Decolonizing= abolishing bioessentialism & the neurodivergent/ neurotypical binary

What does neurodivergent mean exactly?

*The quotes in this newsletter are from people with their consent, general broad background, without their real name (placeholder names instead) to still protect their privacy*

Safia is from & lives in Kenya and is at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. In our 1 on 1 sessions, we’re working on processing & addressing relational, systemic and childhood trauma to break intergenerational cycles of violence, unlearning colonial/ capitalist norms, divesting from them where possible, decolonizing their daily life/ relationships in order to build sustainable home grounded in their tribe. Safia is also coordinating multiple Pan-African mental health grassroots community groups. Here is a quote from a session where Safia expressed concerns with the western export of the neurodivergent label into the global south:

Safia: We’ve had mental health advocacy groups from the U.S. try to do projects or initiatives with our collective but I don’t understand why they use certain labels. They say they want to show solidarity and decolonize but they keep asking us what “kind of neurodivergent” we are which makes some members feel like they have to look up definitions of psychiatric disorders to see which one they fit or get a medical diagnosis. Some of our members have many diagnoses from being incarcerated at psych facilities or just from trying to find solutions to their problems but why do we have to go back to colonial labels if we don’t want to? We don’t find the need to put people into categories and we understand each others struggles because that’s how community building works. But now that more & more of our members are getting information from mental health groups in the west, there is more emphasis on individual identities & using diagnostic labels to define yourself instead of thinking beyond labels. It is not our way of life & it feels like a horrible form of westernization. Since people in the west are only able to use these labels like ADHD, autism etc, they also try to force us to fit these labels because they cannot comprehend how we exist without them. Sure we fit many “symptoms” so some American activists will joke that they can diagnose me & say I must be autistic or must have OCD. But I refuse to take on labels I don’t understand, especially if I don’t see how they will help my community. Why should I go back to the colonizer’s language and obsession with individual identities? What about the many elders in our community who health across generations has been impacted by colonialism but do not see the need to call themselves “neurodivergent”? Are they “neurotypical” because they refuse to be identified? As Black, tribal, colonized peoples, every part of our existence diverges from colonialism. We are a threat to capitalism and yet I must reduce myself to some type of a reductive label so people living in the west can comprehend me through their systems, their blandness and their binaries?

• Conversation from my 1 on 1 session with Layla-

Layla is a person of color, immigrant at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities who has been pathologized by colonial, capitalist mental health systems from therapy to psychiatry and assigned diagnoses most of which fall under the umbrella of “psychosis”. Other family members have also been subject to this including forced institutionalization in a psych ward after having the cops called:

Layla: “I want to join this grassroots organization to build community and be around other people but they say it is only for neurodivergent people. I don’t know if I fall into that category.”

Me: “What do you think that category means?”

Layla: “Based on how I’ve seen the label used, I guess it means people who don’t conform to dominant social norms but do you have to have certain psych diagnoses? I know people who have ADHD and Autism diagnoses fall under that category. I know people say self-diagnosis is valid which means if I think I am neurodivergent then I guess I can claim that label. But I’m not sure what diagnosis?

Layla & I discussed how the term “neurodivergent” is not well defined even though mainstream neoliberal mental health spaces frame it as a “simple” idea- a black and white binary between neurodivergent (ND) and neurotypical (NT). They are now posed with deciding if they should take on the label “neurodivergent” (not previously feeling obliged to) in order to access a space. Based on the binary, not self-identifying as ND means you are by default labeled as NT which has social implications.

Today’s newsletter will explore a single question “What does neurodivergent and neurotypical actually mean?” Who decides? What about Black, Brown, Indigenous communities who don’t align with neoliberal, western cultures that center individual identity labels? Should people take on the “ND” or “NT” label or be assigned one by default? The goal of this newsletter is not to frame the use of the ND label as good/ bad but rather open your mind to complexities. It may have helped you but it isn’t the only approach and the way it is often used upholds the oppressive structures we’re trying to dismantle. Liberation is not just freedom to choose labels but for many of us, it is not having to take on any labels at all and existing in complexities.

1. Neurodiversity as biodiversity means infinite possibilities not typical versus non-typical

The term neurodiversity was coined by Judy Singer in the 90s in Australia as “A subset of biodiversity and refers to the virtually infinite neuro-cognitive variability within Earth’s human population. It points to the fact that every human has a unique nervous system with a unique combination of abilities and needs.” Even within this definition, infinite ways of existing does not mean a “typical” and then all others who are considered “atypical”. It also doesn’t mean “typical” and 70 or so categories of “disorders” made-up by psychiatry in the DSM V. It means infinite, complex permutations, variations & possibilities without unique, distinct categories under the constant influence of infinite environmental and social variables.

The goal of the political neurodiversity framework was to mobilize for the abolition of psychiatry & its categorization of certain people as “disordered”. Yet, the term has been co-opted, sterilized, sanitized and is today often used to uphold & perpetuate oppressive systems. Capitalism and all colonial dominant systems of oppression serve as the homogenizing force. They create oppressive norms and use the threat of violence to coerce people to conform or assimilate. Many variables and layers of marginalization shape how “successful” one may be at accessing resources within such systems.

No one is biologically built to thrive under capitalism and colonialism

These systems are meant to objectify and commodify us all to exploit our labor. Their goal is to brutalize us all to varying degrees. The assumption that some people’s brains are wired to be willingly and happily deprived of autonomy, agency and coerced into obedience is dehumanizing. The idea that some people are just born to be automatons and work horses is messed up. It is also important to remember that the neurodiversity framework was developed in a settler-colonial, western country, has further evolved in the west and is only ONE way of conceptualizing mental health when countless approaches exist in collectivist Black, Brown, Indigenous cultures.

Neurodiversity is the dominant global framework you may be exposed to not because it supreme, better or the best but because of colonialism

Colonial empires constructed systems like psychiatry while erasing the systems of the communities they invaded and destroyed. Today, this neocolonial global power imbalance remains which is why western ideas, culture and values are hailed as supreme while alternatives from the Global South are often ignored, dismissed, actively erased or mocked. The fact that people think the neurodiversity paradigm was created because of a LACK OF non-pathologizing alternative ways to approach mental health shows how normalized it is to erase non-colonial, indigenous communities from global narratives. We have always existed with alternative systems before and after colonialism. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to mental health but often, neurodiversity is framed as a model everyone SHOULD fit leading to gatekeeping and forced enforcement of a dominant model. In fact, western mental health systems are exported to the Global South with their foundations in capitalism & colonialism intact.

How are the terms neurodivergent and neurotypical used in mainstream mental health narratives?

I want you to ask yourself what you think neurodivergent or neurotypical means and critically think about how these terms have been defined in based on their usage around you. There is no universal, standardized, clear-cut definition even though many frame it as such. This gatekeeping of labels is what ends up being problematic.

— Mainstream neoliberal mental health spaces dominated by the west most often use the ND label as part of a bioessentialist, reductive binary where some people are categorized as “biologically typical” or built with a brain that is best suited for societal norms while a minority of people are “biologically different” or built with a brain that diverges from social standards. This is similar to the biological reductionism that goes into falsely framing gender, race and sexuality as “real biological categories” when in fact they are social constructs established by European colonial empires. More on this:

The Global Expansion of Psychiatry is Modern Colonialism & the Global South is Pushing Back

Yes, we're all a little neurodivergent

— Neoliberal mental health spaces turn to the same psychiatric diagnoses that pathologize and criminalize our distress for validation. If you google definitions of neurodiversity or neurodivergent, you will most often see examples that include a list of diagnoses from the DSM V. While the original goal may have been to look at these categories as “alternative brain functions that don’t need to be treated”, the kicker is that we cannot restrict ourselves to labels given to us by oppressors to make total sense of our struggles. Psychiatric diagnoses were created to pathologize people’s logical responses to stress from surviving under oppressive systems, rebelling and diverging from dominant colonial, capitalist, standards of traits arbitrarily framed as “normal”. They have been no biological causes or bases for any psychiatric diagnosis identified till this day which is why psychiatry is the one unique field of medicine that has NO objective tools of diagnosis or treatment- everything is arbitrary and subjective. There are no tests run to measure, quantitate anything physiological but subjective judgments are made by psychiatrists biased by what they define as normal/ abnormal. There is no way to even confirm diagnoses given that different psychiatrists often give different diagnoses for the same person. More on this here:

Psychiatric diagnoses and the DSM are a sham

Yet, many spaces state that someone with X, Y or Z psychiatric diagnosis is considered neurodivergent. There is more mainstream acceptance of a self-diagnosis but it still urges people to turn to the DSM V to validate their struggle and distress- the very oppressive, colonial institution we are trying to burn down. So what happens when someone does not want to turn to psychiatry to amass diagnoses? What about survivors of psychiatric oppression who have had diagnostic labels leveraged to deprive them of basic agency as they are subject to incarceration and forcefully medicated or exposed to “psychiatric treatments” that amount to torture?

Most importantly, for people from the Global South or marginalized communities of color in colonial countries, should they be coerced into turning to psychiatry to assess if they fit certain labels?

Global export of western mental health system has inflicted psychiatric oppression onto oppressed communities. As Safia said in the quote above- many people find their way into colonial psychiatric systems that prey on them in their search for answers about labels.

— Majority of the western literature on neurodiversity itself is inaccessible to non-primary English language speakers. As in, trying to understand if you fit the ND label itself is a hurdle as you sift through jargon you don’t understand. Yet, people who operate many spaces that reinforce the ND/ NT binary do not even put any thought to the nuances of upholding one framework (that happens to be yet again dominated by people living in colonial countries) as the “right one” without creating space to learn from others or allowing for alternative indigenous frameworks to also co-exist.

Gatekeeping and exclusion of indigenous, black and brown narratives from mental health spaces

— Many collectivist cultures from the Global South do not emphasize unique individual identifiers or labels. For example, I never “came out” and eventually was at peace with the total lack of a gender, sex, sexuality label since it aligned with my ancestral South Asian traditions where we always existed in fluidity prior to heteropatriarchal laws introduced by European colonialism. For many of our cultures, the lack of labels is aligned with our innate complexity and collective resilience. Many collectivist indigenous cultures have alternative complex labels for people experiencing unexplainable mental or physical distress rooted in spirituality or religious traditions that not based in biological pre-determinism or reductive binaries or not framed as scientific definitions. None of us should have to feel like we have to choose the ND or NT label to access spaces even if the ND label may help folks in the Global North, many who are largely deprived of access to decolonized, anti-capitalist, collectivist frameworks. Alternatives have always existed, especially those not nurtured in the heart of the empire.

— Gatekeeping is a huge problem where people dominating neoliberal mental health spaces may have not fully interrogated their internalized capitalism and colonialism and thus, continue to operate within colonial constraints. Many spaces state that they are only for people who identify as “ND” which creates the dilemma that Layla stated in her earlier quote. People who have previously never sifted through the DSM V or are from collectivist cultures where identity labels are not emphasized at all may try to fit under an umbrella term that in itself lacks a universal, standardized definition. Essentially it leads to many people being pushed to turn towards pathologizing framework in order to make sense of their distress even if they didn’t find it necessary yet. While many may resonate with the ND label and gravitate towards these spaces, there should also be an explicit mention that alternative approaches to mental health beyond neurodiversity exist and thus the presence or absence of a self-identifier shouldn’t preclude people from accessing these spaces.

Another issue with strict definitions of the ND or NT labels: