Ever since I have come to understand I am neurodivergent, more of the world has opened up to me. I now understand why I found certain environments so difficult, why some people have become inexplicably annoyed by me, and why I might respond to people in ways they don’t expect.

Finding neurodivergent communities online, particularly on X (formally known as Twitter) was immensely supportive. I saw others talk about their own challenges and I was often able to relate. A common topic was how the world does not appear designed for the neurodivergent, with the workplace as the number one offender. This constant pain in dealing with the public world is why the neurodivergent movement has thrived.

The neurodivergent movement has gained traction, in part, because the prefix neuro has the habit of making anything sound legitimate. Neuro is always contemporary regardless of the year, makes people pay attention, and carries with it the command of being taken seriously, something those with autism crave.

A major benefit to neurodivergent culture is that it helps to raise questions over identification. It encourages those with autistic traits to interact with others and discuss similar experiences, which enables them to better understand themselves. This is not dissimilar to coming out of the closet with a growing sense of private understanding and a drive to interact publicly with an accepting community.

The trouble is neurodivergent lacks a solid foundation and appears arbitrary. The term lacks a literal meaning, other than to imply that different neural arrangements lead to different types of people. There are 8 billion people on Earth, each with a brain made up of billions of neurons with trillions of synaptic connections that are constantly changing throughout the expanse of the person’s life; moment to moment, person to person, divergency is the norm.

Neurodivergent people are divergent from other neurodivergent people. Neurotypical people are divergent from other neurotypical people. A dog is neurodivergent from a cat. I am neurodivergent to the me of ten years ago, even ten seconds ago. And if the criteria for acceptance into neurodivergent is to merit neurological difference from a normal, then it must also be accepted that psychopaths and pedophiles are neurodivergent.

The term neurotypical is frequently used to describe the other. The term provides a target with which to level criticism against. This is not dissimilar to homophobe or racist or misogynist. When seeking measures of equality and acceptance, it is crucial to have a label for people that are the problem. Names for the oppressor help to ease cohesion, prevent in-fighting, build enthusiasm, and drive momentum forward, picking up social and political capital. These are all good things and would not be necessary if everyone was receiving the respect and understanding they deserve.

The downside is that the other is caricatured and subject to picking up as many stereotypes as the person seeking equality. Perhaps even without intention, an us-vs-them mentality is established, which questions the likelihood of future integration. Unlike white on black racism, neurotypicals are not actively seeking to oppress the neurodivergent; the major problems appear to be ignorance and stigmas and an unwillingness to change the status quo. Neurotypicals, for the most part, do not identify as neurotypical, which undermines the movement because as far as the rest of the world is concerned, neurotypicals do not exist.

This is not the first time the prefix neuro has been co-opted to re-brand academic subjects or promote business. Technological advancement at the end of the 90s saw fMRI become a popular method for understanding the brain. Thoughts that a participant had while being scanned could be tentatively linked with specific areas of the brain. This caused great excitement and resulted in the prefix neuro being added to many traditional areas of study to boost interest. Fortunately, the limitations of fMRI are now widely known and even though this was a movement of sorts, the focus had not drifted too far from discussions of neurons. The neuro in neurodivergent appears mostly untethered.

At some point, all activism must lead to a pragmatic assimilation into the status quo. In order for this to happen an unambiguous and broadly accepted terminology must be present. Autism, ADHD, and other personalities need to be seen as normal and human, and thus inclusion is necessary and obvious.

The bitter truth behind the good intentions of a diagnosis, something which is done to facilitate treatment or therapy, becomes an event in history that forever tethers the patient from personal growth and in some cases, relationships. During the diagnosis, the person is deemed to be in need of care, after all, they are now the patient. But even after many years of good therapeutic habits, the person is still considered to be in need of care and liable to others – a liability.

A diagnosis also implies a deviation from healthy or normal and will become a defining feature of the medical record, which will always make other people question if the person is healthy or normal in the present. A mental health diagnosis can become a sinister stigmata, because there will always be doubt over whether the person is normal or healthy – in some cases preventing relationships before they can even start.

Many of those diagnosed with autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, etc. could be forced to deal with these problems and have to work hard and struggle to be treated as an independent, autonomous person. The neurodivergent movement has partly been successful because neurodivergent is not a term of diagnosis, but a voluntary label that hinges on the fact that difference is not disorder.

Some of the terms used to define the traits within autism diagnosis, under other circumstances, might simply be seen as eccentric. Terms like disturbances, difficulties, rituals, deficits, hypo-, hyper-, etc. The definition of normality appears to have been randomly decided and anything that deviates from this definition is therefore abnormal. An autist would be well within their rights to reverse the view of these traits and determine that it is the allist who needs the diagnosis.

Many autists do struggle in a world that has been determined and structured by allists, particularly in educational and work settings. Theoretically, if these environments can be re-structured and re-determined so that an autist can flourish, the ease with which they interact with this environment would mean anybody observing would think everything was normal. This means that those who control the environment control what is normal.

The diagnostic behavioral traits are also an issue. Usually, if somebody demonstrates a high enough frequency of a particular trait, they will have a high score and that score will become the determination of a diagnosis. In a world of traits and spectrums, it is likely that many allists will also share autistic traits, such as being comfortable with routine, or a level of fatigue when it comes to prolonged eye contact, or having a somewhat obsessive private interest (in allistic speak, these would be hobbies and pastimes).

That fact that allists can have autistic traits suggests that if social and civil changes were made to benefit somebody with autism, they would also benefit the allist. In addition, because allists and autists can share traits commonly associated with each other, taken together it could just be representative of the traits that make people human.

Many autists have to find and train different behaviors that allows them to mask and deal with being out in the workplace with other people, but this is not synonymous to those with autism as all workers have to find ways to manage long days and increased productivity in difficult environments. Often, workplaces are thought of as normal and the ability for an employee to advance has more to do with a willingness to endure. But this demonstrated struggle is not necessarily useful and if workers could have power over how they get the job done, morale would be higher and productivity would be maximized.

Making changes for those who are neurodivergent would also create an environment where all can be happy. Having less meetings and time for people to decompress on their own would help all workers, as work that is done in solitude is just as important as necessary meetings.

An environment that recognizes diversity would dissolve the need for the term neurodiversity. But what about normality?

In behavioral science, normality appears defined as the absence of the characteristic being studied. Behavioral research experiments typically recruit at least two groups of people; one group that has been screened to ensure they show behavioral traits of the abnormality being studied, and another group that does not display these traits – the control group. Any number of tests can then be given to all groups and any differences that appear based upon group identity can be verified statistically and the difference published as a finding.

However, it is worth noting that there are no studies determining normality in mental health, after all, in a field that struggles with resource and funding, what would any research team have to gain by pursuing a credible diagnosis for normality? This means that normality is not scientifically verified and is made all the more impossible to pursue by the ever changing nature of a person’s mental health.

Yet, for such a cherished moniker of considering oneself normal, is it good enough to define it simply by the traits/dysfunctions/disorders that you do not have? It appears to be a travesty of thought to make an observation of somebody displaying difference to you and declaring that you are normal because you are not that. How satisfied would we be in situations where we needed to learn about another person, in knowing simply what they are not?

How do you determine a person’s substance by the absence of traits?

Lennard J. Davis notes in ‘The Disability Studies Reader’ (4^th Ed.) that the terms norm and average only entered European languages in the 19^th Century. Their arrival coincided with ideas that were being used in the field of statistics. What had been applied in the mathematical determination of astronomical events bled over into the study of human characteristics, such as height and weight. However in this natural accretion, unguided and subject to nineteenth century prejudices, the search for normal behaviors quickly became marred by the assumptions of the privileged.

Statistics is a powerful tool and can be used with great effect to convince scientists of the objectivity of research, but they are only as powerful as their interpretation. Statistics can demonstrate difference like nothing else, but the basis of comparison is loaded with assumptions of deviance versus absence of deviance. When it comes to understanding something as precious as humanity, is that good enough for us? Every single study should have a rigorous definition of what has been considered normal in light of the research question. Normal is needed for statistics to work.

Normality seems to be everything about humanity that we do not consider different or deviant, yet when pressed would struggle to define. This leads one to ask, “Is normality more of a feeling than a state of being?” Normality appears to have a lot in common with the mathematical concept of zero. Both concepts trick us into thinking they are well defined when it is in fact the opposite. The infinity of the absence tricks us into thinking there is substance.

In a world of scientifically and medically confirmed diagnoses, the definition of a normal person is one who would without fail qualify for the control group in any research (unless their socioeconomic markers do not match). Normality is a permanent membership in the control group for every possible behavioral experiment, yet this is clearly impossible, and even inhuman.

In a world where those who have been deemed different are having to fight for more inclusion and equal rights, conversations around normality matter.

If only there was a condition called Manifestly Normal Disorder, a list of symptoms to define normal would have to be rigorously defined in order to screen for the experimental group.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the middle of the bell curve is not where to find normal. Normal is the bell curve.

Jack Pemment is a medical and science writer and has published academically on psychopathy and personality disorders. His work has been published in the Seattle Times, Sheffield Star, and Psychology Today.

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