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Picture this.

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You walk into a job interview, you've prepared for weeks.

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Your credentials are impeccable, your portfolio speaks for itself.

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The interviewer extends their hand.

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You shake it, they gesture to a chair and you sit, and then they glance at your resume.

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In all of this, seven seconds have passed.

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In those seven seconds before you've answered a single question, before you've demonstrated any competence, before you've said anything of substance, they've made a judgment about you, not about your qualifications, not about your ideas, but about whether they like you or not.

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And here's what you don't know.

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This judgment is so robust, so resistant to change that everything you say afterward will be filtered through it.

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If that initial verdict is negative, you've already lost.

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Now, what if I told you that this isn't speculation?

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What if I told you?

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That researchers have measured this phenomenon, quantified it, and documented it with scientific precision.

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And what if I told you that if you're neurodivergent autistic, A DHD gifted or any combination, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you in that seven second window.

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I'm Anita, and this is Neuro Rebel.

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And today we're talking about neurotypical bias, why it happens and how we can change it.

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We One person at a time.

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today's episode is a little longer than my usual one, but I promise you it's worth it.

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Stick with me.

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Let's go explore why this happens and why it's more fascinating than you think.

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Welcome to Neuro Rebel, the bilingual podcast where we dismantle ableist systems, challenge neurotypical assumptions, and explore what it really means to be neurodivergent in a world built for neurotypical brains.

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If you're new here, welcome to a space where we don't sugarcoat, we don't simplify, and we definitely do not romanticize Neurodivergence.

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We're here for the late diagnosed, the self-diagnosed, the questioning, the exhausted, the misunderstood, and everyone who's ever felt like they're operating on a different frequency than the rest of the world.

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I'm autistic gifted, a retired law professor, a Fulbright scholar, and your fellow traveler on this journey toward collective liberation.

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Every episode is recorded in both English and Spanish because extraordinary minds are not constrained by borders or languages.

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Today's episode is going to be uncomfortable.

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We're talking about something most people don't want to acknowledge.

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The measurable, documented contempt that neurotypical people hold toward neurodivergent people, and how understanding the mechanism of that prejudice is the first step toward dismantling it.

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Let me tell you about a research study that changed how I understand every awkward social interaction I have ever had.

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In 2021, a team of researchers at the University of Nottingham did something simple but devastating.

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They showed neurotypical adults short video clips, averaging just over seven seconds of young men reacting naturally to everyday social situations.

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A researcher telling them a joke, giving them a compliment, and then keeping them waiting.

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Just normal human moments, brief glimpses of people just being people.

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Then they asked the neurotypical observers one question, do you like or dislike this person?

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That's it a binary choice, yes or no, like or dislike.

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Here's what the perceivers didn't know.

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Half of the people in those videos were autistic and half were neurotypical.

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The two groups were matched for age matched for context, and the only variable was neurotype.

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The results neurotypical.

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Perceivers were significantly more likely to judge that they disliked autistic targets and not rated them slightly lower on a scale or not had mild reservations.

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Actively disliked active negative judgment in seven seconds based on nothing but observable behavior in mundane social moments.

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and here's the part that should disturb everyone listening.

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The perceivers had no idea.

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Anyone in the videos was autistic.

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They weren't told, they weren't primed, they were just reacting, blindly, reacting.

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When I first read the study, I had to close my laptop and walk away because suddenly every single interaction I'd ever had made sense.

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The job interviewer who seemed uncomfortable before I'd set three sentences, and the colleague who avoided me at the coffee machine, or the acquaintance who said, we should get together sometime with a smile, but never really reached their eyes.

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I thought I was imagining it.

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I thought I was paranoid.

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I thought I was too sensitive.

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Turns out I was accurately perceiving documented bias.

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So what is happening in those seven seconds?

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What are neurotypical people reacting to?

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And the research gave it a name, and it's called Thin Slice Judgments, or TSJ for short.

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Think of it as your brain taking a photograph and instantly deciding, huh?

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Friend or foe.

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Safe or threat in group or outgroup.

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We all do this.

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It's evolved cognitive machinery for rapid social assessment.

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The problem isn't that it exists.

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The problem is what it's assessing and who it targets.

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Neurotypical.

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Perceivers are making rapid judgements based on posture, atypical gestures, facial expressions, patterns of movement, and vocal prosy.

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They're reacting to style, not substance.

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They're reacting to how someone moves through space and not who they are as a person.

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And here's the devastating part.

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Previous research found that when the audio visual cues were removed, when only the content of what autistic people said was represented when it was stripped of all non-verbal information, the negative judgments disappeared.

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This means neurotypical people aren't reacting to anything that is inherently wrong or deficient about autistic people.

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They are reacting to difference itself to an unfamiliar communication style to movements and expressions that don't match their neurotypical template.

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Now, here's what's crucial.

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These thin slice judgements don't operate identically across all forms of neurodivergence.

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Though the underlying mechanism is still the same when neurotypical people encounter autistic individuals, they are reacting primarily to atypical nonverbal communication.

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The rhythm of the eye contact, the facial expressions, and the body language.

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however, when they encounter people with A DHD, they're often reacting to movement patterns, the fidgeting, the interrupting, and the high energy that neurotypical people code as disruptive rather than differently regulated.

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And with giftedness, the bias is conceptual.

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Before it's even behavioral research shows peers form negative judgments.

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When they learn someone is gifted before any interaction occurs, the label itself triggers anxiety about hierarchy and difference, different presentations, same mechanisms.

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Rapid negative judgment based on deviation from neurotypical norms.

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So you might be thinking, okay, so first impressions can be harsh, but surely once people get to know neurodivergent individuals, those initial judgments change right wrong.

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The research shows that these thin slice judgements are highly robust.

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They don't generally change with increased exposure.

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Let me say that again because this is crucial.

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Neurotypical people form lasting negative assessments of autistic people within seconds, and those assessments remain stable even after getting to know them.

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this is the invisible wall neurodivergent people run into every day.

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The judgment happens before meaningful interaction can even occur.

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It acts as a gatekeeper ensuring that the positive contact necessary to challenge prejudice is preemptively blocked.

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You don't get the job, so you can't demonstrate your competence, and you're not invited to the social gathering.

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So you can't show your personality and you're excluded from the group project.

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So you can't prove your collaborative abilities.

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The judgment prevents the very experiences that could contradict the judgment.

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And here's what kills me, neurotypical people don't even realize they're doing this.

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It feels like instinct to them.

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It feels like accurate perception.

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They experience the discomfort of intergroup anxiety, the stress that comes from interacting with someone whose communication style differs from their own.

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And they interpret that discomfort as evidence that something is wrong with a neurodivergent person, not with their own limited cognitive flexibility.

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Mind you.

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And not with their own failure to bridge neurological difference.

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No.

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The problem must be us, but it gets even more twisted because when the researchers asked neurotypical procedures why they disliked autistic targets.

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The answers revealed something profound about projection, prejudice, and the cruelest irony in neurodiversity research so what did these neurotypical perceivers say to justify why they disliked autistic targets?

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Remember?

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They didn't know these people were autistic, but they cited specific reasons.

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And what were those reasons?

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Well, the most common were first perceived awkwardness.

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Second, not wanting to talk to the person.

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And notably fourth on the list is the target's perceived lack of empathy.

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just sit with that for a moment.

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Neurotypical people who have just demonstrated a profound failure to accurately perceive autistic people who have just formed instant negative judgments based purely on superficial style differences, and who have just engaged in documented prejudice, accused autistic people of lacking empathy.

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For decades.

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Decades, autistic people have been told we lack.

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It's even in the diagnostic criteria, it's in the public imagination.

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It's this stereotype that won't die.

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Sheldon Cooper Rainman, the brilliant but emotionally cold savant.

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The person who can't read emotions can't connect and can't care, and here's what neurotypical people have done with that narrative.

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They have weaponized it.

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They use it to justify excluding us from social groups.

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They use it to dismiss our testimony about our own experiences, and they use it to explain away their discomfort with us as somehow it's our fault.

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But what if the empathy narrative is backwards?

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What if the neurotypical people have been projecting their own empathy failures onto us?

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And what if the research shows exactly that?

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There's a concept in autism research called the Double Empathy Problem.

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It was proposed by autistic scholar Damien Milton, and it is one of those ideas that once you understand it, you can't unsee it.

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I've talked about his scholarship before in previous episodes.

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The traditional view of autism suggests autistic people have a one-sided deficit, and that is that we struggle to understand neurotypical people.

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While neurotypical people have no trouble understanding each other, the double empathy problem says, you know what?

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Not so fast.

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What if empathy breakdowns in cross neurotype interactions go both ways.

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What if neurotypical people struggle just as much to understand autistic people as autistic?

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People struggle to understand neurotypical people.

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What if the deficit isn't in either group individually, but in the interface between neurological styles?

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And what if the research proves this?

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Because it does US studies measuring empathic accuracy.

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That is the ability to correctly identify what someone else is feeling.

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Show that neurotypical participants have significantly lower accuracy scores when trying to understand autistic people's emotions compared to understanding other neurotypical people's emotions.

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They literally cannot read us correctly.

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But here's the twist.

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When autistic people communicate with other autistic people, empathy flows naturally.

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Communication is reciprocal, and understanding is mutual.

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The breakdown happens specifically in mixed neurotype interactions.

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It's not just autistic people who get accused of lacking empathy research shows adults with A DHD are perceived as caring less about others' problems, which is another projection of neurotypical misunderstanding onto neurodivergent people.

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The pattern repeats itself.

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The majority struggles to understand the minority, but then blames the minority for that communication breakdown.

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So let me trace the logic here because this is where it gets infuriating.

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Neurotypical people struggle to accurately read autistic emotional expressions because they struggle.

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They experience confusion and discomfort, and they interpret that confusion as evidence that we are emotionally flat.

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Awkward, and here's the key phrase, lacking empathy.

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Then they use that misperception to justify instant dislike and social exclusion.

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And then they pinpoint to our social isolation as further evidence that we have social deficits.

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Do you see what's happening here?

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Neurotypical people's failure to understand us becomes reframed as our failure to be understandable.

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Their discomfort with difference becomes evidence of our deficiency.

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Their empathy failure becomes proof of ours.

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This is what philosophers call epistemic violence when your testimony about your own experience is systematically discounted because the dominant group cannot or will not understand you on your own terms.

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Now, let's talk about the other major justification neurotypical people gave for disliking autistic targets, and it was awkwardness.

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And I want to ask you a question that I think is actually kind of profound.

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Why does awkwardness matter so much?

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Think about it.

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When neurotypical perceivers decided whether they liked or disliked someone, they ranked awkwardness as more important than trustworthiness.

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Let that sink in.

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Neurotypical people considered whether someone was socially smooth, more important than whether they were trustworthy when deciding if they liked them, you could be a liar, a cheat, fundamentally untrustworthy.

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But if you're socially graceful, you're likable.

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You could be honest, brilliant, kind, but if you're awkward, you are disliked.

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I think this reveals something deeply uncomfortable about neurotypical social hierarchies.

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Awkwardness is threatening, not because it causes harm, but because it reveals the artifice of social performance.

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When someone doesn't follow the unwritten rules, doesn't maintain the expected eye contact rhythm, doesn't mirror body language and doesn't produce the anticipated vocal prosy.

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It disrupts the smooth functioning of neurotypical social scripts and that disruption creates anxiety.

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but here's what's crucial.

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That anxiety belongs to the neurotypical perceiver.

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It is their discomfort with unpredictability and their rigidity around social norms and their need for conformity.

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But the system we live in, a system that is designed by and for neurotypical people, reframes that discomfort as the neurodivergent person's problem.

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We are told to fix ourselves, mask ourselves, and contort ourselves into neurotypical shapes instead of the majority being asked to expand their tolerance for difference.

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And when we can't maintain that mask 24 7, because it's exhausting, because it's traumatic, because it's literally physically impossible, because we end up in a burnout and a collapse, we are blamed for the discomfort we cause.

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But what if?

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What if neurodivergent communities have a completely different relationship with awkwardness?

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Research by autistic scholar Brett Heman suggests that some autistic people actually view awkwardness positively as authenticity, as honesty, as freedom from oppressive social performance.

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So when autistic people interact with other autistic people, what neurotypical observers might code as awkward.

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That same behavior is experienced by the participants in the autistic group as genuine.

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So whose standards are we using here, and why is one group's comfort with ambiguity pathologized, while another group's anxiety about it becomes the enforced norm.

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Okay, so we've established that neurotypical people form instant negative judgments about neurodivergent people, that these judgments are based on style rather than substance, and that they justify these judgments with projections about empathy and anxiety about awkwardness.

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But here's the question that should haunt everyone listening.

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How does a split second cognitive bias become a lifetime of systematic exclusion?

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How does a seven second judgment scale into structural oppression?

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Because it does, and understanding that mechanism is crucial.

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individual prejudice is bad enough.

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But what makes neurotypical bias against neurodivergent people so pernicious is that it operates across multiple levels simultaneously, each level reinforcing the others, creating a self-sustaining system.

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Let me show you how this works.

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The foundation is neuron normative ideology and institutional power.

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At the base, we have two intertwined elements.

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The cultural belief that neurotypical ways of thinkings are correct and the formal systems that encode that belief.

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This ideology has historical roots in the late 18 hundreds.

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Statistician, Francis Galton.

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Yes.

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The eugenics guy applied statistical methods to human characteristics and created the concept of norming.

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If you fell outside the statistical norm, you were by definition, abnormal, deviant, and undesirable that conceptual move.

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Treating statistical rarity as inherent inferiority laid the groundwork for over a century of pathologizing difference, and that ideology gets encoded into formal systems, the medical model of disability.

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Diagnostic manuals that frame autism and A DHD as disorders, deficits and dysfunctions that comes from that ideology.

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Genetic research focused on prevention and cure rather than support and accommodations that comes from that ideology.

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Educational systems designed for neurotypical learning styles and workplaces that require neurotypical social performance or healthcare that prioritizes making neurodivergent people less different rather than supporting neurodivergent.

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Flourishing comes from that ideology.

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Every institution reinforces the message.

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You are the problem and you need to change.

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And what is the mechanism?

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Well, cognitive bias and social hierarchy.

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This is where thin sliced judgments live.

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Neurotypical people shaped by neuron normative ideology and institutional messaging develop rapid pattern recognition that codes neurodivergent behavior as wrong.

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And because these judgements happen in seconds before conscious reflection, before meaningful interaction, they function as gatekeepers.

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The bias prevents the very contact that could challenge that bias.

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Simultaneously.

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We see here social dominance theory at work.

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Societies create and maintain hierarchies where dominant groups control resources and privilege.

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Neurotypical people engage in what's called in-group favoritism.

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They preferentially allocate trust, likability, and opportunity to other neurotypical people, and they experience what's called intergroup anxiety.

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When encountering neurodivergent people and the stress that comes from unpredictable social interaction, that anxiety gets managed through avoidance.

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So they just don't engage.

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They don't hire us.

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They don't befriend us, and they don't invite us, and then they tell themselves it's because we are awkward or lack empathy and not because they are anxious and and flexible.

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And what is the outcome?

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Well, there's the structural exclusion.

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All of this culminates in what philosophers call epistemic injustice, systemic devaluation of neurodivergent people as knowers and testifiers of their own experiences In legal settings, autistic defendants get longer sentences because their neurotype emotional expressions are misread as a lack of remorse.

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In healthcare, autistic patients experience what researchers call the triple empathy problem.

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Clinicians don't understand them, they don't believe them, and they don't trust their self reports.

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And this leads to medical neglect, misdiagnosis and trauma.

00:28:21.851 --> 00:28:30.971
And in employment context, neurodivergent candidates are filtered out in interviews before they can even demonstrate their competence.

00:28:31.346 --> 00:28:49.461
And teachers form lower expectations of A DHD students based on diagnostic labels alone and not actual performance and gifted students deliberately underachieve to avoid peer rejection.

00:28:50.601 --> 00:28:59.570
The bias operates preemptively across every domain of life for every form of neurodivergence.

00:29:04.431 --> 00:29:08.570
Now, here's what makes the system so resistant to change.

00:29:09.201 --> 00:29:14.570
It's because each layer reinforces every other layer.

00:29:15.121 --> 00:29:17.101
There is a feedback loop.

00:29:17.672 --> 00:29:21.001
The ideology justifies the institution.

00:29:21.571 --> 00:29:31.021
The institutions create practices that reinforce cognitive biases, and these cognitive biases produce social hierarchies.

00:29:31.352 --> 00:29:49.082
The social hierarchies, in turn generate structural consequences and those structural consequences, unemployment, isolation, criminalization, get pointed to as evidence that the original ideology was correct.

00:29:53.672 --> 00:29:56.041
Can you see the circularity here?

00:29:56.602 --> 00:30:01.372
The system says neurodivergent people have poor outcomes.

00:30:01.662 --> 00:30:06.672
They are less successful, and that proves they have deficits.

00:30:08.038 --> 00:30:15.838
Except what you won't find is an explanation that the outcomes are produced by the system itself.

00:30:16.057 --> 00:30:33.817
If thin slice judgments prevent you from getting hired, and then unemployment is used as evidence that you lack work skills, or if social exclusion produced by neurotypical anxiety is reframed as evidence that you're socially deficient.

00:30:34.178 --> 00:30:45.488
And if your testimony about your own experience is systematically discounted, and then that's silencing is used as evidence that you cannot communicate.

00:30:46.238 --> 00:30:53.446
You're not in a meritocracy, you're in a cage, and the cage is invisible to the people who built it.

00:30:56.835 --> 00:31:08.775
So here we are trapped in a self-sustaining system of bias that operates faster than consciousness in scales from individual judgment to institutional oppression.

00:31:09.375 --> 00:31:13.605
And so the question becomes, can this system be dismantled?

00:31:14.144 --> 00:31:15.585
And if so, how?

00:31:15.945 --> 00:31:19.215
Because here's the thing about conceptual strongholds.

00:31:19.726 --> 00:31:29.296
These deeply embedded ideological systems that define marginalized groups as inherently inferior, they have been defeated before.

00:31:29.986 --> 00:31:37.423
And when we study how they were defeated, we find patterns, blueprints, and mechanisms that work.

00:31:37.913 --> 00:31:48.083
Let me give you three examples from history, three times where marginalized communities successfully destroyed the conceptual frameworks that oppressed them.

00:31:48.653 --> 00:31:54.863
And I'm going to show you not just what changed, but who made it change.

00:31:58.094 --> 00:32:02.286
Example one, the de medicalization of homosexuality.

00:32:03.516 --> 00:32:14.641
In 1952, the first diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders classified homosexuality as a sociopathic personality disturbance.

00:32:15.433 --> 00:32:19.568
By 1968, it was sexual deviation.

00:32:19.976 --> 00:32:30.776
Psychiatry had the institutional authority to define who was sick and who was well, and they used that authority to pathologize an entire group.

00:32:32.631 --> 00:32:35.438
But activists didn't accept that framing.

00:32:36.008 --> 00:32:36.847
They protested.

00:32:36.847 --> 00:32:42.097
They disrupted a PA conferences, they forced confrontation.

00:32:42.847 --> 00:32:50.117
In 1973, the A PA voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM.

00:32:53.428 --> 00:32:56.281
That vote didn't happen in an empty room.

00:32:56.669 --> 00:33:06.959
It happened because activists like Barbara Giddings stood at the microphone and said, we are the experts on our own lives.

00:33:07.663 --> 00:33:09.134
It happened because Dr.

00:33:09.134 --> 00:33:17.413
Judd Marmer, a psychoanalyst stood before his peers and said, our theory is wrong.

00:33:17.894 --> 00:33:31.638
The evidence contradicts us, and we must change one conceptual shift, centuries of medicalization overturned.

00:33:31.977 --> 00:33:34.257
Now, it wasn't that simple.

00:33:34.737 --> 00:33:49.257
The concept morphed because ego dystonic homosexuality tried to survive by reframing the problem as distress about orientation rather than orientation itself.

00:33:49.856 --> 00:33:52.916
But by 1987 even that was gone.

00:33:53.517 --> 00:33:57.176
The conceptual stronghold was defeated.

00:33:57.830 --> 00:33:59.330
And what is the lesson here?

00:33:59.840 --> 00:34:15.721
When a concept is enshrined in an authoritative manual defeating, it requires forcing that authority to reverse its position through a combination of external pressure and internal scientific critique.

00:34:17.891 --> 00:34:22.630
Example two, the disability rights movement and the social model.

00:34:23.094 --> 00:34:28.224
For most of the 20th century disability was understood through the medical model.

00:34:29.123 --> 00:34:31.974
If you couldn't walk, you were broken.

00:34:32.311 --> 00:34:44.460
If you couldn't hear, you needed fixing the problem resided in the impaired body, the disability rights movement engineered a conceptual revolution.

00:34:45.030 --> 00:34:48.451
They introduced the social model of disability.

00:34:49.231 --> 00:34:55.081
The social model said, Hey, the problem isn't the wheelchair that I use.

00:34:55.440 --> 00:35:01.385
The problem is the building with no ramps, and the problem isn't the deaf person.

00:35:01.686 --> 00:35:06.516
The problem is the society that refuses to use sign language.

00:35:07.445 --> 00:35:10.206
The problem isn't the impairment.

00:35:10.626 --> 00:35:14.646
The problem is the environment's failure to accommodate it.

00:35:17.626 --> 00:35:36.514
One conceptual move externalizing the fault from the individual to the system, and that move changed everything That shift happened because people like Judy Hyman denied a teaching license because she used a wheelchair.

00:35:36.514 --> 00:35:37.713
Said no.

00:35:38.373 --> 00:35:46.744
She organized, she sat in federal buildings and she made them see that exclusion was a choice.

00:35:47.144 --> 00:35:48.914
Not an inevitability.

00:35:50.175 --> 00:36:01.275
Because once disability is understood as society's failure rather than individual deficiency, accommodation becomes a civil rights issue and not charity.

00:36:03.385 --> 00:36:09.235
That conceptual shift enabled the Americans with Disabilities Act.

00:36:09.655 --> 00:36:15.085
It enabled legal protections, employment rights, and educational access.

00:36:15.670 --> 00:36:17.409
And so what is the lesson here?

00:36:17.980 --> 00:36:31.360
Replacing a deficit model with a difference model, shifting the locus of the problem from the marginalized group to the dominant system, that is revolutionary.

00:36:33.990 --> 00:36:35.340
Example three.

00:36:36.391 --> 00:36:41.791
This is perhaps the most difficult to talk about the collapse of eugenics.

00:36:42.690 --> 00:36:56.880
Early 20th century, eugenics had it all, scientific legitimacy, legal infrastructure, popular support, and the US Supreme Court endorsed forced sterilization.

00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:03.601
An estimated 65,000 Americans were sterilized under eugenic laws.

00:37:04.710 --> 00:37:20.027
The ideology was based on Oversimplified genetics, like the belief that complex traits like intelligence and morality were determined by single genes that could be bred out of the population.

00:37:20.728 --> 00:37:27.128
What killed eugenics required two simultaneous attacks, moral repudiation.

00:37:27.668 --> 00:37:38.693
And here the association with Nazi atrocities made the ideology politically toxic worldwide and scientific invalidation.

00:37:39.534 --> 00:37:44.994
Advances in genetics proved the underlying science was wrong.

00:37:45.784 --> 00:37:51.114
Most traits are polygenic and are heavily influenced by the environment.

00:37:51.653 --> 00:37:58.813
And thus, quote, genetic improvement is a cultural value judgment, not objective.

00:37:58.813 --> 00:37:59.744
Science.

00:38:00.434 --> 00:38:15.103
Scientists like Herman Mueller, a geneticist who'd initially supported eugenics publicly recanted when he understood the implications and he said, we were wrong.

00:38:15.554 --> 00:38:19.753
The science does not support this, and we must stop.

00:38:21.344 --> 00:38:22.724
What is the lesson here?

00:38:23.353 --> 00:38:33.614
Concepts rooted in pseudoscience can be defeated by exposing both their moral bankruptcy and their empirical falseness.

00:38:35.630 --> 00:38:37.701
So what did these three victories have in common?

00:38:38.650 --> 00:38:46.295
One De Medicalization, removing the pathology label from authoritative diagnostic systems.

00:38:47.014 --> 00:38:49.184
Two deficit to difference.

00:38:49.184 --> 00:38:53.233
Reframing, shifting from what's wrong with them.

00:38:53.744 --> 00:38:56.728
Two, what's wrong with a system that excludes them?

00:38:57.606 --> 00:39:01.235
And three, scientific and moral refutation.

00:39:01.806 --> 00:39:07.356
Challenging both the empirical claims and the ethical frameworks.

00:39:08.016 --> 00:39:08.675
Four.

00:39:09.096 --> 00:39:10.865
Epistemic reclamation.

00:39:11.556 --> 00:39:18.603
Asserting that marginalized groups must be centered in conversations about their own lives.

00:39:18.992 --> 00:39:21.603
Nothing about us without us.

00:39:26.132 --> 00:39:28.083
And here's what should give everyone hope.

00:39:28.802 --> 00:39:34.083
The neurodiversity movement is deploying every single one of these strategies.

00:39:34.083 --> 00:39:43.862
Right now, we are challenging the pathology paradigm and asserting neurodivergence as identity difference, not medical tragedy.

00:39:44.523 --> 00:39:47.643
We are demanding neurodivergent leadership.

00:39:47.672 --> 00:39:49.592
In neurodiversity research.

00:39:50.103 --> 00:40:06.813
We are exposing the pseudoscience of cure focused genetic research and its eugenic implications, and we're proving that what looks like a social deficit is actually mutual communication breakdown.

00:40:07.018 --> 00:40:08.849
The double empathy problem.

00:40:09.353 --> 00:40:15.675
So the battle is underway, but the conceptual stronghold is under siege.

00:40:18.655 --> 00:40:21.686
now I know what some of you may be thinking.

00:40:22.315 --> 00:40:24.626
This all sounds overwhelming.

00:40:24.715 --> 00:40:35.335
Systemic, structural, individual prejudice reinforced by centuries of ideology and decades of institutional practice.

00:40:35.876 --> 00:40:41.996
How do we even begin to fight something that operates faster than consciousness?

00:40:42.463 --> 00:40:49.822
But here's where the research offers some genuinely hopeful insight knowledge works.

00:40:50.344 --> 00:40:53.164
Remember those thin slice judgements?

00:40:53.853 --> 00:40:59.434
The seven second verdicts, where neurotypical people instantly disliked neurodivergent people.

00:40:59.974 --> 00:41:01.474
Researchers test it.

00:41:01.653 --> 00:41:08.643
What happens when you give neurotypical perceivers information before they watch the videos?

00:41:09.213 --> 00:41:26.134
So when perceivers are told some of these people are autistic and given basic education about autism, what it is, how it affects communication, and why certain behaviors occurs, the bias disappeared.

00:41:26.824 --> 00:41:30.664
Not just reduced, but disappeared.

00:41:31.179 --> 00:41:34.750
In some cases, it even reversed itself.

00:41:35.239 --> 00:41:39.829
Neurotypical Perceivers who understood what autism was.

00:41:40.219 --> 00:41:51.349
Started rating autistic targets more favorably, seeing traits like directness and authenticity as positive rather than awkward.

00:41:52.699 --> 00:41:56.000
What is happening is cognitive override.

00:41:56.398 --> 00:41:59.307
The automatic bias still fires.

00:41:59.788 --> 00:42:12.027
That is hardwired pattern recognition, but conscious knowledge allows perceivers to recognize the bias as inaccurate and correct for it.

00:42:12.693 --> 00:42:26.420
They can say to themselves, I am experiencing discomfort, but that discomfort reflects my unfamiliarity with this communication style and not a deficit in this person.

00:42:26.952 --> 00:42:34.663
That cognitive move, that moment of epistemic humility changes everything.

00:42:35.833 --> 00:42:39.733
The same pattern holds for A DHD in giftedness.

00:42:40.213 --> 00:42:48.373
When teachers receive education about A DHD, their negative predictions about student success decrease.

00:42:48.733 --> 00:42:56.472
And when students learn about the stigma of giftedness, anti-intellectual attitudes reduce.

00:42:57.563 --> 00:43:00.773
now education isn't a complete solution.

00:43:01.342 --> 00:43:09.833
It doesn't dismantle structural ableism overnight, but it's a powerful intervention at the cognitive level.

00:43:10.432 --> 00:43:13.523
And that's where the seven second verdict happens.

00:43:16.628 --> 00:43:18.579
And what does this mean for us?

00:43:19.088 --> 00:43:37.967
For the listeners who are interested in these subjects, if you're neurodivergent autistic, A DHD, gifted A DHD, dyslexic, or any combination, and you've made it this far into the episode, I wanna talk directly to you for a moment.

00:43:38.574 --> 00:44:01.824
You have spent your life wondering what is wrong with you, why people seem uncomfortable around you, why friendships dissolve for reasons you can't name, why job interviews go poorly despite your qualifications and why you're told you're too much or not enough or difficult.

00:44:02.530 --> 00:44:04.811
Here's what I need you to hear.

00:44:05.248 --> 00:44:07.677
Nothing is wrong with you.

00:44:08.170 --> 00:44:14.081
The research we've discussed today doesn't show that neurodivergent people are deficient.

00:44:14.681 --> 00:44:22.931
It shows that neurotypical people have limited cognitive flexibility in the face of neurological difference.

00:44:23.681 --> 00:44:28.541
Their discomfort is real, but it's their discomfort.

00:44:28.871 --> 00:44:30.760
It belongs to them.

00:44:31.391 --> 00:44:48.681
It's produced by their own anxiety about unpredictable social interactions, their own attachment to conformity and their own failure to bridge cognitive difference you are not responsible for other people's biases.

00:44:49.161 --> 00:44:55.550
You are not obligated to contort yourself into neurotypical shapes to make them comfortable.

00:44:56.030 --> 00:45:01.490
You don't need to apologize for the way your neurology expresses itself in the world.

00:45:01.905 --> 00:45:07.096
Now, I'm not saying masking isn't sometimes necessary for survival.

00:45:07.635 --> 00:45:08.356
I know.

00:45:09.166 --> 00:45:12.856
I'm not saying disclosure decisions are simple.

00:45:13.456 --> 00:45:14.146
I know.

00:45:15.016 --> 00:45:21.646
I'm not saying you won't face consequences for refusing to accommodate neurotypical preferences.

00:45:22.306 --> 00:45:23.445
I know that too.

00:45:24.083 --> 00:45:31.853
This is still an ableist world and we still have to navigate it strategically and live within it.

00:45:33.038 --> 00:46:07.677
But understanding the mechanism of bias, understanding that it's a rapid, automatic, and rooted in neurotypical cognitive limitations rather than neurodivergent deficits, that knowledge can shift your internal narrative from what's wrong with me to, I encountered systematic bias from I failed to the system, failed me from internalized shame to justified anger.

00:46:08.027 --> 00:46:12.467
And that cognitive shift is genuinely liberating.

00:46:14.659 --> 00:46:26.628
And if you're neurotypical and you're an ally and you're listening here and you don't identify as a neurodivergent, I need you to sit with me with something uncomfortable.

00:46:27.083 --> 00:46:30.052
You have biases you didn't choose.

00:46:30.443 --> 00:46:31.913
We all do.

00:46:32.632 --> 00:46:38.152
The human brain is a pattern recognition machine and it makes errors.

00:46:38.813 --> 00:46:41.782
The question isn't whether you have these biases.

00:46:42.172 --> 00:46:44.333
The research proves you do.

00:46:45.172 --> 00:46:49.103
The question is, what do you do when you learn about them?

00:46:49.753 --> 00:46:57.793
Because the research shows that you automatically form negative judgements about neurodivergent people within seconds.

00:46:58.483 --> 00:47:00.103
You might not be aware of it.

00:47:00.523 --> 00:47:04.702
You probably don't even intend to, but it happens.

00:47:05.059 --> 00:47:08.869
Now you have a choice about what to do with that information.

00:47:09.679 --> 00:47:14.300
You can get defensive, you can insist that you are not like that.

00:47:14.570 --> 00:47:17.804
You can argue that you treat everyone fairly or.

00:47:19.760 --> 00:47:28.056
You can recognize that bias operates beneath your conscious awareness and commit to actively overriding it.

00:47:28.974 --> 00:47:31.255
And here's what that looks like in practice.

00:47:31.596 --> 00:47:49.746
When you meet someone and experience discomfort or social awkwardness, pause for a moment and ask yourself, is this person actually problematic or am I experiencing anxiety because their communication style differs from mine?

00:47:50.295 --> 00:48:01.246
When you're conducting job interviews and someone doesn't make typical eye contact or uses an unexpected body language, consciously remind yourself.

00:48:01.556 --> 00:48:06.956
Different communication styles do not indicate lower competence.

00:48:07.436 --> 00:48:15.541
And when you hear someone described as awkward or weird or off, ask yourself off from what?

00:48:16.601 --> 00:48:22.242
Weird compared to whom and what's the actual harm being done here?

00:48:25.052 --> 00:48:31.623
I invite you to cultivate what philosophers call virtuous testimonial sensibility.

00:48:31.893 --> 00:48:38.523
And that is the trained capacity to perceive others with justice rather than prejudice.

00:48:39.123 --> 00:48:49.503
Listen to neurodivergent people's self reports about their own experiences, even when those reports contradict your assumptions.

00:48:49.503 --> 00:48:53.103
Read Neurodivergent authored work.

00:48:53.612 --> 00:49:05.867
Follow Neurodivergent Advocates Center neurodivergent voices in conversations about neurodivergence and critically teach this to others.

00:49:06.978 --> 00:49:23.003
Especially if you're an educator, an employer, a parent, or a healthcare provider, you have the power to interrupt the seven second verdict in others by providing the educational context that overrides that bias.

00:49:24.438 --> 00:49:40.719
The seven second verdict doesn't have to be final, but changing it requires acknowledging that it exists, and that acknowledgement, that's the first step towards dismantling the entire system.

00:49:45.349 --> 00:49:57.739
So here we are at the end of an episode about judgements that happen in Seven Seconds Systems that took centuries to build and transformations that are happening right now.

00:49:58.728 --> 00:50:02.568
If you take one thing from this episode, let it be this.

00:50:03.259 --> 00:50:04.909
The bias is real.

00:50:05.358 --> 00:50:06.378
It's measured.

00:50:06.528 --> 00:50:10.188
It's documented, but it's also mutable.

00:50:10.909 --> 00:50:20.628
Knowledge changes minds understanding, interrupts prejudice, and education overrides automatic bias.

00:50:21.065 --> 00:50:25.144
For my neurodivergent listeners, you are not imagining it.

00:50:25.715 --> 00:50:39.005
You are accurately perceiving a documented phenomenon and understanding the mechanism does not erase the harm, but it can transform how you make sense of your experiences.

00:50:39.545 --> 00:50:49.835
And for my neurotypical listeners, you have cognitive biases you didn't choose and probably don't want, but you can choose to override them.

00:50:50.554 --> 00:50:57.485
That choice repeated across millions of interactions is how systems change.

00:50:58.505 --> 00:51:03.005
The neurodiversity movement isn't asking for tolerance or pity.

00:51:03.875 --> 00:51:12.005
We are demanding that society recognize neurological difference as a human variation and not human deficiency.

00:51:12.418 --> 00:51:18.628
We are demanding that the seven second verdict be overridden by conscious knowledge.

00:51:19.199 --> 00:51:28.182
We are demanding that the architecture of oppression be replaced by an architecture of inclusion, and we're not waiting for permission.

00:51:29.172 --> 00:51:30.612
Here's my challenge to you.

00:51:31.213 --> 00:51:38.952
Whether you're neurodivergent or neurotypical this week, catch yourself making a thin slice judgment.

00:51:39.583 --> 00:51:44.592
Notice when you decide you like or dislike someone within seconds.

00:51:45.253 --> 00:51:54.822
Notice when you code someone as awkward or weird, and then ask yourself, what am I actually reacting to?

00:51:55.422 --> 00:51:57.702
Harm or difference?

00:51:58.230 --> 00:52:03.471
That moment of recognition, that's where system change begins.

00:52:03.471 --> 00:52:03.501
I.

00:52:12.081 --> 00:52:14.271
Now, here's where you can support this work.

00:52:14.791 --> 00:52:18.780
This is original research that took a long time to put together.

00:52:19.411 --> 00:52:21.481
First, share this episode.

00:52:21.900 --> 00:52:31.891
Send it to someone who needs to hear it, whether that's a neurodivergent person seeking validation, or a neurotypical person ready for uncomfortable truths.

00:52:32.490 --> 00:52:37.380
Second, please rate and review the show on whatever platform you're listening.

00:52:37.891 --> 00:52:44.340
Those reviews help other people find us, and this work only matters if people actually hear it.

00:52:45.181 --> 00:52:53.918
Third, if you have the financial means, support us by buying me a cup of coffee on my website, neuro rebel podcast.com.

00:52:54.369 --> 00:52:56.438
The links are on the show notes.

00:52:57.048 --> 00:53:12.889
Independent researchers like myself, requires independent funding and every contribution, whether it's$3 or 30, helps us keep producing episodes without advertisers or sponsors dictating our content.

00:53:13.253 --> 00:53:15.742
Thank you for listening to Neuro Rebel.

00:53:16.282 --> 00:53:21.202
Remember, every episode of Neuro Rebel is produced in both English and Spanish.

00:53:21.532 --> 00:53:24.922
Because liberation is not limited by language.

00:53:25.313 --> 00:53:29.572
The Spanish version of this episode will be available within two days.

00:53:30.112 --> 00:53:49.012
You can find us on all major podcast platforms and on our website@neurorebelpodcast.com and on social media when I'm most active on TikTok and Instagram, full transcripts and details, show notes with all research citations are always available on my website.

00:53:49.913 --> 00:53:52.793
Until next time, trust your perception.

00:53:53.032 --> 00:53:58.733
Challenge the system and remember that your neurodivergent brain isn't broken.

00:53:59.302 --> 00:54:03.833
The world that can't accommodate you is, this is Anita.

00:54:04.552 --> 00:54:05.362
Keep Rebell.