Neurodiversity treadmill

 One frustrating aspect of the way that disability discourse plays out is that every term that radical anti-pathologization advocates use is appropriated and misused by pathologizers.

Eugenics organizations talk about "acceptance." Behaviorists change the meaning of "behavior is communication" while claiming to be "trauma-informed." Pathologizers worm forced drugging into the umbrella of "services" and market tracking devices as adaptive tech. "Peer support" is subsumed under the purview of professional pathologizers instead of being a radical liberation from their authority. People pretend that "Destigmatizing mental illness" is a coherent concept, as if classifying ways of thinking and feeling as "illnesses" weren't inherently stigmatizing.

I started doing brain-related advocacy as part of the autistic community, but while I still identify as autistic, the identity I now feel most strongly is "neurodivergent." Identifying as "neurodivergent" succinctly conveys that I have a brain which is pathologized by the society I live in, and that I reject classifying my brain as "ill" or "disordered."

Unfortunately, people generally assume "neurodivergent" to encompass autism and maybe some learning disabilities, but not the cognitive and emotional characteristics classified as "mental illnesses." So I say "neurodivergent/mad" to clarify that yes, I mean that too. Except that "mad," too, is whitewashed and coopted by the "recovery" movement.

We say "All minds are valid." Pathologizers rebut "Valid doesn't mean healthy." As if getting away from the "health" framework weren't the entire point.

Round and round and round we go, trying to find the words to say that all humans, all brains, all minds, all ways of learning, all ways of feeling, are equal, before our words are stolen out from under us to be distorted into "As long as they're the RIGHT humans, brains, minds, ways of learning and feeling."

It's okay to be neurodivergent, as long as you're healthy.

It's okay to be mad, as long as you're in recovery.

It's okay to be in the community, as long as it's for therapeutic purposes.

It's okay to seek peer support, as long as a licensed professional oversees it.

It's okay to promote acceptance, but only until a cure is found.

It's okay to be what you are, as long as you're working to become what you're not.

Don't let people get away with these word games. ALL brains, ALL minds, ALL ways of thinking and feeling and learning, are deserving of unqualified, unconditional acceptance. ALL means ALL.

**Obligitory preemptive response to "But what about murderers/ abusers/ rapists/ etc?" -- those are choices people make, not types of brains. No one is born with "murderer brain" or "uses the last of the milk and puts the empty bottle back in the fridge" brain. All brains are valid; all choices are NOT valid, so do the right thing, don't kill anyone, and throw away your empty milk bottle.