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Intersectionality and the Neuroqueer Identity

Updated: Jul 12, 2023

Authors: Fang-Hua Hu & Omeed Yazdani

Editors: Aleister Jones & Kristin M.


Overlap of Neurodivergent and Queer Identities

Those identifying as neurodivergent and queer have become a particularly dominant topic within the discourse of intersectionality due to the significant overlap between the communities. Some people happen to identify as both, and within this subset, somefeel as though their gender or sexual orientation is influenced by their neurodivergent status to a point where the two identities become inseparable.

In an interview we conducted with a student at the University of Washington, they go over their personal experiences regarding these intersections:


Q: How do you identify/perceive yourself in terms of gender and neurodiversity?

A: I’m Autistic, aromantic, and asexual. In terms of gender, I am transgender, but I don’t identify with a specific gender label. I generally consider myself genderless in that I don’t feel the concept of gender really applies to me, but masc-aligned/male in that the way I perceive myself is closest to the category of male. I don’t often use the term autigender, mostly because no one knows what it means, but I don’t think it would be wrong to say I’m autigender.


Q: Do you view these two as intrinsically related in your identity, or can they function as separate entities within your existence?

A: Yes, my gender and neurodivergence are definitely related. To explain exactly why, first you need to think about emotions as a social construct much like gender. Obviously they have physical reactions underlying them, but the way we name/categorize them is social. For me (and this certainly isn’t true for every Autistic), a big part of being Autistic is how I experience and process emotions. Basically, my emotions are pretty different from neurotypical people’s emotions. There are a lot of categories (like happiness and sadness) that don’t really make sense to me. For me, gender is very similar to happy and sad. I sort of get what it’s supposed to be, but it doesn’t really make sense to describe my experience of the world. It’s not even that I’m genderless, exactly, but that the concept of gender doesn’t apply to me at all. My perspective on gender is sort of like how I imagine an alien would see gender. It’s a human concept, it really doesn’t apply to me, but I do still have an internal image of how my body looks, and in a gendered world I can’t really separate that from gender. I don’t know if I’m trans *because* I’m Autistic (it is very hard to say what I would be if I wasn’t Autistic, since I would be a different person), but I certainly think the way I understand my gender is inseparable from my neurodivergence.


Q: How has being neurodivergent influenced how you perceive gender? Have there been points in your life where you had trouble understanding neurotypical perceptions of gender?

A: I do think, in a more general sense, I don’t really ‘get’ gender, and honestly think we would all be better off without it. Of course I have no problem with other people having genders, just as I have no problem with them describing their emotions with words that don’t work for me personally, but I do find it bizarre how central gender is to our society. I don’t like that it’s not possible to interact with other people without being gendered.


Q: Is there anything else that you would like other people to understand about the intersections of your identity (assumptions/misconceptions people make/have)?

A: I think a lot of people find it weird that neurodivergence and gender can be related. To that I say, neurodivergence can impact almost everything about a person. It’s really not that surprising that it can impact gender. There are all sorts of neurotypical social norms that seem very strange to me because I’m Autistic. Gender is no different. Also, I think some people mistake terms like "autigender" to mean "autism is my/a gender", and then go "autism isn't a gender that makes no sense". "Autigender" doesn't claim Autism is a gender, it means someone's gender is impacted by being Autistic.


Q: Are there difficulties engaging in neurodivergent communities (or larger communities) because of being neurogender and having different experiences?

A: Being queer is very common in neurodivergent communities, so I don’t think I’ve really felt unwelcome in neurodivergent communities due to queerness. The neurodivergent communities I’ve interacted with (and to be fair, there is certainly a sampling bias, because being queer I am much more likely to end up interacting with other queer people who I can relate to) have generally been very accepting of queerness/transness, including microlabels and identities that aren’t always accepted in other queer communities. On that, I do think being Autistic sometimes makes it difficult to interact with some queer communities, in part just because socializing with neurotypical people is hard and in part because I experience gender and sexuality differently due to being Autistic. It’s not malicious on anyone’s part (again, this is my experience, I’m sure there is purposeful ableism in queer communities, I just avoid it), just the same difference in experience that makes interacting with neurotypical people complicated for me in general.


This student is not alone in their experience in existing simultaneously separate and yet a part of both queer and neurodiverse communities. In fact, a recent study done on sexual orientations/identities found that, a “group with Autism [Spectrum Disorder] (ASD) reported higher rates of homosexuality, bisexuality and asexuality, but lower rates of heterosexuality [compared to a group without ASD]. The results support the impression that non-heterosexuality is more prevalent in the autistic population” (George, R., & Stokes, M. A. 2018). In other words, it seems as if a higher percentage of autistic people identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) than the general population. The main point that we want to bring attention to is that there are indeed significant intersections and overlaps between queer and neurodivergent populations.


Neuroqueer as a term

With the emergence of various identifications in the intersection of queerness and neurodivergence, there has been effort to categorize them in academic and medical contexts. The term “neuroqueer” has become more prevalent in academia and online communities. Neuroqueer, first coined in 2008 by Nick Walker and Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillion, is defined as “any individual whose identity, selfhood, gender performance, and/or neurocognitive style have in some way been shaped by their engagement in practices of neuroqueering” in which neuroqueering is the act of subverting neuro normativity and heteronormativity (Walker 2021). The general idea of neuroqueering is to acknowledge both gender and neurocognitive style as fluid conceptualizations that interact with each other and not normative roles people need to conform to. In other words, a “normal” sexuality or bodymind does not exist.

To preface, Nick Walker specified that the definition for neuroqueer is a work in progress and won't ever have a definite definition, but some people have brought up concerns over the term “queer” due to its uses in other contexts. Queering in an academic context is used generally as a subversion of power, similar to how Nick Walker uses it, but this generic definition can act to overwrite real experiences. Rowan Potter, an individual identifying as lesbian and autistic, discusses issues she has with universalizing queerness. She brings up concern over the academic perspective in “the context of internet identity politics, with its weird valorization of oppression that leads to straight people calling themselves queer as a particular kind of social capital” (Potter 2019). The generative definition of queer doesn’t identify queerness as a distinct subset of the population that have different experiences than the rest, and so those not having experienced transphobia/homophobia are still able to claim the term and silence queer experiences. This issue may become more apparent with the addition of neurodivergence.


Another concern with using “queer” as a framework for neuroqueer is that queerness has so often been defined in neurotypical terms and mainstream narratives such that some neurodivergent people feel uncomfortable in identifying as queer. Erika Heidewald writes of neurodivergent people who struggle with the question of “if we are “queer enough” or “trans enough” to explore [queer] facets of ourselves” as they don’t want to claim experiences not belonging to them (Heidewald). Neuroqueer emphasizes being able to determine and identify with your own terms, but in asking what neuroqueer is, there needs to be balance between centering neurodivergent and queer people’s experience in addition to the theoretically generative idea of queer, so that the multiplicity of identity is addressed.


Medicalization

In the medical context, there have been attempts to misuse the overlap of

neurodivergence and queerness in a symptomatic manner, as a result marginalizing them. One example of this would be the similarities between Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and conversion therapy, both in fact started by the same person. Applied Behavior Analysis is a form of “therapy” that works to increase behaviors that are helpful and decrease unhelpful behaviors in children with autism. The dichotomy presented between helpful and unhelpful behaviors is not laid out clearly by definition, so these two terms are largely held to interpretation. Conversion therapy on the other hand is a practice with the intent of eliminating one’s queerness and “teaching” them to be heterosexual. Both these practices are very clearly ingrained in the ideas that there are certain “normal” behaviors, whether it be neurotypical or heteronormative, that one should should embrace and other “wrong” behaviors that one needs to denounce. Both of these “therapies” treat behaviors associated with neurodiversity and queerness as symptoms of a disease that need to be cured. These “symptoms” aren’t even isolated from one therapy to the other, to the point of creating an interlocking web of symptoms and conflating the two identities into one definition of non-normative. This web works in such a way that to proponents of these therapies, queerness is seen as a symptom of neurodivergence and neurodivergence is seen as a symptom of queerness. As such, the heteronormative and neurotypical gazes are acting together to marginalize one identity in terms of the other.


In their own reflection on this phenomenon, M. Remi Yergeau, an associate professor of Digital Studies and English at the University of Michigan, asks: "How do we account for where queerness begins and disability ends? It may well be that I am queer only because my neurological disability predisposes me to queerness. But does that matter? What are the consequences of saying that I’m queer because I’m autistic–or, conversely, that I’m autistic because I’m queer?" (Yergeau, 2018, 30). This statement is extremely important to remember as we explore such a dense topic. In particular, it is not helpful, and in fact extremely harmful to search for a cause or source of neurodivergence in the same way that it is harmful to search for a gay gene as the source of queerness. Instead we should acknowledge that queerness and neurodivergence interact, but are separate things. In neuroqueer people, them being neurodivergent is not separate from them being queer, and both interact to construct their identity, similar to how the student interviewed views the multiplicity of their identity.


References

Heidewald, E. (n.d.). Neurodivergence as queerness . Public Neurodiversity Support Center. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from

https://coda.io/@mykola-bilokonsky/public-neurodiversity-support-center/neurodivergen ce-as-queerness-82


Neurodiversity: Some basic terms & definitions • NEUROQUEER. NEUROQUEER. (2021, October 13). Retrieved January 25, 2022, from

https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/


Potter, R. (2019, February 7). How Queer is Neuroqueer? Neurodiversity Science Politics Culture. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from

https://blogs.brown.edu/hman-1973p-s01-2019-spring/2019/02/07/how-queer-is-neuroqueer/


George, R., & Stokes, M. A. (2018). Sexual Orientation in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 11(1), 133–141. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1892


Yergeau, M. (2018). Authoring autism. Duke University Press.




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