I’ll give mine to get the ball rolling.
There was a user that, before getting banned, declared that every single living human being alive on Earth right now should not exist because no one had the benefit of a pre-conception device on hand to somehow determine each individual’s consent to exist before they started to exist.
I don’t know if that take would make David Benatar blush, make David Benatar cackle with glee, or if that was posted by David Benatar himself.
It is not. A neurotype is a trait that you are born with. Whereas personality disorders are a result of trauma and other life factors, and developing problematic reactions to it. It does result in brain changes, but so does any other mental health disorder. You can think of it as external influence vs natural traits. This is in part why personally disorders can’t be diagnosed until adulthood.
I’ve seen stuff that isn’t strictly like genetic/developmental included in the neurodivergence umbrella before, but either way that just seems like a relatively standard semantic disagreement, you kinda phrased it like some kind of deceptive act.
Are we talking colloquial or scientific classification? If it’s the first, it is just semantics. I’m not clear on your reading it as me portraying it as a deceptive act. I should be clear, it is not and I do not endorse such ideas.
Phrasing it as “passing it off as” and bringing it up in a thread of hot takes in general gave off that impression to me, it felt like a relatively minor detail, but I didn’t mean it as a direct accusation, just mainly trying to get a sense of what you meant by mentioning it.
Oh, okay! Yeah, I did actually mean that specifically in regards to DroneRights, the individual. I only responded inside my inbox and kinda forgot the context of the thread. DroneRights is a jackass who wants to accuse anyone who doesn’t agree with its antisocial behaviors as bigoted. There’s plenty of people who have APD who don’t behave this way and work on genuine personal growth.
That makes sense!
IMO, it seems problematic to exclude personality disorders (PD) from the neurodivergent umbrella and neurodivergent solidarity.
The personality in PD refers to personality traits. PDs are typically understood as chronic conditions, which, even if they are triggered/exacerbated by trauma and other life factors, means that someone with a PD will probably experience severe and persistent difficulties in different areas of their life and across their lifespan. Living with a PD and managing the difficult experiences that PDs create is a lifelong process. And PD’s are not diagnosed until adulthood specifically to avoid over-diagnosing trauma responses as disturbances in personality traits.
Different kinds of trauma and other life factors contribute to most kinds of neurodiversity, as supported by the explosive rise in rates of diagnoses like autism and ADHD (especially late diagnoses in adulthood).
Personality disorders are heavily stigmatized already, and I can’t help but think that excluding people with PD’s from neurodivergent solidarity is rooted in stigma (i.e., that people with PDs are too abrasive, unstable, rude, etc.). I think that drawing lines around which psychological diagnoses are considered ND or not reflects and reinforces stigma.
I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying here, we need solidarity amongst marginalized groups. But scientific classification doesn’t back up your opinion on the semantics here.
Thank you for neatly ordering your points, I’ll address them in kind.
#1 - Personality disorders are not organic things you are born with, they can and often are successfully treated. They can be long lasting and even life long, but proper treatment can result in full remission. A neurodivergence itself is a genetic brain structural deviation from the average that can only be worked around/compensated for to help improve one’s quality of life - but the fundamentals of their brain structure does not change. To put it another way, we could say that a person’s personality becomes disordered.
#2 - Trauma does not contribute to the development of a neurodivergence, but it does exacerbate negative outcomes and hurts people’s ability to adapt to their difficulties. There’s typically higher rates of diagnoses in homes that have a lot of traumatic events because these homes usually don’t have the resources to help them adapt or mask. This is not a causal role, and there is no difference in brain structure between these cohorts. The increase in diagnoses is due to increased public knowledge and less stigma.
#3 - This gets to the heart of what we’re going back and forth on - basically it’s semantics. I’m looking at this as official classifications - neurodivergence being the thing that you’re born with vs. brain changes that happened due to trauma post birth (neurological stress responses). We should probably develop a better single word term for these conditions… maybe there is one but it’s escaping me if there is. Classification of conditions for treatment isn’t intended to divide groups to be stigmatized, but unfortunately it does get used by people to sew division. There’s terms that neurodivergent people, people with personality disorders, and people with other stigmatized conditions all fall under - “marginalized people” among many other ways of saying it. I’m not advocating for exclusion of people with PDs from our solidarity, it’s just a different type struggle that they face with close parallels to neurodivergence.
I hope that all makes sense.
As for DroneRights… it was trying to excuse its shitty behavior and calling people bigoted if they disagreed. I’m not going to support someone who’s trying to be a wrecker because we’re both marginalized.