damn solidarity project
[disability, autistic, mad & neuroqueer]
neuroqueer justice
neuroqueer justice builds upon the neurodiversity movement just as the disability justice movement did disability rights by actively striving for collective liberation
it also builds upon the disability justice movement by articulating neurotypism as its own form of oppression & imagining neuroqueer futures that decenter neurotypical modes of communication & engagement
neuroqueer justice - a working draft
This draft is based on & grounded by Patty Berne's "Disability Justice - a working draft."
Neuroqueer justice seeks to address cliffhangers left by the neurodiversity & disability justice movements through:
centering how neurotypism intersects with other forms of oppression & decentering White, cisgender, heterosexual experiences
organizing a broad-based popular movement & embracing strategies other than litigation & construction of a bureaucratic sector
understanding that some neuroqueer identities are privileged over others & we need to center those most impacted in this way as well
Neuroqueer agents of change in their own communities, isolated by neurotypism, ableism, sanism, and other forms of oppression - especially in these pandemic(s) times - have similarly begun to find liberated zones online.
The DAMN Solidarity Project hopes to facilitate the development of a critical mass of neuroqueer activists, organizers, and cultural workers who understand the systemic nature of neurotypism and its inextricability from neurotypist, able-bodied, White supremacy. Through this effort, we can reach the threshold of action potential needed for fractal scaling of the neuroqueer justice framework into the creation of a broad-based movement.
neurotypism
a working definition, 8.2021
[modeled after the working definition of ableism by TL Lewis, Dustin Gibson, & others]
a system that places value on people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of communication, engagement, relation, embodiment, production, and processing.
These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in ableism, sanism, oralism, anti-Black racism, White Supremacy, cisheterosexism, eugenics, classism, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.
This form of systemic oppression leads to people and society determining who is valuable and worthy based on a person’s ability to operate linearly and engage, relate, and learn in socially acceptable ways; and/or their ability to satisfactorily [re]produce, excel and "behave."
