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Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People

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Stimpunks Glossary Develop A Language In Which We Can Both Understand And Challenge The World Photo of wooden letter blocks spelling the word GLOSSARY

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Develop a Language in Which We Can Both Understand and Challenge the World

The shift from the pathology paradigm to the neurodiversity paradigm calls for a radical shift in language, because the appropriate language for discussing medical problems is quite different from the appropriate language for discussing diversity.

THROW AWAY THE MASTER’S TOOLS: LIBERATING OURSELVES FROM THE PATHOLOGY PARADIGM

In politics our frames shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies. To change our frames is to change all of this. Reframing is social change.

When we successfully reframe public discourse, we change the way the public sees the world. We change what counts as common sense. Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames. Thinking differently requires speaking differently.

The ALL NEW Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

Terror comes in many forms and one powerful expression is when people become too fearful to develop a language in which they can both understand and challenge the world in which they live. Not only does such linguistic deprivation fail to ward off the plague of propaganda, but it also contributes ‘to an annihilation of the self and the destruction of the capacity to recognize the real world’.

Giroux, Henry A.. Pedagogy of Resistance (p. 31). Bloomsbury Publishing.

You Cannot Change a Reality That You Cannot Name

Kimberlé Crenshaw | ‘You Cannot Change a Reality That You Cannot Name’:  — FAIR

Language is also a place of struggle.

—bell hooks, Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness

“Language is also a place of struggle.” “Thinking differently requires speaking differently.” “Develop a language in which they can both understand and challenge the world in which they live.”

We may not know it, and be able to talk about it, because there’s been an agenda to erase our capacity to name that reality. And the clear fact is that you cannot change or transform a reality that you cannot name, you cannot historicize, you cannot conceptualize.

Kimberlé Crenshaw | ‘You Cannot Change a Reality That You Cannot Name’:  — FAIR

People often take issue against the terms used by marginalized people. We experience this in our advocacy regarding Identity First Language and the terms neurodivergent and neurotypical. These terms were coined to examine power and privilege, which is exactly what some don’t like about them.

Our glossary grows rapidly. We’re defining the small truths and the big truths of our daily existence.

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share.

Post-truth is pre-fascism.

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (p. 71). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

“Language is also a place of struggle.”

“Thinking differently requires speaking differently.“

“Develop a language in which they can both understand and challenge the world in which they live.”

Language is the most powerful tool we have.

Let’s use it well.

Divisive, demeaning and devoid of feeling: how social work jargon causes problems for families

Latest Glossary Terms

  • Applied Learning

    Applied learning (AL) is an umbrella term for educational approaches in which students learn through the active application of knowledge and skills to real-world tasks, with strategically-timed direct instruction and performance-based assessments supporting learning.

  • Human Interdependence Paradigm

    Human Interdependence Paradigm emphasizes cultivating unique individual greatness. It posits that the value of this greatness is realized through applying it to solve meaningful real-world problems for others, fostering a sense of purpose and mutual reliance.

  • Pathology Lite

    Pathology Lite

    Pathology lite complements the now well-known concept of neurodiversity lite. It highlights equally risky ways that scientific discourse and practice can subtly reinforce harm against neurodivergent people, often without being described as such. In the emerging field of critical neurodiversity studies (Ashley, Creechan, and Jones, n. d.; Bergenmar, Creechan, and Stenning 2025; ND Hums Network, n. d.), the…

  • Dyspraxia

    Dyspraxia, like many other neurodivergences, is a natural variation in human neurotypes and experience. Dyspraxic individuals experience the world differently – they struggle with coordination, movement, language, speech and independence in a world often designed and designated for neurotypical individuals. We need to shifting our understanding of dyspraxia from a purely medical perspective to one…

  • Administrative Burden

    A simple definition of administrative burden is that it is an individual’s experience of a policy’s implementation as onerous. A more specific definition is that administrative burdens are the learning, psychological, and compliance costs that citizens experience in their interactions with government. Herd, Pamela; Moynihan, Donald P.. Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means (p. 22).…

  • Scenius

    Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the…

  • Nesting

    Nesting

    Autistic nesting is a concept I have written about before; the way we curate physical and sensory spaces to sustain our flow and manage transitions in a world not built with our needs in mind. Nesting is not simply decorating, nor is it only about comfort. It is the active creation of an environment that…

  • Techno-Legal Solutionism

    “techno-legal solutionism”—the belief that complex social problems can be solved through legally mandated technical fixes. Nerd Harder: A Typology of Techno‐Legal Solutionist Logics in Child Online Safety Laws – Reid – 2025 – Policy & Internet – Wiley Online Library Our analysis of recently enacted state-level child online safety laws (COSLs) demonstrates how techno-solutionist logic…

  • Thick Data

    Thick Data

    Data related to qualitative aspects of human experience and behavior, particularly when used as context for the analysis of a large data set. thick data This term is a mashup of big data and thick description, an anthropological research methodology that documents not only human behavior, but also the context of that behavior. thick data…

  • Glimmers

    Glimmers

    I really loved the idea of glimmers. I think for autistic people our glimmers are often related to our passions and interests, and to some extent related to seeing justice enacted. I know I certainly feel a sense of inner calm and balance when imbalances are addressed, and mistreatments corrected. I definitely feel a sense…

  • Connection

    Connection

    A sense of being connected to other autistic people has been reported anecdotally. Friendships and connectedness may be important to autistic people and beneficial for their wellbeing. Our research aimed to understand the autistic community by interviewing 20 autistic people about their experiences of being connected to other autistic people. Participants were interviewed in person,…

  • Aphantasia

    Some neurodivergent individuals, especially autistic folks, may experience aphantasia, an inability to visualise something in one’s mind. For these folks, mindfulness exercises that rely on visualisation aren’t really effective. The Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills I can think about the idea of a red triangle. But it’s blackness behind my eyes. Blackness next to…

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Essential Neurodiversity Vocabulary: The Good, The Bad, The Different

Here’s some essential neurodiversity, disability, and equity vocabulary grouped by the good, the bad, and the different.

Essential Neurodiversity Vocabulary: The Good, The Bad, The Different

Other Glossaries