Subscribe Via RSSWhat Word Do You Use To Describe the Absence of Autism?
So, what word do you use to describe the state of not having autism?
I bet you didn’t think of “healthy”. In a review of Jodi Picoult’s new novel House Rules, NYT columnist Lisa Belkin made this comment:
Her central character, Jacob, has Asperger’s syndrome, and while she has an adult cousin with the disorder, her own three children are (you can hear her knocking wood here) healthy.
The assumption Ms. Belkin is making here is that autism is a disorder, or rather a disease, so not being autistic then would render one healthy. Which is completely ridiculous if you really understand autism, because you can be autistic and completely healthy, or you can be neurotypical and not healthy. (Or other permutations.)
After complaints from readers (hooray for my friend @outoutout!), Ms. Belkin eventually apologized and retracted the comment.
Unfortunately this seems to be the general attitude surrounding House Rules, on the part of both reviewers and the author herself. Cat in a Dog’s World has a couple good posts about the book here and here.
We need to stop talking about autistics as “victims”, “suffering”, and not “healthy”.
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Thanks, Sandy! I’m so glad to see that the author changed the wording on that article; it was incredibly offensive to suggest that the opposite of being autistic is ‘healthy’.
outoutout´s last blog ..outoutout: @Petshopboysfan LOL. I meant my usual run out to drop off J and K. How are you feeling today?
This recently came up in a post on Jezebel.com, a favourite blog of mine. The bloggers themselves are quite good about not using (too much) ableist language, I think because there’s a strong feminist and FA contingent (Kate Harding sometimes guest writes), and a huge recovering ED group of readers, so they are aware of triggering and ableist language. They even use neurotypical in their posts, which I really appreciate. The post was one of many about how McCarthy is totally unsupported by science or, you know, reality, and the comments were largely good and helpful. I did a lot of educating about the spectrum, and there are a couple other spectrumites and parents of spectrumites who are also prominent commenters. However, there were a handful of comments about how autism is some crippling disease…yeah. They got soundly corrected. And not just by me.
Ali´s last blog ..shouting, screaming in your ear
I used to cringe when I saw words like “disorder” and “Illness” applied to autism, but now I just feel angry and sad about the ignorance that fuels that kind of talk. To me, it’s like dealing with any other kind of ignorance or prejudice: I simply interrupt it whenever I see it. I can’t let it stand.
This is one area of many in which we can empower ourselves and start to break down the wall of neuro-typical privilege and misconception. I don’t know about anyone else around here, but I tend to be pretty blunt (autistic people? blunt?) and that comes in pretty handy when dealing with the inunitiated..
Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg´s last blog ..Contributing to the Local Community
Oh, to answer your original (and probably rhetorical) question: I am trying to remember to use the word “non-autistic” in preference to “neuro-typical,” althought I’m having trouble giving up the latter. It was recently pointed out to me that there are many people who are neither neuro-typical nor autistic–people with ADD, for example. As much as I see the logic of that argument, “neuro-typical” has come to mean more to me than simply “non-autistic.” It’s become a shorthand for a certain kind of privilege and entitlement, and I still find it useful for that reason.
Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg´s last blog ..Contributing to the Local Community
Neurodiversity doesn’t just mean autism. It covers a whole range of thinking types, including ADHD or OCD. Neurotypical is the word for, well, a typical brain with typical thinking processes. Someone who is not autistic but does have another neurodiverse thinking type like ADD is not neurotypical.
Ali´s last blog ..shouting, screaming in your ear
That’s what I was saying.
OK, if autistic people are not “healthy”, why is my autistic 6-year-old son one of the few in his school who still has a perfect attendance record?
Sheesh.
A person can only be termed as one of two things – neurotypical or neurodiverse. And if you get right down to it, anyone who’s neurotypical is also neurodiverse, because typicality is just another way of being, although more numerous. “Diversity” includes every-freakin’-body, of whatever description.
So that person who says, “We don’t need no stinkin’ Neurodiversity” might as well be saying, “We don’t need no stinkin’ gravity.” It’s there, your can’t deny it or do anything about it.
Clay´s last blog ..Jerry Brown & Prop 13 Revisited
I have to say that I think autistic people are very ‘healthy’ in the literal sesne as my son never suffers with the illnesses that the other children in his class get and I also am in very robust physical health. I wanted to read this novel but am now less keen.
DJ Kirkby´s last blog ..The Million Pound Bike Ride
Well before Jodi Picoult, came scientific literature, and this very distintion between Autistic and Healthy is what prompted my question to Geri Dawson at the 2008 IMFAR.
Yes that infamous incident where a legitimate (if uninvited question) on a very important matter of respect and indeed accuracy in scientific writing prompted an ad hominem attack from an enraged Matthew Belmonte, which Jonathon Mitchell will not let me forget.
As for what Neurotypical stands for, it stands for the greater volume of a notional bell curve of Neurodiversity.
Yes it really does, figure it out. The curve represents a set of all possible neurological configurations, therefore it represents diversity.
Some configurations tend closer to the mean and others further away. The most diverse are actually in the smaller number, and as an exception recieve the title “Neurodiversity” if you follow the analogy whereas they are only types of neurodiversity without the capital N. It is partly the way that perception works, and language that this comes about, but to comment further would essential mean I end up writing a pscychololinguistical paper not a blog comment.
Whoops I entered the wrong website in the website box there, and not for the first time either. That does not lead to my blog, whereas this one does.
I think one large part of the problem is that the term “autism” itself, and the broadening range of terminology and taxonomy associated with it, are themselves artifacts of a process of study that was, until very recently, completely *outside* the internal experience of being what is commonly labelled “autistic” or anywhere else along the “autism spectrum”.
The false dichotomy between “autistic” and whichever antonym we choose to apply here is much deeper than the question of what we use as that antonym. Ultimately, it’s the problem of concepts outside of language having to be fit into language, and this one is far more complex than the terminology currently used to refer to it. And solving that problem will ultimately require a thorough understanding of the *internal* experience at least as much as the *external* study of observed behaviors, because studying the behaviors themselves without seeing the cognitive process inside is only going to perpetuate the concept of autism-as-disorder.
That being said, yes, “neurotypical” refers somewhat ambiguously to the central region of a space with varying degrees of “autistic” toward one edge, and that space has almost infinitely many dimensions. Nothing about the brain is ever simple. and many things about how it functions will probably forever be inexpressible in language. Which is not an excuse to not bother with efforts to refine that language in areas where we know it isn’t adequate.