Different, Not Less: The Story of the Neurodiversity Movement
Disability Pride Month celebrates the history, achievements, and ongoing advocacy of people with disabilities. One important part of that story is the neurodiversity movement, which reframed autism not as something to be hidden or "fixed," but as a natural part of human diversity. At Shared Wellness, we are glad to see the increasing attention that the neurodiversity movement has gained in recent years. This movement, which recognizes that people with autism and other neurodevelopmental differences deserve the same dignity, respect, and opportunities as everyone else, seems like a mainstream idea today. However, the understanding and acceptance that we have today was not the standard for much of recent history. The understanding of autism as a natural form of human diversity emerged through the work of autistic self-advocates who challenged stereotypes and spoke about their own experiences. While every autistic person's experience is unique, these advocates helped many people understand autism from the perspective of those living it. For Disability Pride Month, we will be looking at just a few of the notable figures in this movement who built on each others’ work to create the culture of autistic pride and self-advocacy that we see today: Temple Grandin, Jim Sinclair, and Ari Ne’eman.
Temple Grandin has become a household name for anyone who is interested in autism. Born in 1947, Grandin grew up in a world where the standard for autistic children was for them to be institutionalized or otherwise kept out of the public eye. Her mother’s refusal to send her to an institution allowed Grandin to develop ways of understanding and navigating her autism on a level that was unique for the time. Starting in the early 1980s, she began to share her experiences at autism conferences and in interviews. Hearing about autism from a firsthand perspective was groundbreaking for many people, especially for parents who had been told that their autistic child had no inner life or intelligence. Through her writing and public speaking career, Grandin laid much of the groundwork for what would become the neurodiversity movement. Her eloquent explanations of how her mind functioned worked to break down the stigma surrounding autism and promoted the idea that autism could be accepted and even celebrated as a naturally occurring variation that was “different, not less.” Grandin has been quoted as saying, “If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.”
Temple Grandin was not alone in promoting this narrative. In 1993, autistic self-advocate Jim Sinclair took it even further in their landmark speech and essay “Don’t Mourn For Us.” After hearing the conversation around autism being continually dominated by language of “tragedy” and “cures,” they wrote a manifesto of what was considered radical self-acceptance for the autistic community. Addressing parents who expressed grief over their children’s autism diagnoses, they stated in a powerful and well-known passage: “Autism is a way of being. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism (...) This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.” Instead of treating autistic people as victims of an illness, Sinclair encouraged society to treat them as people who simply had a different way of relating to the world. Sinclair would continue their work by organizing self-advocacy conferences, including Autreat, a retreat which became a gathering place for the autistic pride community and helped to shape a cohesive self-advocacy movement.
When Ari Ne’eman founded the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network in 2006, he cited Sinclair as a direct inspiration. In an interview for an academic paper, he stated: “I never would’ve founded ASAN if not for Jim. ASAN might have popularized neurodiversity, but Jim Sinclair created it.” From a young age, Ne’eman was also determined to combat the negative rhetoric that surrounded discussions of autism by founding an organization that was run by and for autistic people. He founded ASAN as a college freshman. During its first year, the organization established itself as a prominent promoter of educational equality for autistic children, largely inspired by Ne’eman’s own experiences in the public school system: “What is, I think, most frightening to me is that for many students out there that kind of message is absorbed—the idea that they are inferior is absorbed, and that can be very damaging because it really puts a limit on people's potential.” ASAN truly entered the public eye when they spoke out against an ad campaign run by the NYU Child Study Center, which compared autism to a kidnapper holding children hostage. In what has been called a defining moment in the neurodiversity movement, ASAN led a letter-writing campaign that gained widespread media attention and led to the ads being pulled after less than three weeks. Since this victory, ASAN has worked to promote ethics in scientific research on autism, educational and employment rights, and autism acceptance. Ne’eman has also worked within the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, and he was both the youngest and the first autistic appointee to the National Council on Disability.
Today, the neurodiversity movement is stronger than ever. While autistic people continue to face barriers in education, employment, healthcare, and community life, the movement has transformed public conversations about autism and helped create greater understanding and acceptance. This was due to the hard work and courage of activists who worked for decades to show the world that they were not victims of their circumstances or oddities to be hidden away, but a community of people who were fully capable of speaking up for their own rights and dignity. Using their widely varying experiences, Temple Grandin, Jim Sinclair, and Ari Ne’eman are just three of the countless self-advocates who have fought to make this possible. By fighting against outdated expectations about what is ‘normal’ and expanding our understanding of human diversity, they continue to encourage others to keep carrying the torch forward.
At Shared Wellness, we are proud to continue this tradition by encouraging self-determination, inclusion, and community participation for the individuals we support. The neurodiversity movement reminds us that every person deserves the opportunity to be heard, to make choices about their own lives, and to be valued not despite their differences, but as whole people with unique perspectives, strengths, and contributions to offer.
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