October 31, 2022 • 53 mins
Nick Walker is a queer, transgender, flamingly autistic writer and educator, best known for her foundational work on the neurodiversity paradigm and Neuroqueer Theory. She is a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, senior aikido instructor at the Aiki Arts Center in Berkeley, author of the book Neuroqueer Heresies, and co-creator of the urban fantasy webcomic Weird Luck.
The Neuroqueer website: https://neuroqueer.com
The Weird Luck webcomic: https://weirdluck.net
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/WalkerSensei
My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nickwalkersensei
https://neuroqueer.com/neuroqueer-heresies/
Instagram: GenderStories
Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
Gender Stories logo by Lior Effinger-Weintraub
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Musical Intro (00:04):
There's a whole lotta things I want to tell you
about. Adventures dangerous andqueer. Some you could guess and
some I've only hinted at, soplease lend me your ear.
Narrator (00:04):
Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's
your story? Hello and welcome toGender stories with your host,
(00:29):
Dr. Alex Iantaffi.
Alex Iantaffi (00:33):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of
gender stories. I know I alwayssay I'm thrilled to sit with my
interviewees, but I really,really am and today I'm sitting
with Nick Walker, who is aqueer, transgender flamingly
autistic writer and educator,best known for our foundational
work on the neurodiversityparadigm, and neuro queer
(00:54):
theory. She's a professor ofpsychology at the California
Institute of integral studies,senior aikido instructor at the
iKey Art Center in Berkeley,authored the book Neuroqueer
Heresies, which is a fantasticbook, and you should definitely
get a hold of it. There's gonnabe a link on how to order it on
the episode description. Andshe's also the CO creator of the
(01:17):
urban fantasy webcomic. We're inSlack, which is fantastic. And
there's gonna be links to all ofthe amazing things that Nick
does on the episode summary. Sowelcome, Nick is so good to have
you here.
Nick Walker (01:30):
Oh, thank you so much for having me here, Alex.
Alex Iantaffi (01:34):
And so I know they took us a while to get
together, but it was worth it.
Because now I'm really excitedabout this conversation.
Nick Walker (01:35):
Me too. I'm looking forward to it.
Alex Iantaffi (01:45):
You are like multi talented. You're a
scholar, your web comic writer.
You've written both fiction andnonfiction. You're also
professor, you're an aikidoinstructor. I feel less busy
just reading your bio, which isgreat. I'll do too many things.
And I was like, kindred spirit.
(02:06):
Book is neuro queer Harris'swhich combines both kind of your
password and your current work,I believe, right?
Nick Walker (02:16):
Yes.
Alex Iantaffi (02:17):
So yes, let's start by telling the listener
What does in Europe queer means?
Because, yes, I don't know ifthe listeners have an
understanding
Nick Walker (02:27):
of what Yes. Good question. That is a good place
to start. So, so yeah, I've beenplaying with this, what I'm
calling neuro queer theory. Andit's about extending the concept
of queer theory into the realmof neurodiversity. And so we
(02:51):
have my my work for many yearshas been around neurodiversity.
And what I see as an emergingneurodiversity paradigm, sort of
a cultural paradigm shift. Soneuro diversity is the diversity
(03:11):
among human minds, the waydifferent people's minds work
differently, as a concept thatoriginally emerged in the
Autistic rights movement, andhas spread outward from there.
And so I mean, a lot of my workis around this cultural paradigm
(03:34):
shift from what I call thepathology paradigm, which takes
says, basically, there's onenormal kind of mind, and
anything that diverges fromnormal is pathological. It's
those sort of disorder ordefects. And so I've seen that
what what's starting to happenis a cultural paradigm shift
(03:57):
towards this neurodiversityparadigm, which says, No,
there's no such thing as anormal mind, just like there's
no such thing as a normalculture or a normal ethnicity or
a normal gender. And there'sjust diversity. And so we, we
can embrace this diversity andof course, you know, we'll look
at how to alleviatepsychological suffering, but
(04:22):
also not not createpsychological suffering by
pathologizing people simply forhaving minds that were
differently from what what arethe dominant culture says as
normal? So, so I've done workaround that and also, you know,
being, being queer have beenvery into queer theory and
(04:49):
understanding gender as asocially, a socially instilled
and socially enforcedperformance and And so. So
that's come together for me inthis neuro queer theory. And
(05:10):
what happened in 2008, I was agrad student in the field of
somatic psychology, which is oneof the fields that I teach and
work in. And I was I was writinga paper just as a just a grad
(05:32):
student paper for a class onthis experience of having to
when I was a kid, having to hidethe way that I naturally moved,
because I naturally move like anautistic person. And I was
(05:56):
bullied for that, andpathologized and punished by
adults for it. And so when I wasa little kid, I was learning to
do what's now what's nowreferred to as masking, hiding
my natural embodiment, andputting on this performance of
neuro normativity. And so I waswriting about that, and it, it
(06:19):
came to me that it was actuallyvery similar to what I had done
around gender, where, you know,I was really only recently I've
I have I understood that I met atrans woman, I'm really, you
know, haven't even begun tomedically transition yet. But,
(06:42):
but as a kid, definitely I wasclearly gender non conforming
and not playing my assignedmasculine role and having to
hide my femininity as a childand it got buried for a long
time. And I was just seeing howthose were similar and
(07:02):
overlapped. And so neuro queertheory at its at its root has
two principles. And one is thatneuro normativity functions like
hetero normativity as a sociallylearned and socially imposed and
(07:31):
enforced performance, that justas just as the dominant culture
really pervasively pusheseveryone into these assigned the
heteronormative binary genderroles. It also pushes people
into the performance of certainways of being normal and
(07:54):
abnormal in,in a neurocognitive sense, act
like you have a normal mind. Andso that the neuro normativity
functions the same way that whatwe call, you know, in the
neurodiversity movement, peopleuse this term neurotypical
meaning people who are withinthe dominant, you know, the
(08:17):
dominant performance of thenormal who stay within the
dominant culture standards ofwhat it means to have a normal
mind. That's called neurotypicality. But there is no such
thing as a neurotypical brain.
There's no, there's nobodyactually it's not a type of
(08:38):
brain that people have. It'sreally just, it's a way that
people learn to perform. Andit's a performance that fits
some people better than others,just like a heteronormative
binary gender role is areasonably good fit for some
people. And for some of us, itjust doesn't fit at all, and we
can't live inside of it. And soI was saying, so that's the
(09:01):
first principle there was thatneuro normativity works like
heteronormativity and could alsobe queered, like hetero
normativity. You we were headingactivity and we can queer neuro
normativity as well. By by beingour own unique, peculiar selves
(09:23):
and allowing ourselves to embodythat and create neuro queer
spaces and such. The secondprinciple of neuro queer theory
that was at neuro normativityand heteronormativity are
actually just two facets of thesame thing, that they're they're
intertwined with each other andcan't really be fully separated.
(09:43):
That if you look at when, youknow, when when people take
autistic children and try tomake them act like they're not
autistic, and they try to, theysay be normal. What are they
they're really saying, Beathlegen Norm All
heteronormative boy or act likea normal, or no bit of girl,
(10:04):
nobody is nobody is saying actlike a normal, non binary gender
fluid child, it's always theneuro normativity and the
heteronormativity are alwaysmixed with each other. And so in
a sense, if you queer one fineenough, you're also queering the
other. So that's, that's thefoundation. That's the neuro
(10:25):
neuro queer theory that I'mplaying with and just putting
out into the world right now.
And it's really excitedlycatching on.
Alex Iantaffi (10:35):
It is it really is, I mean, I'm a mental health
provider, which is so definitelyI know how we're trained to like
stigmatize any kind of, youknow, anything that's non
normative, right? You arecognitively and yes, I love the
way you were describing thisjust spaciousness. I'm also
(10:55):
Somatic Experiencingpractitioner when you were
talking. Yeah, I was thinkingabout all the ways in which I've
written about our kind of thisregion, gender binary, makes us
contract and just notindividually, but also
collectively, in our collectiveso much and, and as you were
talking, I was like, yes, yournormativity does the same thing,
(11:18):
right. And it causes so muchsuffering, right? People trying
to fit into neuro typicalitycauses so much suffering. And
then when there is kind of, whenI read about neuro queerness it
feels so expansive. Just as youknow, gender expansiveness feels
so expansive and spacious and wecan like, take up space. And
(11:40):
yeah, it just feels so muchfreeing for everyone. Ya know,
like, I feel like evenneurotypical folks, whatever
that means, sometimes my reallybenefit from some neuro queering
actually will definitely benefitfrom some neuro creating, what
do you think? Do you think thatreally, neuro queerness is
(12:01):
really to the benefit ofeveryone? Potentially?
Nick Walker (12:04):
Yes, very much, very much. And that's a central
point, I make that in that. Thefinal section of that book, you
know, so the book nuclearheresies, you know, I, a lot of
the material is sort of some ofit is my older work and
commentary on the older work anda lot of sense about the
neurodiversity paradigm andautism and autistic empowerment.
(12:27):
And I move into this finalsection where I really go in
depth into the neuro queertheory and put it out there and,
you know, detail writing, for myfirst time, I'm doing that in
print. And, but one of thethings that I emphasize is that
this is for everyone, and thatthis is a big shift in terms of
how we consider neurodiversity.
That neuro queer theory reallyrepresents a shift there,
(12:49):
because most work onneurodiversity, you know, we
have on there's a whole emergingfield of neuro diversity studies
and some of my years or youknow, previous work has helped
to lay the foundations for that.
But so much of it is all of itreally has been about the idea
(13:14):
of specific types of minds, theidea that you're born, you're
born neurotypical which again,there's not really such a thing
as a neurotypical brain oryou're born, you're born
autistic, you know, which, whenyou know, is born autistic,
autistic people are bornautistic, but you know, you're
born with particular, aparticular like, neuro type is
(13:36):
the idea. And I don't fully buythat, I think that's limiting in
the same way, that it'sliberating to say, either you're
born straight, or you're borngay. It like, I mean, that's,
you know, that was a necessarystep in the gay rights movement
(13:56):
to say, okay, so people can youcan be born gay, and we got to
accept that, that people arethat way. But I think that but
it was a, it's a limitation toto say people have to fit into
one of those categories, becausewe can be queer in so many
fabulous ways. And, yeah, that'sthe thing with, we see with
(14:19):
hetero, when we look atheteronormativity like, even if
a person is happy with theirassigned gender, you know,
they're cisgender and they'reheterosexual. Still, the
socially imposed limitations ofwhat it means to act like have
to act like a woman or act likea man you know, to follow these
(14:42):
cultural stereotypes. We getthis terrible like, you know,
women's powering it sorestricted and, and men are
forced into this toxicmasculinity where they have to
constantly prove their manhoodand that's a terrible way to
live and so everybody benefitsfrom a looseness. So around
gender and a queering of genderand recognize, recognizing that
(15:05):
we can, we can break out ofcultural gender roles and start
playing with them and gettingeverybody benefits from getting
a little more fluid a littlemore queer with that stuff, even
if they stay, you know, fullyheterosexual and their sex
lives. And the very much thesame thing is the case
around neuro queering, that,that neuro normativity is a is a
(15:30):
cage like heteronormativity andit, it restricts people and
everybody benefits fromexpanding their consciousness in
in some way and being able to,you know, not having to feel
constrained by having to seemnormal. Yeah, people benefit. I
(15:50):
mean, and, and I look atdefining it broadly, really,
it's like, if you'reintentionally altering your
gender performance creatively,you know, that's, that's
queering and it's not about youdon't have to be born gay, you
can just sort of say, well, I'mnot, I want to, you know, okay,
(16:10):
you know, I've been assignedmale and I feel like intersexual
male, but I want to put on adress and wear makeup, I want to
not act or I want to just notenact toxic masculinity, I want
to be fluid and how my role inmy relationships or my my role
(16:31):
in my sex life. And I think thesame thing with neuro
normativity I, you know, neuronormativity I mean, in the sense
of people who are altering theirconsciousness with lots of
psychedelics are neuro queering,you know, they're, they're
really letting their lettingtheir consciousness turned into
something outside of the norm.
And that, of course,historically, you know,
(16:52):
psychedelics are illegal,because that did become so
threatening to the dominantculture. And I see that as a
form of queering. I also see,you know, I see my Zen practice
and my Aikido practice as formsof neuro queering as well, you
know, they're there. They alterthe brain, they alter
consciousness in a way that getswent outside of the boxes of,
(17:16):
you know, just the ordinarycultural trance. And I think
just everybody benefits fromthat. And we, I think we should
be, you know, less concernedwith types of minds and more
like, well, how can you know,what, can we all learn from each
(17:39):
other? And how can I, oh, here'sa person who's whose mind works
very differently from mine, andtheir embodiment is very
different. And can I experimentwith trying that out myself and
see what it does to my ownconsciousness? Rather than
having these firm lines ofautistic versus neurotypical or
(17:59):
gay versus straight?
Alex Iantaffi (18:04):
Absolutely, I love all of that. I feel like I
want to say, founder differentthings, you know, one is like, I
know one that when I was readingyour book, that was one of the
things I love this idea thatthis is really to the benefit of
everybody, this is really theride, that's very much kind of
what I write in terms of gender,and that rigid gender binary is
(18:25):
traumatic for everybody.
Benefit, right from just movingaway from this kind of colonial
patriarchal, racist kind ofmodel. And, you know, we've,
we've been relying on biologicalessentialism for so long, right?
This is how we are born, this ishow we are. And that denies
like, what we know aboutneuroplasticity. It denies what
we know about the relationship.
(18:49):
We are relational beings. So inrelation with the environment,
you know, you have been, likeexploring, like, what does
masking do to you, when you doit for like, 50 years, that's
the conversation I'm having withmy therapists like, right, how
much of a master now early andalso trauma contributes to that,
because if there's no safety aregonna, like, hide everything
(19:12):
that you travel, right. And soto me, this is so appealing,
because there's so much healing,right? Just like in trauma
healing, we want the flexibilityof the nervous system and that
expansion. For me, that'sthere's just so much healing in
the study of neuro queerness. Idon't know if that makes sense.
Nick Walker (19:30):
Oh, it completely.
Absolutely. completely in linewith my intention. And yes,
absolutely. It's a wonderful asI see you, you get it, you get
what
Alex Iantaffi (19:41):
sounds great.
Exactly. And I know one of thethings when people talk about
neurodiversity, or autism,especially gender becomes a
thing, right? Yeah, even when Iwas getting trained, like this
is how autism manifests in boys.
And this is how autism manifestsin girls. And Nothing is a
(20:02):
nothing is that simple be? Imean, I was very confused just
by many things, includinggender. But this was also
confusing because I was like,well, that is that is so
reductive. Yes. And so I amreally interested in kind of
talking about a bit more aboutthis idea of what happens to
(20:22):
gender in a Euro clearingparadigm. Right? Does it even
matter that? Is gender evenrelevant anymore? Or not? Or?
I'm just curious about yourthoughts on this. I think
Nick Walker (20:33):
gender is very relevant, I think it is, I think
that it's moving into, you know,a concept of gender that's, that
moves away, as you say, it movescompletely away from biological
essentialism, completelyuncouple it from from, you know,
concepts of biological sex. Andof course, we're seeing that
(20:55):
with that the anti transmovement with the whole trend
that you know, transphobic panicthat's happening in in society
today. That, you know, the, thetransphobes are calling
themselves gender critical. Now,for instance, they're, they're
really what they're discoveringis, you know, I mean, the whole,
(21:19):
the whole concept of gender, asdistinct from sex, they realize
is more our territory thantheirs, that, that, Jen because
gender is so easily queer. Andso it's almost like they've
they've moved from trying tomaintain binary gender to even
just rejecting the idea ofgender Oh, no, it's only
(21:41):
biological sex, there's,there's, there's no gender just
reject, because they're startingto discover the the wild the
fluidity of this and that it is,it is a creative medium, and
that I think, is where this isgoing is that gender, gender,
(22:04):
and cognition, gender, and, youknow, the realm, the realm of
gender and the realm of neurodiversity are both playgrounds,
they're both they're both works,media that we can work in
(22:24):
creatively and to shapeourselves and so you talked
about new neuroplasticity, youknow, that's where, like, the
whole neuro queer theory ideaworks like it doesn't maybe, you
know, you're born with certainneurocognitive tendencies and
proclivities. And that may besomething as sharply defined as
(22:46):
autism or something, you know,more ambiguous and something
within, you know, that fallswithin what, you know, the
dominant culture would callnormal, but there's still these,
whatever, however, when it'sborn, there still is
neuroplasticity, that lets usalter our consciousness and all
(23:07):
sorts of exciting ways andcustomize it. And gender also
can be customized so much. Andthere's just and I think that's,
that's what it is, this is a thecombination of both cognition
(23:28):
like the body, mind, in general,and then the, the whole realm of
gender in particular, our fieldsof possibility and fields of
creative possibility. And I'mabout approaching them in a
spirit of creative play.
Alex Iantaffi (23:47):
I love that because also, you know, there's
all that possibility in theliminal space, too, right? Where
does one identity and the onethat one begin right away? My
oldest kid, and I talk a lotabout when dad's autism and and
where do you get to becomeconsidered neurotypical? And how
much of it as if you performaccording to capitalist values,
(24:11):
right? If you do well in school,and if you don't get into too
much social travel, then youknow, you couldn't possibly take
for example, right, and ifyou're a certain gender, and so
a lot of actually well, how wehad those borders is so linked
to what we believe is we shouldbe able to do should in
(24:33):
airports, right as humans inthis kind of capitalist society,
and I think that, in a way, thisneuro queerness paradigm
challenges that and so, I'mreally interested in how you see
this paradigm contributing tokind of this count, almost
counter this kind of rising, rerising, I should say, fascist
(24:54):
paradigms that we're seeingright like the gender critical
folks and mean that I think thata lot of people would agree
There is a rise of fascismglobally. Yes. You know, maybe
it's because I come from acountry that was highly impacted
by it. Yes. So yeah, I'm just Idon't know if I'm making sense.
But I'm curious about this ideaof in your awareness as kind of
(25:15):
this counter force to this kindof rising fascist paradigm,
Nick Walker (25:19):
I think very much.
So not that not that we can, youknow, counter fascism, just with
queering, you know, counteringfascism. underfoot, right? If
only unfortunately, counteringfascism takes really drastic
measures as we did in World WarTwo, you know, it really it
really has to be stood up to ina very direct way. But But yes,
(25:40):
it's very much I think, I thinkit very clearly is part of
something that's happened. And Ithink this neuro queer neuro
queer theory, and just sort ofthe increase, increasing
(26:00):
queerness, in in that we'reseeing in general people being
more open about the queerness,more openly transgender, in the
younger generations, especially.
All of this, the neurodiversitymovement, I think there's
(26:24):
something happening, there'ssomething happening, that is the
opposite end of the spectrumfrom fascism. And in a sense,
fascism is a reaction againstall of this. There. There were a
bunch, after, you know, afterWorld War Two, when World War
(26:49):
Two had a profound impact, ofcourse, on the field of
psychology, because peoplewanted to ask this question, you
know, how could people go alongwith it? How can people go along
with the Holocaust? And what isit that draws people to fascism?
And that's still, of course, ahighly relevant question. And so
(27:11):
there were a lot of, you know,psychologists got into that. And
one of the things that theorieshave developed was this idea of
the authoritarian personality.
And what are the traits of theauthoritarian personality? And
the biggest feature of theauthoritarian personality of you
know, people who were studyingit found was a fear of fear of
(27:33):
uncertainty. Yes, they werescared, they're driven by the
sphere of ambiguity. And so thisthis authoritarian personality,
likes to read reduce things, ittakes this reductionist
approach, how to reduce thingsand keep them simple. So we can
(27:54):
be clear about everything andnot have to deal with the, the
fear of ambiguity and theuncertainty that comes with it.
And so that include that ends upincluding a fear of cultural
diversity, because a lot of thefact that, you know, there's so
many people with differentcultures who have different ways
(28:15):
of doing things, and you know,what is never entirely certain,
you know, what's this? What isthis customer here? What does it
mean, when this person doesthis? What does that mean in
their culture, there's ambiguityand uncertainty around it. And
that there's just a constantuncertainty and ambiguity about
(28:38):
human difference and navigatingthat field. And therein lies the
opportunity for learning andcreativity and but the
authoritarian personalities,fears the ambiguity and
uncertainty that's necessary forlearning to happen. And that
really shows up around genderthat beta authoritarianism is a
(29:01):
universally associated withadherence to strict gender norms
and strict gender roles so thatthey can be certain exactly
which gender box everyone fitsinto, and how do you prove
what's the right way to performthis, who is supposed to be
attracted to who and they wantcertainty around it and are very
threatened by the uncertainty.
(29:26):
And my colleague, alpha AlfonsoMontori is one of my dear dear
friends and colleagues and waschair of my doctoral
dissertation committee. Montoridid some lovely work on the
authoritarian personality,contrasting it, seeing the the
(29:49):
it's it's the opposite end ofthe spectrum for the
authoritarian personalities, thecreative personality, and that
the creative personalityis a seeks ambiguity and
uncertainty because that liminalspace of uncertainty is where
creativity happens. And sohighly creative people and
cultural spaces tend to be moregender fluid and have you know,
(30:13):
more willing to blur andcrossing eliminate gender lines
and play with it. And you know,the creative personality
embraces cultural diversity anddifference in general as Oh,
this is an opportunity to tolearn, wow, this is exciting. I
have no idea what's going onhere. I don't understand this.
(30:36):
This culture I'm encountering atall, I don't understand this
person's gender at all, what anexciting opportunity to grow.
And it's the opposite reactionfrom the authoritarian reaction
of of, I must impose certainty,I must destroy this thing that
threatens my sense of certaintyin in house where everything
(30:56):
stands. So I think yeah, I mean,neurocrit theory is definitely
the far end, you know, fascismis the extreme end of the
authoritarian spectrum, we mustcrush anything that makes us
feel uncertain. And the, youknow, and hold on to these rigid
ideological certainties, evenwithout even examining them
(31:21):
rationally, because even thatopens up too much uncertainty.
And then the opposite, and Ithink is all you know, the neuro
queer stuff is the artrepresents the, the opposite end
of let's continually, like,identity and culture and such,
is all is all fluid and all hereto creatively experiment with an
(31:47):
explorer. And the differencesbetween us and the, you know,
this spectrum of human humandiversity is a continually a
place where we can learn andgrow and learn from each other
and borrow from each other. And,and even. I mean, the thing
(32:13):
about neuro queer theory, andwhere I'm going with it, in
terms of going to the oppositeextreme from the from fascism,
is if you look at most socialjustice work, it's about
accepting, you know, embracingdiversity, saying, you know,
(32:36):
that words, this cosmopolitanspirit of just let us, let us
embrace and accept humandiversity and, you know, stop
oppressing people for beingdifferent. And yea, there's lots
of difference among people. Ipushing it a little bit further,
(32:58):
saying, let's not only embracethe scope of human diversity,
let's expand it. Let's expandthe range of possible gender
expressions and possible modesof neurocognitive functioning
even more than it is like let's,let's not just accept weird
(33:19):
people. Let's How can we getweirder? How can we creatively
get weirder?
Alex Iantaffi (33:27):
And how much healing possibility is in there?
Right? I remember, in myadvanced module for somatic
experiencing, one of my teachersKathy Cain talked about, you can
tell when, you know, as we'rehealing from trauma, we embrace
our weird, right around theclass of folks during somatic
training for three years. Andyou know, those people on their
(33:48):
gym ball and most people likeunder a blanket and swaying on
the side, and I'm like, yes,absolutely. As you know, that
kind of flexibility of thenervous system that allows us to
listen to ourselves and go, Whatdo I need right now to be
present, to be engaged or for mybody to be comfortable, right?
It's like that expansion intopossibility of relationship with
(34:12):
yourself and with others andwith the world. And yeah,
there's just so much excitingpossibility. And it's it makes a
lot of sense for me that Fascismis kind of aligned with this
tutorial. Authoritarianauthoritarians, at least, that's
a really hard word with my nonEnglish as a first language, but
(34:32):
the end is still colonial.
Right? So it's about control,control of land control of
bodies, you know, control,control or control. That's that
and here, I'm hearing whathappens if we actually don't try
to control each other. Right,exactly, which is also kind of
abolitionist. It is. A lot ofcontrol over the chatter happens
(34:54):
through policing, right? Yes,there was I'm like a threat. It
was a public thread on Twitter.
So I don't feel that talkingabout it here. But like it was a
queer family, you know, thatencounter that really homophobic
man on this train. And the firstthing that people asked was, did
he get arrested? And why I getthat this dude was doing
(35:18):
something terrible screaming atthe Children's like, how is that
the solution long term? Like,right when policing is part of
the problem? Right. And so forme that I don't know, but the
more I think about this, and asI'm talking to you, I'm like,
Well, that's pretty abolitionisttoo. I don't know. Yeah. So I
don't know what you think aboutthat, or from just going off on
(35:40):
a tangent?
Nick Walker (35:41):
Oh, no, definitely.
I think I think it is. I thinkit definitely is. I mean,
there's you know, policing as aninstitution. I mean, it does, it
does enforce the status quo.
And, you know, I mean, it's, itwould be lovely, if it were
(36:02):
like, it was on, you know, copshows on television, where
police went unsolved crimes, butthat's not what policing
actually does. It's like, oh,this is, this is a threat to the
status quo, this is a threat towhatever our normal is, and the
normal, if a normal is socioeconomic injustice, or the
normal is, everybody walks andpublicly behaves in a certain
(36:26):
normative fashion, then thepolice become a threat to, you
know, anyone who wants to beoutside of those boxes. So yeah,
I mean, I think I'm very muchyou know, about liberation in,
in a very non abstract, youknow, concrete way, because,
(36:49):
like you, you know, and I mustsomatics person, so as we all
should be because we all ourbodies, so I'm so, so, so, so to
me, you know, neuro Korean isvery much an embodied process.
And when I talk about, you know,breaking out of the boxes of
neuro normativity andheteronormativity, it's very
(37:13):
much an embodied process, youknow, that, that gender is an
embodied performance and, andneuro normativity is an embodied
performance and queering issomething that is done bodily,
bodily acts of bodilyexpression, and who, how we
embody ourselves in the world.
(37:38):
And I think that, you know,institutions like policing in
prisons, you know, they theyimprison and regiment bodies.
And so, you know, I think thatnecessarily there's an, there's
an abolitionism, you know, andthat that applies, I think, also
just to you know, I meanstructures of capitalism, where
(38:02):
so many people are forced to,you know, forced to labor in
dehumanizing repetitive jobs,just to avoid starving. You
know, that that is, that's acoercive system, you know,
Captain policed by policing andthat not only, you know, I think
(38:26):
there's so yeah, there's all ofthese, all of these drives, of
course, colonialism in a bigway, you know, is about imposing
colonial you know, imposing thecolonizers norms on the bodies.
Really, you really is reallycoming into sharp focus in the
US history with the Indianschools, right. You know,
(38:49):
indigenous American childrenwere separated from, you know,
separated from their nativeculture and had really the
colonizers ways of moving andembodiment posts on them, it was
very much a disciplining ofbodies. And so, so yeah, all I
(39:12):
think this necessarily, youknow, to speak of neuro queering
as a good thing, it's aliberating thing we say
liberated, liberated from whatyou know, and it's, it
necessarily involves aliberation from policing or
liberation from prisons orliberation from structures of
(39:33):
forced labor and imposedpoverty, liberation from
colonialism. So yeah, all ofthose things, you know, because
similarly, you know, I thinkthat I've really focused my
work, just coming from my ownexperience being autistic and
(39:55):
trans and queer. So I've tendedto focus on to gender and how,
you know, the normativity thatthe neuro normativity that's
imposed on autistic children andother neurodivergent children is
a heteronormativity. But ofcourse, it's also, you know,
(40:17):
colonialist, it's also a whitewoman tivity you know, you put
up a black autistic child andbehavior therapy, the
behaviorist is not is, isteaching them, you know, when
they havior says, I'm going toteach your child to act like a
normal child, they mean aheteronormative child and also a
(40:37):
white heteronormative child,that there's a there's
absolutely so implicit culturalvalues of normativity that are
insidiously in the dominantculture. And I sort of I leave
that for, you know, people ofcolor to write about the
increasingly that's, that'shappening, and we're hearing
more, you know, from from nonautistic, from, from from, from
(41:01):
non white autistic people abouttheir experiences and how, you
know, the the neuro normativityand racist and colonial
colonialist structuresintersect. So, yeah, I think
thatall of these different axes of
imposed normativity ultimately,interconnect and liberation, you
(41:25):
know, it comes back to, youknow, Martin Martin Luther
King'ssaying, you know, injustice
everywhere is injustice anywhereis a threat to justice
everywhere, it just anywhere,like it's fine, there's one, one
group or one person isoppressed, no one is really
(41:45):
free, because all of thesesystems do intersect. And so
there's this, there's this.
Like, okay, I'm gonna make asmuch space in my own life
individually to liberate myselfas possible. But in the process,
I'm also looking at, you know,how can we spread that
(42:05):
liberation around two? How canwe like, okay, there's people
who are, you know, there'speople who if they queer
themselves as visibly as as, asyou and I are in positions where
they're going to be shot for it.
And so, how do we change that aswell? And so, it's almost like,
I don't even see because, youknow, I'm really just, you know,
(42:29):
largely, you know, a somaticpsychologist and queer theorists
and just into playing with thisstuff creatively. I don't, I
don't think of my work as socialjustice work necessarily. At the
same time, I see that when I putmy writing out there, it gets
(42:51):
brought into social justice workand liberation work. And that's,
you know, that's, that's what Ihope for that, okay. We, on the
one hand, it's like, what arewhat are the extremes of freedom
that we can explore? And thenthere's, how can we? How can we
make this more and moreavailable to everyone?
Alex Iantaffi (43:16):
Exactly. And that's what I love about your
work as well, that it's not justkind of individualized by in
rugged individualist, individualfreedom, right? It's the
paradigm and there cannot bethat kind of neuro queer
creativity and expansion withoutcollective change. Right?
Because and that's, I love that.
I feel like, again, I'm havinglike, fats pop all over the
(43:41):
place. But as you were talking,there's so many connection, you
know, as you were saying that,you know, when therapists or
educators work with autistickids, right, they're imposing as
this era normative whitestandards, right? Child,
regardless about theirracialized or their gendered,
right, like Rasma mannequinswork that taught in my
(44:03):
grandmother's hands, talkingabout the white bodies, the
standard, you know, in a waythat I love that there's so much
work coming out of somaticapproaches, that really is about
this weaving of expansiveness asI see it, right? Like, how can
we really heal from all thiscontracting of colonialism,
(44:25):
racism, all the systems and comeinto this place of spaciousness,
expansiveness, cultural change,so that the world is safer for
as many people as possible,right?
Nick Walker (44:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi (44:42):
So exciting.
about this for a long time, butI want to be respectful of your
time. And plush. One question Ialways ask at the end is, is
there anything we haven't talkedabout that you would love to
share with the gender storieslisteners?
Nick Walker (44:59):
Oh, that's how A Wonderful question to ask. I.
Alex Iantaffi (45:08):
And I'm sorry, I always put people on the spot
for this one. So I love it.
Nick Walker (45:13):
I love it. I would say I would say a couple of
things. One is, you know, we'vetalked here a little bit about
(45:34):
policing as an institution andsuch. But I think one thing that
I one thing that I talked aboutin my book, too, is this idea.
Not just about, you know, theoppressive nature of policing as
a social institution, but alsothat we shouldn't police each
other. Yes. And I think that'simportant that when I see people
(45:56):
policing each other's identitiesa lot, and I, including, you
know, I put the term neuro queerout into the world. And people
started claiming it as anidentity label and then trying
to tell other people, theycouldn't use them as an identity
label. Like, no, no, you'remissing the point here. And so
that authoritarian impulse cancome up and everyone in the
(46:18):
sense of people often wanting tostay alienated, you know, that
sometimes identity politicscauses people to say, Okay,
well, this is, this is ourgroup, and that's your group and
don't cross the line between us.
And I think that that's, that'sjust more policing and more of
the authoritarian impulse tocertainty. And I'm really on
(46:42):
about blurring those lines andsaying, No, anyone can engage in
neuro queering. Let's, let's,let's get rid of normativity.
Let's, let's get rid of, youknow, neurotypical reality is,
is not a state that people areborn in, and it's something that
(47:03):
we can eliminate, nobody has tobe normal. Let's eliminate the
whole the whole idea and youknow, just recognize it as such
a social construct that we candiverge from freely. And so I
think that the authoritarianimpulse comes up even in people
(47:28):
doing social justice, where acomes up around identity
politics, I see people.
More mistake, hybridity forcultural appropriation, for
instance. So, you know, the ideaof cultural appropriation
(47:51):
originally as a concept waslike, Oh, well, you know, don't,
don't, you know, don't, don'trip off the cultures, oppress
and colonize people and make abuck off them. And that's,
that's good. But it's gotten tothe point where I see people say
that, you know, any sort ofcreative cultural hybridity
(48:13):
becomes a culturalappropriation, like everybody
has to stay within their ownlittle cultural boundaries, but
historically, called thecultural hybridity. And the way
that cultures influence andlearn from each other and pick
things up from each other is ahuge source of creativity, it
has given us most of the world'syou know, great music and
cuisine and sciences. It's alland so I think it's important to
(48:40):
recognize, you know, there's tolook at the the non oppressive
ways that people can blur thelines and pick things up from
each other and hybridize andcollectively and individually
(49:00):
mutate. And so that's, yeah,that's one thing that I would
emphasize is just avoiding thatauthoritarian impulse or the,
the, the identity politics thatmakes anybody get into into an
enemy. And I think that's that'sone thing and the other thing
(49:31):
that I would bring into thisconversation here is creative
work. Just you know, I mean, Ithink that I like gender as a
creative Canvas, you know, andthe mind you know,
neuroplasticity means the brainitself is something that is, we
(49:52):
can, we can sculpt and playwith. But also, so much The I
prefer reading fiction andcomics to writing nonfiction,
it's more fun. But so much ofthe work that I see is very
(50:14):
neuro queer is happening in therealm of fiction. And so I
really I really love that Ireally hope that people will
look at you know, the, thewriting I do, you know, the
fiction writing, I do the comicswriting I do and the writing
(50:35):
being done by other people, youknow, we have, I'm involved in
the annual spoon knifeanthology, which is a neuro
queer, multi genre litanthology, and sort of a way to
get introduced to a lot ofauthors who are playing in that
territory, there's just somelovely, wonderfully queer thing
(50:58):
that's happening in, in therealm of fiction and
storytelling that I think it's,it's easy to overlook, it's easy
to get caught up in all thethings that are wrong and and or
focus on the the mainstream,sort of the sameness. Oh, got
(51:23):
another, another TV show withthe same stereotypes and all,
but there is so much wildlyqueer, creative work happening,
that. And even though the worldis imperfect, still, and even
though there's oppressioneverywhere, in a sense, not only
(51:44):
are we still allowed to enjoyourselves, and enjoy a good
book, and enjoy the picture andbe creative, but also, we need
to we need to remind ourselveswhat we're working for, and not
make our entire lives aboutfighting against something, but
also what, what positive thingsare we creating, and that really
(52:05):
involves keeping the creativeimagination alive. So I think I
want to close with that.
Alex Iantaffi (52:11):
That is so beautiful. I love that because I
actually find fiction and evenTV and sound so rejuvenating.
Yeah, and I think there is somuch you know, when I was a
teenager, Alex and Flashdancewas the clearest character there
was. Because she was a dancerand a welder, right? And I was
like, look at that challengingof gender stereotypes. And now
(52:34):
you know, my oldest kid can belike, yeah, if it if it's not
clear, then want to watch it. Ordon't because there's so much
out there. So yes, I love endingon that note of creativity. And
also just hope, right? Thatcreativity, there is hope it's
so it's kind of hard to hold onto hope sometimes in this moment
(52:55):
in this in this times. And so Ilove that. Thank you so much.
This was so wonderful. I feellike we haven't even talked
about all the other things youdo. You know, this is a tiny
piece of work usually important,but just one part of who you
are. So thank you for coming onto the show. Wish we had more
time to talk about all the otherthings you do and for your
(53:18):
listeners. If you do want tofind out all the wonderful
things that Nick does, you canfind links to all of our work in
the episode summary and so goexplore all the links for read
the webcomic buy the book, ofcourse. NeuroCare Harris's in
thank you so much for listening,and I hope that you will play
with your own kind of neurolandscape and your own gender,
(53:42):
landscape and keep creating.
Until next time
There's a whole lotta things I want to tell you
about. Adventures dangerous andqueer. Some you could guess and
some I've only hinted at, soplease lend me your ear.
Narrator (00:04):
Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's
your story? Hello and welcome toGender stories with your host,
(00:29):
Dr. Alex Iantaffi.
Alex Iantaffi (00:33):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of
gender stories. I know I alwayssay I'm thrilled to sit with my
interviewees, but I really,really am and today I'm sitting
with Nick Walker, who is aqueer, transgender flamingly
autistic writer and educator,best known for our foundational
work on the neurodiversityparadigm, and neuro queer
(00:54):
theory. She's a professor ofpsychology at the California
Institute of integral studies,senior aikido instructor at the
iKey Art Center in Berkeley,authored the book Neuroqueer
Heresies, which is a fantasticbook, and you should definitely
get a hold of it. There's gonnabe a link on how to order it on
the episode description. Andshe's also the CO creator of the
(01:17):
urban fantasy webcomic. We're inSlack, which is fantastic. And
there's gonna be links to all ofthe amazing things that Nick
does on the episode summary. Sowelcome, Nick is so good to have
you here.
Nick Walker (01:30):
Oh, thank you so much for having me here, Alex.
Alex Iantaffi (01:34):
And so I know they took us a while to get
together, but it was worth it.
Because now I'm really excitedabout this conversation.
Nick Walker (01:35):
Me too. I'm looking forward to it.
Alex Iantaffi (01:45):
You are like multi talented. You're a
scholar, your web comic writer.
You've written both fiction andnonfiction. You're also
professor, you're an aikidoinstructor. I feel less busy
just reading your bio, which isgreat. I'll do too many things.
And I was like, kindred spirit.
(02:06):
Book is neuro queer Harris'swhich combines both kind of your
password and your current work,I believe, right?
Nick Walker (02:16):
Yes.
Alex Iantaffi (02:17):
So yes, let's start by telling the listener
What does in Europe queer means?
Because, yes, I don't know ifthe listeners have an
understanding
Nick Walker (02:27):
of what Yes. Good question. That is a good place
to start. So, so yeah, I've beenplaying with this, what I'm
calling neuro queer theory. Andit's about extending the concept
of queer theory into the realmof neurodiversity. And so we
(02:51):
have my my work for many yearshas been around neurodiversity.
And what I see as an emergingneurodiversity paradigm, sort of
a cultural paradigm shift. Soneuro diversity is the diversity
(03:11):
among human minds, the waydifferent people's minds work
differently, as a concept thatoriginally emerged in the
Autistic rights movement, andhas spread outward from there.
And so I mean, a lot of my workis around this cultural paradigm
(03:34):
shift from what I call thepathology paradigm, which takes
says, basically, there's onenormal kind of mind, and
anything that diverges fromnormal is pathological. It's
those sort of disorder ordefects. And so I've seen that
what what's starting to happenis a cultural paradigm shift
(03:57):
towards this neurodiversityparadigm, which says, No,
there's no such thing as anormal mind, just like there's
no such thing as a normalculture or a normal ethnicity or
a normal gender. And there'sjust diversity. And so we, we
can embrace this diversity andof course, you know, we'll look
at how to alleviatepsychological suffering, but
(04:22):
also not not createpsychological suffering by
pathologizing people simply forhaving minds that were
differently from what what arethe dominant culture says as
normal? So, so I've done workaround that and also, you know,
being, being queer have beenvery into queer theory and
(04:49):
understanding gender as asocially, a socially instilled
and socially enforcedperformance and And so. So
that's come together for me inthis neuro queer theory. And
(05:10):
what happened in 2008, I was agrad student in the field of
somatic psychology, which is oneof the fields that I teach and
work in. And I was I was writinga paper just as a just a grad
(05:32):
student paper for a class onthis experience of having to
when I was a kid, having to hidethe way that I naturally moved,
because I naturally move like anautistic person. And I was
(05:56):
bullied for that, andpathologized and punished by
adults for it. And so when I wasa little kid, I was learning to
do what's now what's nowreferred to as masking, hiding
my natural embodiment, andputting on this performance of
neuro normativity. And so I waswriting about that, and it, it
(06:19):
came to me that it was actuallyvery similar to what I had done
around gender, where, you know,I was really only recently I've
I have I understood that I met atrans woman, I'm really, you
know, haven't even begun tomedically transition yet. But,
(06:42):
but as a kid, definitely I wasclearly gender non conforming
and not playing my assignedmasculine role and having to
hide my femininity as a childand it got buried for a long
time. And I was just seeing howthose were similar and
(07:02):
overlapped. And so neuro queertheory at its at its root has
two principles. And one is thatneuro normativity functions like
hetero normativity as a sociallylearned and socially imposed and
(07:31):
enforced performance, that justas just as the dominant culture
really pervasively pusheseveryone into these assigned the
heteronormative binary genderroles. It also pushes people
into the performance of certainways of being normal and
(07:54):
abnormal in,in a neurocognitive sense, act
like you have a normal mind. Andso that the neuro normativity
functions the same way that whatwe call, you know, in the
neurodiversity movement, peopleuse this term neurotypical
meaning people who are withinthe dominant, you know, the
(08:17):
dominant performance of thenormal who stay within the
dominant culture standards ofwhat it means to have a normal
mind. That's called neurotypicality. But there is no such
thing as a neurotypical brain.
There's no, there's nobodyactually it's not a type of
(08:38):
brain that people have. It'sreally just, it's a way that
people learn to perform. Andit's a performance that fits
some people better than others,just like a heteronormative
binary gender role is areasonably good fit for some
people. And for some of us, itjust doesn't fit at all, and we
can't live inside of it. And soI was saying, so that's the
(09:01):
first principle there was thatneuro normativity works like
heteronormativity and could alsobe queered, like hetero
normativity. You we were headingactivity and we can queer neuro
normativity as well. By by beingour own unique, peculiar selves
(09:23):
and allowing ourselves to embodythat and create neuro queer
spaces and such. The secondprinciple of neuro queer theory
that was at neuro normativityand heteronormativity are
actually just two facets of thesame thing, that they're they're
intertwined with each other andcan't really be fully separated.
(09:43):
That if you look at when, youknow, when when people take
autistic children and try tomake them act like they're not
autistic, and they try to, theysay be normal. What are they
they're really saying, Beathlegen Norm All
heteronormative boy or act likea normal, or no bit of girl,
(10:04):
nobody is nobody is saying actlike a normal, non binary gender
fluid child, it's always theneuro normativity and the
heteronormativity are alwaysmixed with each other. And so in
a sense, if you queer one fineenough, you're also queering the
other. So that's, that's thefoundation. That's the neuro
(10:25):
neuro queer theory that I'mplaying with and just putting
out into the world right now.
And it's really excitedlycatching on.
Alex Iantaffi (10:35):
It is it really is, I mean, I'm a mental health
provider, which is so definitelyI know how we're trained to like
stigmatize any kind of, youknow, anything that's non
normative, right? You arecognitively and yes, I love the
way you were describing thisjust spaciousness. I'm also
(10:55):
Somatic Experiencingpractitioner when you were
talking. Yeah, I was thinkingabout all the ways in which I've
written about our kind of thisregion, gender binary, makes us
contract and just notindividually, but also
collectively, in our collectiveso much and, and as you were
talking, I was like, yes, yournormativity does the same thing,
(11:18):
right. And it causes so muchsuffering, right? People trying
to fit into neuro typicalitycauses so much suffering. And
then when there is kind of, whenI read about neuro queerness it
feels so expansive. Just as youknow, gender expansiveness feels
so expansive and spacious and wecan like, take up space. And
(11:40):
yeah, it just feels so muchfreeing for everyone. Ya know,
like, I feel like evenneurotypical folks, whatever
that means, sometimes my reallybenefit from some neuro queering
actually will definitely benefitfrom some neuro creating, what
do you think? Do you think thatreally, neuro queerness is
(12:01):
really to the benefit ofeveryone? Potentially?
Nick Walker (12:04):
Yes, very much, very much. And that's a central
point, I make that in that. Thefinal section of that book, you
know, so the book nuclearheresies, you know, I, a lot of
the material is sort of some ofit is my older work and
commentary on the older work anda lot of sense about the
neurodiversity paradigm andautism and autistic empowerment.
(12:27):
And I move into this finalsection where I really go in
depth into the neuro queertheory and put it out there and,
you know, detail writing, for myfirst time, I'm doing that in
print. And, but one of thethings that I emphasize is that
this is for everyone, and thatthis is a big shift in terms of
how we consider neurodiversity.
That neuro queer theory reallyrepresents a shift there,
(12:49):
because most work onneurodiversity, you know, we
have on there's a whole emergingfield of neuro diversity studies
and some of my years or youknow, previous work has helped
to lay the foundations for that.
But so much of it is all of itreally has been about the idea
(13:14):
of specific types of minds, theidea that you're born, you're
born neurotypical which again,there's not really such a thing
as a neurotypical brain oryou're born, you're born
autistic, you know, which, whenyou know, is born autistic,
autistic people are bornautistic, but you know, you're
born with particular, aparticular like, neuro type is
(13:36):
the idea. And I don't fully buythat, I think that's limiting in
the same way, that it'sliberating to say, either you're
born straight, or you're borngay. It like, I mean, that's,
you know, that was a necessarystep in the gay rights movement
(13:56):
to say, okay, so people can youcan be born gay, and we got to
accept that, that people arethat way. But I think that but
it was a, it's a limitation toto say people have to fit into
one of those categories, becausewe can be queer in so many
fabulous ways. And, yeah, that'sthe thing with, we see with
(14:19):
hetero, when we look atheteronormativity like, even if
a person is happy with theirassigned gender, you know,
they're cisgender and they'reheterosexual. Still, the
socially imposed limitations ofwhat it means to act like have
to act like a woman or act likea man you know, to follow these
(14:42):
cultural stereotypes. We getthis terrible like, you know,
women's powering it sorestricted and, and men are
forced into this toxicmasculinity where they have to
constantly prove their manhoodand that's a terrible way to
live and so everybody benefitsfrom a looseness. So around
gender and a queering of genderand recognize, recognizing that
(15:05):
we can, we can break out ofcultural gender roles and start
playing with them and gettingeverybody benefits from getting
a little more fluid a littlemore queer with that stuff, even
if they stay, you know, fullyheterosexual and their sex
lives. And the very much thesame thing is the case
around neuro queering, that,that neuro normativity is a is a
(15:30):
cage like heteronormativity andit, it restricts people and
everybody benefits fromexpanding their consciousness in
in some way and being able to,you know, not having to feel
constrained by having to seemnormal. Yeah, people benefit. I
(15:50):
mean, and, and I look atdefining it broadly, really,
it's like, if you'reintentionally altering your
gender performance creatively,you know, that's, that's
queering and it's not about youdon't have to be born gay, you
can just sort of say, well, I'mnot, I want to, you know, okay,
(16:10):
you know, I've been assignedmale and I feel like intersexual
male, but I want to put on adress and wear makeup, I want to
not act or I want to just notenact toxic masculinity, I want
to be fluid and how my role inmy relationships or my my role
(16:31):
in my sex life. And I think thesame thing with neuro
normativity I, you know, neuronormativity I mean, in the sense
of people who are altering theirconsciousness with lots of
psychedelics are neuro queering,you know, they're, they're
really letting their lettingtheir consciousness turned into
something outside of the norm.
And that, of course,historically, you know,
(16:52):
psychedelics are illegal,because that did become so
threatening to the dominantculture. And I see that as a
form of queering. I also see,you know, I see my Zen practice
and my Aikido practice as formsof neuro queering as well, you
know, they're there. They alterthe brain, they alter
consciousness in a way that getswent outside of the boxes of,
(17:16):
you know, just the ordinarycultural trance. And I think
just everybody benefits fromthat. And we, I think we should
be, you know, less concernedwith types of minds and more
like, well, how can you know,what, can we all learn from each
(17:39):
other? And how can I, oh, here'sa person who's whose mind works
very differently from mine, andtheir embodiment is very
different. And can I experimentwith trying that out myself and
see what it does to my ownconsciousness? Rather than
having these firm lines ofautistic versus neurotypical or
(17:59):
gay versus straight?
Alex Iantaffi (18:04):
Absolutely, I love all of that. I feel like I
want to say, founder differentthings, you know, one is like, I
know one that when I was readingyour book, that was one of the
things I love this idea thatthis is really to the benefit of
everybody, this is really theride, that's very much kind of
what I write in terms of gender,and that rigid gender binary is
(18:25):
traumatic for everybody.
Benefit, right from just movingaway from this kind of colonial
patriarchal, racist kind ofmodel. And, you know, we've,
we've been relying on biologicalessentialism for so long, right?
This is how we are born, this ishow we are. And that denies
like, what we know aboutneuroplasticity. It denies what
we know about the relationship.
(18:49):
We are relational beings. So inrelation with the environment,
you know, you have been, likeexploring, like, what does
masking do to you, when you doit for like, 50 years, that's
the conversation I'm having withmy therapists like, right, how
much of a master now early andalso trauma contributes to that,
because if there's no safety aregonna, like, hide everything
(19:12):
that you travel, right. And soto me, this is so appealing,
because there's so much healing,right? Just like in trauma
healing, we want the flexibilityof the nervous system and that
expansion. For me, that'sthere's just so much healing in
the study of neuro queerness. Idon't know if that makes sense.
Nick Walker (19:30):
Oh, it completely.
Absolutely. completely in linewith my intention. And yes,
absolutely. It's a wonderful asI see you, you get it, you get
what
Alex Iantaffi (19:41):
sounds great.
Exactly. And I know one of thethings when people talk about
neurodiversity, or autism,especially gender becomes a
thing, right? Yeah, even when Iwas getting trained, like this
is how autism manifests in boys.
And this is how autism manifestsin girls. And Nothing is a
(20:02):
nothing is that simple be? Imean, I was very confused just
by many things, includinggender. But this was also
confusing because I was like,well, that is that is so
reductive. Yes. And so I amreally interested in kind of
talking about a bit more aboutthis idea of what happens to
(20:22):
gender in a Euro clearingparadigm. Right? Does it even
matter that? Is gender evenrelevant anymore? Or not? Or?
I'm just curious about yourthoughts on this. I think
Nick Walker (20:33):
gender is very relevant, I think it is, I think
that it's moving into, you know,a concept of gender that's, that
moves away, as you say, it movescompletely away from biological
essentialism, completelyuncouple it from from, you know,
concepts of biological sex. Andof course, we're seeing that
(20:55):
with that the anti transmovement with the whole trend
that you know, transphobic panicthat's happening in in society
today. That, you know, the, thetransphobes are calling
themselves gender critical. Now,for instance, they're, they're
really what they're discoveringis, you know, I mean, the whole,
(21:19):
the whole concept of gender, asdistinct from sex, they realize
is more our territory thantheirs, that, that, Jen because
gender is so easily queer. Andso it's almost like they've
they've moved from trying tomaintain binary gender to even
just rejecting the idea ofgender Oh, no, it's only
(21:41):
biological sex, there's,there's, there's no gender just
reject, because they're startingto discover the the wild the
fluidity of this and that it is,it is a creative medium, and
that I think, is where this isgoing is that gender, gender,
(22:04):
and cognition, gender, and, youknow, the realm, the realm of
gender and the realm of neurodiversity are both playgrounds,
they're both they're both works,media that we can work in
(22:24):
creatively and to shapeourselves and so you talked
about new neuroplasticity, youknow, that's where, like, the
whole neuro queer theory ideaworks like it doesn't maybe, you
know, you're born with certainneurocognitive tendencies and
proclivities. And that may besomething as sharply defined as
(22:46):
autism or something, you know,more ambiguous and something
within, you know, that fallswithin what, you know, the
dominant culture would callnormal, but there's still these,
whatever, however, when it'sborn, there still is
neuroplasticity, that lets usalter our consciousness and all
(23:07):
sorts of exciting ways andcustomize it. And gender also
can be customized so much. Andthere's just and I think that's,
that's what it is, this is a thecombination of both cognition
(23:28):
like the body, mind, in general,and then the, the whole realm of
gender in particular, our fieldsof possibility and fields of
creative possibility. And I'mabout approaching them in a
spirit of creative play.
Alex Iantaffi (23:47):
I love that because also, you know, there's
all that possibility in theliminal space, too, right? Where
does one identity and the onethat one begin right away? My
oldest kid, and I talk a lotabout when dad's autism and and
where do you get to becomeconsidered neurotypical? And how
much of it as if you performaccording to capitalist values,
(24:11):
right? If you do well in school,and if you don't get into too
much social travel, then youknow, you couldn't possibly take
for example, right, and ifyou're a certain gender, and so
a lot of actually well, how wehad those borders is so linked
to what we believe is we shouldbe able to do should in
(24:33):
airports, right as humans inthis kind of capitalist society,
and I think that, in a way, thisneuro queerness paradigm
challenges that and so, I'mreally interested in how you see
this paradigm contributing tokind of this count, almost
counter this kind of rising, rerising, I should say, fascist
(24:54):
paradigms that we're seeingright like the gender critical
folks and mean that I think thata lot of people would agree
There is a rise of fascismglobally. Yes. You know, maybe
it's because I come from acountry that was highly impacted
by it. Yes. So yeah, I'm just Idon't know if I'm making sense.
But I'm curious about this ideaof in your awareness as kind of
(25:15):
this counter force to this kindof rising fascist paradigm,
Nick Walker (25:19):
I think very much.
So not that not that we can, youknow, counter fascism, just with
queering, you know, counteringfascism. underfoot, right? If
only unfortunately, counteringfascism takes really drastic
measures as we did in World WarTwo, you know, it really it
really has to be stood up to ina very direct way. But But yes,
(25:40):
it's very much I think, I thinkit very clearly is part of
something that's happened. And Ithink this neuro queer neuro
queer theory, and just sort ofthe increase, increasing
(26:00):
queerness, in in that we'reseeing in general people being
more open about the queerness,more openly transgender, in the
younger generations, especially.
All of this, the neurodiversitymovement, I think there's
(26:24):
something happening, there'ssomething happening, that is the
opposite end of the spectrumfrom fascism. And in a sense,
fascism is a reaction againstall of this. There. There were a
bunch, after, you know, afterWorld War Two, when World War
(26:49):
Two had a profound impact, ofcourse, on the field of
psychology, because peoplewanted to ask this question, you
know, how could people go alongwith it? How can people go along
with the Holocaust? And what isit that draws people to fascism?
And that's still, of course, ahighly relevant question. And so
(27:11):
there were a lot of, you know,psychologists got into that. And
one of the things that theorieshave developed was this idea of
the authoritarian personality.
And what are the traits of theauthoritarian personality? And
the biggest feature of theauthoritarian personality of you
know, people who were studyingit found was a fear of fear of
(27:33):
uncertainty. Yes, they werescared, they're driven by the
sphere of ambiguity. And so thisthis authoritarian personality,
likes to read reduce things, ittakes this reductionist
approach, how to reduce thingsand keep them simple. So we can
(27:54):
be clear about everything andnot have to deal with the, the
fear of ambiguity and theuncertainty that comes with it.
And so that include that ends upincluding a fear of cultural
diversity, because a lot of thefact that, you know, there's so
many people with differentcultures who have different ways
(28:15):
of doing things, and you know,what is never entirely certain,
you know, what's this? What isthis customer here? What does it
mean, when this person doesthis? What does that mean in
their culture, there's ambiguityand uncertainty around it. And
that there's just a constantuncertainty and ambiguity about
(28:38):
human difference and navigatingthat field. And therein lies the
opportunity for learning andcreativity and but the
authoritarian personalities,fears the ambiguity and
uncertainty that's necessary forlearning to happen. And that
really shows up around genderthat beta authoritarianism is a
(29:01):
universally associated withadherence to strict gender norms
and strict gender roles so thatthey can be certain exactly
which gender box everyone fitsinto, and how do you prove
what's the right way to performthis, who is supposed to be
attracted to who and they wantcertainty around it and are very
threatened by the uncertainty.
(29:26):
And my colleague, alpha AlfonsoMontori is one of my dear dear
friends and colleagues and waschair of my doctoral
dissertation committee. Montoridid some lovely work on the
authoritarian personality,contrasting it, seeing the the
(29:49):
it's it's the opposite end ofthe spectrum for the
authoritarian personalities, thecreative personality, and that
the creative personalityis a seeks ambiguity and
uncertainty because that liminalspace of uncertainty is where
creativity happens. And sohighly creative people and
cultural spaces tend to be moregender fluid and have you know,
(30:13):
more willing to blur andcrossing eliminate gender lines
and play with it. And you know,the creative personality
embraces cultural diversity anddifference in general as Oh,
this is an opportunity to tolearn, wow, this is exciting. I
have no idea what's going onhere. I don't understand this.
(30:36):
This culture I'm encountering atall, I don't understand this
person's gender at all, what anexciting opportunity to grow.
And it's the opposite reactionfrom the authoritarian reaction
of of, I must impose certainty,I must destroy this thing that
threatens my sense of certaintyin in house where everything
(30:56):
stands. So I think yeah, I mean,neurocrit theory is definitely
the far end, you know, fascismis the extreme end of the
authoritarian spectrum, we mustcrush anything that makes us
feel uncertain. And the, youknow, and hold on to these rigid
ideological certainties, evenwithout even examining them
(31:21):
rationally, because even thatopens up too much uncertainty.
And then the opposite, and Ithink is all you know, the neuro
queer stuff is the artrepresents the, the opposite end
of let's continually, like,identity and culture and such,
is all is all fluid and all hereto creatively experiment with an
(31:47):
explorer. And the differencesbetween us and the, you know,
this spectrum of human humandiversity is a continually a
place where we can learn andgrow and learn from each other
and borrow from each other. And,and even. I mean, the thing
(32:13):
about neuro queer theory, andwhere I'm going with it, in
terms of going to the oppositeextreme from the from fascism,
is if you look at most socialjustice work, it's about
accepting, you know, embracingdiversity, saying, you know,
(32:36):
that words, this cosmopolitanspirit of just let us, let us
embrace and accept humandiversity and, you know, stop
oppressing people for beingdifferent. And yea, there's lots
of difference among people. Ipushing it a little bit further,
(32:58):
saying, let's not only embracethe scope of human diversity,
let's expand it. Let's expandthe range of possible gender
expressions and possible modesof neurocognitive functioning
even more than it is like let's,let's not just accept weird
(33:19):
people. Let's How can we getweirder? How can we creatively
get weirder?
Alex Iantaffi (33:27):
And how much healing possibility is in there?
Right? I remember, in myadvanced module for somatic
experiencing, one of my teachersKathy Cain talked about, you can
tell when, you know, as we'rehealing from trauma, we embrace
our weird, right around theclass of folks during somatic
training for three years. Andyou know, those people on their
(33:48):
gym ball and most people likeunder a blanket and swaying on
the side, and I'm like, yes,absolutely. As you know, that
kind of flexibility of thenervous system that allows us to
listen to ourselves and go, Whatdo I need right now to be
present, to be engaged or for mybody to be comfortable, right?
It's like that expansion intopossibility of relationship with
(34:12):
yourself and with others andwith the world. And yeah,
there's just so much excitingpossibility. And it's it makes a
lot of sense for me that Fascismis kind of aligned with this
tutorial. Authoritarianauthoritarians, at least, that's
a really hard word with my nonEnglish as a first language, but
(34:32):
the end is still colonial.
Right? So it's about control,control of land control of
bodies, you know, control,control or control. That's that
and here, I'm hearing whathappens if we actually don't try
to control each other. Right,exactly, which is also kind of
abolitionist. It is. A lot ofcontrol over the chatter happens
(34:54):
through policing, right? Yes,there was I'm like a threat. It
was a public thread on Twitter.
So I don't feel that talkingabout it here. But like it was a
queer family, you know, thatencounter that really homophobic
man on this train. And the firstthing that people asked was, did
he get arrested? And why I getthat this dude was doing
(35:18):
something terrible screaming atthe Children's like, how is that
the solution long term? Like,right when policing is part of
the problem? Right. And so forme that I don't know, but the
more I think about this, and asI'm talking to you, I'm like,
Well, that's pretty abolitionisttoo. I don't know. Yeah. So I
don't know what you think aboutthat, or from just going off on
(35:40):
a tangent?
Nick Walker (35:41):
Oh, no, definitely.
I think I think it is. I thinkit definitely is. I mean,
there's you know, policing as aninstitution. I mean, it does, it
does enforce the status quo.
And, you know, I mean, it's, itwould be lovely, if it were
(36:02):
like, it was on, you know, copshows on television, where
police went unsolved crimes, butthat's not what policing
actually does. It's like, oh,this is, this is a threat to the
status quo, this is a threat towhatever our normal is, and the
normal, if a normal is socioeconomic injustice, or the
normal is, everybody walks andpublicly behaves in a certain
(36:26):
normative fashion, then thepolice become a threat to, you
know, anyone who wants to beoutside of those boxes. So yeah,
I mean, I think I'm very muchyou know, about liberation in,
in a very non abstract, youknow, concrete way, because,
(36:49):
like you, you know, and I mustsomatics person, so as we all
should be because we all ourbodies, so I'm so, so, so, so to
me, you know, neuro Korean isvery much an embodied process.
And when I talk about, you know,breaking out of the boxes of
neuro normativity andheteronormativity, it's very
(37:13):
much an embodied process, youknow, that, that gender is an
embodied performance and, andneuro normativity is an embodied
performance and queering issomething that is done bodily,
bodily acts of bodilyexpression, and who, how we
embody ourselves in the world.
(37:38):
And I think that, you know,institutions like policing in
prisons, you know, they theyimprison and regiment bodies.
And so, you know, I think thatnecessarily there's an, there's
an abolitionism, you know, andthat that applies, I think, also
just to you know, I meanstructures of capitalism, where
(38:02):
so many people are forced to,you know, forced to labor in
dehumanizing repetitive jobs,just to avoid starving. You
know, that that is, that's acoercive system, you know,
Captain policed by policing andthat not only, you know, I think
(38:26):
there's so yeah, there's all ofthese, all of these drives, of
course, colonialism in a bigway, you know, is about imposing
colonial you know, imposing thecolonizers norms on the bodies.
Really, you really is reallycoming into sharp focus in the
US history with the Indianschools, right. You know,
(38:49):
indigenous American childrenwere separated from, you know,
separated from their nativeculture and had really the
colonizers ways of moving andembodiment posts on them, it was
very much a disciplining ofbodies. And so, so yeah, all I
(39:12):
think this necessarily, youknow, to speak of neuro queering
as a good thing, it's aliberating thing we say
liberated, liberated from whatyou know, and it's, it
necessarily involves aliberation from policing or
liberation from prisons orliberation from structures of
(39:33):
forced labor and imposedpoverty, liberation from
colonialism. So yeah, all ofthose things, you know, because
similarly, you know, I thinkthat I've really focused my
work, just coming from my ownexperience being autistic and
(39:55):
trans and queer. So I've tendedto focus on to gender and how,
you know, the normativity thatthe neuro normativity that's
imposed on autistic children andother neurodivergent children is
a heteronormativity. But ofcourse, it's also, you know,
(40:17):
colonialist, it's also a whitewoman tivity you know, you put
up a black autistic child andbehavior therapy, the
behaviorist is not is, isteaching them, you know, when
they havior says, I'm going toteach your child to act like a
normal child, they mean aheteronormative child and also a
(40:37):
white heteronormative child,that there's a there's
absolutely so implicit culturalvalues of normativity that are
insidiously in the dominantculture. And I sort of I leave
that for, you know, people ofcolor to write about the
increasingly that's, that'shappening, and we're hearing
more, you know, from from nonautistic, from, from from, from
(41:01):
non white autistic people abouttheir experiences and how, you
know, the the neuro normativityand racist and colonial
colonialist structuresintersect. So, yeah, I think
thatall of these different axes of
imposed normativity ultimately,interconnect and liberation, you
(41:25):
know, it comes back to, youknow, Martin Martin Luther
King'ssaying, you know, injustice
everywhere is injustice anywhereis a threat to justice
everywhere, it just anywhere,like it's fine, there's one, one
group or one person isoppressed, no one is really
(41:45):
free, because all of thesesystems do intersect. And so
there's this, there's this.
Like, okay, I'm gonna make asmuch space in my own life
individually to liberate myselfas possible. But in the process,
I'm also looking at, you know,how can we spread that
(42:05):
liberation around two? How canwe like, okay, there's people
who are, you know, there'speople who if they queer
themselves as visibly as as, asyou and I are in positions where
they're going to be shot for it.
And so, how do we change that aswell? And so, it's almost like,
I don't even see because, youknow, I'm really just, you know,
(42:29):
largely, you know, a somaticpsychologist and queer theorists
and just into playing with thisstuff creatively. I don't, I
don't think of my work as socialjustice work necessarily. At the
same time, I see that when I putmy writing out there, it gets
(42:51):
brought into social justice workand liberation work. And that's,
you know, that's, that's what Ihope for that, okay. We, on the
one hand, it's like, what arewhat are the extremes of freedom
that we can explore? And thenthere's, how can we? How can we
make this more and moreavailable to everyone?
Alex Iantaffi (43:16):
Exactly. And that's what I love about your
work as well, that it's not justkind of individualized by in
rugged individualist, individualfreedom, right? It's the
paradigm and there cannot bethat kind of neuro queer
creativity and expansion withoutcollective change. Right?
Because and that's, I love that.
I feel like, again, I'm havinglike, fats pop all over the
(43:41):
place. But as you were talking,there's so many connection, you
know, as you were saying that,you know, when therapists or
educators work with autistickids, right, they're imposing as
this era normative whitestandards, right? Child,
regardless about theirracialized or their gendered,
right, like Rasma mannequinswork that taught in my
(44:03):
grandmother's hands, talkingabout the white bodies, the
standard, you know, in a waythat I love that there's so much
work coming out of somaticapproaches, that really is about
this weaving of expansiveness asI see it, right? Like, how can
we really heal from all thiscontracting of colonialism,
(44:25):
racism, all the systems and comeinto this place of spaciousness,
expansiveness, cultural change,so that the world is safer for
as many people as possible,right?
Nick Walker (44:41):
Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi (44:42):
So exciting.
about this for a long time, butI want to be respectful of your
time. And plush. One question Ialways ask at the end is, is
there anything we haven't talkedabout that you would love to
share with the gender storieslisteners?
Nick Walker (44:59):
Oh, that's how A Wonderful question to ask. I.
Alex Iantaffi (45:08):
And I'm sorry, I always put people on the spot
for this one. So I love it.
Nick Walker (45:13):
I love it. I would say I would say a couple of
things. One is, you know, we'vetalked here a little bit about
(45:34):
policing as an institution andsuch. But I think one thing that
I one thing that I talked aboutin my book, too, is this idea.
Not just about, you know, theoppressive nature of policing as
a social institution, but alsothat we shouldn't police each
other. Yes. And I think that'simportant that when I see people
(45:56):
policing each other's identitiesa lot, and I, including, you
know, I put the term neuro queerout into the world. And people
started claiming it as anidentity label and then trying
to tell other people, theycouldn't use them as an identity
label. Like, no, no, you'remissing the point here. And so
that authoritarian impulse cancome up and everyone in the
(46:18):
sense of people often wanting tostay alienated, you know, that
sometimes identity politicscauses people to say, Okay,
well, this is, this is ourgroup, and that's your group and
don't cross the line between us.
And I think that that's, that'sjust more policing and more of
the authoritarian impulse tocertainty. And I'm really on
(46:42):
about blurring those lines andsaying, No, anyone can engage in
neuro queering. Let's, let's,let's get rid of normativity.
Let's, let's get rid of, youknow, neurotypical reality is,
is not a state that people areborn in, and it's something that
(47:03):
we can eliminate, nobody has tobe normal. Let's eliminate the
whole the whole idea and youknow, just recognize it as such
a social construct that we candiverge from freely. And so I
think that the authoritarianimpulse comes up even in people
(47:28):
doing social justice, where acomes up around identity
politics, I see people.
More mistake, hybridity forcultural appropriation, for
instance. So, you know, the ideaof cultural appropriation
(47:51):
originally as a concept waslike, Oh, well, you know, don't,
don't, you know, don't, don'trip off the cultures, oppress
and colonize people and make abuck off them. And that's,
that's good. But it's gotten tothe point where I see people say
that, you know, any sort ofcreative cultural hybridity
(48:13):
becomes a culturalappropriation, like everybody
has to stay within their ownlittle cultural boundaries, but
historically, called thecultural hybridity. And the way
that cultures influence andlearn from each other and pick
things up from each other is ahuge source of creativity, it
has given us most of the world'syou know, great music and
cuisine and sciences. It's alland so I think it's important to
(48:40):
recognize, you know, there's tolook at the the non oppressive
ways that people can blur thelines and pick things up from
each other and hybridize andcollectively and individually
(49:00):
mutate. And so that's, yeah,that's one thing that I would
emphasize is just avoiding thatauthoritarian impulse or the,
the, the identity politics thatmakes anybody get into into an
enemy. And I think that's that'sone thing and the other thing
(49:31):
that I would bring into thisconversation here is creative
work. Just you know, I mean, Ithink that I like gender as a
creative Canvas, you know, andthe mind you know,
neuroplasticity means the brainitself is something that is, we
(49:52):
can, we can sculpt and playwith. But also, so much The I
prefer reading fiction andcomics to writing nonfiction,
it's more fun. But so much ofthe work that I see is very
(50:14):
neuro queer is happening in therealm of fiction. And so I
really I really love that Ireally hope that people will
look at you know, the, thewriting I do, you know, the
fiction writing, I do the comicswriting I do and the writing
(50:35):
being done by other people, youknow, we have, I'm involved in
the annual spoon knifeanthology, which is a neuro
queer, multi genre litanthology, and sort of a way to
get introduced to a lot ofauthors who are playing in that
territory, there's just somelovely, wonderfully queer thing
(50:58):
that's happening in, in therealm of fiction and
storytelling that I think it's,it's easy to overlook, it's easy
to get caught up in all thethings that are wrong and and or
focus on the the mainstream,sort of the sameness. Oh, got
(51:23):
another, another TV show withthe same stereotypes and all,
but there is so much wildlyqueer, creative work happening,
that. And even though the worldis imperfect, still, and even
though there's oppressioneverywhere, in a sense, not only
(51:44):
are we still allowed to enjoyourselves, and enjoy a good
book, and enjoy the picture andbe creative, but also, we need
to we need to remind ourselveswhat we're working for, and not
make our entire lives aboutfighting against something, but
also what, what positive thingsare we creating, and that really
(52:05):
involves keeping the creativeimagination alive. So I think I
want to close with that.
Alex Iantaffi (52:11):
That is so beautiful. I love that because I
actually find fiction and evenTV and sound so rejuvenating.
Yeah, and I think there is somuch you know, when I was a
teenager, Alex and Flashdancewas the clearest character there
was. Because she was a dancerand a welder, right? And I was
like, look at that challengingof gender stereotypes. And now
(52:34):
you know, my oldest kid can belike, yeah, if it if it's not
clear, then want to watch it. Ordon't because there's so much
out there. So yes, I love endingon that note of creativity. And
also just hope, right? Thatcreativity, there is hope it's
so it's kind of hard to hold onto hope sometimes in this moment
(52:55):
in this in this times. And so Ilove that. Thank you so much.
This was so wonderful. I feellike we haven't even talked
about all the other things youdo. You know, this is a tiny
piece of work usually important,but just one part of who you
are. So thank you for coming onto the show. Wish we had more
time to talk about all the otherthings you do and for your
(53:18):
listeners. If you do want tofind out all the wonderful
things that Nick does, you canfind links to all of our work in
the episode summary and so goexplore all the links for read
the webcomic buy the book, ofcourse. NeuroCare Harris's in
thank you so much for listening,and I hope that you will play
with your own kind of neurolandscape and your own gender,
(53:42):
landscape and keep creating.
Until next time
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