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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

  • Epistemic Trespassing

    Epistemic trespassing of the sort I’ve noted is easy to recognize. Experts drift over a highly-visible boundary line and into a domain where they lack either the relevant evidence or the skills to interpret the evidence well. But they keep talking nonetheless. Experts on a public stage are cast in the role of the ‘public…

  • Racial Weathering

    Steele was likely experiencing the effects of “weathering.” The term describes how repeated exposure to stressors leads to poor health outcomes. A related concept, racial weathering, points to racism as a major stressor among Black Americans, contributing to their historically high rates of chronic disease, viral infection and premature death. A weathered body is weaker,…

  • Tonic Masculinity

    Seeing Tonic Masculinity everywhere right now because Tim Walz joined the winning presidential ticket is a lot like getting a new car and then seeing the same car everywhere on the road and in parking lots. Positive and supportive men who show kindness and care for others have been here the whole time, but we…

  • Suicide

    Research studies consistently find heightened risk of suicidal behaviours, ideation, attempts and deaths in those with ASD and ADHD, especially if they are un or misdiagnosed. From the research, the risk of suicidality is higher for those with ASD and higher cognitive abilities, and even higher for those with ASD and other comorbid conditions. The…

  • Stim-Watching

    Stim-Watching

    stim-watching = repeatedly watching, most often, digital media. What exactly is stim-watching? If stim-listening is repetitively listening to songs, stim-watching is repeatedly watching, most often, digital media. I first recognized that I was doing this in the fall of 2004. While out Christmas shopping at an electronics store, I came across a big-screen TV that…

  • DEIAB

    DEIAB = Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging Further Reading

  • Learning Management System

    It seemed to me that Canvas was the most schoolish dimension of college: everything is self-contained, divorced from the rest of the world (alienated), imposed from outside—filled with points, metrics and tasks, like a game in a box. Learning management systems help make college a to-do list (opinion) We are not fans of any LMS.…

  • Becoming

    Becoming acknowledges children’s ongoing learning and development. It emphasises learning to participate fully and actively in society. My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia Neurodiversity is where potential and possibilities lie. We need to embrace our collective flow, our differences and our ways of becoming. Autistic Community: Connections & Becoming I’ve…

  • Schoolishness

    Schoolishness is basically the Thorndike model. Dr. Susan Blum, Schoolishness w/ Dr. Susan Blum | Human Restoration Project | Podcast Further Reading

  • Transcendent Thinking

    transcendent thinking = analyzing situations for their deeper meaning, historical contexts, civic significance, and/or underlying ideas. This kind of thinking, which the study’s authors call “transcendent,” moves beyond reacting to the concrete specifics of social situations to also consider the broader ethical, systems-level and personal implications at play. Engaging in this type of thinking involves…

  • Stim Listening

    Stim Listening

    stim listening = listening repetitively to a single song, album, or playlist I often start, or while writing the bulk of, a composition will do what I call stim-listening. Or, listen repetitively to a single song. It helps get me started or gives me the dopamine(?) that seems to maintain my focus. I often start,…

  • Segregationist Discourse

    segregationist discourse = states’ rights, federalism, radically free enterprise, freedom of association, increased privatization, the mythic view of American meritocracy, and opposition to public assistance, all couched in the polemics of anti-communism and civil religion Again, how did the traditional segregationist discourse, trimmed of a few unacceptable phrases, become the dominant discourse in American society…

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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