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

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▶ Table of Contents

  1. Table of Contents
  2. We need a counterculture of care.
  3. Freedom is not freedom without care.
  4. Ethics of Care
  5. Acknowledge our collective public health reality.
  6. Let’s organize our lives around love and care.
  7. Further Reading
Stimpunks Glossary Develop A Language In Which We Can Both Understand And Challenge The World Photo of wooden letter blocks spelling the word GLOSSARY

Table of Contents

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

  • Peer Respite

    A peer-run respite center is a non-clinical, completely voluntary service operated by people with their own stories of mental health recovery, trauma, hospitalization, incarceration, substance use, homelessness or some combination of these. An alternative to the psych hospital, run by people in mental health recovery – NC Health News A safe place to rest and…

  • Warm Line

    Peer-run warm lines – staffed by people who have lived mental health experience – have been shown to reduce loneliness and participants’ use of mental health crisis services. Additionally, a review of several studies found that digital forms of peer support improve the lives of people with serious mental illness by “enhancing participants’ functioning, reducing…

  • Neuroqueer

    I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb: neuroqueering as the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously. It was an extension of the way queer is used as a verb in Queer Theory; I was expanding the Queer Theory conceptualization of queering to encompass the queering of neurocognitive norms as well as…

  • Autigender

    Autigender

    Autigender flag: black infinity symbol over gradient green horizontal stripes

  • Liberatory Design

    Liberatory Design is a creative problem-solving approach and practice that centers equity and supports us to design for liberation. It is made up of mindsets and modes. Mindsets invoke stances and values to ground and focus our design practice, and modes provide process guidance for our design practice. Liberatory Design generates self-awareness to liberate designers…

  • Design Questioning

    While much good has come of design thinking, it has inadvertently fueled the narrative that disabled people are recipients, rather than drivers of design. This is why I propose design questioning, which looks at design thinking from the user’s perspective. Because I believe when we’re finally able to question the systems that disable us, everybody…

  • Theory of Mind

    And this is where the neurotypical belief in theory of mind becomes a liability. Not just a liability – a disability. Because not only are neurotypicals just as mind-blind to autistics as autistics are to neurotypicals, this self-centered belief in theory of mind makes it impossible to mutually negotiate an understanding of how perceptions might differ…

  • Mindset Marketing

    The marketing of mindsets was everywhere this year: “How to Develop Mindsets for Compassion and Caring in Students.” “Building A Tinkering Mindset In Young Students Through Making.” “6 Must-Haves for Developing a Maker Mindset.” The college president mindset. Help wanted: must have an entrepreneurial mindset. The project-based learning mindset. (There’s also Gorilla Mindset, a book written by alt-right meme-maker…

  • Hyperlexia

    Hyperlexia

    Image credit: “Neurodivergent #2: When visions leap off the page” by Betsy Selvam Hyperlexia is when a child starts reading early and surprisingly beyond their expected ability. It’s often accompanied by an obsessive interest in letters and numbers, which develops as an infant.‌ Hyperlexia is often, but not always, part of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It’s considered…

  • Open Source

    Open Source

    One model that successfully harnesses the power and commitment of talent and engages that talent in an ongoing way over time is open source. The term “open source” is traditionally used in the software arena and designates a process in which anyone can contribute to or access code, unlike traditional software development, which is proprietary…

  • Human Scale

    The scope of trusted relationships is constrained by human cognitive limits (according to Robin Dunbar’s research, a human can maintain a maximum of 150 relationships at any point in time) and the ability to scale trusted collaboration beyond these human scale limits depends on using and developing communication technologies that assist us in maintaining trusted…

  • Workflow Thinking

    Workflow thinking is the act of reading knowledge work as modular and intertwined with technologies. Through workflow thinking, writers break any particular task into a series of smaller steps and search for writing technologies and practices that might improve, challenge, or alter their work. Workflow thinking encourages the writer to ask questions about each component…

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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