NeuroDiversity: The Birth of an Idea

by Judy Singer

These people who, in less loaded terminology, simply lack an innate capacity for social communications, have begun to recognise a neurological kinship.

And autistics are beginning to challenge and invert NT assumptions. A member of InLv, ‘Muskie’, has set up a website “The Institute for the Study of the Neurotypical” which parodies the ways that autistics have been studied, and turns the tables on NT’s by subjecting them to the clinical Gaze: Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterised by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.... NT is believed to be genetic in origin. Autopsies have shown the brain of the neurotypical is typically smaller than that of an autistic and may have overdeveloped areas related to social behaviour. (ISNT;1998) Visitors to the site evince pity for poor NT’s with their limited sensorium, ineptitude with computers, and compulsive pursuit of social conformity.