• she/her

Principal engineer at Mercury. I've authored the Dhall configuration language, the Haskell for all blog, and countless packages and keynote presentations.

I'm a midwife to the hidden beauty in everything.

💖 @wiredaemon


discord
Gabriella439
discord server
discord.gg/XS5ZDZ8nnp
location
bay area
private page
cohost.org/newmoon

i'm not a fan of gatekeeping labels because a lot of people don't neatly fall into one category or another one

For example, for many types of neurodivergence I've always felt like I exist somewhere in the middle between neurotypical and neurodivergent1. Like, when I listen to and observe neurodivergent people I sometimes relate to them but not completely and, vice versa, when I listen to and observe neurotypical people I also sometimes relate to them but also not completely. Along each axis I have some behaviors and qualities that make me very well-adjusted in normal society and some behaviors that make me very queer and … uh … unpalatable to normies.

One example of this is that one of my friends once commented that I was the "most cis trans person" that they knew, because I was more well-adjusted than most trans women they knew2. Like, for a lot of people (like my friend) they seem to subscribe to this binary belief that you're either overtly queer or you're a cishet neurotypical normie and they don't hold space for people like me who live somewhere in the middle who aren't as legible to them.

This is one of the reasons that I'm a big proponent of self ID for basically everything (including gender and neurodivergence) because I don't think it's helpful to police the boundary between various categories and there's a lot to gain by letting people peacefully inhabit that grey area that can't be easily labeled or categorized.


  1. You could argue that somewhere in the middle is itself neurodivergent but I think it's safe to say that for many things I pretty commonly fall in the grey area that most gatekeepers would police.

  2. I think this was kind of a problematic comment and I neither agree with it nor endorse it, but I let it slide and I'm just using it as an illustrative example.


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in reply to @fullmoon's post:

makes complete sense since iirc neurodiversity is Literally considered a spectrum (or at least autism is, but i wouldn't be surprised if this applied to ND in general)

also wut to that friend, neurotypical trans people exist im pretty sure xwx they're the straight ones (KIDDING I'M KIDDING)

personally, i understand neurodivergence as referring to whatever is outside of what society considers “normal” brain operation. the thing is that “normal” is a teeny tiny region inside the absolutely massive space of all possible brain behaviors. i don’t think anyone ever is going to relate to all of neurodivergent people, there’s just too much diversity there. while it is most often used to refer to people who have autism and or adhd, neurodivergence encompasses people who hallucinate, have ocd, bpd, or are plural, etc.

VERY relatable

for example talking to people with diagnosed ADHD about how I sometimes just "can't even" do any work and sometimes get the obsession that gets me to hours and hours of uninterrupted flow state work, about how the paralysis is worse with tasks assigned by others but internal motivation gets me to accomplish big things, how I only got by in formal education by already knowing my subjects of interest super well and (often due to that) the profs letting it slide with others, … I've been told that "yep you have ADHD you dummy" but at the same time I do NOT relate at all to any of the forgetfulness kind of stuff, I have no problems organizing my daily life, it all just works fine.