🔊 Listen

In the Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic (WEIRD) world we live in what philosopher Guy Debord attempted to describe as The Society of the Spectacle. The reality presented to us via the media and public social media has been engineered to fit the exacting standards of Homo Economicus®. All the people alive today in Westernised countries, i.e. all the people in WEIRD countries and in the countries aspiring to WEIRD standards, have been born into The WEIRD Spectacle of internalised ableism. 

Internalised ableism

The less WEIRD a country, the lower the fidelity of The Spectacle, and the more there is still some room for life beyond The Spectacle. I have lived all my life in The Spectacle, in the ruins of the WEIRD empire. I also call it the WEIRDT empire: Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic Theatre. Everything in this theatre is about perception – there is very little substance or connection to the biophysical and ecological context outside the theatre.

The institutions of the WEIRDT empire pretend that all aspects of life can be categorised and understood in terms of normality – by the hump of the bell curve.

But the living planet does not conform to anthropocentric normality, it is chaotic, it is beautifully and awesomely diverse. Like many neurodivergent people, I am highly sensitised to the language people use, in particular to the semantic possibility space that is created and bounded by the use of specific terms and by the conscious avoidance of other terms. In WEIRD politics the language of economic growth and war dominates. Growth economics is a euphemism for neocolonialism, genocide, and ecocide. Only 100 years ago, barely anyone was writing about the “need” for “economic growth”.

The most deadly wars today are economic wars. Social inequalities, in particular unequal access to high quality healthcare and lack of access to healthy ways of life result in a rise in chronic diseases, a several-fold increase in the risks of global pandemics, and in the premature death of millions.

My Autistic mind compels me to reduce cognitive dissonance. If I leave cognitive dissonance to fester, it promptly generates migraines or other symptoms of physical disease. Via my work, usually in the transdisciplinary context of small groups of people with complementary domain specific expertise, I have learned to ask clarifying questions and to ask for examples, and zero in on potential misunderstandings and ambiguities. This co-creates bridges of shared understanding across discipline and domain boundaries, which are essential for anyone who attempts to do anything that (re)connects us to Gaia, i.e. to the sacred living world beyond The WEIRD Spectacle. 

I was fortunate to have been exposed to the foundations of logic, i.e. the foundations of philosophy, and then studied mathematical thinking tools for four years before becoming exposed to the commercial world of The Spectacle.

Indoctrination

By the time I was born, the anthropocentric WEIRD Spectacle manifested in terms of neocolonialism. It is fascinating to look back and reflect on how effective the indoctrination is. I grew up as a WEIRD alien, immersed in less WEIRD cultures within the ruins of the British Empire. This left cracks in my WEIRD indoctrination, and later it helped me to put my education to good use in terms of critical thinking tools and habits.

George Orwell had a somewhat similar background to mine in an earlier time. The above biographical clip is worthwhile listening to – ignore the embedded cringe-inducing commercial promotion. The conclusion is directly relevant to our times.

Once we appreciate that even our “educated” Western scientific worldview is not free from ideological bias, we can develop a better conceptual model of how individual and collective human belief systems and related bodies of knowledge evolve. It is helpful to distinguish the following categories of beliefs and related knowledge:

1. Beliefs based on scientific theories backed by empirical evidence that we are intimately familiar with. Such beliefs may be affected by paradigmatic bias and the quality or bias inherent in the supporting evidence. We need to be cognisant of corresponding blind spots in our understanding of the world when applying such beliefs in our reasoning. Only a small minority of our beliefs fall into this category.
2. Beliefs based on scientific theories backed by empirical evidence that we are not intimately familiar with. Such beliefs may be affected by paradigmatic bias and the quality or bias inherent in the supporting evidence. We have no idea of the potential blind spots in our understanding of the world when applying such beliefs in our reasoning. In the few cases where the theories have been developed by trusted friends and colleagues within our personal competency network, we can decide to rely on their understanding of the limits of applicability and potential blind spots. If we are “educated”, a sizeable minority of our beliefs fall into this category.
3. Beliefs based on personal experiences and observations. We know that no human can maintain more than 150 relationships with other people, and that all our assumptions about the lives and needs of humans are based on the very small set of people that we relate to. For those who identify as autistic, a significant number of beliefs held fall into this category. By definition, we don’t understand all the people that we “don’t relate to”. Thus, making any decisions that potentially affect the lives of many hundred to several billion people without explicit consent of all those potentially affected (a daily occurrence in government institutions and corporations), must be considered the pinnacle of human ignorance.
4. Beliefs that represent explicit social agreements between specific people regarding communication and collaboration. Such sacred commitments can be verbal or in writing, and they only scale up to the limited numbers of relationships that we can maintain. As needed we can jointly update these commitments to reflect evolving needs or constraints in the wider ecology we are embedded in. For those who identify as Autistic, a significant number of beliefs held fall into this category, especially agreements with family members, friends, and colleagues. In hierarchically structured societies, agreements such as laws issued by regional or national authorities apply to large groups of people, and by necessity have been developed with limited input from those who are affected. Such agreements invariably cause untold harm that for the most part remains invisible to the authorities. Humans did not evolve to live in hierarchically structured super-human scale societies. Pretending that we can maintain such structures without causing untold harm is a form of anthropocentric hubris.
5. Beliefs based on what others have told us and what we have been encouraged to believe by parents, teachers, and friends, … and politicians and advertisers, including beliefs that we have absorbed from our social environment subconsciously, i.e. beliefs for which we can’t recall the origin. For those who do not identify as Autistic, the majority of beliefs held may fall into this category.

All categories of human beliefs are associated with some level of uncertainty regarding the validity and applicability to a specific context at hand. A belief in the universally competitive nature of humans clearly falls into the fifth category. When beliefs related to neoliberal ideology are reflected in laws (category 4. above), they are internalised as cultural norms by large parts of the population, and when the externalities of hyper-competitive profit maximising behaviour hit with full force, Homo Economicus® has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I was employed for 13 years before I could no longer bear to be part of The Spectacle of the corporate world, which is an Orwellian world of social perception management. The Spectacle is not survivable for sensitive neurodivergent people who are unable to maintain “quasi unlimited” levels of cognitive dissonance on an ongoing basis.

WEIRD indoctrination and enculturation in cruelty and violence goes very deep. I remember being taught at home and in school in the 1970s that animals can’t have “thoughts”, and that any feelings or consciousness they may have are not in any way comparable to human lived experiences. This was taught to us as “science” in biology classes. To top it off, in middle school we learned how to dissect dead frogs and we were given live laboratory mice to conduct experiments with. It tells us something about so-called WEIRD “normality” that such experiences remain etched into our memories, and that we can’t ever unsee or unlearn them. 

Deep down we know we are part of Gaia. This is why we enjoy immersing ourselves in the natural world. This is why we are able to build mutual trust with non-human animals, including wild animals. Living beings recognise each other as being part of the sacred cycle of life. We know that each living being enjoys being alive and enjoys exploring the world. Of course as humans we most deeply relate to animals that are roughly human scale – it is at that scale that we can communicate, and, if we take the time, build genuine relationships across species, from domesticated animals to wild birds, octopuses, fish, and mammals of all kinds. 

When animals eat other animals, it is only to cover their basic survival needs. Humans have the same inhibitions. We evolved to know intuitively that all lives and all our relationships are sacred. The human capacity for culture and spoken language evolved on top of this biological backdrop. This is something that to this day is not part of the WEIRD indoctrination system – because it clashes with the WEIRD neocolonial narrative of technological progress. 

The WEIRD indoctrination system makes sure that all children are indoctrinated in Homo Economicus® from a very young age, before we learn anything substantial about Gaia and the living world. This is possibly the most cruel, dehumanising, and life denying part of WEIRD cultures. 

The pill of Homo Economicus® is sweetened by punishing children with rewards for compliance. In this way children learn to collaborate only to compete. 

“Pay for merit, pay for what you get, reward performance. Sounds great, can’t be done. Unfortunately it can not be done, on short range. After 10 years perhaps, 20 years, yes. The effect is devastating. People must have something to show, something to count. In other words, the merit system nourishes short-term performance. It annihilates long-term planning. It annihilates teamwork. People can not work together. To get promotion you’ve got to get ahead. By working with a team, you help other people. You may help yourself equally, but you don’t get ahead by being equal, you get ahead by being ahead. Produce something more, have more to show, more to count. Teamwork means work together, hear everybody’s ideas, fill in for other people’s weaknesses, acknowledge their strengths. Work together. This is impossible under the merit rating / review of performance system. People are afraid. They are in fear. They work in fear. They can not contribute to the company as they would wish to contribute. This holds at all levels. But there is something worse than all of that. When the annual ratings are given out, people are bitter. They can not understand why they are not rated high. And there is a good reason not to understand. Because I could show you with a bit of time that it is purely a lottery.”

– W Edwards Deming (1984)

If we learn about Homo Economicus® before we are encouraged to listen deeply to our intuition, and before we learn about Gaia and collaborative ecological niche construction within and between species, then we are primed to view any other narrative that deviates from or that contradicts Homo Economicus® with suspicion. In the commercial digital world of Homo Economicus®, where the very means of communication have been seized by corporations, and where universities have become dependent on corporate funding, it has become easy to sideline the growing body of scientific evidence that contradicts Homo Economicus®. 

Since we are immersed in information overload, evidence such as what we know about the innate collaborative inclinations and sense of fairness of human toddlers and about the pivotal role of highly egalitarian societies in the evolution of the human capacity for language and culture does not even need to be hidden. It is completely sufficient for algorithms and institutions to deprioritise such evidence.

I am learning that not only have humans lived in highly egalitarian human scale bands for most of 300,000 years, but also that such bands maintained ongoing collaborative and dynamically evolving relationships with other bands across large bioregions, routinely coming together for omni-directional learning. Amongst other things such gatherings also allowed new groups to form. Apparently it was common for families or individuals to join another group. Important to note the absence of a hierarchical super-structure between groups, and the dynamism of ongoing relationships between groups.

All of this fits well with my own experience with egalitarian human scale worker coops, and with the interest from other small groups of neurodivergent and disabled people in adopting a similar model, including ongoing collaboration between groups.

We still have access to all our innate collaborative capabilities. If we care to listen to our guts, hearts, and minds, we can (re)learn everything we need for co-creating ecologies of care beyond the human.

The ripples of collaborative niche construction and intersectional solidarity are spreading. More and more small cosmo-local bands of marginalised people are coming together to catalyse intersectional solidarity.

Actually, the WEIRD empire is not in control. Gaia has a perfect 10,000 year track record of clamping down on anthropocentric empire building attempts, making room for new forms of life to emerge from the compost heap. She is probably asking herself in some planetary language that is beyond human comprehensibility: Can this species recover from cultural cancer? Data from climate science and biodiversity research gives us a glimpse of Gaia’s language.

Healthy human scale cultural development

At least some of the developmental patterns of cells and organs within insects seem to translate to the developmental stages and metamorphosis of healthy human cultures. The world of insect metamorphosis is amazing. The big cycle of life within Gaia is fractal, very similar phenomena reoccur at very different scale and in different contexts. In this case patterns at level of cells and organs within a metamorphosing insect seem to reoccur at the level of human scale cultural development.

The more I learn about this topic and weave it together with anthropological evidence, and with experiences from worker coops of neurodivergent and otherwise disabled people, the more I get the impression that Homo Economicus® relates to a cancer that has arrested the development of human cultural organisms at the larval stage, resulting in a perpetual production of growth hormones. 

Humans need to (re)learn how to stop perpetuating hierarchically structured systems of social control, striving for infinite growth like a cancer. We also need to (re)learn how to reproduce and evolve peacefully, along the lines of what we know about the ongoing lifetime collaborative relationships and some of the amazing conflict resolution strategies practiced within and between hunter gatherer bands. 

The global mono-cult is an empire that has the developmental maturity of a teenager. An individual human that keeps eating like a teenager will become morbidly obese, develop chronic diseases, and end up dying prematurely. 

The Pentagon Wars is the favourite movie of one of my former Autistic colleagues who spent many years in large government departments. This movie, which is based on a true story, is a good illustration of the teenage stage of cultural development in WEIRD societies. Given all the deadly wars that are in progress and that have been stoked for decades, this movie is too painfully close to reality for me to genuinely enjoy.

We need to learn how to deactivate the growth hormone of Homo Economicus®, which is capital constructed as interest-bearing debt. Gaia is showing us all the examples we need for fully rejoining the sacred cycle of life. 

The challenge of deactivating the growth hormone of Homo Economicus® is not a new one. It is an instance of the same Homo Empire® challenge faced by the inmates of the warring states in what is now China over 2,000 years ago. Hence my appreciation for the timeless wisdom embedded in Daoist philosophy.

All indigenous cultures honour Gaia. They all operate on time horizons that span at least 7 generations into the future, and draw on collective knowledge and wisdom that extends at least 7 generations into the past. How does this compare to the WEIRD addiction to quarterly results and infinite growth?

Every human is a uniquely valuable repository of lived experience and insights.

Dialogues are uniquely valuable, they allow us to walk each others minds, and via clarifying questions and other thinking tools, we converge on shared understanding and shared mental models for specific domains or experiences. Linear language is a poor communication tool, but dialogue transforms it into a very powerful communication and collaboration tool. 

Of course dialogues only catalyse shared understanding when sharing freely and honestly, and it fails miserably as soon as one or both parties have any hidden self-serving agenda – which is the default in the world of Homo Economicus®. This is why I am incapable of buying into the competitive “logic” of markets.

Institutionalised learning disability

Institutionalised social power is the privilege of not needing to learn, it leads to collective stupidity, it is a form of collective learning disability.

Markets invariably generate collective stupidity, because by definition participants have incentives not to share unlimited amounts of information. By definition, unconstrained markets are the anti-thesis of collaborative niche construction.

There are encouraging signs in some less WEIRD, and more communally oriented societies. By WEIRD standards Japan is an economic basket case, with a shrinking and ageing population, and a GDP growth that is probably averaging around zero over the last 20 years. We need to hear more stories from the less WEIRD world to understand what modern life can be like in a context of shrinking economic busyness, shrinking population, and correspondingly shrinking ecological footprint.

Such examples illustrate how the growth hormone of Homo Economicus® can be deactivated. The referenced example also illustrates the significance of small scale autonomous local communal decision making, which is the opposite of the centralised models that still operate in the ruins of the British Empire. There is no need at all for glorious leaders. Acknowledging the extent of the cultural cancer is going to be hard for some people to swallow. Patriotism and professionalism are key ingredients of fascism.

Too many professionals have “only been doing their job” and have been following “orders” or “best practices” for too long, without listening deeply to their innate ethical compass, which has been systematically and thoroughly suppressed by the WEIRD indoctrination system.

1. The biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people relate to unmet healthcare needs, their work environment, their parents, and disrespect by healthcare professionals. Data from our participatory research shows the large overlap and the intersectionality between Autistic communities, and the LGBTQIA+ and Disabled communities.
2. Results from our survey on psychological safety and mental wellbeing indicate that the biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled children – and especially those who also belong to cultural minorities, relate to classmates, parents, and teachers. 97% indicate often or always having anxiety, and 80% indicate often or always feeling depressed.
3. Our individually unique nervous systems and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults often or always feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% often or always feel disrespected and unsafe. Our overall sense of wellbeing is determined by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care we are embedded in (or not).

Advocating for a “better” command and control hierarchy is no solution, it only sows the seeds for yet another empire building attempt. Collectively we can work towards revoking the social license for maintaining and strengthening life destroying powered-up institutions.

Sensitive Daoist thinkers saw this clearly over 2,000 years ago. The documentaries by British film maker Adam Curtis are also excellent educational resources for those who have the stomach to face the reality of toxic cultural inertia.

Full economic eclipse

In-depth discussions of Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation and Century of the Self should be part of every high school curriculum, and they should be mandatory menu items in the curriculum of medical schools and all other institutions entrusted with any aspect of human wellbeing.

Acknowledging reality is only the first step. Economic eclipse is a product of many decades of WEIRD indoctrination and propaganda. Gaia is nowhere to be seen:

Economic eclipse has been causing untold harm for decades, and it inevitably ends in economic collapse. As we are collectively moving out of full economic eclipse, the beauty of Gaia as well as the delusion of hypernormality is revealed. Sobering up is going to be painful for the addicts who remain in denial.

Capital is not a hand that feeds, it is a drug that kills. Gaia has nurtured and fed humans for 300,000 years.

We need commitment, we need community. We need to create spaces of trust. But for that, there’s tremendous work that we need to be doing. But I don’t think that any of that work will be possible, should we not have that commitment–that commitment that no matter how challenging and tremendously difficult it will be to reckon with these narratives and to dismantle these narratives. Because seeing the horror in the eye of all these narratives that we live by comes with tremendous understanding. It will leave us very fragile, very vulnerable, and most, of course, are not willing to do that, because we don’t feel safe. But if we are able to stand the heat and create these spaces, if we commit to do this kind of work for the benefit of the planet, then we may be able to learn that we can fly.

– Yuria Celidwen

This is the voice of Gaia, exposing the life denying doctrine of Homo Economicus®:

We deeply appreciate the wonder of life, and we can clearly see the global mono-cult for what it is. We are fully human. We are alive.

Knowing a bit about all of the above may help you to remain sane, and to see, enjoy, and where possible, nurture the growing cracks in The WEIRD Spectacle. Most importantly, we must acknowledge that we can not regain sobriety alone, in self-isolation, and we can only relearn to be fully human at a scale that is compatible with our biological cognitive and emotional limits, neither at smaller scales, nor at larger scales.

Healing

Healthy cultural organisms do not consist of:

• Isolated individuals
• Atomised nuclear families
• Incomprehensibly complex groups and institutions

The world in reality is a beautifully interconnected world, and it’s interconnected through many many layers. It’s interconnected through consciousness, which is why we are spiritual beings in human form. But the plants outside my window are spiritual beings in plant form. But the plant of the lychee is in lychee form, and the tree of the mango is in mango form. They are just different expressions of one spiritual interconnected consciousness in the world.

I’ve studied quantum theory. We realised that the particles in the world are really not the basic reality. The basic reality is potential and energy, and it’s only when you try and measure it, then it shows up as a particle, or it shows up as a wave, but the reality really is that which connects, the non-separability problem. My PhD thesis was on non-separation, non-locality, and quantum theory. We knew [this] 100 years ago in physics, and yet an obsolete physics of more than 100 years ago is being used to shape and and divide a very interconnected world. So dualism today is not just epistemologically so wrong, it is not just ontologically so wrong, it is spiritually just not the right way to think of the world, but it is now becoming a threat to human life, preventing people from living with each other in diversity with love. And that’s why we have to spread the message of non-dualism, of interconnectedness, of oneness through love, and we have to be the practice...

All cultures had economies but it wasn’t the first organising principle, it was a byproduct of good living… Where did that wealth come from? It was an economy, but it was not an economy of extraction. It was not an economy of domination, it was an economy of living. If you go to the roots of the word economy, economy according to Aristotle is the art of living. Our civilisation has very deep spiritual foundations, and through spirituality you know that the diversity in the world is really different expressions of the same oneness… Let all the beings flourish…

– Vandana Shiva

The relational nature of the big cycle of life is obscured as long as long as we attempt to define cultural organisms as groups of people or even groups of living beings beyond the human.

Wherever you are, most of the inmates at the grassroots level are humans trying their very best. Appreciate those who are able to see and attempt to widen the cracks in The WEIRD Spectacle, and tread carefully when confronted with the institutionalised internalised ableism of Homo Economicus®. 

🔊 Listen

Initial results from a survey on psychological safety and mental wellbeing indicate that the biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled children – and especially those who also belong to cultural minorities, relate to classmates, parents, and teachers. 97% indicate often or always having anxiety, and 80% indicate often or always feeling depressed. We are committed to gathering further data from as many geographies as possible. The data and lived experience reports will flow into our education courses for teachers, and will inform our advocacy work.

The results from our Feeling Safe Growing Up survey highlight that neurodivergent and intersectionally marginalised children grow up in a highly traumatising environment, and often don’t seem to have any genuinely safe and trustworthy relationships. The numbers are so staggering that they leave me speechless, they speak louder than words. And yet, they are in many ways consistent with my own childhood experience. Even the limited initial results are worthwhile sharing to encourage wide circulation of the survey.

This article presents participatory research data in a visual format, and provides context in terms of the demographics covered.

How safe do intersectionally marginalised students feel?

The vast majority of education professionals are ignorant not only about Autistic culture and Autistic ways of being, they are also ignorant about the prevelance of complex trauma amongst intersectionally marginalised people, including both students and their colleagues.

The data and anonymous lived experience reports on psychological safety during childhood presented in this article are the initial results from an ongoing survey.

Especially if you are part of a minority group, you can greatly assist our ongoing efforts by contributing your childhood experiences to our anonymous survey Feeling Safe Growing Up.

The results presented relate to all the responses received from marginalised population segments, 36 responses so far, with an emphasis on lived experiences in education settings.

If you are part of a minority group, you can also assist our ongoing efforts by contributing your lived experiences to our anonymous survey Feeling Safe.

Demographics

Geography

Whilst so far most of the responses received are from the US, an analysis of the the data set reveals that responses from other countries are very much consistent with the US results. It seems childhood experiences are very similar across Western societies, underscoring the hypernormalising effects of the global mono-cult. In this article we therefore only explore the aggregate numbers across all geographies.

Intersectionality of Autistic communities

The level of intersectionality visualised in this graph is consistent with the larger dataset from our survey Feeling Safe that covers the lived experiences of adults within their families and in other social spheres.

(Un)safety in different social spheres

These numbers need no commentary. Answers to similar questions related to adult lived experiences are visualised in the graph below.

The answers from students below should be alarming for all educators and teachers, raising serious questions about typical classroom experiences, and what if anything is being learnt.

How feeling unsafe is experienced

Again, the numbers above are noticeably more disturbing than numbers relating to the experiences from the lives of adults (in the graph below).

Back to the way in which neurodivergent and intersectionally marginalised students are experiencing / have experienced their childhood:

The numbers speak louder than any words:

Lived experiences from school and educational environments

This section only features a small number of examples from our growing database of participatory research.

What are the most important things you wished your teachers to know, respect, and do, when engaging with you?

Just because I was quiet and got good grades didn’t mean I was doing okay. I was horribly bullied and abused by classmates, and no one did anything about it. And I didn’t feel like I could speak up. I didn’t even know that was an option. 

I wish there was more awareness and compassion towards mental health problems and what “high functioning” neurodivergence looks like. I wish teachers had bothered to ask about my home life and mental health rather than comparing my academic performance to other students’ and questioning why I wasn’t applying myself.

I wish my teachers had understood that I was not attempting to be disruptive when asking questions or raising issues. I wish they had treated me as a more genuine person, and as a person at all, instead of an obstacle. 

I honestly wish teachers and professors knew that I may not always able to reach out for help. I wish they would react to signs of struggle sooner if even at all.

I wished I had been identified as Autistic in school and had received help then. I wished I had someone recognize I was being abused at home and helped me.

Saying “so much potential” doesn’t help unleash potential in any way. Forcing us to do repetitive work (multiplication tables in grade 9 math, for a real example) is intellectually stifling. When a child is performing poorly in school, and they test as very intelligent, consider whether it might not be the child at fault, but rather an educational system designed to teach by rote and not by understanding. Don’t incarcerate a child for giving literal answers. Don’t assume a child giving literal answers is trying to talk back. That might be an autistic attempt at complete honesty. (Unfortunately the police who need to know this are unlikely to understand.) It’s hard to overstate how much damage is done by criminalizing a child for autistic behaviour.

Abuse isn’t teaching. Asking for clarification isn’t insolence. Not wanting to engage isn’t ‘acting out’.

Just because the teaching and learning method you know is what you teach doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me and saying it louder and more often doesn’t change that.

i wish my teachers understood my needs when i was younger, and even now. even when i go out of my way to tell them about my conditions, which is already draining enough, they refuse to adjust, despite it being *documented* that it helps me.

Understanding how seriously damaging the bullying was and the double empathy problem.

I listen best when I don’t look at them. I need protection from bullies. 

I was overperforming (using anxiety to get good grades and gain approval) and did not have a happy home life. I needed extra support with executive functioning and making friends. Just because I was quiet and “good” didn’t mean I wasn’t struggling. 

I wish all professionals, whether teachers or medical, would accept the neurodiversity paradigm and stop pathologizing the existence of so-called “invisible minorities”. While LGBTQIA+ is a bit further ahead in acceptance than Autism, there are still so many problems there as well.

Be patient, and don’t yell at me or mock me. Don’t tell me “rules” that don’t actually apply to everyone because I will follow them forever at great personal cost. Intervene when you see bullying rather than expecting children to fight it out themselves. Don’t force speech.

I was a curious, inquisitive kid, and I asked a lot of questions. Sometimes teachers didn’t have time for to answer those, or they just didn’t have answers. That’s fine. Just say so. Sometimes they gave me non-answers, or were otherwise dismissive of the substance of my questions. That would really piss me off, and would result in conflict that was serious enough to make teachers quit teaching. So don’t do that. Just say you don’t know, or don’t have time to answer my question at this time. If you’re going to demand that I accept something, solely on the basis of your authority as a teacher, pupils like me will buck, and everyone will be worse off for it.

Have you had any traumatising experiences in school and other education settings that no one should ever experience? Please outline.

in grade school (middle school especially) i was constantly a victim of bullying which the teachers/administration did nothing to prevent. multiple times staff turned it around and asked if i had done anything to _provoke_ the bullying (once when i complained of bullying they even asked if i had been having sex with the bully, which was absolutely an inappropriate question and completely unfounded), and multiple times they told me they could either do nothing or suspend both me and the bully (usually i took this option, because it seemed better than nothing, and when i returned from suspension sometimes students/other teachers would ask why i had been away, and i could say i had been unjustly suspended and use that as a conversation starter to try to point out the systematic issues, although nothing ever seemed to come of that).

the trauma was more pervasive rather than any one incident. more the environment generally, especially the expectation to chase grades destroying long term motivation to learn

Yes. My bullies would torment me daily, making fun of me and various aspects of how I look or who I am. I was in survival mode all of my school years. Home was the only place I felt safe. 

My baby sitter convinced me to stand up and tell my teacher I was being bullied. The bully’s teacher made me apologize for a *fake accusation* because “oh she would never have done that!” The accusation wasn’t fake. Trust broken. Completely. 

I was assaulted on a school bus which was cheered and applauded by peers and ignored by the bus driver. I had sat in my normal seat, which someone standing in the aisle had apparently planned to sit in. I refused to move, and she attempted to force me. I was accused of plagiarism on my reading log by a teacher due to my extensive reading record. My physical appearance was publicly mocked by a teacher. I was in gym, so in the mandatory gym uniform, and another teacher came in and made fun of my legs, I believe something akin to “Now I know why you don’t wear shorts.” I’m sure there are others i’m forgetting at the moment. 

Yes. “School” below refers to K-12. I was scapegoated and shunned in school. I do not use those terms lightly. Elementary school, teacher-led scapegoating ended after a couple of years but I remained a pariah through high school. Those traumatized me more than physical violence. I did not have a chance to develop socially until my 20s, when it was much much harder (probably because it was after neural pruning). At school, I was under constant, unending risk of violence from classmates. I was almost expelled for refusing to ever shower after gym class, but the walls and floor were concrete, and I was justifiably afraid of concussion and rape. I was the fastest one to get changed, too, because adults also avoided the change rooms, making them especially dangerous zones. At school, I was violently sexually abused (punched in the crotch). “Stand with your arms at your sides or go to detention” meant I went to detention instead of unclasping my hands, which I clasped firmly over my genitals for protection. At school, i was consistently told that my poor performance was my fault. For context, I tested several standard deviations above average intellectually, I was writing software in grade 3, reading before kindergarten, and reading at a university level by grade 7. School was prison, torture. Again, not terms used lightly. And being intellectually quashed was deprivation. It’s illegal to keep a child in a house’s basement, denying them stimulus, refusing to speak in their presence; it shouldn’t be acceptable to do so in a school basement. It is a quiet killing, a destruction of the future of that child.

Regular physical and non-stop mental abuse.

Often abandoned when asking for clarification or accommodations. “Figure it out what I meant or get an F. No I will not help clarify” – Ridicule and mocking from both peers and teachers when not understanding social contexts or apparently cultural touch points such as movies TV shows or books that I have not yet experienced or was not aware of. – Being grouped with people that are known for harassing autistic kids in the school.

My peers eventually bullied me enough, to the point i was both hospitalised for risk of harming myself, and then pulled out of the school. i don’t typically remember much, but i remember that night vividly. i’m still in distance education, and i don’t plan on changing.

I was emotionally and physically bullied to the point where I was having flashbacks by second grade and had all the symptoms of CPTSD by middle school.

One time i was asked to resolve a math problem that i did not understand in front of the classroom and the teacher made fun of me. It took 30 minutes before the teacher let it go, but he never explained. My classmates stood by my side though. Later i perfectly understood the math problem, it was the teaching method that wasn’t right for me.

I believe being unseen because of being quiet and a “good girl” was traumatizing. Especially in difficult subjects like math (I have identified as an adult that I have dyscalculia) taught by an unaware man who had no sense of how to handle children, very unaware of my struggles. I suffered in silence. I marked above that I was never angry and never had meltdowns and it’s important to note that’s because I wasn’t ALLOWED to be that way. I had to be good, and that was heavily encouraged by society, parents, teachers, and adults. It was the only way I could receive positive attention and not receive negative attention. 

Being grabbed by classmates and having grass clippings shoved down the front of my shirt. Being unable to use the washrooms at school due to the sensory environment and danger of being attacked by other students and developing severe constipation for 6 years as a result; being too afraid of my teachers to ask to go to the washroom during class time in the early grades.

I shouldn’t have been mocked and othered for just being myself and getting excited over the things I liked.

Safety of work environments in the education sector

Our survey data on the safety of work environments is from an ongoing survey across all sectors of the economy, across a population of more than 329 workers, of which more than 10% identify as Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and/or Disabled, and of which 177 work in the education sector.

You can greatly assist our ongoing efforts by contributing your lived experiences to our anonymous survey Psychological Safety. We would love to expand our dataset to be able to compare differences between various sectors in the economy and between the lived experiences in different geographies.

Demographics

Baseline across all education professionals

The demographics of marginalising categories across education professionals within our database:

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled education professionals

The intersectionality of marginalising categories amongst Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people across the education professionals within our database:

How safe do educators feel at work?

Baseline across all education professionals

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled education professionals

The lack of psychological safety of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled educators underscores the lived experience reports from students. If teachers bully and mistreat colleagues from minority groups, what are the chances that students from minority groups will have positive experiences at school?

Further answers from Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled educators. These numbers are consistent with the datasets from Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled workers in other sectors:

Conclusions

Safety of intersectionally marginalised students

Across the board, most Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled students do not feel safe within their families, amongst their classmates, and with their teachers.

Prevelance of trauma

In our survey data, 92% of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled students often or always feel overwhelmed, and over 89% of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled students often or always feel misunderstood. Over 70% of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people often or always have at least five negative feelings, in addition to the above, feeling bullied, insecure, and disrespected. Furthermore over 60% often or always feel unsafe, and over 30% indicate that they often or always feel betrayed and abandoned.

84% of the Neurodivergent respondents to our Feeling Safe Growing Up survey identify as Autistic. This means that the demographics of our data show the large overlap and the intersectionality between Autistic communities, and the LGBTQIA+ and Disabled communities.

In our survey data 45% of Autistic students also identify as Disabled, and 61% number identify as LGBTQIA+. This means the majority of Autistic students are intersectionally marginalised. We are are part of an easily overlooked minority within the Disabled and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Given this context, it is no surprise that complex trauma is very common amongst Autistic students, and that this is reflected in our mental health statistics.

Our survey data indicated that 97% of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent students often or always experience anxiety, and 80% often or always feel depressed. 67% often or always suffer from stress related health problems, and 58% often or always suffer from burnout and insomnia.

The biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled students relate to:

1. classmates (78%)
2. their parents (64%)
3. teachers (58%)

In comparison, the numbers of those whose greatest fears relate to other social spheres are much lower:

1. healthcare environments (36%)
2. school bus / transport environments (25%)
3. unmet healthcare needs (22%)
4. siblings (22%)
5. friends (19%)

It is very clear that education settings are consistently experienced as highly unsafe by Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled students.

This is also reflected in the experiences submitted in the qualitative parts of our survey.

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled education professionals

Many Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled education professionals often or always feel unsafe amongst peers, and more than 50% or more of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals often or always feel unsafe with their superiors, noticeably more so than their non/less-marginalised colleagues.

Across the board, the level of psychological safety amongst Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled workers is much lower than the level of psychological safety amongst workers in general.

Next steps

Contribute to our participatory research

Participate in our anonymous surveys, submit lived experience reports, and encourage your colleagues, families, friends, and local schools to participate. Our surveys do not ask for the names of schools. We are not interested in ranking schools, we are interested in gathering country wide statistics.

Feeling Safe Growing Up – This 5 minute anonymous survey (fifteen questions) is conducted by the Autistic Collaboration Trust and is sponsored by S23M.

Feeling Safe – This 5 minute anonymous survey (fourteen questions) is conducted by the Autistic Collaboration Trust and is sponsored by S23M.

Regularly attend our education courses for educators

If you are a teacher or education professional, join our education courses for educators as part of your Continuous Professional Development (CPD) efforts.

Our courses are taught by neurodivergent educators, allow you to learn from our unique database of lived experiences, and provide interactive opportunities to learn from and with members of the intersectional AutCollab community.

Onwards! – The AutCollab Education Team.

🔊 Listen

The biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people relate to unmet healthcare needs, their work environment, their parents, and disrespect by healthcare professionals. Data from our participatory research shows the large overlap and the intersectionality between Autistic communities, and the LGBTQIA+ and Disabled communities.

The vast majority of healthcare professionals are ignorant not only about Autistic culture and Autistic ways of being, they are also ignorant about the prevelance of complex trauma amongst intersectionally marginalised people.

This article presents Dr. B. Educated participatory research data in a visual format, and provides context in terms of the demographics covered.

If you are mainly interested in a summary of the results and in recommendations for clinical practice, you can navigate straight to the conclusions, and to the steps you can take towards making healthcare environments more accessible and safer for intersectionally marginalised people.

How safe do intersectionally marginalised people feel?

Our survey data on the relative safety people experience in different spheres of life is from an ongoing survey of marginalised populations, currently limited to 129 responses, which an emphasis on lived experiences in healthcare settings.

If you are part of a minority group, you can greatly assist our ongoing efforts by contributing your lived experiences to our anonymous survey Feeling Safe.

Demographics

Geography

Intersectionality of Autistic communities

(Un)safety in different social spheres

How feeling unsafe is experienced

Lived experiences from clinical environments

This section only features a small number of examples from our growing database of participatory research.

What are the most important things you wish healthcare professionals to know, respect, and do, when engaging with you?

I wish they wouldn’t make assumptions about autism. I have sensory challenges. Informed consent is a must. Do not order, push, or try to change my mind about treatment. I will decide what I can do and what I want. I believe in self advocacy and working as a team with healthcare providers. I don’t do well with anyone who wants to tell me what to do. I haven’t met many who understand the needs of autistic people.

Clarity and not get upset if I ask them to repeat the questions, and wait if I don’t respond fast enough.

That autists can have higher sensitivities to life stressors, which affects every part of health. 

That if I am bringing a problem to them, I have already spent a lot of time learning and thinking about it and they should be open to asking me questions instead of dismissing my concerns based on my history of depression/anxiety.

Don’t lie to me, or lie by ommission. Do not withold information for fear I will be upset by it. Lay everything out as it is. I cannot make informed decisions if I am not properly informed. In the sam vein; I will take everything you say at face value. If you mince words, if you exagerate or hold back, I will not realise. I will not read between the lines and put together your puzzle. Just because I seem okay, it does not mean I am. I have had decades of practice at acting “normal”. That mask doesn’t drop just because I’m in pain, physical or mental.

I don’t always feel pain or discomfort the same way as others, and I can take longer to process new information and formulate questions about it. Encouraging follow up emails would help. 

Listen and believe my experience.

Our bodies are all holding so much trauma. 

My experience of pain and responses to treatment in psychotherapy and medical settings (i.e., anesthesia does not work as expected in my body); and all mental health and medical treatment must be managed differently to prevent iatrogenic harm.

They need to understand when you upset someone with communication difficulties, it amplifies those difficulties. That it steals our words. I need them to listen to me when I talk and to believe what I have to say. To consider it at face value as I describe it, not twist and warp it with intent into something it is not. It is important to allow me to start where I need to in the process of medical history, starting in the middle can be hard. The forms should be more detailed; tell me if you want 2 years or all of my medical history. 

Even though I am a grey haired middle aged autistic bisexual married woman, I am not stupid. I am often treated as if I am somehow low in intelligence. My IQ is around 146 +- 10. People expect me not to be able to use my cell phone, not to understand simple medical explanations etc. The lightning in the doctor´s often is very difficult, and all stimuli is overwhelming. 

I hear you when you’re talking about me even when I don’t appear to be listening or capable of hearing. I’m afraid you will kill me. My personal experiences and the experiences of my family and the experiences of others taught me this fear. When I may be in need of medical attention I consider whether I am ready to die in your care. If you are engaging with me it will be because I think the risk of dying is higher without at least attempting to get medical help. If that happens: Please do not disparage me, or make fun of me, or laugh at me, or punish me with your power because you are angry at me. Please know that I am not trying to be difficult, ever. Please help me by asking me questions and listening to my answers. Please ask me if I have questions and reply respectfully to those questions if I do. Please let me offer solutions to your gown and other things that cause me distress while I am being treated. Please don’t lie to me. Please know that I am terrified, even when I do not appear to be. I may not be able to speak or hear well. I may seem to be resistant to things that don’t make any sense to you. I would need you to explain why you are doing what you are doing. I am very courageous and can put up with many painful and invasive things if necessary but I need to understand. I am slow processing but I can and do understand a lot. I’m capable. Please give me time, information, and choices. That said, please listen to what I am telling you about my body and my symptoms. I am listening to you. I am not lying. I understand that I can be wrong. I am not thinking I know better than you. If I did I wouldn’t be there. Please do not force me or manipulate me physically or otherwise to do things you want me to do.

Have you had any traumatising experiences in healthcare settings that no one should ever experience? Please outline.

Yes. Pushing of invasive screenings. Disrespect of my bodily autonomy and informed consent. Rough exam. I avoid going to the doctor at this point as no one is autism and trauma informed.

I was in the ER after my hip had dislocated for the 3rd time. The doctor never visited me prior and after my resetting of my hip. He also left the hospital to go to his private practice without giving an order to the discharging nurse to remove my catheter. I personally had to call his office. When I asked to personally speak to the doctor he refused and I was embarrassed to tell the receptionist that I needed to have him call the hospital and give the order to remove the catheter. I was so upset my words were mumbled, I shut down from anger, and cried all the way home. It took hours to regain my composure. 

Yes. I have had a male doctor pretty much kick me out of the patient room. I had a female doctor misdiagnose me with a rare brain disorder and put me on the wrong medication; when I told her it wasn’t working she upped my dose. She refused to hear any of my other symptoms or complications. Not many doctors understand the consequences of sensitivity on the body. My therapist didn’t even recognize my autism until I got diagnoses through my psychiatrist. 

Yes, too many and I’m going right now with a breast cancer diagnosis with 0 accommodation .

Yes, multiple. I respond differently to anesthesia and have had horrifically painful surgeries while fully conscious and feeling everything. I was repeatedly misdiagnosed with major depression, generalized anxiety, and borderline personality disorder and mistreated as a result in subsequent treatment settings. I am a mental health professional. 

I am partially from a Muslim background- during my second appointment with a talk therapist, I mentioned a poor relationship with my father, and she immediately assumed that his poor attitude towards me was due to his religious background. She kept insisting on this even after I explained that the issues were clashes of personality between two people living in the same house (he is impatient and quite extroverted, I do tasks slowly and am almost asocial).

Yes. People not respecting my pronouns, my gender. Doctors not wanting to treat me for being trans. Having my illnesses minimized due to my mental health diagnosis.

My former psychologist used to invalidate me because I began to unmask my autistic traits. I left because she did not want to understand anything about my experience in the world.

Safety of work environments

Our survey data on the safety of work environments is from an ongoing survey across all sectors of the economy, across a population of more than 320 workers, of which more than 10% identify as Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and/or Disabled.

You can greatly assist our ongoing efforts by contributing your lived experiences to our anonymous survey Psychological Safety. We would love to expand our dataset to be able to compare differences between various sectors in the economy and between the lived experiences in different geographies.

Demographics

Baseline across all professions

The demographics of marginalising categories across all professions within our database:

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals

The intersectionality of marginalising categories amongst Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people across all professions within our database:

How safe do you feel at work?

Baseline across all professions

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals

Baseline across all professions

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals

Baseline across all professions

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals

Baseline across all professions

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals

Safety of clinical work environments

Demographics

Healthcare professionals

The demographics of marginalising categories amongst the healthcare professionals within our database:

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals

The intersectionality of marginalising categories amongst Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals within our database:

How safe do you feel at work?

Healthcare professionals

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals

Healthcare professionals

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals

Healthcare professionals

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals

Healthcare professionals

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals

Conclusions

Safety of intersectionally marginalised people

Across the board, many – if not most Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people do not feel safe within their families, amongst their friends, and at work.

As to be expected, compared to other spheres of life, Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people tend to feel safest with their life partner.

More than 40% of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people do not have a life partner. Around half of these 40% likely don’t have any accessible social sphere in which they can feel genuinely safe.

Prevelance of trauma

In our survey data, over 85% of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people often or always feel misunderstood, and the same number often or always feel overwhelmed. Over 60% of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people often or always have at least five negative feelings, in addition to the above, feeling unsafe, insecure, and disrespected. Furthermore over 40% often or always feel bullied/manipulated and abandoned, and 32% indicate that they often or always feel betrayed.

93% of the Neurodivergent respondents to our Feeling Safe survey identify as Autistic. This means that the demographics of our data show the large overlap and the intersectionality between Autistic communities, and the LGBTQIA+ and Disabled communities.

In our survey data 56% of Autistic people also identify as Disabled, and 53% number identify as LGBTQIA+. This means the majority of Autistic people are intersectionally marginalised. We are are part of an easily overlooked minority within the Disabled and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Given this context, it is no surprise that complex trauma is very common amongst Autistic people, and that this is reflected in our mental health statistics.

Our survey data indicated that 82% of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent people often or always experience anxiety. 63% often or always suffer from burnout, 57% often or always suffer from stress related health problems, 52% often or always suffer from insomnia, and 45% often or always feel depressed.

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled patients

The vast majority of healthcare professionals are ignorant not only about Autistic culture and Autistic ways of being, they are also ignorant about the prevelance of complex trauma amongst intersectionally marginalised people, and this ignorance is reflected in the lived experience reports we are receiving from Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent patients.

The biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled people relate to:

1. unmet healthcare needs (65%)
2. their work environment (64%)
3. their parents (54%)
4. disrespect by healthcare professionals (46%)

In comparison, the numbers of those whose greatest fears relate to other social spheres are much lower:

1. friends (22%)
2. siblings (22%)
3. life partner (18%)
4. children (7%)

It is very clear that healthcare settings are consistently experienced as highly unsafe by Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled patients.

This is also reflected in the experiences submitted in the qualitative parts of our surveys and in the in-depth lived experience reports we receive. Consistently, over 75% of the responses we receive to our ongoing Feeling Safe survey include examples of traumatising experiences in healthcare settings that no one should ever experience.

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals

Many Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals often or always feel unsafe amongst peers, superiors, and suppliers, in some aspects of work more than 50% or more of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled professionals often or always feel unsafe.

Across the board, the level of psychological safety amongst Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled workers is much lower than the level of psychological safety amongst workers in general.

Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals

50% or more of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals often or always feel unsafe amongst peers, superiors, and patients, noticeably more so than their non/less-marginalised colleagues.

Even though according to our survey data, the psychological safety experienced across all healthcare healthcare professionals is slightly lower than in many other industries, this lack of safety is consistently highest amongst Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals. In particular more Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and Disabled healthcare professionals indicate that they are:

1. always afraid to be their authentic self at work
2. always afraid to make mistakes at work
3. always afraid to disagree with their peers and their patients

Next steps

Contribute to our Dr. B. Educated participatory research

Participate in our anonymous surveys, submit lived experience reports, and encourage your colleagues, families, and friends to participate.

Feeling Safe – This 5 minute anonymous survey (fourteen questions) is conducted by the Autistic Collaboration Trust and is sponsored by S23M.

Feeling Safe Growing Up – This 5 minute anonymous survey (fifteen questions) is conducted by the Autistic Collaboration Trust and is sponsored by S23M.

Regularly attend our Dr. B. Educated courses

If you are a medical doctor or allied healthcare professional, join our Dr. B. Educated courses as part of your Continuous Professional Development (CPD) efforts.

Our courses are taught by neurodivergent educators, allow you to learn from our unique database of lived experiences, and provide interactive opportunities to learn from and with members of the intersectional AutCollab community.

Regularly attend our education courses for educators

If you are a teacher or education professional, join our education courses for educators as part of your Continuous Professional Development (CPD) efforts.

Our courses are taught by neurodivergent educators and provide interactive opportunities to learn from and with members of the intersectional AutCollab community.

Onwards! – The AutCollab Education Team.