Showing posts with label neurodiversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neurodiversity. Show all posts

Neurodiversity Misattribution

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13623613241237871

While neurodiversity is popularly attributed to Judy Singer, it was in fact a collective effort of many autistic activists in the 1990s. A correct in attribution is overdue.

"For some time, the coinage and theorizing of the concept of ‘neurodiversity’ has been attributed to Judy Singer. While Singer published one early book chapter on the neurodiversity movement in 1999, she was only one of many working on theorising neurodiversity, and certainly not the first. In fact... ‘neurological diversity’ or ‘neurodiversity’ concept – and body of theory surrounding it – was collectively theorised and developed by autistic activists, primarily in the autistic community email list Independent Living in the mid-1990s. While much of this earlier theorising, and that which followed, has been lost due to being on now defunct emails lists, forums, blogs, and so on, in our view, it is important to clarify the multiple origins of the concept. This allows us to correctly show that neurodiversity theory arose and was developed collectively among autistic activist communities, rather than originating with any individual"

Its like the way I had attributed "inspiration porn" to Stella Young, who had used it a Ted Talk and thus popularized it. But the term was coined by comedian Maysoon Zayid. Thanks to disability rights activist, Rebecca Cokley who knows both was nice enough to correct the attribution.