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The word neuroqueer might feel unfamiliar, but at its core, it offers a powerful invitation: to think differently about difference. It brings together two worlds, neurodiversity and queerness, and shines a light on the similar pressures both face.
When I first came across the word, I assumed it was just another label. But the more I read, the more I realised it names something I’ve been living all my life. That sense of being told to tone down, to hide, to conform.
Neurodivergent people often learn to mask their differences, and I know I felt enormous pressure to do the same. Queer people frequently experience the same, and I, too, did, under a pressure I would now describe as traumatic. Both groups encounter systems that pathologise, exclude, or demand assimilation.
Neuroqueer thinking pushes back. It says: our ways of being are not broken. They don’t need fixing. They are rich, creative, and necessary for building a more inclusive society.
Neuroqueer thinking draws on several traditions:
Queer theory: which questions rigid binaries around gender and sexuality.
Crip theory: which challenges the idea that there is one “normal” body.
Mad studies: which resists the over-medicalisation of distress and difference.
In my own experience of ADHD and queer identity, I’ve experienced the restriction of societal judgement, in my case, quite simply, being told that I didn't belong. Those same judgements show up around gender and sexuality, too, policing what is acceptable.
Taken together, these approaches remind us that ideas of “normal” are socially constructed and often used to exclude. Neuroqueer asks us to notice those patterns, and to imagine different possibilities.
For some, neuroqueer is a personal identity, proudly embracing both queer and neurodivergent selves. For others, it is more of a political stance, a refusal to be “fixed” or forced to assimilate. Either way, it invites us to see difference not as deficit, but as potential.
For me, neuroqueer isn’t an abstract idea. It shapes how I think about social care, workplaces, and society more broadly. If we only focus on making people fit in, we lose the chance to redesign environments that truly include.
Neuroqueer thinking isn’t just about language or labels. It is about reshaping spaces, relationships, and expectations so that people can belong as they are, not as others want them to be.
So what does it mean to bring neuroqueer thinking into our workplaces, communities, or services? A few starting points might be:
Designing workplaces where communication styles are flexible, written, spoken, or visual.
Creating community spaces where sensory needs are honoured, not treated as an afterthought.
Listening to lived experience, and valuing it as expertise.
Moving away from compliance and box ticking, towards genuine cultures of belonging.
I think of Pride events where quiet, sensory-friendly rooms have been provided, and how that simple change allows autistic and neurodivergent queer people to participate fully. Small adjustments like that send a clear message: you belong.
These are not small changes. They ask us to shift from “helping people fit in” towards reshaping environments so that everyone can flourish.
We are living in a time when difference is not just questioned but attacked. The global lurch to the right brings with it a ruthless agenda: to erase diversity, flatten identity, and strip away the freedoms that let us live fully as ourselves. Perhaps most disturbing is that the enforcers of these norms are often the very people who should be embracing difference.
As someone who has often been told I am too much, or not enough, that I break rules, that I need to conform, neuroqueer thinking feels freeing. It reminds me that my way of being isn’t a mistake, and that difference, far from being a burden, can be the very thing that transforms how we live together.
As we step into the future of social care, workplaces, and communities, this vision feels not only hopeful but essential. It asks us to move beyond boxes and into belonging, together.
