Fugitivus Discussion Forum

(For future reference: This thread was originally titled "Daily Does of... Neurotypicalism?")

I've looked around for a good word for this, but I didn't find any that were quite what I wanted. (If anyone knows a good term, tell me so I can change the thread title!) I'm looking for something that means:

The assumption that people with feelings/responses that are sufficiently different from what's "normal" either don't exist, or, if they do exist, are abnormal-in-a-bad-way.

A lot of the time it can fit under the umbrella of "ableism", but not always, because a lot of neurological differences aren't disabilities (and vice versa). Witness this conversation from my Fiction Writing class a couple weeks ago:

(We had just read a story where the main character, a doctor, gets caught up in a power struggle with a child he's supposed to be caring for.)
Professor (paraphrased): I think all of us been in a situation, at some point in our lives, where we try to win over someone else even once it's not worth it for another reason [they gave a list of things like sports rivalries, and debating with the purpose of winning the argument rather than finding the truth]
Me: That's not correct. Not everyone has done that.
Professor: Well, I guess you're just a sterling individual then. [I think they were using "you" in the general sense.]
Me: Well, if you want to call me a sterling individual... okay...
[some people expressed confusion/disbelief]
Me: I don't have a sense of interpersonal dominance. It's not something I experience.

This professor has pretty distinct opinions on what's realistic or believable from a character. We workshopped our first two stories (written by other students) today, and I had an abortive argument with them about whether one of the main characters' behavior was realistic. It was abortive because they cut me off to let the broader discussion of the story continue, which was reasonable - but after saying we should move on, they used their position as facilitator to get the last word in our argument. Yuck.

I'm in the next cycle in this class, so the class will workshop my story a week from now. I can't wait to see how the professor responds to my story - I have deliberately written a main character who is wildly outside the norm.

I didn't follow you at first, until I had read your example, so now I understand what you mean. This is an interesting thing to think about. I mean, the ways it manifests, and what word we should find for it. On the one hand, my brain is saying that this is just part of a general 'normal' 'not normal' thing, but it's also more specific than that because it has to do with the way people think and feel. At essence, most of the -isms are bout 'normal' and 'not normal' dichotomies, so finding a specific word for it seems necessary.

Neurotypicalism is a good one, but a bit long.

The problem with "Neurotypicalism" is that it's also a term for the condition of being neurotypical.

I just googled around and found that someone has coined a term that's pretty much what I'm looking for: "Neurelitism". In the absence of anything else, it's good enough for me. Having a good term enables me to say this a lot more clearly: "This professor says subtly neurelitist things in class; it makes me feel the same way I feel when a professor says subtly sexist things in class."

Neurelitism is my new favourite word! Thank you! The things you've said about your professor make me really, really grateful for the guy who teaches my Writing for Young People class.

I have been informed that everybody lies, and that I must be either wrong (...somehow...) or lying (ha!) when I say that I do my best not to lie and can't remember the last time I deliberately said something I knew to be false with the intent of deceiving someone. I say plenty of false things, but usually I'm either working from wrong facts or not thinking about what I'm saying.

I'm not sure if that's neurelitist (somewhere on the wiggly line between patterns of thought/feeling and patterns of behaviour...), but it sure is annoying.

Up 'till pretty recently (a couple years ago), I just sorta assumed everyone had visual snow. Until one night I was biking with my friends late at night and casually mentioned the "fuzzy darkness" and they just kinda looked at me funny. xD
So would this be a case of... REVERSE NEURELITISM?!?!
Quick! Somebody call FOX NEWS!!!

Edit: kinda off topic now but holy smokes, VS is correlated with depersonalization/derealization, fatigue, *and* anxiety?! That uh... that could explain a lot actually o.o

It's more like forwards neurelitism, where everyone except you never thought it was important enough to mention that they didn't have visual snow, and then decided to look at you funny because of their poor own communication.

I've had something like that issue from the other side - everyone else in my family wears glasses, but I have 20/20 vision, and I'm afraid I do a pretty bad job of being aware/sensitive towards other people's vision limitations. It's not a neurological thing, per se, but it's similar in that it's a difference in how we perceive the world. (On another note, I've sometimes wondered if it's possible that my eyes are no more good-at-seeing-precisely than my sibling's, but that my brain is better at interpreting the signals. I can increase the clarity of my vision by a significant amount just by concentrating in the right way, and it seems to improve with practice; I deliberately practice seeing things clearly in the same way I deliberately practice physical coordination. Neurological, or having an effect on the eye itself? Damn you, science, why won't you tell me!)

...Wait, you mean most people don't see patterns in unrelieved darkness? Bizarre.

Damn, I wish I could improve my vision by concentrating. (I could probably improve my vision by looking at things farther away than the other end of my bedroom once in a while, but that might involve—gasp!—going outside!)

I'm not sure in the slightest but from talking to people I think seeing patterns in pitch black is at least somewhat common. Not as common is seeing said patterns all the time, wheee.

It's kinda funny because apart from that my vision is perfect, but last time I tried night driving I kept almost crashing into stuff, it was scary

That's interesting. To me, pitch blackness appears as pitch blackness (once the afterimages go away anyway). Silence doesn't come out as silence though - I have an illusory little high-pitched (non-annoying) whining sound that I hear when my surroundings are sufficiently quiet. I can 'listen' for it at other times and hear it, too, and it's sometimes hard to tell apart from a distant TV whine (which is usually annoying. Apparently most people don't have hearing ranges that go high enough to hear it...) Does anyone know if there's a name for that type of thing?