The Premise
Due both to their ability to denaturalize social norms and to their neurological differences, autistic individuals can offer novel insights into gender as a social process. Examining gender from an autistic perspective highlights some elements as socially constructed that may otherwise seem natural and supports an understanding of gender as fluid and multidimensional.
Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender: Women’s Studies in Communication: Vol 35, No 1
In many ways, the impulse to repress transgender people from expressing their true identity is rooted in the same impulse that makes people want to stop #ActuallyAutistic people from flapping their hands.
Eric Michael Garcia on Twitter
LGBTQI+ people with an Autistic diagnosis have two separate rainbows — and two separate coming out stories. There are times when an autistic will not come out as LGBTQI+, and vice-versa. The challenges for each minority group are great, and being a double-social minority can be especially tough. Education and peer support goes a long way in helping to navigate these challenges, and make for a smoother trip on the social highway.
About Us – Twainbow
Navigating the Course
Header Art Credit: itsyagerg_zero
The Table of Contents below is provided for two reasons:
- to outline the content provided by our Stimpunk Learners, and
- to offer a suggested course flow.
While this is the suggested order of the course, you are free to work through it in the order you choose and at your own pace.
Content is structured in a loose, multimedia, multi-modality, scrollytelling style where the main concepts are presented at the top of the page in plainer language, with more academic language and further detail provided as you scroll down. Read to the depth you’re comfortable with. If you don’t have time to rabbit hole an entire page or section, read what you can knowing that you got the main ideas up front.
We provide “Main Takeaways” of the Reading list sections and present them in accordions that you can click or tap to expose lists of main takeaways presented with one idea per line. If you don’t have time or energy to read the reading lists for each session, reading just the main takeaways will give you what you most need to know.
We use block quotes heavily. We quote our favorite passages and sources with hyperlinks signposting back to the original work.
We love hyperlinks and use them extensively. We consider them a kindness to the reader and a potent weapon in the fight against disinformation. Many of our links open up inline definition boxes when you hover over them with a mouse or tap them on a touch screen. The links that open definition boxes are bolded.
Consume this content to the depth and breadth of your preference in whatever way and order works for you.
This is a living document that you can contribute to under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. Send us your suggestions and favorite quotes and resources.
- Course Structure
- Course Purpose
- Course Primer
- Lesson 1: Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are
- Lesson 2: Gender Copia and Bricolage
- Lesson 3: Neurodivergence, Gender, and Minority Stress
- Lesson 4: Autigender and Neuroqueer: Two Words on the Relationship Between Autism and Gender That Fit Me
- Lesson 5: Chosen Family
- Lesson 6: Queer
- Lesson 7: Bathroom Access
Course Structure
- Purpose – Contains the goal of the information provided in the lesson.
- Introduction – We try to ease you into the lesson with background information and our thoughts (or quote(s)) on the topic.
- Reading – Select links directing you to important readings, videos, and other research supporting the call to actions and deconstructions.
- Activities – A combination of activities to help you process the information presented.
- Reflection Activity – These quotes, articles, journal prompts direct you to being intentional in your advocacy by providing further support of the ideas presented in the lesson.
- Take It Further – The offerings here encourage you to dig deeper.
- Resources – Anything we want to share but could not fit in the previous sections.
Course Purpose
This course uses neurodivergent experience to support an understanding of gender as fluid and multidimensional and demonstrate that queer and neurodivergent liberation are entwined.
Course Primer
Across 7 lessons, we deconstruct gender and construct community.
- Lesson 1: Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are
- Lesson 2: Gender Copia and Bricolage
- Lesson 3: Neurodivergence, Gender, and Minority Stress
- Lesson 4: Autigender and Neuroqueer: Two Words on the Relationship Between Autism and Gender That Fit Me
- Lesson 5: Chosen Family
- Lesson 6: Queer
- Lesson 7: Bathroom Access
Lesson 1: Neurodiversity and Gender: You Hit So Hard With All the Colors That There Are
Purpose
In this lesson, we review the shared history of neurodivergent and queer people and celebrate our entwined natures, with lots of music.
Queer and neurodivergent liberation are entwined.
Introduction
…plenty of autistic people are LGBTQ and experience a double portion of discrimination. The desire to eliminate the traits that make autistic people unique is rooted in the same impulse to suppress people from affirming their gender identity or sexuality.
We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation
Members of the neurodiversity movement adopt a position of diversity that encompasses a kaleidoscope of identities that intersects with the LGBTQIA+ kaleidoscope by recognising neurodivergent traits – including but not limited to ADHD, Autism, Dyscalculia, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Synesthesia, Tourette’s Syndrome – as natural variations of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
Reading
Main Takeaways
- Due both to their ability to denaturalize social norms and to their neurological differences, autistic individuals can offer novel insights into gender as a social process.
- Examining gender from an autistic perspective highlights some elements as socially constructed that may otherwise seem natural and supports an understanding of gender as fluid and multidimensional.
- Neurodivergent people are more likely than the general population to be gender non-conforming.
- LGBTQI+ people with an Autistic diagnosis have two separate rainbows — and two separate coming out stories.
- People who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six times as likely to be autistic as cisgender people are.
- Autistic people are more likely than neurotypical people to be gender diverse, several studies show, and gender-diverse people are more likely to have autism than are cisgender people.
- Members of the neurodiversity movement adopt a position of diversity that encompasses a kaleidoscope of identities that intersects with the LGBTQIA+ kaleidoscope by recognising neurodivergent traits as natural variations of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species.
- “Queer,” in any case, does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.
- In many ways, the impulse to repress transgender people from expressing their true identity is rooted in the same impulse that makes people want to stop #ActuallyAutistic people from flapping their hands.b
- Autistic and queer folks share some dark history—and some bad actors.
- Learning about the shared DNA of gay conversion therapy and ABA reaffirmed what Martin Luther King wrote in 1963 “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
- Plenty of autistic people are LGBTQ and experience a double portion of discrimination. The desire to eliminate the traits that make autistic people unique is rooted in the same impulse to suppress people from affirming their gender identity or sexuality.
- ABA and its conversion therapy kin are with us still, all too alive and well.
- Protecting queer kids protects also neurodivergent kids—and vice versa. The fight is for inclusion and acceptance—for all operating systems, for all of our different ways of being human.
- Queer and neurodivergent liberation are entwined.
- I don’t need a cure for me.
- Conversion therapy is wrong. Conversion therapy does not work.
- Autistic perceptions of gender identity are far more diverse, and put interests, rather than gender identity, at the core of autistic people’s identity perception.
- Autistic people often state repeatedly in their accounts how confusing and emotionally taxing ‘doing gender’ is for them, explaining why they may explicitly reject being confined to traditional and binary gender norms.
- Children on the autism spectrum are more than seven times more likely to show signs of gender variance.
- Being both autistic and gender non-conforming, some children face a double-challenge in responding to society’s biases.
- People who feel significant distress because their gender identity differs from their birth sex have higher-than-expected rates of autism.
- People with autism appear to have higher rates of gender dysphoria than the general population.
- Rates of autism and autism traits appear to be higher in those identifying as genderqueer.
- Gender norms should not be imposed on people with autism to make the rest of the world more comfortable.
- Knowing how to navigate in a world that is not really friendly with people who are trans can be tricky when you are missing social cues.
- We can see that a lot of the social rules around gender are bullshit basically.
- Learning that they are autistic can show people that they are not wrong for living outside prescribed social rules and norms, including ones for gender and sexuality. Once they accept that they are autistic, they realize that a lot of social norms are constrictive and should be questioned
- Masked Autism and being a closeted gender minority often go hand in hand, and the experiences share a lot of features.
- When your belief system teaches that disability and gender variance are embarrassing and disgusting, it’s hard to look at your child and recognize those traits.
- We have to make society over again from the ground up, our own little neuro-queer microsocieties. Because no one else will think to include us.
- When a person’s gender is doubted because they are autistic, this paves the way for removing autistic people’s agency in all kinds of other ways.
- Trans autistic people often lack access to services and supports that understand and respect all aspects of their identity.
- Too frequently, autistic people are denied basic rights to make decisions about our own bodies and health care, including when it comes to expressing our gender identity.
- Our dual identities are not competing; they are complementary.
Activities
- Listen to and/or read the lyrics of some of the ten songs provided in the Reading list. Let the souls and experience of these queer/neurodivergent artists reach you. Feel how the songs connect to the context they are used in the surrounding course materials.
- What does gender have to do with presuming competence?
- Bodily autonomy and presuming competence are very important principles in the neurodiversity and disability rights movements. Consider the reading in light of these principles.
Reflection Activity
Queer and neurodivergent people share some dark history summarized by the phrase:
“The cost of indistinguishability is unreasonable.”
Reflect on the consequences of “indistinguishable from their peers” for queer, neurodivergent, and other marginalized people. Learn more about the unreasonable cost of masking and passing on our Autistic Burnout page.
Take It Further
ABA and conversion therapy have behaviorism in common. Learn about the problems with behaviorism on our glossary page and education access pages.
- Behaviorism
- Education Access: We’ve Turned Classrooms Into a Hell for Neurodivergence
- We Don’t Need Your Mindset Marketing: Education Technology and the New Behaviorism
- Fix Injustice, Not Kids: Justice, not grit. Justice, not growth mindset. Justice, not behavior “management.” Justice, not rearrangement of injustice.
Resources
Our course “DIY at the Edges: Surviving the Bipartisanship of Behaviorism by Rolling Our Own” goes into depth on behaviorism.
Lesson 2: Gender Copia and Bricolage
Purpose
Autistic people, who are less aware of social norms, are less likely to develop a typical gender identity. Instead of gender as a binary or even a continuum, this lessons presents gender as a fluid and multidimensional copia, an identity bricolage.
Introduction
Due both to their ability to denaturalize social norms and to their neurological differences, autistic individuals can offer novel insights into gender as a social process. Examining gender from an autistic perspective highlights some elements as socially constructed that may otherwise seem natural and supports an understanding of gender as fluid and multidimensional.
Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender: Women’s Studies in Communication: Vol 35, No 1
Reading
Main Takeaways
- Due both to their ability to denaturalize social norms and to their neurological differences, autistic individuals can offer novel insights into gender as a social process.
- Examining gender from an autistic perspective highlights some elements as socially constructed that may otherwise seem natural and supports an understanding of gender as fluid and multidimensional.
- Confronting and denaturalizing social norms describes the terrain of many autistic lives. We’re social construct canaries.
- Copia provides a strategy of invention, a rhetorical term for the process of generating ideas.
- Autistic people are recognising and preaching the fluidity and/or flexibility of things like sexuality, gender, time, love, career and more.
- Gender identity is how we make sense of our gender subjectivity, the totality of our gendered experiences of ourselves.
- People construct gender identity from an endless list of more ‘basic’ building blocks.
- To arrive at a gender identity, we arrange gender subjectivity like building materials.
- Accounts of gender identity that would be stereotyping or bioessentialist if universalized remain acceptable at the individual level.
- Psychological synthesis of gender subjectivity into gender identity is particular to the individual.
- Gendered experiences are not static.
- While gendered experiences often demonstrate stability over time, there is no unbreakable promise against change.
- Gendered experiences may also vary situationally, relationally, or temporally.
- I don’t ‘feel’ like a gender, I feel like myself.
- Interests play a role in defining both gender identity and identity in general.
- My sense of identity is fluid, just as my sense of gender is fluid.
- Autistic individuals have described feeling pressure to ‘‘mask’’ their autism. They often do that by “performing” normative gender roles.
- “Doing” gender as socially expected can be incredibly draining for autistic individuals.
- Discovering their autistic identity might help autistic individuals process their gender identity as well.
- The connection between participants’ interests and gender identity was an important and unexpected finding of this research. Participants’ questioning of their gender identity often stemmed from their interests not conforming to those typically associated with femininity.
- Autistic people describe feelings of alienation provoked by the pressure to conform to ‘‘gender-typical’’ and ‘‘neurotypical’’ expectations of them.
- Gender identity is traditionally perceived in terms of binary categories, which is not useful for those who do not conform to them.
- If gender is a social construct, then autistic people, who are less aware of social norms, are less likely to develop a typical gender identity.
- If social constructs are made of symbols and representations, then autistic concreteness may lead to a less generalized, and more personal gender identity. Therefore, autism may redefine womanhood in a unique way.
Activities
Bricolage is construction using whatever comes to hand. Thanks to community efforts, there is more and more vocabulary for identity at hand. Peruse the gender wiki for a copia of vocabulary.
Reflection Activity
What’s your identity copia? How does it privilege or marginalize you?
Take It Further
Interests play a role in defining both gender identity and identity in general. The connection between participants’ interests and gender identity was an important finding in the research presented in the reading. Participants’ questioning of their gender identity often stemmed from their interests not conforming to those typically associated with their assigned gender.
Autism and ADHD (aka Kinetic Cognitive Style) are interest based operating systems featuring monotropism, hyperfocus, special interests, attention tunnels, and flow states. Learn about these in our glossary.
Resources
Lesson 3: Neurodivergence, Gender, and Minority Stress
Purpose
Queer neurodivergent people face compounding minority stressors. Decreased social standing leads to stigmatized minority groups being exposed to more stressful life situations, with simultaneously fewer resources to cope with these events.
Introduction
The primary aim of the minority stress model is to explain disparities in health between majority and stigmatized minority groups (Meyer 2003). Social stress theory hinges on the idea that social disadvantage can translate into health disparities (Schwartz and Meyer 2010). Researchers hypothesize that decreased social standing leads to stigmatized minority groups being exposed to more stressful life situations, with simultaneously fewer resources to cope with these events. Social structure facilitates this process through acts of discrimination and social exclusion, which are added stress burdens that socially advantaged groups are not equally exposed to.
(PDF) Extending the Minority Stress Model to Understand Mental Health Problems Experienced by the Autistic Population
The closet can only stop you from being seen. It is not shame-proof.
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
And that is what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate.
Reading
Main Takeaways
- The primary aim of the minority stress model is to explain disparities in health between majority and stigmatized minority groups.
- Social disadvantage can translate into health disparities.
- Decreased social standing leads to stigmatized minority groups being exposed to more stressful life situations, with simultaneously fewer resources to cope with these events.
- Transgender people may find themselves living in constant fear of verbal or physical harassment.
- As social relations and culture change over time, negative attitudes toward transgender people may be reduced, which will then reduce the stressors which trigger anxiety and depression.
- The concept of minority stress stems from several social and psychological theoretical orientations and can be described as a relationship between minority and dominant values and resultant conflict with the social environment experienced by minority group members.
- Minority stress theory proposes that sexual minority health disparities can be explained in large part by stressors induced by a hostile, homophobic culture, which often results in a lifetime of harassment, maltreatment, discrimination and victimization.
- A strong correlation may be drawn between minority stress theory and a greater likelihood for psychological distress and physical health problems.
- Stress theory provides a useful framework to explain and examine health disparities and the role of homophobia.
- There is a significant relationship between minority stressors and deleterious behavioral and mental health outcomes.
- The minority stress model posits that social disadvantage and marginalization results in an increased burden, which in turn can result in mental and physical health disparities.
- Autistic individuals are more likely to experience (poly)victimization.
- Autistic lives are marked by an often-astounding excess stress burden across the life span.
- Exposure to minority stress does predict significantly worse well-being and higher psychological distress in the autistic community.
- The constant marginalization of autistic people is contributing to high rates of poor mental health.
- Autistic community connectedness buffered against some of the effects of minority stress and was related to better mental health over time.
- The increased rates of mental health problems in these minority populations are often a consequence of the stigma and marginalisation attached to living outside mainstream sociocultural norms.
- This stress could come from external adverse events, which among other forms of victimization could include verbal abuse, acts of violence, sexual assault by a known or unknown person, reduced opportunities for employment and medical care, and harassment from persons in positions of authority.
- Autistic individuals constitute an identity-based minority and may be exposed to excess social stress as a result of disadvantaged and stigmatized social status.
- Suicide rates are significantly higher among autistic LGBTQ+ youth than non-autistic youth.
- Minority stress levels are further perpetuated by internal stresses, such as the anticipation of adverse events, the vigilance this anticipation requires, the internalization of negative social attitudes, efforts to conceal one’s sexual orientation and gender-identity, and pressure to conform to societal expectations.
- Prolonged Adaptation Stress Syndrome is what happens when someone pretends to be something they’re not on an everyday basis.
Activities
What minority stressors do you notice in your life? Flow patrol a day at your work/school/office taking note of possible stressors for marginalized people.
Reflection Activity
Autistic people are often referred to as canaries.
Autistic man Freestone Wilson suggested in the 1990s that autistic people are functioning as the “miners’ canaries” of civilisation. When the air in the mine is poisoned we do not prevent canaries being born in case they suffer from the poison and upset us: we clean the air or close the mine.
Discussion paper on eugenics and diversity
What are some ways that neurodivergent and queer people are canaries in our societies? Consult our Canary glossary page for ideas.
Take It Further
Adapting to minority stress contributes to Prolonged Adaptation Stress Syndrome. PASS is what happens when someone pretends to be something they’re not on an everyday basis. PASS fuels burnout. Learn about the costs of adapting to minority stress on our Burnout page.
Resources
Our Minority Stress glossary page has more research on minority stress. Our Neurominority glossary page describes what it is to be a neurological minority.
Lesson 4: Autigender and Neuroqueer: Two Words on the Relationship Between Autism and Gender That Fit Me
Purpose
Neuroqueering queers neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. Let’s try it out.
Introduction
Autistic people can have an exceptionally complicated and unique understanding of what gender is, how it affects us, and how we express gender. Autigender and neuroqueer describe our relationship with gender.
Reading
Main Takeaways
- Autigender is not explicitly saying that “My gender is autism” – it’s not about saying you are a boy, girl, enby, autism, whatever. It’s about your relationship with your gender.
- The primary deficit of autism includes difficulties interpreting and understanding social constructions. This means that we have a disability that inherently makes understanding gender part of our disability.
- Because autigender describes the relationship with gender, an autigender person’s gender can be, well anything.
- “Autigender” is a term that some autistic people use to describe their relationship with gender. Specifically, it means that they feel that their autism affects the way they perceive and feel about gender.
- Autism is a neurotype that specifically affects our perceptions and understanding of social conventions, norms, etiquette and mores.
- Neuroqueering is the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously.
- A neuroqueer individual is any individual whose identity, selfhood, gender performance, and/or neurocognitive style have in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering, regardless of what gender, sexual orientation, or style of neurocognitive functioning they may have been born with.
- Neuroqueer is not a mere synonym for neurodivergent, or for neurodivergent identity combined with queer identity. Neuroqueer is active subversion of both neuronormativity and heteronormativity.
- Neuroqueer is intentional noncompliance with the demands of normative performance.
- Neuroqueer is about recognizing the fundamentally entwined nature of cognition, gender, and embodiment, and also about treating cognition, gender, and embodiment as fluid and customizable, and as canvases for ongoing creative experimentation.
- The term neuroqueer points to a horizon of creative possibility with which anyone can choose to engage.
Activities
Reflection Activity
Do you relate to the autigender experience? What is your relationship with gender?
Take It Further
Cognition, gender, and embodiment are fundamentally entwined. Learn about the concept of bodyminds on our Bodymind glossary page.
Resources
- Mind Is an Embodied Phenomenon: Neurodiversity Is About Bodyminds, Not Just Brains
- Making Spaces Safer: Bodymind Affirmation and Access Intimacy
Lesson 5: Chosen Family
Purpose
Chosen families help us cope and survive.
Introduction
According to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Marriage, Family, and Couples Counseling, “chosen families are nonbiological kinship bonds, whether legally recognized or not, deliberately chosen for the purpose of mutual support and love.” The term originated within the LGBTQ community and was used to describe early queer gatherings like the Harlem Drag Balls of the late nineteenth century.
Finding Connection Through “Chosen Family” | Psychology Today
So many people around the world are not accepted by their parents or their family for who they are.
Rina Sawayama: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Reading
Main Takeaways
- So many people around the world are not accepted by their parents or their family for who they are.
- Chosen families are nonbiological kinship bonds, whether legally recognized or not, deliberately chosen for the purpose of mutual support and love.
- The circumstances surrounding the birth of the first “chosen families”—intense loneliness and isolation faced by those rejected by their biological kin—continue today.
- Chosen families can form as a result of any person’s experience with their biological family that leaves needs unmet.
- Nearly 40 percent of today’s homeless youth identify as queer, and a recent study found that roughly 64 percent of LGBTQ baby boomers have built, and continue to rely on, chosen families.
- A chosen family can be part of a person’s growing network, and can help construct a wide foundation of support that continues to grow with time.
- Your ‘chosen’ family consists of those who accept you for who you are and they want the best for you.
- If you can find yourself among a unit of supporters who love you unconditionally, will offer a place to you that allows you to be yourself, safely and without barriers, you might have found your ‘chosen’ family.
- This family might not be all in one place.
- The idea of ‘found’ or ‘chosen’ family has a strong emotional meaning in the community.
- A NeurodiVenture is an inclusive non-hierarchical organisation operated by neurodivergent people that provides a safe and nurturing environment for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction.
- Without the support of an Autistic whānau, Autistic life feels like a life in continuous emergency mode.
- Chosen families are homes, not rooted in geography, but in shared passion, imagination, and values.
Activities
Chosen Family provides sanctuary from minority stress. Our sanctuaries are under attack. The current crop of anti-gay bills are fighting to restrict how and when Queer people can be ourselves. Notice how these bills amount to attacks on developing Chosen Family and safe space.
Reflection Activity
Who is in your chosen family? Who are your “strawberry people”?
Take It Further
Two ways Chosen Family can help us survive are via peer respite and collaborative niche construction. Read about these two topics in our glossary.
Chosen family might not be all in one place, especially for autistic people who thrive on written communication in online communities. Learn about the importance of online community in our piece on written communication.
Resources
Indigenous languages like Te Reo Māori have important words for concepts that have been suppressed by colonialism. This video gathers vocabulary for community.
Lesson 6: Queer
Purpose
How and why we use the word Queer.
Introduction
“Queer,” in any case, does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.
Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography
…queer as not about who you’re having sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.
bell hooks
Reading
Main Takeaways
- Being queer means constantly questioning what’s considered “normal” and why that norm gets privileged over other ways of being.
- Being queer is a worldview characterized by acceptance, through which one embraces and validates all the unique, unconventional ways that individuals express themselves.
- Being queer is about acknowledging the infinite number of complex, fluid identities that exist outside the few limited, dualistic categories considered legitimate by society.
- Being queer means believing that everyone has the right to be themselves and express themselves without being judged or hated.
- Being queer means challenging everything that’s considered normal.
- Being queer means ceasing to think in binaries.
- Queer is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.
- Queer does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility.
- Queer has to do with being different. And how everyone is different from everyone else.
- Autistic people naturally stand queer neuronormative standards.
- Queer is the subversion of societal expectation.
- When we begin to dismantle neuronormativity, we also begin to dismantle heteronormativity.
- The universe always turns out to be more complicated and queer than we think it is.
- Liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of heteronormativity is referred to as queering.
- One can queer and one can be queer.
- The queering of heteronormativity and the queering of neuronormativity are interconnected.
- All queering (including neuroqueering) is inherently transgressive, since by definition it involves subverting, defying, deviating from, and/or fucking with normativity.
- Wherever restrictive conventions of compulsory neuronormativity and heteronormativity exist, there also exists the potential to open new vistas of creative possibility by queering those conventions in some way or another.
- The amount of space outside of a closet is always infinitely greater than the amount of space inside the closet.
Activities
Stop thinking in binaries. Embrace the copia.
Reflection Activity
Being queer means believing that everyone has the right to be themselves and express themselves without being judged or hated because that doesn’t fit in with what’s normal. Consider this in the light of behaviorist therapies that suppress autistic ways of being, as discussed in lesson 1.
Take It Further
Queer means constantly questioning what’s considered “normal”. Learn about normal as a construct on our glossary page.
Being Queer is a worldview characterized by acceptance. Learn about acceptance on our glossary page.
Queer is a reclaimed word. Learn about reclamation and how language is a place of struggle on our Identity-First Language page.
Resources
We promote weird pride as an umbrella for all of us who deviate from the norms. Get weird on our glossary page.
Lesson 7: Bathroom Access
Purpose
Bathroom access is fraught territory for queer, neurodivergent, and disabled people.
Introduction
I wish I didn’t have to think about bathrooms so much.
@mzalopany on TikTok
Bathrooms can be anxious experiences for neurodivergent and disabled people who need assistance. Queerphobic bathroom bills ratchet that anxiety by emboldening fear and hate. Unisex and family bathrooms are wonderful, and often scarce. We are left with assisting our different gender family, friends, and clients in binary gendered bathrooms, hoping nobody makes a fuss, hoping we can relieve ourselves in peace. Bathroom bills steal that peace. Bathroom bills hurt disabled people. Bathroom bills hurt neurodivergent people. And, of course, bathroom bills hurt their primary targets, transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Bathroom bills are incompatible with neurodiversity, the social model of disability, the norms of work and collaboration, and the “all means all” of education.
Reading
Main Takeaways
- Everyone uses the bathroom and gender is a construct.
- Bathrooms can be anxious experiences for neurodivergent and disabled people who need assistance.
- Bathroom bills hurt disabled people.
- Bathroom bills hurt neurodivergent people.
- Bathroom bills hurt their primary targets, transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
- Bathroom bills are incompatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability.
- People can embody multiple marginalized identities.
- The right to safe and accessible public restrooms is also important for adults and older children who need accommodation, assistance, or supervision.
- Bathroom access becomes especially difficult for people with disabilities who have caretakers of a different gender.
- Anyone, who is caring for a seriously impaired person, who is his/her opposite gender, will also experience hardship from the passage and enforcement of segregated bathroom laws.
- Bathroom bills are a violation of many disabled people’s rights.
- Innocent behavior will be stigmatized, and even fatal, for members of communities criminalized.
- Bathroom bills reinforce the stigma people with disabilities face and criminalize many people’s normal biological functions.
- Few non-binary bathrooms are accessible when you use a wheelchair.
- Living with the threat of being bullied, assaulted or arrested for using the ‘wrong’ restroom generates near constant anxiety.
- Using the bathroom shouldn’t have to be a nervewracking (using gendered bathrooms) or guilty (using disabled unisex bathrooms) experience.
- If we allow restrooms to be more fluid and accommodating for different life experiences, we include transgender people, people with disabilities, and parents with young children.
- Must so many people who are different dread something as fundamental as going to pee in a public restroom?
- Passing strict gender segregation laws not only demeans and endangers our transgender brothers and sisters, but also puts severely disabled people with caretakers of the opposite gender in extreme danger in many cases.
- Inclusive restrooms could be a welcome respite for a huge population of people.
- Not everyone fits neatly into the categories of male and female, but everyone needs to go to the bathroom.
Activities
Consider bathroom access as another source of minority stress.
Reflection Activity
Why are we still making gender specific bathrooms? Why are gender inclusive bathrooms often single stall? And if they are single stall why are they often inaccessible?
Could it be due to a lack of an imagination that people can embody two marginalized identities?
Take It Further
Bathrooms highlight the need for intersectional thinking. Visit our Intersectionality glossary page and our “Design Is Tested at the Edges” page to develop an intersectional lens that will help you perceive minority stressors.
Resources
Bathrooms also highlight the need for accessible thinking. We all should be enabled to take care of our most basic biological functions. Consult these pieces to learn how to build accessible spaces and systems.
- Enable Dignity: Accessible Systems, Spaces, & Events
- Neuroception and Sensory Load: Our Complex Sensory Experiences
- Making Spaces Safer: Bodymind Affirmation and Access Intimacy
- Event Access Guide
- Access Survey
Why don’t you study my gender? Tell me it’s not enough Shout at me in the streets Claim it’ll make me tough Why don’t you study my gender? Tell me there’s only two Tell me that it's perfect It's enough for me and you Why don’t you study my gender? Peddle those tired old lines That the violence is justified 'Cause it saves the right kind of lives Why don’t you study my gender? Tell me I’m no fun anymore That I used to bе quiet and pretty And you liked thе old me more Why don’t you study my gender? Stretch it out so we both can see Ask invasive questions Pretend you’re not hurting me Because when you study my gender And we fight this dirty war And I tell you that you’re trash And you call me a whore We’ve nothing gained and Nothing ventured and there’s No outcome we haven’t seen before So go ahead, study my gender Bring all your fears and insecurities To the fore 'Cause when you study my gender Guess what I like the new me more 'Cause when you study my gender Guess what I like the new me more
Left: Lydia Santos (she/they), autistic, epileptic, demigirl lesbian. 26 y/o (if they care)
Right: Maxine Fields (she/her), adhder, bisexual cis woman and Lydia’s girlfriend. 28 y/o (again, if they care)
Art: itsyagerg_zero
