A note on "Neurodivergence"

Most of us are weird in at least one direction. Some of us just get a fancy label for it.

I use the word neurodivergent because it gives me a way to talk about human difference without immediately dragging everyone into the dusty basement of deficit language. It says, very simply, that there is more than one way for a brain and nervous system to work.

That should not be revolutionary, but here we are.

I also like the word because it leaves room for complexity. Neurodivergence is not a superpower sticker. It is not a tragedy pamphlet. It is not a polite rebrand of disability that lets everyone avoid saying the word disabled. It is a way of naming difference while still leaving room for support, challenge, identity, pride, frustration, accommodation, and the occasional full-system reboot in a parking lot because the grocery store lighting was designed by goblins.

The point is not that everything is easy.

The point is that difficulty is not proof of lesser humanity.

Where the terms come from

The terms neurodiversity, neurodivergent, and neurodiverse are related, but they are not interchangeable. This is one of those places where the details actually matter.

Neurodiversity is usually associated with Judy Singer, who is often credited as an important early academic voice in naming the concept. Harvey Blume helped bring the idea into wider public conversation in the late 1990s. More recent scholarship complicates that neat little origin story, arguing that neurodiversity theory emerged more collectively from autistic community spaces rather than from one lone genius dropping wisdom from the mountaintop (Botha et al., 2024).

That collective history matters. Movements do not usually spring fully formed from one person’s forehead. They come from communities, arguments, message boards, lived experience, frustration, language experiments, and people finally saying, “Actually, maybe we are not the problem.”

Neurodivergent and neurodivergence are different terms. Kassiane Asasumasu is credited with coining those terms in 2000, and those terms were meant to be broad and inclusive, not another tiny diagnostic clubhouse with a secret handshake (National Autistic Society, 2026).

One more distinction: neurodiverse is not just a fancier way to say neurodivergent. In Nick Walker’s terminology, a person can be neurodivergent, but only a group can be neurodiverse. A classroom can be neurodiverse. A workplace can be neurodiverse. A family can be neurodiverse. One person cannot be neurodiverse, because diversity describes groups, not individuals (Walker, 2021).

Tiny grammar hill? Maybe.

Worth defending? Absolutely.

What I mean when I say “neurodivergent”

When I say neurodivergent, I mean someone whose brain or nervous system works in ways that diverge from whatever a particular culture is currently treating as normal.

That last part matters: currently treating as normal.

Normal is not a scientific fact handed down on stone tablets. Normal is often just whatever institutions were built around first. Schools, workplaces, application forms, classrooms, meetings, deadlines, interviews, office lighting, group projects, and “professionalism” all carry assumptions about how people are supposed to think, speak, sit, focus, process, respond, and perform being a person.

Neurodivergent people often find out very early that those assumptions were not built with them in mind.

That does not mean diagnosis is irrelevant. Diagnoses can matter. They can open doors to services, legal protections, medication, therapy, accommodations, and self-understanding. I am not anti-diagnosis. I am anti-turning-diagnosis-into-destiny.

A person can need support without being treated as a broken appliance.

A student can need accommodations without being treated as a problem someone reluctantly agreed to manage.

A person can struggle in one environment and thrive in another, which suggests maybe we should stop pretending the environment is just innocent wallpaper.

Why I avoid flattened medical-model language

I do not love language that talks about human beings primarily as disorders, deficits, or compliance projects.

There are places where medical and legal language is useful. Disability services paperwork exists. Health care systems exist. Eligibility rules exist. Documentation exists. We do not get to defeat bureaucracy by pretending it is not standing there with a clipboard.

But that language gets dangerous when it becomes the only language we use.

The problem with flattened medical-model language is that it often smuggles in a bigger assumption: the person is the problem, and the environment is neutral.

That assumption falls apart fast.

A student who cannot follow a chaotic verbal instruction dump may look “noncompliant” in one classroom and completely capable in another where the instructions are written clearly. A student who avoids eye contact may be read as rude by one instructor and thoughtful by another. A student who asks direct questions may be treated as argumentative when they are actually trying to understand the hidden rules everyone else seems to have downloaded at birth.

That is not just disability. That is interpretation. That is culture. That is power wearing a name badge.

The better work in neurodiversity does not force us into the lazy binary of “everything is society’s fault” or “everything is the individual’s deficit.” The useful answer is messier and more honest: bodies and minds are real, support needs are real, and environments can either reduce barriers or turn them into a full obstacle course with fluorescent lights (Dwyer, 2022; Kapp et al., 2013).

Why belonging matters

This is the part I care about most.

Belonging is not just being allowed into the room.

Belonging is being in the room without having to constantly prove that you deserve to stay there.

It means being seen as competent even if your communication style is different. It means being allowed to process slowly without being treated as unintelligent. It means being direct without being treated as hostile. It means needing support without being treated as a burden. It means not having to perform “normal” so convincingly that there is no energy left to learn, work, connect, or exist.

Access matters. Accommodations matter. Legal rights matter.

But access without belonging can still feel like being invited to dinner and then handed a folding chair in the hallway.

Belonging research has long shown that meaningful connection is central to human motivation and well-being (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). In higher education, neurodiversity-inclusive work pushes this further by arguing that student success depends not only on accommodations, but also on campus climate, communication flexibility, peer connection, disability culture, and visible institutional validation (Dwyer et al., 2023).

That is especially true for neurodivergent students, who are often doing two jobs at once.

First, they are doing the actual task: learning the material, completing the assignment, navigating the campus, managing time, building relationships, figuring out adulthood.

Second, they are doing the invisible translation work: trying to appear engaged enough, calm enough, social enough, organized enough, professional enough, grateful enough, normal enough.

That second job is exhausting.

And too often, institutions treat that exhaustion as a personal weakness instead of evidence that the system is making people pay an entrance fee in self-erasure.

Language, identity, and respect

I do not think there is one perfect language rule that solves everything. Language is not a magic spell. It is a tool, and like most tools, people can use it carefully or swing it around like they found it in a garage and got overconfident.

In autism research, there is no single term that everyone prefers. Kenny et al. (2016) found that autistic adults, parents, professionals, and other community members often preferred different language. Autistic adults were more likely than professionals to prefer identity-first language, such as autistic person, while professionals were more likely to prefer person-first language, such as person with autism.

That difference is worth noticing.

It is also why I tend to prefer community-informed language over universal etiquette rules. Botha et al. (2023) argue that language choices are not just cosmetic. They affect autonomy, identity, stigma, and who gets treated as the expert on disabled people’s lives.

So my general rule is:

Be specific.
Avoid euphemism.
Follow individual or community preference when you know it.
Do not correct someone’s self-description because you read a better pamphlet.

If I mean autistic, I say autistic.

If I mean disabled, I say disabled.

If I mean neurodivergent, I say neurodivergent.

Those words overlap, but they are not the same thing. Treating them as interchangeable usually creates more fog than clarity.

Why I use the term in my work

I use neurodivergent because it lets me say several true things at the same time.

It lets me talk about disability without reducing people to deficiency.

It lets me talk about identity without pretending every experience is easy.

It lets me talk about support without implying that support is charity.

It lets me talk about education, work, relationships, and community without pretending the individual is the only thing that needs to change.

That last part is the big one.

A lot of institutions love the language of inclusion right up until inclusion asks them to do something inconvenient. Then suddenly we are back to rewarding masking, pathologizing directness, treating accommodations like favors, and acting shocked when people burn out after years of being asked to sand down every interesting edge of themselves.

That is not inclusion.

That is assimilation with better marketing.

I am interested in something better than that.

I want schools, workplaces, and communities that can recognize more than one kind of mind as legitimate. I want support structures that do not require people to become smaller before they are considered successful. I want belonging that is deeper than “we let you in, please clap.”

People own themselves.

Labels should help people make sense of their lives, not shrink them.

And if a school, workplace, or community only knows how to value one kind of mind, the problem is much bigger than vocabulary.

References

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497-529.

Blume, H. (1998, September). Neurodiversity: On the neurological underpinnings of geekdom. The Atlantic.

Botha, M., Chapman, R., Giwa Onaiwu, M., Kapp, S. K., Stannard Ashley, A., & Walker, N. (2024). The neurodiversity concept was developed collectively: An overdue correction on the origins of neurodiversity theory. Autism, 28(6), 1591-1594.

Botha, M., Hanlon, J., & Williams, G. (2023). Does language matter? Identity-first versus person-first language use in autism research: A response to Vivanti. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 53, 870-878.

Dwyer, P. (2022). The neurodiversity approach(es): What are they and what do they mean for researchers?. Human Development, 66(2), 73-92.

Dwyer, P., Mineo, E., Mifsud, K., Lindholm, C., Gurba, A., & Waisman, T. C. (2023). Building neurodiversity-inclusive postsecondary campuses: Recommendations for leaders in higher education. Autism in Adulthood, 5(1), 1-14.

Kapp, S. K., Gillespie-Lynch, K., Sherman, L. E., & Hutman, T. (2013). Deficit, difference, or both? Autism and neurodiversity. Developmental Psychology, 49(1), 59-71.

Kenny, L., Hattersley, C., Molins, B., Buckley, C., Povey, C., & Pellicano, E. (2016). Which terms should be used to describe autism? Perspectives from the UK autism community. Autism, 20(4), 442-462.

National Autistic Society. (2026). The neurodiversity movement. Retrieved May 18, 2026.

Walker, N. (2021). Neurodiversity: Some basic terms and definitions. Neuroqueer Heresies.