Protected: 3. Moving Away from Gender and Sexual Hierarchies: Neuroqueer Interventions

Panellists: Seyi Keyamo, Kate Ellis & Elizabeth Straus, Ruby Hake
Chair: Denise Henschel

Seyi Keyamo | We are Not Villains: Neurodivergent Modes of Radical Black Dyke Intimacy 

Abstract: This paper is based on my relationships within my community of 5 Black trans radical dykes. 

Engaging with neurodivergent as a politicised term describing those who are oppressed by and those actively resist neuronormativity (aiyana goodfellow, NEUROMANCERS), and taking neuronormativity as the colonial construction of a false ‘neuro-typical’ archetype in order to justify and legitimise the anti-Black, anti-indigenous, genocidal and white supremacist capitalist world order, I hope to articulate a Black radical neurodivergent politic of resistance that draws upon Black trans lesbian identities in homage to the Combahee River Collective’s statement.  

Through explorations of relational intimacy between neurodivergent Black radical trans lesbians, intimacies that know the person is political, intimacies that witness and hold oppression-related traumas and intimacies stay steadfast in their commitment to the liberation of all oppressed people, we can start to recognise the potential of a world-making relational politic that can form the basis of the next chapter in of Black liberation movements. 

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Kate Ellis; Elizabeth Straus (Online) | Neuroqueer Entanglements of Gender and Sexuality: Challenging Stereotypes Beyond the Normative Knot 

Abstract: In recent years, harmful rhetoric has emerged around neurodivergent individuals’ identifications with non-normative conceptions of gender and sexuality. For example, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist organizations have spread pathologizing narratives about the supposed links between transgender identity and ADHD, Autism, and OCD, suggesting that individuals labelled with these diagnoses are unable to meaningfully consent to a gender transition.  

Drawing on interviews and digital stories from the project Beyond the Normative Knot: Life and Praxis at the Gender-Sexuality-Autism Nexus, we aim to provide a counternarrative that considers how neurodivergent individuals (conceived broadly) are doing gender and sexuality in ways that resist cis/hetero- and neuro-normative conventions and what this can tell us about gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence more broadly. We draw on narratives that conceive of sexuality, gender, and neurodivergence as inherently intertwined, considering how cis/heteronormativity and ableism intersect and how individuals resist these systems of power. In particular, we discuss how our participants found current identity categories around gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence (including the separation of these categories) constraining and imagined new ways to understand the intersection of these so-called categories. 

This project involved interviews with 26 autistic adults in Southern Ontario, Canada and multimedia storymaking (a type of digital storytelling) with 11 of these individuals. Although our study specifically recruited individuals who identify as autistic (including those who are self-identified and questioning), we found that most participants had relationships with multiple experiences of neurodivergence and/or Mad identities and that some participants rejected the label of autism in favour of the broad category of neurodivergence. We engage critical autism studies, neomaterialist and posthuman scholarship, intersectionality, and critical access theory to analyze the ways in which neurodivergent people encounter, challenge, and reimagine normative expectations and stereotypes about gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence. 

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Ruby Hake | Essentialism in autism and gender research 

Abstract: Anti-essentialist interpretations of autism and gender have worked to illuminate the ways in which gender essentialism can create damaging patriarchal, heteronormative and cisnormative hierarchies that actively discriminate against non-conforming autistic people. Emphasizing that it is autistic people themselves who often reveal the violence of rigid gender norms, the anti-essentialist literature follows and takes seriously the assumption that “most autistic people do not see gender as an internal or external category that is important or even applicable, especially to themselves”. In so doing, anti-essentialist interpretations have opened up possibilities for new conceptions of gender and of autism, using frameworks that are completely removed from any deficit view. This work makes a crucial contribution to understandings of autism and gender. One immediate concern, however, is that whilst anti-essentialist interpretations have exposed the fact that essentialist views of autism and gender do exclude many or even most autistic people and inflict significant harm as a result, there are a significant number of trans autistic people who do see their gender as binary, innate and important to them. These people are often excluded by anti-essentialist accounts of gender and autism. The dichotomy between essentialist and anti-essentialist conceptions of autism and gender thus gives rise to a problematic mutual exclusivity whereby autistic people with binary genders and those with non-binary genders are seen to be incommensurate within any one explanatory framework. This limitation is evident across many of the prevailing ideas in the anti-essentialist literature on autism and gender, though is yet to be acknowledged. 

In this presentation I explore this dichotomy and damaging mutual exclusivity, and discuss how critical phenomenology and critical neurodiversity manage to avoid and mend it. 

This presentation is drawn from a book chapter I have co-written with Dr. Emily Hughes on autism and gender (forthcoming). 

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Speaker Bios:

Seyi Kayamo: Seyi is your friendly neighbour Black radical dyke living in London. as an anti-colonial social researcher, youth worker and community organiser, their focus is on building revolutionary capacity with communities through political education and building relationships rooted in joint struggle and collective care. 

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Elizabeth Straus: Elizabeth Straus (they/she) is a queer, autistic, and disabled nurse scholar, educator, and advocate and Adjunct Professor with Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice. Their research focuses on accessible community-engaged, participatory, critical and intersectional scholarship in disabled, autistic, neurodivergent, and 2SLGBTQIA+ well-being, social justice, and equity, with an emphasis on centering their stories, the socio-material, discursive, and affective dimensions of their experiences, and how this knowledge can inform and transform structures and practices in nursing, health services, and education. They are the Principal Investigator of “Beyond the Normative Knot: Life and Praxis at the Gender-Sexuality-Autism Nexus”.  

Kate Ellis: Kate Ellis (they/them), is a queer, trans, autistic PhD student in Communication at Carleton University and the Graduate Research Assistant for “Beyond the Normative Knot”. Their research interests are in social media use for autistic community-building, questioning gendered presentations or 'phenotypes' of autism, and the intersections between transphobia and anti-autistic ableism. They have a background in Critical Disability Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies and are committed to doing research that centres community perspectives. 

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Ruby Hake: Ruby Hake is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Birmingham, UK, researching the phenomenology of autistic transfeminine camouflaging. She did her BA and MA in philosophy at the University of Exeter. Her research interests include autism, gender diversity, feminism, critical phenomenology and existentialism. She has also co-authored a book on patriotism in the UK. She is an autistic queer cis woman, and a musician. 

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