ok y’all it’s time to stop using the word “neurotypical” to mean “someone who told me to do yoga when i said i was sad”. that was not it’s original context (it was, in fact, coined by autistic people and yoinked by mentally ill allistics lmao), and the idea that “non-mentally ill people” is a coherent class of people is BONKERS. ANYONE can be susceptible to mental illness, you do NOT know everyone’s history with mental illness, and even though people who are vocally against mental healthcare are obviously shitheads and dangers to themselves/their loved ones, to claim that their views are because they have a squeaky clean bill of sanity is just fuckin……wild.
anyway op isn’t autistic, and while neurotypical did originally mean not autistic, the definition has since expanded to include anyone without a mental illness or disability, basically because there are more mental and developmental disorders than just autism. this change happened about a decade ago more or less. the current word for non-autistic is allistic. neurotypical really does mean someone without a history of mental illness or disability. whether or not that’s a “coherent class”, whatever that means?
and if this is implying ableism somehow doesn’t affect mentally ill people then. idk that’s pretty fucking wild
a) as an autistic person, what they said has nothing to do with whether they’re autistic or not. they didn’t claim to be autistic or to speak for us. you’re just trying to start shit by bringing that up.
b) calling strangers “neurotypical” is a bad practice because you cannot KNOW their history with mental illness. they may be undiagnosed or not have the resources to recognize something or they might just not public with that information.
c) listen, mentally ill people ARE oppressed, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to categorize every mentally ill person into a simple recognizable group. i STRONGLY doubt that op was trying to say that mentally ill people aren’t oppressed when they said that “neurotypical” and not neurotypical aren’t that easy to define, especially since some mentally ill people will never know what they’re dealing with or why. it’s not that black and white, and if neurotypical includes not having mental illness (in addition to developmental disorders), you can’t just apply it to anyone and everyone who you don’t agree with about mental health. in fact, you can’t really apply it to most people, because you don’t get to make that judgement.
yeah i don’t actually disagree w u. if u read what i said i was more concerned about terminology being misused. the ‘yoinked by mentally ill allistics bit’ is wrong and pretty demonising tbh. i’m aware that I can’t see someone’s mental health by looking at them, that’s not really what i was responding to
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