I want to talk more about neurodivergency. In the last post, I talked about how for most of my life, I just assumed that I was a broken person or that there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t until I talked to my friend, A, that I realized that a lot of what I considered failings on my part might actually be neurodivergency (specifically autism).
Here are some other things that fall into this category. I cannot for the life of me NOT connect the dots. What do I mean by that? I mean that I can’t see things in discrete units. It’s why my posts go all over the place. I think of one thing that leads me to another thing that then leads me to a third thing, which may or may not be related to the first thing.
I am a big fan of footnotes, asterisks, side notes, etc. In my old posts, I was guilty of oversuing all of the above. I used to footnote my footnotes, for heaven’s sake. I went down long and winding side roads, sometimes, never to return. It’s really hard for me to focus on one thing and exclude other things because they really are connected to me. I remember the professor in my Feminism in Philosphy class asking us what we wanted to learn in the class. I mentioned something about race and gender, and she said we didn’t have time to talk about that. I lost interest in the class because to me, you cannot talk about one without including the other. This was years before intersectionality was even a whisper in conversations about isms, but I felt it on a cellular level.
In the same vein, any time I tried to bring up gender issues in the Asian group I was in while in college, I would get the (male) leader responding that we didn’t have time/energy/money to tackle that issue. What?! Excuse me? Feminist issues are Asian issues are queer issues. I can’t be Asian without being AFAB/agender, queer, areligious. I can’t be AFAB/agender without being the other things. That’s not how life works, and it still astounds me that people don’t get that.
I mean, I understand that sometimes you have to focus on one thing at a time for political reasons and to get shit done. That’s a political move, although I would argue that it’s still important to be as intersectional as possible when you’re trying to get shit done.
Look! I did it again. I digressed, and I’m fine with it.
A mentioned to me the social model of disability (as opposed to the medical model), and it really resonated with me. The medical model is based on the presumption that someone is sick and needs to be cured. Which, to be fair, works well for many illnesses. Though I would argue that there is room for the social model in doctor shit, but that’s another post for another day. The social model argues that the problem is with the society, not the individual. That if we make it easier for neurodivergent people to exist in society, then the neurodivergency wouldn’t be an issue (that’s grossly simplified, of course).
It’s interesting. The medical model is so ingrained in our society that even the mere mention of the social model can send people into a tizzy. And not just neurotypical people either! Many neurodivergent people cling to the idea that there is something wrong/broken with/in themselves. Which I totally get. It’s a huge mindshift to go from something is wrong with me to something is wrong with society.
First of all, if there’s something wrong with me, then I can fix it (theoretically). This is an understandable impulse. If you believe that there’s something wrong with society instead, well, that’s a harder pill to swallow. You can work to change society, but that’s a much dicier proposition than changing yourself (in theory).
Side note: It’s the same reason people will often talk about what they did wrong in any given situation because if they can just act perfectly, then nothing bad will happen to them! That’s not how it works, obviously, but it’s a very human impulse. The same with criticizing how other people act in any given situation. It’s a way to think you can keep yourself safe. Women do this to other women who have been sexually assualted with depressing frequency.
Another thing that I thought was just me being me is how I react to sensory shit. This is combined with all the various allergies/sensitivities I have. They are not the same, though, but how I react to them is similar. Obviously, the allergies/sensitivities induce physical reactions that affect me negatively. Those are easy to explain (well, again, in theory). Sensory issues, on the other hand, are much harder to explain to people. “I can’t listen to loud music because it makes my head hurt. Oh, and that loud music is about ten notches lower than most people’s.” That does not go over well. Even though in my case, that’s a physical pain, it still sounds precious.
It doesn’t help that my mother told me I was too sensitive and ignored my sensory issues in favor of my brother’s behavoiral issues. When we were kids, she used to take us to the MN State Fair. She told me I would be screaming and crying, but my brother would be happy. I asked why she kept taking me if she knew how much I hated it. She said because my brother loved it so much. She always put him over me, and I was painfully aware just how far down the hierarchy I was. It’s mostly because my brother was a boy (important) and I was a girl (not important), but it was also because my brother had undiagnosed neurodivergencies that affected him. Specifically autism.
As I mentioned before, my brother displays (displayed) the stereotypical aspects of autism. Once I realized that autism existed, I easily placed him on the spectrum. My mother talked about how he was a difficult child. But she did it in drips and drabs, so I didn’t put the full puzzle together until much later.
My mother was basically a single parent. My father was perennially absent, and when he was home, he had very rigid ideas of parenting (that included spanking. Which my mother opposed, surprisingly). My mother worked full-time at my father’s insistence and did all the cooking, cleaning, sewing, and child-raising. I’m saying this because I can understand that she was under a lot of pressure in her late twenties. It’s not to excuse that she continued to take me to the State Fair, but that I can understand why she did it. It was something that would soothe my brother for several hours, so it would make sense that she would do it.
More tomorrow.