Radical inclusivity goes beyond the idea of accepting differences. It encourages people to work together to dismantle systemic barriers and create neuroqueer spaces where everyone has freedom to embrace cognitive and somatic liberty.

Radical inclusivity starts with inclusion safety and develops through continuous acts of neuroqueering in pursuit of cognitive and somatic liberty.

Note: We’re still developing this definition. Thoughts?

We develop radical inclusivity through continuous acts of neuroqueering. Radical inclusivity enables cognitive and somatic liberty. Radical inclusivity starts with inclusion safety.

Radical inclusivity, which fosters cognitive and somatic liberty, begins with ensuring inclusion safety and is cultivated through ongoing neuroqueering efforts.

Radical inclusivity is a confrontation with normativity.

There is no path to radical inclusivity that does not include direct confrontation with inequity and normativity.

Radical Inclusivity and Inclusion Safety

But it’s important to understand that inclusion safety isn’t merely tolerance; it’s not an attempt to cover up differences or politely pretend they’re not there. No, inclusion safety is provided by genuinely inviting others into your society based on the sole qualification that they possess flesh and blood. This transcendent connection supersedes all other differences.

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

Giving inclusion safety is a moral imperative.

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

As the first stage of psychological safety, inclusion safety is, in its purest sense, nothing more than species-based acceptance. If you have flesh and blood, we accept you. Profoundly simple in concept, devilishly difficult in practice, we learn it in kindergarten and unlearn it later.

The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety

Radical Inclusivity and Neuroqueering

Just as intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of heteronormativity is sometimes referred to as queering, intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity can be thought of as neuroqueering.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 155). Autonomous Press.

I originally conceived of neuroqueer as a verb: neuroqueering as the practice of queering (subverting, defying, disrupting, liberating oneself from) neuronormativity and heteronormativity simultaneously.

Neuroqueer: An Introduction

What might education look like in a system in which the acceptance, inclusion, and accommodation of every sort of bodymind represents an unquestioned baseline? What if “acceptance and inclusion” didn’t mean neurodivergent students being accepted and included under neurotypical supervision within educational environments created by and for neurotypicals, but instead meant a system which has itself been shaped through the collaboration of a wide diversity of minds—a system sufficiently neurocosmopolitan as to place all students on equal footing and render the concepts of “typical” and “divergent” effectively irrelevant? What might classroom education look like at various levels from preschool through grad school, in the context of a neurocosmopolitan approach to education in which it’s built into the curriculum that every person in the class, teachers and students alike, works at learning to comprehend and accommodate the neurocognitive styles and communication needs of every other person in the class as best they can? What if both the education of youth and adults, and the training of educators, included the explicit understanding that no neurocognitive style is more “correct” or “normal” than any other, and that the work of mutual accommodation is both an essential part of a proper education and an essential preparation for being a participating citizen in a civilized society?

What might the results be if it were standard practice for organizations to actively seek to cultivate neurodiversity within their ranks at every level, including the highest levels of leadership and policy-making? What might organizations and social institutions look like, if conformity to some particular set of neurocognitive norms was not in any way—officially or unofficially—an advantage in attaining entry, employment, inclusion, advancement, or positions of leadership? What if cultivation of neurodiversity within organizational ranks didn’t consist merely of neurodivergent individuals being brought into neurotypical-run organizational environments under neurotypical supervision, but instead occurred in the context of neurocosmopolitan organizational environments in which the systems, structures, and policies were created collaboratively under the leadership of a wide diversity of minds—with no one sort of mind privileged over others or considered the default norm?

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (pp. 77-79). Autonomous Press.

To liberate the body from the ingrained habits, tensions, and inhibitions that keep one locked into the performance of normativity, and to reawaken and cultivate the capacity for spontaneous stimming and non-normative self-embodiments, can also serve to help free the mind from the limits of normative perception and cognition.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 190). Autonomous Press.

All queering (including neuroqueering) is inherently transgressive, since by definition it involves subverting, defying, deviating from, and/or fucking with normativity. Neuroqueer Theory is thus in some fundamental way oppositional and defiant by its very nature. At the same time, though, it’s also radically optimistic in its view that with sufficient engagement in neuroqueer practice, anyone can liberate themselves from the strictures of normativity. The already neurodivergent can reconnect with and cultivate previously suppressed or undeveloped capacities, in order to more fully manifest their potentials for beautiful weirdness, and those whom we call neurotypicals are just potential neuroqueer mutant comrades who haven’t yet woken up and figured out how to unzip their normal-person suits.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (p. 190). Autonomous Press.

Neuroqueering on an individual level, in the form of creative bodily enactments that subvert the norms of normative performance and disrupt internalized habits of normative embodiment, serves to materialize previously unrealized neurocognitive and creative potentials. With this awakening of new neuroqueer creative capacities comes an increased capacity to participate in the neuroqueering of cultural spaces and cultural practices: the ongoing co-creation of social environments that support the creative participation of neuroqueer bodyminds and encourage further embodied exploration of neuroqueer performance and neuroqueer possibilities. This sort of ongoing interplay between the neuroqueering of individual bodyminds and the neuroqueering of cultural spaces is the key to collective liberation from compulsory normativity.

Neuronormativity and heteronormativity, in essence, are systems of artificial restriction on human potential. By their very nature, they limit our possibilities. To neuroqueer is to refuse to be constrained by those limits. Wherever restrictive conventions of compulsory neuronormativity and heteronormativity exist, there also exists the potential to open new vistas of creative possibility by queering those conventions in some way or another. The possible forms and horizons of neuroqueer practice are effectively infinite; the amount of space outside of a closet, after all, is always infinitely greater than the amount of space inside the closet.

Walker, Nick. Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (pp. 190-191). Autonomous Press.

In line with a disability justice approach, one of the more positive recent developments is the theory and praxis of neuroqueering. Stemming from the work of Nick Walker and Remi Yergeau, neuroqueering focuses on embracing weird potentials within one’s neurocognitive space, and turning everyday comportment and behaviour into forms of resistance.3 This has provided a new tool for combatting neuronormativity from within the constraints imposed by history and current material conditions. By queering the social world, new possibilities are carved out for the future, helping us not just challenge aspects of the current order but to start collectively imagining what a different world could be like.

Chapman, Robert. Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism (pp. 179-180). Pluto Press.

If neuronormative ideology enforces a pervasive fog, restricting our thought, agency, and action, neuroqueering prods this, helping identify its weak points. And disability justice approaches help build vital community resources and projects outside of state-sanctioned interventions.

Chapman, Robert. Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism (p. 180). Pluto Press.

Radical Inclusivity and Libraries

In Huzar’s estimation, the library has inherent value in the movement toward radical inclusivity by providing a judgment-free space and resisting the counting and categorizing of each person within that space. In a radically inclusive library, not only are all welcome, but all are welcome to use the library without criticism or expectation of conformance to rules of productivity, implicit or explicit.

Why Social Justice in the Library? | Outreach + Inreach | Library Journal

A radically inclusive library facilitates community conversations and development of community-based solutions. The library does not bring the solutions but rather its leadership listens to ideas, finds commonality in aspirations, and brings the community to a table where every member has voice and influence. It follows that a radically inclusive library will be in a position to fight oppression, not necessarily through pickets and petitions but through the tools and resources of the library and by the coordination of community resources.

Why Social Justice in the Library? | Outreach + Inreach | Library Journal

The most important part of my job is to make the library a safe space. One where kids burst through the door and go running with glee to the children’s area so they can say hello to whoever is at the desk. One where a patron can have a full metal meltdown about the state of the world and still be given resources to find housing, a shower, a meal. One where someone can come in blasted high for years and then return the next day sober and clean, ensconcing themselves in the safety of the books to stay that way.

Safety Net – Longreads

12 Steps of Radical Inclusivity: A Model for Recovery from Oppressive and Exclusive Theologies and Religions

This piece is couched in terms of Christianity but has some good general advice on practicing radical inclusivity that aligns with inclusion safety and neuroqueering.

• Radical Inclusivity is and must be radical.
• Radical Inclusivity, recognizes, values, loves and celebrates people on the margin.
• Radical Inclusivity recognizes harm done in the name of God.
• Radical Inclusivity is intentional and creates ministry on the margin.
• The primary goal of Radical Inclusivity is not to imitate or change the mainline church, but rather to be Church.
• Radical Inclusivity requires a new way of seeing and a new way of being.
• Radical Inclusivity requires awareness, information and understanding.
• Radical Inclusivity does not hide and works to undo shame and fear.
• Radical Inclusivity recognizes diversity on the margin.
• Radical Inclusivity must be linked to preaching andteaching.
• Radical Inclusivity demands hospitality.
• Radical Inclusivity is best sustained and celebrated when everyone in the community is responsible and accountable.

 12 Steps of Radical Inclusivity: A Model for Recovery from Oppressive and Exclusive Theologies and Religions 

Further Reading