In this episode of Translating ADHD, Ash and Dusty explore the concept of neuroqueerness, a term that captures the intersections between neurodivergent identities and queer experiences. They discuss how neuroqueerness challenges both heteronormativity and neuronormativity, offering a valuable framework for self-understanding, especially during Pride Month. Through personal experiences and coaching insights, they highlight how neuroqueer individuals often express themselves in ways that disrupt societal norms around gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence.
The hosts further differentiate between the experiences of autistic and ADHD individuals in relation to queerness, emphasizing the unique identity challenges ADHD can pose due to masking and unconscious conformity. They also explore how neuroqueer identity is not limited to those who identify as gender or sexual minorities, showcasing examples of people who embody queerness through their expression and relationships. Ultimately, the episode underscores the importance of community, authentic self-expression, and embracing complexity in identity.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:02:10] Asher: Hi, I’m Ash.
[00:03:27] Dusty: And I’m Dusty.
[00:05:05] Asher: And this is Translating ADHD. First off, listeners, apologies for the unplanned two weeks off. We had some ADHD scheduling snafus and decided to just let that be okay. But we are back for three more episodes in the month of June before we take our summer break in July and August. And since it’s pride month, we wanted to lead with something thematic.
[00:33:06] Dusty: And what would that be, Ash?
[00:35:08] Asher: Dusty, what I want to talk about today is a concept that I’ve been pulling on, both in my professional work and for myself, and that is the term neuroqueer. So this term has been making the rounds for a while in neurodivergent communities. And I think for some of us, it can be a really helpful framework to better understand ourselves.
So let’s start with like a base definition. So neuroqueer to my understanding, means existing in a way that disrupts heteronormativity and neuronormativity. And it also acknowledges that our neurodivergent impacts our expression of gender and sexuality.
[01:24:24] Dusty: Yeah, it’s an interesting concept. It’s interesting because we do tend to put identity into, like, little pots. Like I’m, you know, I’m a person of this race or this culture or this sexuality or this gender or this neuro type, but I think it makes sense that, like in life, these things are messy. And and it’s not like each identity piece is discrete.
They have an impact on each other. So conceptually, I think it’s a very cool concept to acknowledge how how these these things play off each other. It’s reminding me of another term which is misogyny. I don’t know how to say it, but it’s like like a hatred of women, but also black people. So like black like the concept that like, black women have worse, sort of tend to experience more marginalization than just a black person or just a woman.
Or similarly, like the concept of trans misogyny, right? The idea that trans women are at the the axis of two separate marginalized identities. And this is these are obviously both quite negative terms, you know, obviously, like representing something we don’t like, but that’s kind of the only other place where I’ve heard like two different identity concepts put together. So neuroqueer is nice because it’s quite a positive one.
[02:38:01] Asher: Yeah. Just so you really hit the nail on the head there, because this term is really about acknowledging the complicated intersectionality. If you are someone who holds both of these identities, and based on my experience as a coach, not all neurodivergent people are neuroqueer or would necessarily identify as neuroqueer. I’ve had many clients throughout the years who a life that fits for them, even being a neurodivergent person and needing to learn how to navigate the world differently as a neurodivergent person is relatively heteronormative.
And that’s okay. But I also, on the flip side, want to say that you don’t necessarily have to be a gender or sexual minority to identify with the term neuroqueer, and we’re going to get into more of that later in this episode. But really, the idea behind today’s episode is to just introduce this term as a potential framework to better self-understanding.
We’ve talked about ADHD and identity on this show many times before. That is at the heart of the work that I do. And for some of my clients, examining identity through the lens of neuroqueerness can be really revealing in terms of identity.
[03:54:25] Dusty: Yeah. You know, as you were talking something else that occurred to me that that might be salient here is like, so it’s Pride Month and Facebook is a cesspool. And so like, I don’t know what’s going on lately, but Facebook is showing me all these posts from groups and and like people being, you know, super homophobic and stuff as they always are during pride month.
But something that occurs to me is like when we talk about people who are neuroqueer, like who are who are expressing themselves not just through their their gender and their sexuality, but through neurodivergent. I do think there’s something here around the fact that, like, how do I say this? I feel like maybe it’s the neuroqueer people who are making up that larger proportion of people that, like the haters, are hating on.
And let me explain what I’m saying. Right. One of the things we know about some some autistic people have been given a hard time for, like having what might be considered like childish interests, right? Like some autistic adults, you know, whether they’re sort of low support needs, medium support needs, high support needs, they’ll sort of get like flack for maybe having like, you know, childish interests in or childish expression.
Right. Like that. They like really colorful colors or you know what I mean. And so if you combine that then with like, being queer, I feel like when I, when I think of neuroqueerness, I do think of the people who are like more like more open to expressing themselves in really alternative ways with their esthetic, you know, like in the narrative community.
We also know that there’s a link between neurodivergent and stuff like binge eating or weight management. Right? So when you think of that, sort of like traditional, like fat dike with the collar or whatever, right? Like the really way that some people might see that person really pejoratively, and then some people might be like, yeah, live your best life, right.
Like, but that real visual representation of queerness, fat bodies, colorful expression, maybe like enjoying having accessories that, like some people might find childish, right? Like these two identities are going to come together in a way that, like, make that person more visible, I guess, is what I’m saying. You know what I mean? I can see how that might kind of make neuroqueers sort of part of the bigger population of what the haters be hating on, you know what I mean?
I feel like the neuroqueers are the ones that are like, yeah, like, let’s, let’s really rock an alternative looking identity. So I don’t know necessarily where I’m going with that, but like, I feel like I feel like what you’re saying is important because certainly I know people who are nerdy, virgin and gay, and neither of those are like the biggest part of their identity.
And they’re like, just, you know, they’re just business casual. But I feel like the neuroqueers are the ones that are like, you know, really kind of repping, I guess.
[06:34:14] Asher: Dusty, I agree with your observation. My queer community here locally is largely neuroqueer, and that is part of what I really love about it, because community is a need that comes up for almost all of my clients, even if it’s not something they name is a need. When we do values and needs, it is something that I think is neurodivergent people we all need.
We all have this need to be understood, to have people around us who get us when we’re being our most authentic selves. And so for me, neuroqueer community has helped me in my queer journey to better understand myself by a giving me a comfortable place in terms of neurodivergent, obviously coming into my own queerness as a person who eats, sleeps, lives, and breathes.
Neurodivergent was already instantly comfortable in this community, but also helped me sort of learn and figure out some things about who I am identity wise. So yes, I think you’re hitting the nail on the head there. I we got so much more to do. We got to move on from this.
[07:50:04] Dusty: Oh, but I just wanted I figured out what my point was in it. Okay. Because you said it’s about like when you say neuroqueers about disruption. Disrupting that word disruption, I think makes a lot of sense to me because, like, with an identity and with a queer identity, you know, you’ve probably spent your whole life maybe not feeling like you can be your fullest self.
And when those two identities play on each other, I think, yeah, we get maybe that like big bold expression that is really disruptive to homophobic people and like attracts a lot of negative attention from people who are like uncomfortable with it. But like, it’s so, so important for a person who’s marginalized in two different ways to be able to, like, own both identities at once and have them, like ricocheting off each other.
[08:31:05] Asher: Exactly Dusty, and I think it’s also important to call out, you sort of called out knowing people who are LGBTQ who may not identify as or fall into neuroqueerness. And that is also true, right? Not every gender or sexual minority is neuroqueer, even if they are, again, neurodivergent. It’s sort of where does this identity fall for you?
How disruptive is it in terms of what is normative, and how does that impact your experience in terms of marginalization? That’s put so well. So now I want to pivot and sort of talk about some of the uniquely ADHD things, because a lot of the discourse around neuroqueerness is related to autistic people. The studies that are out there that are showing correlations between neurodivergent and being LGBTQ are largely studying autistic people.
And the prevailing theory there is that correlation is maybe not necessarily because of neurodivergent, like neurodivergent isn’t the cause of quote unquote queerness, but rather that autistic people are less likely to understand or conform to social norms and expectations. So more likely than to realize and vocalize non-normative identities, which in my experience of autistic people in queer spaces is very true, anecdotal evidence wise, I think that that’s a sound theory.
But now let’s talk about ADHD and put that in the mix, because that’s that’s less studied and less well understood. One of my primary focuses as a coach is identity work better understanding oneself and one’s identities. And so I’ve had a lot of experience with queer people who have ADHD and their relationship to queerness because of ADHD. And I think and my observation is this we all have complicated relationships with queerness.
We all, every single queer person, anybody who is using the label queer to identify themselves. And by the way, not all LGBTQ people are comfortable being called queer. Let’s make that really clear. I identify as queer. Not every gender or sexual minority identifies as queer, and that is okay. But for those that do identify as queer and lean into queerness, I think we all have to identify and unlearn ways that we’ve massed normativity, whatever our neuro type is.
I think the uniquely ADHD thing is that we don’t always know we’re wearing the mask. And that is at the crux of how I lived 38 years without knowing who I was, because I did not realize the number of mass that I was wearing, I did not realize the ways in which I was conforming to rules that I didn’t necessarily believe in without being aware of that.
And interestingly enough, in hindsight, I had all of the pieces to the puzzle about who I was. Everything was there. It’s a combination of that, that ADHD nature. We have these brains that are searchable but not indexable. So sometimes we’re behaving in ways that we don’t even realize what the motivation for that behavior is. We don’t realize that we’re holding on to somebody else’s rules or norms or stories.
We’re just reacting to the emotion in the moment without knowing what the bigger picture is behind that. And also kind of the nurture thing of ADHD, where we have this experience over and over again of letting people down, of being told that we’re wrong, of being told that we’re lazy, of being told that we’re this. And so we start to again, oftentimes without realizing it, to adapt and conform, to avoid that pain.
And so something I do notice with people with ADHD and this is this is kind of cross the board. This is with people who are newly out. I have had some clients who have been out for a very long time, who still didn’t know a lot about their queer identities, who still had some work to do in terms of unpacking that and better understanding themselves, is that, yeah, we can be wearing the mask without realizing we’re wearing the mask.
And you and I see that in our coaching work all the time relative to any number of topics, not just queerness, but that can certainly make an ADHD person’s relationship with queerness bumpier in terms of identifying a beef, figuring out who we are.
[13:17:27] Dusty: Yeah, that’s it’s really it’s interesting to think about how that how that journey looks different for somebody who is just autistic or maybe ordered versus a person who has ADHD. Because you’re right. Like, again, it comes back to this idea that, like, we still have social differences, but how our social differences show up are different depending on the type of neurodivergent you have.
And I was going to say like, yeah, you know, you working largely in this piece around identity with clients, I’m sure it comes up all the time.
[13:46:17] Asher: It does, Dusty. And so what do we do with this. And so I’m going to I’m going to pivot here. We’re going to work with two different definitions of neuroqueer for the remainder of this episode, to sort of highlight for listeners how you might use this framework to examine what might be true for you. So the first one is neuroqueer can refer to people who are both neurodivergent and queer, with some degree of conscious awareness and or active exploration around how these two aspects of one’s being intertwine and interact.
And so I have a few ADHD specific related examples for this, the first being ADHD and identity. My experience in coaching is the father. One’s context is from one’s identity. As a person with ADHD, the harder it can be to understand oneself. Not every client I have worked with over the years is somebody who doesn’t know themselves. I have had clients who know exactly who they are, but that is because their context has allowed them to figure out and lean into a life that fits naturally.
For those of us whose context kind of flies in the face of who we are, that can leave us with a lot of questions and not a lot of answers in terms of identity as people with ADHD. Again, not like that. Searchable, but not indexable. It’s so hard to know oneself with ADHD. It’s hard to separate what it is that we stand for and believe in, and what we’re carrying around unconsciously and reacting to unconsciously that we’re not even aware of.
And so a couple of those identity questions with ADHD, natural curiosity, and in terms of queerness, you get the concept of micro labels. So micro labels for those who don’t understand the term, sort of break gender or sexuality down into smaller, more discreet definitions. So, for example, I consider myself demi romantic. I don’t fall for people easily. I’ve only had two significant relationships in my entire 40 years, despite the opportunity to have many more, because I need to feel a very strong and certain type of connection with somebody to develop any sort of romantic feelings.
Like, I don’t. I don’t crush on people in a romantic way, and I don’t experience romantic feelings that often. Now, if I’m talking to a colleague at the Chad conference or something, I’m not going to describe myself as demi romantic, but this is a term that has helped me better understand myself and who I am, and micro labels in general can be I use them all the time.
In coaching can be a really helpful way to examine what is true for you as a person with ADHD, when it is sometimes so hard to understand ourselves and why we are the way that we are. So another one I thought of is ADHD and novelty. And we’ve actually covered this before because we did an episode on Flexible Frameworks where we talked about non-monogamy, we did an episode on kink, and both of those things absolutely tie into the ADHD brains love of novelty.
Right. So I live a non-monogamous existence, I live a kinky existence. And I recognize and here’s the intersectionality, here’s what makes it neuroqueer, that it is both my ADHD and my ADHD brains, love of novelty and my queerness that makes those things a life that fits for me.
[17:36:05] Dusty: Oh yeah, you can’t separate them out.
[17:39:17] Asher: Exactly, exactly. And then the last one, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. These are the things that I sketched up based on my experience as a neuroqueer person. So this is not intended to be these are the only ways. These are just some examples of how ADHD specific neuroqueerness might play out or might might look like for someone.
And so the last for me is ADHD and the types of relationships I have. So even my non neuroqueer clients describe disliking shallow or surface level relationships. There’s this natural ADHD tendency that our friendships are deep or they’re nothing. They don’t tend to exist in a middle ground, and I find that to be pretty universally true for my clients with ADHD.
Neuroqueer or not. So add neuroqueerness to this, right? A life that fits being non neuro normative, non heteronormative, and you end up with atypical relationships. The best term I could think to use this is the set of queer platonic relationships that are more than friendships, but not necessarily romantic relationships in the traditional sense, where a group of us has come together as this powerful form of chosen family.
And this is not just happenstance like we, this has been a process of making explicit agreements with one another, having the experience of showing up for one another, leaning into this more like these people are my first, second, and third phone calls. If I need something, if there’s some emergency. And as a person with ADHD, I lean on them for ADHD specific support.
So again, there’s the there’s the queerness in terms of these very atypical relationships that are sort of hard to describe in a half an hour long episode. And the neuro divergence that a big part of the mutual support and benefit I receive for the effort that I put into these relationships is to support me as a person with ADHD, is to help me fill in those particular gaps for myself.
And not every one of these person. There’s four of us, one HD, two autistics, and I am the sole ADHD only person in this in this group of people. And so it’s not even a group of all ADHD people, but a large part of the support that I receive is relative to my ADHD and my needs as an ADHD person.
[20:26:10] Dusty: That is very cool. I like that you found the particular like. I like that there’s sort of little tinkering you can do in like adaptations. And I think you’re right. If you’re neurodivergent, you’re probably used to doing things in an atypical way or having atypical communication styles or atypical interests. So you might have already felt really othered, just naturally.
As far as how your brain perceives reality. It engages with everything day to day, and then certainly from an identity or gender or sexual standpoint, if your experience is not that of like the majority or the norm, you’re going to be experiencing a lot of feelings about yourself from all directions as just being like very other or very different.
So I think this label of neuroqueer certainly like I’ve noticed that people are really, really enthusiastic about it. Like it’s a concept that really resonates with a lot of people.
[21:21:16] Asher: Yeah. And so now let’s take the other definition. This definition says neuroqueer means embodying and expressing one’s neurodivergent in ways that also queer one’s performance of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and or other aspects of one’s identity. And so I said at the start of the episode that one does not have to be a gender or sexual minority in order to identify with the term neuroqueer.
And so the two examples I’m going to give here are people who fall into that category, both clients of mine. So the first is a person who self describes is a cis gender heterosexual male, but he presents in very atypical ways. He paints his nails, he has long hair, he dresses very colorfully. He would absolutely fit right in slash be quote unquote normative.
If there is such a thing in a neuroqueer setting. And part of our exploration of this is sort of recognizing that two things can be true, that he can identify in these ways and still feel very at home in neuroqueer spaces. Right. And this is, by the way, is why I’m an advocate for queer spaces should include everyone, because you never know why someone else is there or why someone else finds community there.
But it shouldn’t be about what you identify as. It should be about. If this if these are your people, then you’re in the right place. However you identify right? And starting to get here is really interesting. It kind of started with the 2016 election and some realizations on his part about patriarchy and the oppressive systems that we live in that he hadn’t been exposed to in the same ways that a visibly queer person might be exposed to, but in ways that had his attention and made him realize that he wanted to show up differently, he felt compelled to show up differently, and leaning into the outward expression of that in ways that feel good for him. Right? The expression isn’t performance, it’s leaning into. This is what feels good and right for me. Alongside, I reject these standards of normativity and I’m leaning into that. Does that make sense?
[23:44:06] Dusty: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
[23:46:01] Asher: And then the other client self describes as a cis gender heterosexual woman. And her presentation is pretty typically feminine. Meaning if you pass her on the street, you wouldn’t necessarily even as a queer person because we have radar for that, that, that others don’t. You wouldn’t necessarily look at her and see her in some sort of quote unquote queer way.
But she has an incredibly complicated relationship with gender because she’s gender nonconforming in other ways. She’s not American. She’s from another country. And so much of her being is incredibly atypical for women in her society. The things that she’s interested in, the way that she lives her life, they’re just very, very outside of the norm. So much so that she struggled throughout her life to have close female friends and tends to have more male friends.
And that’s not because she’s discriminating in any way. It’s because she’s often discriminated against by other women for failing to perform gender in the correct way. So again, somebody who’s not a gender or sexual minority in terms of how they identify, but I think the the uniting thread with both of these clients is people who experience that same sort of othering whose very existence is disruptive, certainly qualifies them to fall under that neuroqueer umbrella.
[25:27:01] Dusty: Yeah. I think that the concept of queerness, you know, I’m not, I’m not. There’s so much more reading and studying and understanding the history of queer theory that I could do, but like it is its whole own theory. And this concept of like queerness, not just as an identity or a thing that you are, but a thing that you do.
Like an action, a verb, like queering things is so interesting. And again, like, I think neurodivergent people who are already used to operating outside social norms because they can’t always operate inside social norms even when they want to, or they may just naturally do things in an unusual way, sort of like the perfect target audience, I think, for like being able to embrace the concept of queering as a verb and like and leverage it to, to just like, live in a way that feels more authentic for them and maybe also more disruptive for the status quo. Love that.
[26:19:05] Asher: Really well said, Dusty. And I think actually a nice point in which to end this episode. So once again, happy Pride month everybody. And until next week, I’m Ash.
[26:29:12] Dusty: And I’m Dusty.
[26:30:17] Asher: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
