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

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I was planning on just dipping in and out of this but ended up reading it from start to finish in a day. I think it’ll be helpful in giving people a different way of looking at their diagnosis and understanding of themselves through the neurodiversity paradigm rather than the pathology paradigm.

The author is similarly dismissive and judgmental towards anyone who uses key terms differently or less precisely than she does. 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.

ACT Contact / FAQ About Events / Videos Merch / Subs Sign in/up Neuroqueer Heresies : Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities Walker, Nick More by this author.

Neuroqueer Heresies' is urgently needed in a world that is still dominated by the corporate co-opting of the neurodiversity paradigm, and by conversion "therapies" that have only one goal: turning the fears of parents and the trauma of neurodivergent people into profits. As someone who has sought to be the latter for many years, I still come away with several important reminders and tweaks I need to make to my approach and internal attitudes. And thank goodness for independent thinkers, if we are going to grow culture it's totally necessary. 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).

I was incredibly relieved that Neuroqueer Heresies was not the jumble of academic terms and run on sentences like the blurb suggested. But be prepared to sift through vast amounts of over-explaining and a chunky chapter filled with ranting about the incorrect use of language. Through a critical lens, she explores why the neurodiversity paradigm rejects the medicalisation of autism and neurodiversity. There also seems to be a hierarchy of autistic people - those who should be trusted and those that are “tame autistics” benefitting from a life of internalized oppression.