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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

  • ADHD Tax

    ADHD Tax

    ADHD Tax The extra costs those with diagnosable inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and/or executive function challenges incur as a result of being inattentive, hyperactive, impulsive, and/or struggling with executive function. Does the ADHD Tax Need to Be So High? At this point you might ask, “What the hell is the ADHD tax?” Answer: it’s the price…

  • Fawn

    Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries. Pete Walker, The 4Fs: A Trauma Typology in Complex Trauma Fawning is taking care of others…

  • Echolalia

    Echolalia is the repetition of sound, words, phrases. For example: repeating a phrase you’ve just heard, repeating a line from your favourite film, repeatedly pressing a button on a device which elicits a sound. Communication Features | AutisticSLT Echolalia is all about language development Marge Blanc: Making Sense of Echolalia: It’s All About Language Development!…

  • Asynchronous Communication

    This is a style of communicating which lots of neurodivergent people prefer – including myself. Asynchronous communication is when you send a message without expecting an immediate response. Examples: receiving an email and responding minutes, hours, days later / responding to a text later in the day / getting back to someone / waiting until…

  • Autistic Language Hypothesis

    The Autistic language hypothesis (ALH) is a new alternative approach to autistic communication. Framing autistic verbal language as different, not disordered compared to allistic people (non-autistic). The hypothesis takes a Neurodiversity affirming approach to autistic verbal communication. The neurodiversity movement views autistic people and other neurodivergence such as ADHD as natural variations in human neurology…

  • Interoception

    Interoception, our 8th sense, connects us to inner bodily awareness (e.g. pain, thirst, hunger, desire, hygiene & toilet needs, temperature, heart rate, breathing, even our bones, etc.) rather than sensations outside our body (vision, noise, smells, touch, taste and movement).

  • Samefood

    Samefood

    Samefood The term “samefood” refers to the autistic tendency to eat the same food very frequently or even exclusively for days, weeks, even months at a time. Samefood can be used as a noun or a verb. For example: “Sour cream and onion chips are my samefood right now.” or “I don’t usually samefood much, but this past week I can’t…

  • Genderpunk

    Genderpunk: a colloquial term for culture and resistance against gendernormativity; an identity that in and of itself is a resistance against gender norms, homophobia and transphobia, oppression and societal status Your gender has nothing to do with your eligibility to be genderpunk. If you agree with the mindset, no matter how you identify, you can…

  • Cripple Punk

    Cripple Punk

    It’s about rejecting pity, inspiration porn, & all other forms of ableism. It rejects the “good cripple” mythos. Cripple Punk is here for the bitter cripple, the uninspirational cripple, the smoking cripple, the drinking cripple, the addict cripple, the cripple who hasn’t “tried everything”. Cripple Punk fights internalized ableism & fully supports those struggling with it. It respects intersections…

  • Deep Pressure

    Deep Pressure

    Please Crush My Soul Back Into My Body: deep pressure input good!! Provides proprioceptive input and can soothe body stress responses (always get consent) A famous example of the common autistic preference for deep pressure input is Temple Grandin’s Squeeze Machine. At age 18, I constructed the squeeze machine to help calm down the anxiety…

  • Support Swapping

    Support Swapping

    Neurodivergent people, working together, can fill the gaps in each other’s spiky profiles. Go team. Members of the Neurodiversity ERG at Automattic help each other out during synchronous, meatspace meetups, which can be very stressful. Support swapping can happen during parallel play, making for a nice moment of converging love languages. Header image credit: “Support…

  • Respectability Politics

    Respectability politics didn’t save me then, and they won’t save our community or movement now or in the future either. Our movement, however, needs nothing of respectability politics. Accepting — conceding, surrendering, submitting to — that will only erode our movement until it crumbles entirely. Autistic Hoya — A blog by Lydia X. Z. Brown:…

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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