i’ve wanted to talk about this for a while, but i’m not interested in any fuckass liberal takes, so i’m posting this here
also, i’m not a medical/mental health professional so feel free to call me on my bullshit. i’m genuinely interested to hear why i might be wrong
anyway
adhd and autism are social disorders
that doesn’t mean that “everyone is a little autistic”. that doesn’t mean that “labels don’t matter”. that doesn’t mean that we should all get off our meds. they’re genuinely disorders and need to be treated as such
what it means is that they’re not illnesses. these conditions are not inherently disorders, they’re socially determined to be disorders. they’re disorders because they make us misadjusted to our current class society, not because they’re inherently harmful to our health
i’m also not saying that there aren’t inherent limitations to autism or adhd, of course there are, very clearly. but limitations aren’t necessarily disorders or disabling. everyone has limitations, even neurotypicals, but not everyone has mental disorders. children and the elderly have particular limitations, but neither childhood nor old age are disorders. perfectly healthy people have numerous limitations compared to other healthy people, but those limitations don’t hinder their participation in our current society
this discussion frustrates me so much because it seems to be either the “labels don’t matter” discourse that put me off of seeking diagnosis for over a decade or the “autism/adhd is an illness and i’m broken for having it” discourse which sometimes veers very close to eugenics and puts the blame of our suffering in our “bad genes”
being autistic and having adhd sucks and we need as much treatment as we can get and i love my meds, but this suffering is not my fault. a capitalist class society that steals our lives and grinds us to a pulp is to blame. neurotypicals just happen to be better at surviving this hell (which is exactly why they’re typical). in a society designed for our wellbeing, those diagnoses would look very different
what do you think?
This is a good take on adhd/autism imo, and it’s as complex as the subject itself. I found this paragraph of yours particularly interesting:
what it means is that they’re not illnesses. these conditions are not inherently disorders, they’re socially determined to be disorders. they’re disorders because they make us misadjusted to our current class society, not because they’re inherently harmful to our health
You continue to elaborate on the limitations later on, but what intrigues me here is that you contrast “disorders” and “socially assigned as disorders” while at the same time allowing for the fact that there are clearly limitations to everyone and that the socially assigned ones are a product of class society. This is, I think, the only proper way to look at the topic, but I do think a lot of people would find it too complex, hence the “labels don’t matter” rhetoric.
There’s some quibbles over language but that has been my experience.
As someone with autism and ADHD, I fucking suck at existing within capitalism. It feels physically painful to even apply for jobs that wouldn’t see me directly benefiting society rather than someone’s bottom line, and while I’m intelligent and knowledgeable I can’t deal with academic learning environments and just burn out in them, so my jobs have all been low paid stuff in my community, but that’s also fine by me because money disgusts me and I hate having to interact with it. I’m constantly exhausted and have regular meltdowns without someone around to do basic things like choose meals for me to cook or physically enter a supermarket to buy things because I find the level of choice overwhelming. Trying to keep a personal schedule has been a complete nonstarter by any method. Under capitalist standards I have failed at life, family, career etc.
On the other hand, I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer on short term educational communes. There is no money to deal within the camps, the schedule is kept collectively, the teaching is experiential rather than academic, people have camp wide jobs so I don’t have to do things like decide what to eat, and it turns out having someone with no set schedule and a wide range of knowledges and skills that you can grab and put to task on any element of the camp is really useful to have in those circumstances. I get to have constant variety to my days on work directly benefitting the group, and don’t have to deal with any of my triggers. For these camps, I’ll “work” for about 16 hours a day for nearly 4 straight weeks, and while I’ll be pretty exhausted by the end of it, it’s something I can recover from with a few days of rest rather than a permanent state. I’m even able to remain highly sociable for the whole time, with people unironically describing me as fascinating, and even inspirational on occasion.
And then I have to go back to capitalism.My expression of autism and ADHD isn’t the same as other’s, but my fitting in on these camps is only possible because of how much more accommodating the entire structure of the work is. People can have individual roles where necessary, and can work together on other tasks where they have weaknesses. You can easily split and combine tasks across groups when you’re working within a collectivised structure, rather than the individual cells under capitalism that demand complete self sufficiency. ADHD and autism stop being disabilities, and just become a different skill set.
you seem to share a popularly held misunderstanding of what neurodiversity is; it’s neither an illness nor a label, it’s a testable and measurable variation of how your brian processes and analyzes information compared to how the mainstream of people do the same thing in a more-or-less typical/expected way. it’s akin to measuring your spatial capabilities or testing your IQ.
there can be medications involved (because it’s helpful), but a vast majority of treatment is done via some sort of therapy where you learn how to bridge the social gaps between yourself and the expectations of our neurotypical dominated society.
it’s debilitating for some; which is why it’s called it a disorder; and this group is the most visible among us, so (i think) it’s the biggest reason why most people see it as an illness or a label.
I would you are correct. I’ve never heard of the arguments that you are talking about, but it just sounds like someone who is trying to get out of the responsibility of making a more accessible environment.
Or to put it another way, disability is relative and always has been. But the societal system we use is not the issue, it’s our standards. If you go to Japan or Canada, they’re so social with their health programs that, when you have a condition that makes you stand out, it really, really makes you stand out, and there’s seldom anyone who will see you as an equal (in fact, Japan won’t even see you as an equal if you’re overweight; they quite literally have a “fat tax”). Having resided near the Canadian border, they knew they were talking to a non-Canadian when they were talking to me. Meanwhile, you have societies, such as the one Hippocrates lived under, that didn’t treat things that way which were happy to navigate said differences rather than be dismissive.
