A recent interview on the blog Technoccult with neurodiversity advocate Kassiane (she didn’t wish to give her last name), highlighted some key points about neurodiversity. In defining neurodiversity, she made an important distinction between the word and the movement, explaining: “Neurodiversity, the word, simply means the whole variety of different brain wirings people have…from the different kinds of normal to the different kinds of not so normal. Then there’s Neurodiversity, the movement which is the shocking idea that people with non standard wiring are human and deserve to be treated as such without being “fixed” first.”
Also significant was her emphasis on making the neurodiversity movement inclusive: “Autistic/Asperger people tend to make up the base of the movement, because we latch onto things so well, but we’re really inclusive…ADHD, learning disabilities, mental health issues, cognitive conditions like Down Syndrome, epilepsy, migraines, neurotypical allies, Not Diagnosed Just Weird…we’re accepting of pretty much everyone.” I thought it was interesting that she included “neurotypical allies,” as part of the movement. This makes sense, given the fact that the neurodiversity movement needs all the friends it can get to have a loud enough voice in the marketplace of ideas.
Thomas Armstrong is the author of The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain (published in hardcover as Neurodiversity)
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