I mean, yes, visibility and legitimacy is a major element in why neurodiversity is more widely recognized. However, STEM folks tend to reassert the authority of science as an institution of capitalism and settler-colonialism by not recognizing that these are not “illnesses” or pathological conditions naturally. Yes, they are behaviours that we have no reason to believe are divergent or new from typical human life, and their status as pathological is conditional on the specific social and material conditions that are facilitated by this system.
We are recognizing it more because it is covered more in scholarship, yes, but also because this system has created the conditions where we are even in the position to construct these behaviors as worthy of identifying to prove that they are real. If neurodiverse people didn’t have to justify their worthiness of human compassion and dignity just because they can’t conform to the expectations and demands of a system that only values human life for its productivity, then there’d be no distinction at all.
“However, STEM folks tend to reassert the authority of science as an institution of capitalism and settler-colonialism by not recognizing that these are not “illnesses” or pathological conditions naturally. Yes, they are behaviours that we have no reason to believe are divergent or new from typical human life, and their status as pathological is conditional on the specific social and material conditions that are facilitated by this system.”
There’s a lot in this that I agree with, but in the past, I have been quite irked by people who take a hard line version of this stance, who say that I’m being ableist by referring to myself as disabled. Whilst the majority of things that being autistic and ADHD cause me to struggle with that are better understood as a function of our environment, there are plenty of ways in which I would consider to be independent of societal structure.
For instance, I struggle with sensory hypersensitivity, such that a bright sunny day, or loud sounds cause me physical pain, and also cause me to become fatigued quickly if exposed to them for a while. This sucks, and I think it would even in a society that was structured radically differently
I’m not sure what you thought my comment was suggesting, but ableism is not related to whether or not you subscribe to the idea that disabilities exist, it refers to the systemic oppression of disabled people and construction of disability as devaluing. Races as they are constructed socially are inherently racist as their existence is entirely contingent on a way of life where groups of colonized people are subordinated, but it would not be racism for a racialized person to correctly identify that race exists because of the world they live in. Structuralism and social construction aren’t terms that we use to prove that a thing doesn’t exist, but how human action is an effective explanation for why that thing has come to be.
What makes something like AuDHD a disability is that people are systemically oppressed for possessing those traits, not that those traits only exist because we made them up. It’s true that you may have pain or discomfort from those traits even outside of this system, but it wouldn’t necessarily exist in terms of ability when society isn’t orgsnized around commodification and profit maximization (wage labour, and the forces that coerce people into productivity). There isn’t a “natural” rate of neurodiversity or ability as that language and all of our understandings of it are inextricably linked as well as realized through a system that is organised around those imperatives.
We know that human beings have not always valued people by the productivity of their bodies because we have archaeological evidence of early humans caring for others who would not have been able to survive on their own (as though any person would). Even more, there is genuinely no way to tell if these kinds of sensory issues have in fact taken on the form they have because of these conditions. Schizophrenia produces wildly different experiences from the same symptoms depending on cultural contexts, for example. Even if you had the same symptoms, how would you experience them differently if you were not forced to hear loud noises or sun exposure, or with no negative connotation attributed to that intolerance, or with many other members of your community experiencing similar symptoms with your value as human beings left completely intact?
Oh, and what social system of order and productivity do you think should take over that authority? communism? anarchism?
What is ‘typical human life’?
Am i better off being beaten into submission and diagnosed and drugged by a communist expansionist dictatorship than a capitalist state of settler colonialism?
I do not live under a communist or anarchist authority (as funny as it is to suggest there’d be an authoritarian anarchist system), and so I can only analyze the system I do live under. If you want to accept dehumanization for convenience and comfort, you can keep that to yourself. I do not, and therefore I criticize this system the way it deserves to be and do so to better understand how to build something better, whatever that may be.
Either way, it was truly boring to read this comment. If structuralist and postmodern theory from fifty years ago is shocking to you, I’m afraid you aren’t the right person to be discussing this with me.
Yes, you are so superior. Wow I am so dumb. I should just listen to you, you so smart.
It can’t be that postmodern theory from 50 years ago is total naval gazing shit from pompous bourgeois academics types… who have enough money and power to sit around all day bitching about how oppressed they are and how much smarter they are than everyone else… weird how they dehumanize anyone who doesn’t agree with their theorizing… just you do.
It can’t be that you yourself, are the very thing you hate so much? Perhaps you, are the system of oppression and misery you so loathe? because instead of being a productive memory of your society, you see yourself as too elevated and sophisticated to participate in it in a meaningful or productive way that would measurable improve it?
“Academic types … who have enough money and power…” Gee, that’d be the day. That prestige and wealth is largely denied to academics specifically because this sort of scholarship was so challenging to a capitalist system and so difficult to commodify.
I’m honestly not sure what the rest of this is meant to mean in this context, as it is mostly incoherent anti-intellectualism that could not come from academic experience in the slightest. Quite literally, scholars are punished for doing what you claim to think they do here. They want you to have four publications and several community outreach initiatives before you’re even done your Ph.D. in many fields now.
Also, it isn’t dehumanising to say you’re uninformed and wrong, humans do that all the time. To reduce that term to the meaning, “you were mean to me on the internet (I wasn’t),” is honestly gross and embarrassing. We use that term to explain cultures that systemically eradicate groups of people, you’re going to sit here and pretend you’ve experienced a fraction of that victimization in an internet comment thread? I’m not sure where you get off acting that entitled to deciding truth, but I wouldn’t even say something like that anonymously and be happy with myself that night.
I mean, yes, visibility and legitimacy is a major element in why neurodiversity is more widely recognized. However, STEM folks tend to reassert the authority of science as an institution of capitalism and settler-colonialism by not recognizing that these are not “illnesses” or pathological conditions naturally. Yes, they are behaviours that we have no reason to believe are divergent or new from typical human life, and their status as pathological is conditional on the specific social and material conditions that are facilitated by this system.
We are recognizing it more because it is covered more in scholarship, yes, but also because this system has created the conditions where we are even in the position to construct these behaviors as worthy of identifying to prove that they are real. If neurodiverse people didn’t have to justify their worthiness of human compassion and dignity just because they can’t conform to the expectations and demands of a system that only values human life for its productivity, then there’d be no distinction at all.
There’s a lot in this that I agree with, but in the past, I have been quite irked by people who take a hard line version of this stance, who say that I’m being ableist by referring to myself as disabled. Whilst the majority of things that being autistic and ADHD cause me to struggle with that are better understood as a function of our environment, there are plenty of ways in which I would consider to be independent of societal structure.
For instance, I struggle with sensory hypersensitivity, such that a bright sunny day, or loud sounds cause me physical pain, and also cause me to become fatigued quickly if exposed to them for a while. This sucks, and I think it would even in a society that was structured radically differently
I’m not sure what you thought my comment was suggesting, but ableism is not related to whether or not you subscribe to the idea that disabilities exist, it refers to the systemic oppression of disabled people and construction of disability as devaluing. Races as they are constructed socially are inherently racist as their existence is entirely contingent on a way of life where groups of colonized people are subordinated, but it would not be racism for a racialized person to correctly identify that race exists because of the world they live in. Structuralism and social construction aren’t terms that we use to prove that a thing doesn’t exist, but how human action is an effective explanation for why that thing has come to be.
What makes something like AuDHD a disability is that people are systemically oppressed for possessing those traits, not that those traits only exist because we made them up. It’s true that you may have pain or discomfort from those traits even outside of this system, but it wouldn’t necessarily exist in terms of ability when society isn’t orgsnized around commodification and profit maximization (wage labour, and the forces that coerce people into productivity). There isn’t a “natural” rate of neurodiversity or ability as that language and all of our understandings of it are inextricably linked as well as realized through a system that is organised around those imperatives.
We know that human beings have not always valued people by the productivity of their bodies because we have archaeological evidence of early humans caring for others who would not have been able to survive on their own (as though any person would). Even more, there is genuinely no way to tell if these kinds of sensory issues have in fact taken on the form they have because of these conditions. Schizophrenia produces wildly different experiences from the same symptoms depending on cultural contexts, for example. Even if you had the same symptoms, how would you experience them differently if you were not forced to hear loud noises or sun exposure, or with no negative connotation attributed to that intolerance, or with many other members of your community experiencing similar symptoms with your value as human beings left completely intact?
Oh, and what social system of order and productivity do you think should take over that authority? communism? anarchism?
What is ‘typical human life’?
Am i better off being beaten into submission and diagnosed and drugged by a communist expansionist dictatorship than a capitalist state of settler colonialism?
My eyes rolled so hard that I could hear them.
I do not live under a communist or anarchist authority (as funny as it is to suggest there’d be an authoritarian anarchist system), and so I can only analyze the system I do live under. If you want to accept dehumanization for convenience and comfort, you can keep that to yourself. I do not, and therefore I criticize this system the way it deserves to be and do so to better understand how to build something better, whatever that may be.
Either way, it was truly boring to read this comment. If structuralist and postmodern theory from fifty years ago is shocking to you, I’m afraid you aren’t the right person to be discussing this with me.
Yes, you are so superior. Wow I am so dumb. I should just listen to you, you so smart.
It can’t be that postmodern theory from 50 years ago is total naval gazing shit from pompous bourgeois academics types… who have enough money and power to sit around all day bitching about how oppressed they are and how much smarter they are than everyone else… weird how they dehumanize anyone who doesn’t agree with their theorizing… just you do.
It can’t be that you yourself, are the very thing you hate so much? Perhaps you, are the system of oppression and misery you so loathe? because instead of being a productive memory of your society, you see yourself as too elevated and sophisticated to participate in it in a meaningful or productive way that would measurable improve it?
“Academic types … who have enough money and power…” Gee, that’d be the day. That prestige and wealth is largely denied to academics specifically because this sort of scholarship was so challenging to a capitalist system and so difficult to commodify.
I’m honestly not sure what the rest of this is meant to mean in this context, as it is mostly incoherent anti-intellectualism that could not come from academic experience in the slightest. Quite literally, scholars are punished for doing what you claim to think they do here. They want you to have four publications and several community outreach initiatives before you’re even done your Ph.D. in many fields now.
Also, it isn’t dehumanising to say you’re uninformed and wrong, humans do that all the time. To reduce that term to the meaning, “you were mean to me on the internet (I wasn’t),” is honestly gross and embarrassing. We use that term to explain cultures that systemically eradicate groups of people, you’re going to sit here and pretend you’ve experienced a fraction of that victimization in an internet comment thread? I’m not sure where you get off acting that entitled to deciding truth, but I wouldn’t even say something like that anonymously and be happy with myself that night.
I won’t be reading anything else you send.