Neurodiversity Celebration Week: Back To Our Roots?

Neurodiversity Celebration Week is almost over for another year. The team at Lexxic, led by James Robertson, have put together an excellent selection of event, platforming and amplifying the good work of many advocates and professionals in the field, covering a wide range of topics such as intersections with gender, global inequalities, culture and sexuality. They’ve covered education, health care and work. It’s been a real ‘back to our roots’ event, with 139 countries participating and thousands of people attending the menu of webinars.

But, and there is a big but, I cannot lie. For those of us working in this field since before Neurodiversity was fashionable, there’s a more sinister pattern at work. Lived experience and diligent research is being cannibalised by big business and hyper commercialisation. Neurodivergent profiling is being positioned as method for targeting sales. Influencers and advocates are being asked to educate rich companies for “exposure” rather than being paid for their worth. Commissioners of work are overlooking authentic, evidence-based provision for big brand names who have paid lip service to their own neurodivergent staff but now position themselves as ‘experts’, who charge six-figure sums to deliver tokenistic work.

This has happened to all diversity and inclusion movements at some point or another, but the scale and pace of exploitation is alarming. This is clearly because of the size of the “market”. A few years ago I estimated that 15-20% of the human population has one or more neurodivergent condition, based on meta-interpretation of prevalence studies, overlap, under-diagnosis and my experience of psychometric assessments. This is a huge customer base. No one talks about “myth busting” Tinnitus.

However, we come with a warning. Neurodivergent people can sometimes be naïve, trusting and many of us don’t challenge social communication easily, as we have been marginalized. However, we often experience something called “justice sensitivity”, which makes it very hard for us to accept unfairness, incongruency and hypocrisy. We cannot let it lie. We also like social media and have strong, active networks. Using us as customer base without authenticity risks a public relations backlash that can stop the commercial machine in its tracks. We might be marginalized, but we are not a pushover.

If you want to engage the neurodivergent population, you need to do so with integrity. And I don’t mean the odd participant with a diagnosis, I mean ethical research which is co-produced, where stakeholders have driven the questions, as well as answered them. We don’t want our data being used for purposes other than our collective benefit. We will object to our advocacy work – for example graphics and blogs – being used in marketing material without permission and referencing. These are basic rights but, like Davids fighting Goliaths, we stick up for each other when this goes wrong.

If you want to celebrate neurodiversity in your business, this means engaging with neurodivergent people, neuroinclusive companies and hard graft working on your internal culture. Beware of overhyped, overbranded buzz word bingo from companies who have jumped on the bandwagon. Inclusive cultures, reimagining workplaces to provide optimum conditions for a wider range of minds is undoubtedly a positive move, but doing so without the people who started this movement will only get you more of what you have now. We don’t want to be reduced to the stereotype of our label so that you can sell more widgets, we want to have equal rights and participation. Celebrate us by lifting up our work, not taking it over.