What do you think of applying the concept of historical trauma to neurodivergence?
Many kinds of neurodivergence such as autism are genetically linked. Certain kinds of queerness are also genetically linked. Many kinds of neurodivergent people find out they are neurodivergent after their children are diagnosed. It is also unfortunately common that many queer people suspect some of their parents of being closeted. Given the genetic links of kinds of neurodivergence and queerness, it is reasonable to assert some amount of transgenerational trauma. Many autistic adults have been too familiar with obviously autistic parents who adamantly denied they were autistic and traumatized them heavily by obsessively forcing them mask and taking out their own personal struggles on them. Also not learning how to communicate feelings and so on.
Moreover as cultures or rather lack of cultures, neurodivergent and queer people have a claim to historical trauma. The systematic scrubbing of neurodivergent and queer people from history is in itself a kind of wound to any neurodivergent and queer communities.
We do not think of an absence as a historical trauma but consider the wealth of possibilities that may have flourished if genocidal programs like Aktion T4 were not carried out. These were real living people, and they would have communicated, wrote books, appeared in history and have built community and supports that neurodivergent people do not have today.
One could call more modern crimes such as ABA therapy an ongoing genocide. The very lack of neuroqueer cultures being evidence of such historical traumas.
24 Sep 2024, 1:35 pm
