Post #2047447

2025-12-05 05:52 UTC

@axoaxonic BTW *I* think we're all neurodivergent, and it's just a question of which kind out of thousands or more. So I recommend not worrying *too* much about your particular kind of neurodivergence. We all perceive and interpret the world differently, and then we have language and customs (and movies!) to create a kind of middle ground that theoretically everyone understands the same way (they/we don't, actually) , but the implicit propaganda is that that middle ground really is "reality". It isn't, but to be fair, it's really really hard to fix that situation, even if everyone were of good will (they're not, of course). But I do value the goal of best effort at communicating between all of us islands -- "each man is an island, entire unto himself" (John Donne, who actually said "no man", but I'm adapting it to this discourse 🙂 )

Replies (2)

@4raylee@mathstodon.xyz 2025-12-05 07:05

@dougmerritt I, on the other hand, come from a family with exactly 1.94 children, therefore am completely average. @axoaxonic

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@axoaxonic@synapse.cafe 2025-12-05 07:11

@dougmerritt Things like this have been said before and it really dismisses the people's lived experience rather than being inclusive, in my and many others https://www.divergentpod.com/blog/ep-132 https://enna.org/everybody-is-on-the-spectrum-microaggression/ (these are about autism specifically -- and it has been said to me before by someone who ended up making me homeless -- but applies to the more general statement). Everybody's brain is different, yes, but there is a large percentage closer to the mean and people who are outliers. It's fuzzy and complicated but it's real. The outliers face real socioeconomic consequences in this ableist world , and real violence. "Neurodivergent" isn't the opposite of something like neuro-homogenous, there's variation in the norm and nobody has the same brain. Typicality, the norm, is a real thing though, even if the propaganda you mention overemphasizes it, and it does so because it the distribution of power in society is hierarchically structured. It states/enforces that typicality is the *only* thing, which I hear you're arguing against, but your post comes off to me as erasure of the people whose brains significantly deviate from the norm. I process information, like short videos, way different than most people around me, I stim and do echolalia in places where no one else is, my affect is flat, my hands shake, I almost crash my bike when someone goes by with a flashing tailight, etc etc. I've had psychometric tests that said straight up that I'm impaired in some things that people take for granted like executive functions (although rly good at repeating number strings apparently), I've faced real challenges and done unusual things that are interesting and cool because of it, and I'm never worried about it. I'm proudly taking space, asserting myself by talking about my experience.

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