"Neuronormativity" and Gender Performance

According to Judith Butler, all gender is performative — there is no identity without performance (Butler, 1999). I was reminded of this while listening to a podcast on autism and intersectionality in which Dr. Nick Walker, a “flamingly autistic” transwoman, was the guest.

Dr. Walker compared the performance of gender with the performance of “neuronormativity.” Like heteronormativity, a system in which queer people are pressured to perform like cisgender straight people, neuronormativity insists that autistic people learn to perform like neurotypical people.

This concept of performativity and the overlaps between neurodivergence, queerness, gender diversity set me thinking about the ways people perform in daily life. We are taught as young children to perform the gender we were assigned at birth. The performance begins before birth with nursery decorations, baby clothes, and, perhaps most dramatic of all, “gender-reveal” parties. Gender is a predetermined script that children must follow or they will spoil the show.

There is an enormous body of scholarly literature in the fields of feminism, gender theory, and queer theory exploring the nature of gender as performance. Many scholars aim to dismantle the binary roles of gender that have been, at least in the cultures originating in European Christianity, established as ‘norms’ for centuries. Over time, roles, styles of dress, mannerisms, accessories, and behaviours have shifted. However, in 2022, gender performativity is, for many people, still quite circumscribed and defined.?

Even though it is culturally acceptable for a girl to grow up to have a career in a traditionally ‘male’ profession, she is still socialised and expected to look, act, and dress a certain way. Because biology dictates that those assigned female at birth are the ones who become pregnant and birth babies, society has assigned a certain role to mothers which requires its own script. Part of this role is to either teach the child the traditional script, change the script and teach the new one, or, in more extraordinary cases, enable the child to write their own script.

Personally, I am a huge proponent of the latter option. Gender-reveal parties, and baby showers with gendered decorations, toys, clothing, and even greeting cards make my skin crawl. It’s difficult for me to convey in words the visceral feeling of disgust mixed with anxiety that I have when I try to buy a card or gift for a baby and am presented with only traditional binary options.?

For some reason, I have been invited to only a few baby showers and no gender- reveal parties. I view that as a win on many fronts. Both my quest to eliminate the genderisation of children and my dread of parties in general would most likely be viewed as fun-spoiling, to say the least.

Besides gender, there are many other aspects of life that are performative. Job interviews, social events, dates, dinner parties, meeting new people, public speaking, posting on social media, even writing this essay — all contain an element of performance. Book collections on display in our living rooms (or bathrooms), pictures on our walls, and the topics we discuss with others are all performative. For some, performance is unconscious and, I would argue, a type of privilege. Cisgender, heterosexual, and neurotypical people do not have to think much about how to perform those roles. They will have rehearsed and easily learnt heteronormative and neuronormative scripts as children.

What, exactly, constitutes neuronormativity? As a doctor, I am going ‘off script’ to assert that developmental milestones and timelines, while based on observations of millions of children over time, are highly variable. “Normal” is based on “averages” and many of us simply cannot or will not settle for “average.”

In fact, “average” doesn’t work for children whose brains are unable to follow the script. While some children can be medicated or carefully trained, this type of performance comes at great cost. The variety of colours that emerge from the prism of brain development is essential for the beauty and intricacy of life. But mainstream disciplines of medicine and psychology have diagnosed some colours as “normal” while others are classed as “disorders,” “diseases,” or “syndromes.” In the spectrum of visible light, green is in the middle. That seems appropriate, given that a large portion of the natural world is either green or blue. So, if we take the blue-green sections of the spectrum as “normal,” then those children who fall somewhere on the sides of orange-yellow-red, or indigo-purple are divergent. Colours such as pink, brown, or grey don’t even appear on the spectrum.

But what would the world be like without?all?of the colours? If the script is only written for blue-green actors, what happens to the others? Perhaps?some?performance of other colours is acceptable, as long as it’s clear that they are only there to add accent and interest.

This is where neuronormativity comes in. Neurodivergent children have brains that operate outside of the “normal” or “average” colours of the spectrum. They perform the reds and oranges and purples and pinks of life. But neuronormativity diagnoses those children and then structures therapies and treatments to nudge them back into performing “green-blue” with their peers. (Walker calls this the “pathology paradigm.”)

It is well known that there is a huge overlap between those who fall outside the prescribed gender binary (and its prescribed roles) and those who deviate from neurotypical expectations. For those children, the script is completely pointless. Following it results in a far diminished performance lacking the brilliance and magnificence of?all?of the colours, to the detriment of the health and well-being of the children who are forced into those normative roles.

To me, performing autism, means not ‘masking’ — not pretending to be neurotypical by hiding my ‘stims,’ censoring the connections my brain makes that others don’t see (and therefore think are “weird”), and staving off meltdowns when my senses are overloaded and my routines interrupted.

Decades ago, when I first came out as queer, I struggled to ‘mask’ my queerness at work, changing the pronouns of partners and hiding large pieces of my life. As it turns out, I was wearing many masks that hid my true gender, sexuality, and neurodivergence. Gradually removing the masks has allowed me to perform my gender and my autism in ways that feel right, colourful, and authentic. I don’t have to conform. I can grow a beard and wear a dress. I can ask blunt questions and take sensory breaks. I can unapologetically eat my lunch in my room with the door closed and wear noise-cancelling headphones all day. I can arrange my work and home lives to accommodate my performance rather than the other way around.

Of course, this doesn’t mean our performances are allowed to interfere with or harm other people or their performances. The great thing about the spectrum of light is that all the colours are beautiful and blend together to make an infinite array of patterns and designs. People have colour preferences and, for some, certain combinations clash. But all colours are beautiful and all of them are essential to the intricate, elaborate, and sometimes messy performance of life.

References

Blecher, D., & Johnson, K. B. (2022, February 16). Interview with Dr. Nick Walker [Audiopodcast Episode]. In?Intersections on the Spectrum Podcast.?https://anchor.fm/intersections-on-the-spectrum/

Butler, J. (1999).?Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.?New York: Routledge.