But the term identity politics is a bit more vague. It was coined by Renee Anspach who was describing how disabled and mentally ill people were using their identities as paths to activism.

Anspach observed that the taking up of these stigmatised identities was key in interrupting the process of stigmatisation.

Writing in the 1970s, Anspach talks about deviance theory, the sociological idea that stigmatised ways of being are seen as a personal flaws or deviations.

The label assigned to these groups is designated unidirectionally, the society imposes the label on the person.

Think of how frequently the stigmatised identity gets a name, and the rest of us just get to be called “normal.” Think of how angry some people get when the marginialised group wants a word besides “normal” to describe other people on that scale.

Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube

“Why do you need a label?”

Because there is comfort in knowing you are a normal zebra, not a strange horse.

Because you can’t find community with other zebras if you
don’t know you belong.

And because it is impossible for a zebra to be happy or healthy spending its life feeling like a failed horse.

@OMGImAutisticAF

By taking up the label and owning the identity, disabled and mentally ill individuals were able to change the conversation and perceive the political processes happening at the root of their marginalisation. This meant that physically disabled people were able to interrupt a nondisabled public’s narrative of pathos and pity, while people with mental illnesses were able to speak without being discounted as hysterical.

Spider-Verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – YouTube

Language as Copia

The deconstruction has begun
Time for me to fall apart
And if you think that it was rough
I tell you nothing changes
Till you start to break it down

And break apart
I'll break apart
I'll break apart
Right now it's going to start
I'll break apart

The reconstruction will begin
Only when there's nothing left
But little pieces on the floor
They're made of what I was
Before I had to break it down

The Deconstruction by The Eels

The sources considered here imply not a binary model (masculine=feminine) or even a view of gender as a continuum, but something more like a copia, the rhetorical term Erasmus used to describe the practice of selecting ‘‘certain expressions and mak[ing] as many variations of them as possible’’ (17). Copia provides a strategy of invention, a rhetorical term for the process of generating ideas. To be specific, copia involves proliferation, multiplying possibilities so as to locate the range of persuasive options available to a rhetor. I find the concept of invention fitting to describe the kind of rhetoric in which many autistic individuals engage when they discuss sex and gender, a rhetoric we might consider, following Mary Hawkesworth, a feminist rhetoric, insofar as it seeks to ‘‘call worlds into being, inscribe new orders of possibility, validate frames of reference and forms of explanation, and reconstitute histories serviceable for present and future projects’’ (1988).

Individuals who find themselves engaged in this rhetorical search for terms with which to understand themselves can draw on a wide array of terms or representations, such as genderqueer, transgendered, femme, butch, boi, neutrois, androgyne, bi- or tri-gender, third gender, and even geek.

Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender: Women’s Studies in Communication: Vol 35, No 1

Their diversity does support an expanded concept of autistic gender identity that pushes past a gender continuum toward a copia, in which terms can be tried on and appropriated, discarded, and invented while still being understood as embo- died and constructed. The previous sections indicate five possible ways that gender functions rhetorically: as disidentification, as a resource for ambiguity, as a social code or symbolic order, as performance, or as idiosyncratic. Importantly, any one individual might draw on and enact any combination of these gendered processes at any one time—they are not mutually exclusive. For instance, one person might disidentify with traditional notions of femininity and draw instead on elements of clothing and behavior as resources of ambiguity; another person might consciously perform a traditional gender role as a coping mechanism, even as she struggles to interpret the social codes that make that gender role natural for others. All of these gendered processes function as rhetorical resources for self-creation, in the sense Corder describes as the rhetorical act of creating ‘‘a way of being in the world.’’ 

By generating a range of possibilities, participants can rhetorically constitute possible identities for themselves out of their embodied experiences. While gender theorists might privilege the moment of disidentification—the zero concept, in Weston’s terms—individuals who participate in these discussions seem to want to find a stasis point of some kind. Terms for gender identity seem to offer these points of identification, even if they do not square up with mainstream, binary notions of gender. No one theory of gender accounts for this range of insights; instead, we might draw from autistic descriptions an understanding of gender as identification, as ambiguity, as a social code, as performance, and as idiosyncrasy. Together, these elements might be understood as copia or congeries—a heaping up of theories, names, and qualities that range far beyond simple binaries (male=female; masculine= feminine; nature=culture; symbolic=embodied) or even continuums. 

Gender Copia: Feminist Rhetorical Perspectives on an Autistic Concept of Sex/Gender: Women’s Studies in Communication: Vol 35, No 1

Identity politics has always been a complex process involving finding ourselves identified as belonging to a particular category (women, blacks, gays), and identifying with these particular “we’s, and constructing our identity through active processes of resistance, of making meaning, through political struggle, through identifications with each other, through creating new narratives, and thereby (re)creating ourselves, and our identities.

Alison Weir, 2008

Identity First Language

I however, choose to use IFL to directly challenge the bigotry inherent in assuming that I must be separated from my body to be considered human. I most definitely don’t do it to pigeon hole my identity into one label. I am far to complicated for that, just like everyone else.

I continue to believe that people should have the right to self-label and I endeavor to respect people’s personal preferences because we have been labeled by others far to often and it is time for us to take over the conversation about our own lives. I will not however accept the idea that my choice in sentence structure means that I am limiting my identity.

Just Because I Use Identity First Language Doesn’t Mean I Let Disability Define Me | crippledscholar

Saying that I am disabled more accurately highlights the complex biosocial reality of disability. I am not merely a person existing with a label; I am constantly disabled and enabled by the interplay of my body and the environment.

I am Disabled: On Identity-First Versus People-First Language

As soon as you ARGUE with a disabled person about how they refer to their condition, you put yourself in a position where you’re trying to convince them that their condition is shameful and they shouldn’t want to label themselves with it.

Does that seem like a good idea to you?

Keep in mind that the more culture there is around a disability, and the more that disability changes someone’s fundamental perceptions and interactions with the world, the more likely it is that identity-first language is probably a better bet.

Person-First Language: What It Is, and When Not To Use It » NeuroClastic

I’ve earned the right to label myself as autistic. It explains everything. It is not all that I am, but it defines so much of who I am.

And that is why, for me at least, the identify label comes first. That I’m still a person should be obvious.

Dear Autism Parent | The Misadventures of Mama Pineapple

The core thesis of the paper is that people construct gender identity from an endless list of more ‘basic’ building blocks that include social messaging, bodily gender dysphoria, how they feel about pronouns, whether they feel interpolated by certain gender norms, etc.

@floral_ashes • The core thesis of the paper is that people construct gender identity from an endless list of mor… • Threads

Language is one of the most effective tools of neurological imperialism.

But words aren’t decoration, nor inconsequential. They are actually the architecture of meaning, shaping how people are perceived, treated, and how they come to understand themselves.

Language can both degrade and elevate.

It can wound and it can soothe.

It can fracture identities.

And it can also stitch them back together.

Autism, it’s Labels and the Language of Pathologising Rhetoric – The Autistic Advocate

Yet the reality is that language shapes the way others perceive us and the way we perceive ourselves. It translates into systems, and practices, into policies, and punishments.

Language is never only about intent.

Autism, it’s Labels and the Language of Pathologising Rhetoric – The Autistic Advocate

The distance between what is meant and what is received is the space where harm grows, which is why language must always be seen in the context of power.

Language is one of the most effective tools of neurological imperialism: the systemic imposition of neuro-normative values and ways of being, enforced through research, through policy, through clinical practice, through education, and, crucially, through words. And the words used about us are the first stage of colonisation.

They tell us who we are and aren’t, what we are not, and where our boundaries must lie.

They create categories that professionals have control over, and the rest of society absorbs it.

They decide whether we are legible, and at what cost that legibility comes.

Other marginalised groups know this story all too well:

Deaf communities have resisted clinical labels of deficit in favour of cultural identity.

Queer communities have reclaimed words once used as slurs and turned them into badges of solidarity.

Disabled communities have challenged the very terms that medical systems invented to classify them.

Autism, it’s Labels and the Language of Pathologising Rhetoric – The Autistic Advocate

The Problem with “Invented Labels”

When we call lived realities “invented,” we invite disbelief and invalidate lived experience. Disbelief has consequences: delayed assessments, denial of accommodations, parent blame and retraumatisation of those who have fought hard to be understood and find answers and acceptance for their differences.

Inclusion Needs Recognition, Not Erasure: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach | Autistic Realms

When a parent fights for an autism diagnosis, they are rarely doing so because they want a label; they are doing so because the label unlocks resources, accommodations, and legal rights that otherwise do not exist. Remove the label without transforming the system, and you remove the only remaining pathway to support.

In this sense, Timimi’s rhetoric aligns, perhaps unintentionally, with cost-cutting agendas that seek to shrink SEND provision under the guise of reform. It allows policy-makers to say, “We’re not denying support; we’re rejecting labels”. But the result is the same; children lose access to help they are entitled to.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

We already see echoes of this in schools that prefer in-house SEND support over EHCP’s, or that resist referrals because “we don’t believe in labels”. These positions often masquerade as compassion while functioning as austerity. They replace evidence-based support with moral judgement and personal responsibility.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

Crucially, diagnosis can open doors to community. For many Autistic and ADHD adults, receiving a diagnosis (or self-identifying after careful reflection) was the first step toward finding people who think and feel like them. These communities, both online and offline, provide the very relational support Timimi claims is missing.

The autistic and ADHD communities are not symptom clusters. They are cultural, creative, mutually supportive ecosystems. Within them, individuals share strategies, develop language for their experiences, and challenge internalised shame.

When Timimi dismisses diagnostic labels as inventions, he overlooks this entire relational dimension. He seems to imagine diagnosis as an isolating act, a medical branding, when in fact, for many, it is a gateway to belonging.

If relationships improve outcomes, as he argues, then dismantling the structures that lead people into community is counterproductive. Diagnosis does not prevent relationships; it often creates them.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

The problem is not the diagnosis itself; it is the scarcity model built around it.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

There’s an appealing simplicity in the idea of abolishing diagnostic labels. Without them, perhaps we could focus on children as individuals rather than categories. But in practice, abolition without structural change entrenches inequity.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

Furthermore, for many neurodivergent people diagnosis is not merely a bureaucratic event but an existential one, a way of naming lifelong experiences of difference, confusion, and exclusion. It offers narrative coherence. To tell those people that their label is invented is to erase their self-knowledge and advocacy.

The way forward is not diagnostic nihilism but diagnostic transformation; from pathology to identity, from exclusion to inclusion, from disorder to difference.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

Children do not need fewer words to describe themselves; they need better ones. They do not need professionals to tell them their brains are myths; they need adults who will listen, believe, and adapt.

The future of inclusive education lies not in denying difference, but in designing for it.

Diagnosis, community, and relational care are not enemies. They are interdependent. The label can open the door; the community can provide the belonging; the relationship can sustain the growth. Remove any one of these, and the structure collapses.

The Problem with “Invented Labels” – David Gray-Hammond

Language matters. Calling Autism and ADHD “invented labels” erases decades of lived experience, research, and community knowledge. Labels aren’t everything but they can go a long way to developing an understanding of yourself whether formally diagnosed or whether you come to the realisation that you may be Autisic/ ADHD and self identify (often due to the barriers around getting a diagnosis in the first place!).

Inclusion Needs Recognition, Not Erasure: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach | Autistic Realms

However, it is not labels that disable us or our children, it is the bureaucratic structure that attaches value and resources to labels rather than to authentic needs. When a child is only seen as deserving of support once labelled, the problem lies with the gatekeeping logic and finances of the institution and system, not the real identity and needs of the child.

Removing labels does not solve this injustice, it risks erasing visibility and human rights. The Children and Families Act 2014, the Equality Act 2010, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities all hinge on recognition of disability as a protected identity. Without diagnostic and validating self identification recognition, many young people would simply fall through the cracks.

Inclusion Needs Recognition, Not Erasure: A Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach | Autistic Realms

Further Reading