First of all, Happy Pride!
I recently learned of two terms that I absolutely love: Neuroqueer (a verb/adjective) and autigender. Both of these terms describe the ways in which neurodivergence and queerness intersection. As an autistic person, I don't typically understand social constructs like gender. That would make me autigender since being autistic informs my beliefs about gender including my own. I mean I see that these constructs exist but my autistic brain doesn't really feel a strong identification with any of them. This seems to be quite contrary to society since there is so much drama, anger, intolerance, and pain about gender and gender expression.
My act of simply existing is an act of neuroqueering because I naturally veer away from hetero- & neuro-normativity. I am neuroqueering all day every day. I don't ascribe myself to random social norms that don't make sense and I don't pretend to anymore either. Social constructs don't cause me to feel any deep emotions since I see them as made up and therefore, should be fun for people to explore (although, sadly, most of society does not agree).
As a person who is always thinking outside of the neurotypical box, I love how neuroqueering encapsulates how I think since I never quite had the right words for it. Especially as a late discovered autistic person, realizing the way I think is called neuroqueer is so liberating. I finally have language that explains my internal thinking process. On top of that, I know that I am not the only one who simply doesn’t understand inflexible social norms/constructs. There are other neuroqueers/autigender people out there like me! We can literally be so many things and be fluid and creative, why would we ever want to discourage people from expressing what feels good/right for them? I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks like this.
留言