By Claudia Casser

Context

I’m not a joiner. People exhaust me. One on one, I enjoy short interactions, but then I need to get away into a book.

So I don’t voluntarily join groups unless they are my only way to a goal. On the other hand, I have a compulsion to “help out” when someone brings a problem to my attention.

Now that I’ve discovered I share a cluster of characteristics which the psychological community called “Asperger’s Syndrome,” in DSM 4 (second guessing themselves regarding the validity of that category in DSM 5), I am becoming aware of problems that people “on the spectrum” want to solve.

Hence this modest proposal for ameliorating one of those problems.

The Problem Presented

“Neurotypicals,” especially neurotypicals with social power, fail to (i) appreciate the contributions the social minorities defined as “neurodivergent” can make to society, and (ii) remove barriers to those contributions.

The barriers on which my modest proposal focuses are those of (a) stigma and (b) civility norms. Other social minorities, such as women and the LGBT community, have made great strides in overcoming these barriers to productivity and happiness. (I am particularly familiar with women’s efforts.)

The Proposal

My modest proposal is that we lobby schools and social venues to adopt a “new” template for civil interaction among diverse mentalities. This template is highly successful on a fictional world described below, and, in more primitive form, existed in many historical cultures of our “real” world. The proposed conventions will make it easier for diverse groups to understand each other; and, to the extent that language and understanding affect perception, should, over time, reduce stigma and open doors.

A. Fostering appreciation of the contributions of neurodiverse minorities (reducing stigma)

There is a well-trodden path here, prepared by minorities of color and gender. We need to make neurodiversity cool.

I understand that many recent YA novels (including my own “No Child Left Behind,” published this year) are already undertaking this task. However, I can find no archive of cool neurodiverse characters, real and fictional; no place that collects them to show how many and how amazing they are.

To speed the process of helping everybody appreciate that neurodiversity is cool, IMO we need to gather the cool kids in one place so they’re easier to find. This website (or whatever) would collect and diagnose fictional and “real” people like Sherlock Holmes, the Big Bang Theory kids, Whoopie Goldberg, Robin Williams, and, for the British, Jon Richardson. I say “diagnose” so that the public mind directly associates the famous members of each DSM minority with their quotidian members.

In addition, we need to agree on cooler names for each DSM minority. For those people “on the autistic spectrum,” I suggest “Spectrics.” Or, possibly, “Spectrix,” if you prefer a term where the singular and the plural are identical.

B. Removing barriers to productivity

In the far-future universe of C.S. Friedman’s “This Alien Shore” , a New York Times Notable Book from 1998, the first technology used for FTL travel caused radical mutation. This was discovered shortly after colonization of hundreds of planets, and before the vast majority of these planets were self-sufficient.

In fear of mutations entering their gene pool from returning space-farers, Earth cut off all contact with her colonies. Half a million settlers were left to fend for themselves. On Earth, all existing mutations perceived as illnesses or handicaps were scrubbed from the population.

Those who colonized the planet Guera suffered brain mutations. Everyone descended from humans who travelled to Guera by the first FTL technology were born with genotypes that expressed one or several “mental disorders” (called “kaja” in the novel) similar to those characterized in DSM-IV. The world became a Babel of cognitive styles, with none achieving majority status.

The problem of appreciating neurodiverse minorities was not an issue on Guerra, because everybody was a neurodiverse minority.

So what was Guera’s solution to promoting productivity? It was a code of conduct that facilitated interaction and cooperation among the kaja. The code of conduct required (i) each person to identify themselves each day with standardized facial designs; and (ii) each other person to interact with them according to specified rules.

On Guera, the rules for interaction were based on assessments of what behaviors would promote the productivity and reduce the stress of citizens “suffering” each “disorder.” The code also contained rules of “precedence” for when citizens with conflicting needs interacted (e.g., those who preferred subtlety in communication were required to speak plainly to those who did not understand subtlety in communication; those pathologically impatient were required to wait for those who had compulsive repetitive behaviors).

It is this Gueran model that I suggest we neurodiverse minorities advocate to schools and social groups (e.g., the Girl Scouts).

Note that the Gueran model differs from the “equal treatment” most race and gender minorities demand. However, precedent for personalized “different” treatment does exist today in the forms of (i) “reasonable accommodation” legislation, and (ii) old-fashioned courtesy. As an example of the latter, I always give up my seat to people I recognize as pregnant or lugging around an infant, as I expected people to do for me when I was so burdened.

1. Self identification

The first step to adapting the Gueran code to Earth is agreement upon (i) the characteristics to be identified and (ii) the symbols to represent those characteristics.

Once agreed upon, that relationship initially could be communicated through associating with each symbol one or more of the “cool” neurodiverse characters collected in the archive proposed above. FREX, if I am a male who just can’t speak to women, I could wear a badge showing Big Bang Theory Raj’s frightened face and an icon or hieroglyph of a male stick figure with a hand over his mouth, crouched in front of a female stick figure.

Note, this of course requires the courage to self-identify as something others may ridicule or shun, but such appears to be a necessary stage to “neurodiversity is beautiful.” (Or, for the corporate types, “neurodiversity energizes productivity.”)

Without self-identification, it is unreasonable to expect special treatment. One cannot fault a man for hitting on a married woman at a bar if she is not wearing a wedding ring.

Like wedding rings, other badges identifying personal statuses or characteristics adjust expectations in social interactions, reducing friction and frustration on both sides of the interaction. This opens the door to proposing adoption of more badges for neurotypicals, too.

FREX, neurotypicals might wear a badge for peanut allergies, or the recent death of a relative or pet (until recently, in most non-tribal cultures, one could reliably identify the bereaved by the color of the clothes or ribbons they wore). Today, many alleged neurotypicals already wear sports team hats to bars, informing others there about their likely response to derogatory comments about those teams. Other neurotypicals wear t-shirts reading “Boss Mare,” informing others about their odds in a fight for a taxi; still others stick plaques reading “police pension patron” in the back windows of their cars, hoping for forgiveness for traffic violations.

Building on these existing neurotypical fashions could help combat the singling out of “I’m Aspie, I follow the rules” badge-wearers.

Introducing badges in pre-school could even create a demand for them in kindergarten, a fad in first grade, and who knows what from there! I imagine a pile of “get to know me” badges at the door of primary school classrooms. Both “neurotypical” and neurodiverse minority kids could bring badges from home or pick from the pile each day, telling other kids what they liked and disliked.

Primary school badges which both majority and minority kids might choose could say stuff like: “I like to talk about cars,” or “I’m not contagious, I just have allergies,” or “When I grow up, I’ll be a fireman.” Some neurodiverse minority kids might also pick badges saying “I don’t mean to be bossy,” or “I hit when I’m hugged,” or “I prefer to read than talk,” or “I bet I’m shyer than you!” or “I hate sitting still.” Kids could choose to wear multiple badges, changing some each day.

In high school, the badges might read, “Leave me alone, I’m busy writing Mortal Kombat XX,” or “If you want a friend who will tell you the truth, it’s me.” Or Sheldon.

2. Rules for Social Interactions

The second step in my modest proposal is agreement upon the details of what could be called a guide or manual of etiquette, or, if enforcement mechanisms are put in place, a code of conduct. An example of a rule of etiquette might be: when talking to a boy wearing a badge with a picture of the older Howard Hughes or the television detective Monk, do not hand him anything unless he is wearing gloves.

More difficult than agreement on first level rules, however, will be agreement on second level rules: what to do when neurodiverse needs clash. FREX, what should the rule be when those with the need to hug, meet those with the need to not be touched? Which need should prevail? Or should a third norm of conduct be substituted (e.g., pantomiming hugs)?

But difficult as reaching this agreement might be, we gotta start. Per the official motto of the United States Navy Seabees, “the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer.”

SOLICTING YOUR INPUT

So, what are your suggestions for non-fictional and fictional neurodiverse stars to populate the “cool” archive? What are their DSM diagnoses?

What characteristics or clusters of characteristics (aka syndromes or diagnoses) should the first neurodiversity badges symbolize? What symbols should we use to identify those characteristics?

Which neurotypicals are most likely to join our efforts to reduce stigma and remove barriers to our productivity?

Please let us know your thoughts.

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Claudia Casser (ccasser@gmail.com), a graduate of Harvard Law School, worked as an antitrust litigator and a corporate in-house counsel before retiring to write and raise her children. Claudia’s 2016 semi-comic coming of age novel, “No Child Left Behind,” celebrates neurodiversity. Visit her website at www.ethicalantics.com, and buy her novel on Amazon.