Lens Not Label
See things differently.
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Happy Friday, Reader. How was your week? It's been another exciting one here and I can't wait to share the latest with you!
But first, let's dive into our lens on neurodiversity. Fresh from the draft of Uncontained, this week we're exploring Dr. Nick Walker's concept of neuroqueering:
Neuroqueer started its journey as a verb,
Like many ideas, it has taken on a linguistic life of its own. As Walker says,
“the adjective form of neuroqueer can also serve as a label of social identity. One can neuroqueer, and one can be neuroqueer. A neuroqueer individual is any individual whose identity, selfhood, gender performance, and/or neurocognitive style have in some way been shaped by their engagement practices of neuroqueering, regardless of what gender, sexual orientation, or style of neurocognitive functioning they may have been born with.”
Walker provides a list of what neuroqueering means in practice, including:
“Engaging in practices intended to undo and subvert one’s own cultural conditioning and one’s ingrained habits of neuronormative and heteronormative performance, with the aim of reclaiming one’s capacity to give more full expression to one’s uniquely weird potentials and inclinations.”
And it goes beyond the individual. Neuroqueer practice also involves “working to transform social and cultural environments in order to create spaces and communities – and ultimately a society – in which engagement in any or all of the above practices is permitted, accepted, supported, and encouraged.”
So with that in mind, we offer these question prompts to ponder:
- how might you embrace what’s unique and unconventional about what you do?
- and how might you foster spaces that enable others to do the same?
For more on this, check out Dr. Nick Walker's article: Neuroqueer, an Introduction
Now onto this week's book updates…
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