Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities

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While the author is expansive in her views on who gets to be "neuroqueer," she is quite judgmental when it comes to the ways people choose to speak publicly about and embody autism in the world.

This is because an entire population is diverse, including both those with extra privilege and those who don't conform to normative standards. The author clearly explains how the neurodiversity movement relates to disability justice, gender justice, and other interconnected liberatory movements.Neuroqueer Heresies is a collection of essays, written by Walker over the course of a decade, including new, previously unpublished works. But unfortunately, these wonderful nuggets of information are densely wrapped in a tirade about the people who get it wrong, with a chapter and a half seemingly entirely devoted to ranting about this. The kids who are clawing out the eyes of their own parents or siblings because they didn’t care for the sound their plate made against the dinner table. Shelving this under ethics, human rights, and justice-making because the disablement of neurodivergent folx is part of social problems of injustice and educational expectations (trying to make people pass as more neurotypical). Neuroqueer Heresies collects my shorter writings on neurodiversity, autism, and Neuroqueer Theory, including 120 pages of brand-new material that’s never before been available online or in print.

Required reading for any scholar of trans, queer, disability, and/or neurodiversity studies from one of the preeminent scholars on neuroqueerness (and a co-coiner of the term!While I happen to share her preferred language and framing of autistic experiences, I don't share her lack of respect or tolerance toward autistic folks who think and speak differently on these points. She coined a lot of the words, or knows the people who did, and gives difinative histories and meanings for the words. For progress to occur, you will likely be left challenging at least some of your current assumptions.

I loved the part about how disability should be looked at from the lens of society’s inability to accommodate neurodivergent people. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Over the course of many years Nick Walker has meticulously documented the origins and semantics of the evolving language that is co-created within autistic culture. Take, for instance, the "transphobes don't understand how pronouns work" trope which rests on classist assumptions, positioning the trans activist as having the moral high ground through being educated or 'intelligent', and using grammar normatively.Corporations can co-opt individual words, but they can't co-opt the entire language system of the neurodiversity movement without revealing their colours as part of the attempt. Autistic people co-create Autistic culture every day, and it is recorded and made visible one publication at a time.

Lays out extremely digestible definitions of and frameworks for utilizing different terms related to neurodivergence, neurodiversity, and neuroqueer, and the problems with pathologization, as well as provides extremely important input for interacting with and honoring the individuality of autistic individuals (through clinical work, educational settings, and personal relationships). This book summarizes where we are at now with the "divide" between professionals using the pathology paradigm (medical model of disability) and the neurodiversity paradigm (social model of disability). Very few books have ever left me with such a frustrating recurrence of feeling "This is such a poor way to put this and I can see why people probably bully you" followed by "damn, but you're right though". Too often high-profile queer activism relies on shaming people for understanding gender and language in anything other than a middle-class way.Whilst I understand the need to express this problem, I also feel deep regret that so much of the writing had to be impacted by this discussion. Other parts are terribly casual, hand waving away opposing viewpoints by offering no criticism other than them being "disgusting" or "abhorrent" without justifying why. I'm uncomfortable with this evasion of responsibility for what she's publishing, and I don't think this caveat will prevent harm caused by inadequately considered texts, given that they're intended to occupy the privileged position of teaching material.