Neuroqueer: Nick Walker's Big Idea

Most words for kinds of people are nouns. You are one. Neuroqueer started life as a verb. You can do it.

That one grammatical choice is the whole trick, and it came out of a graduate school paper in 2008.

Where the word came from

Nick Walker, a scholar, educator and author, says she coined "neuroqueer" in a paper she wrote in graduate school in 2008, then kept developing it quietly for years before sharing it with other autistic bloggers in early 2014. ^[1]

She wasn't the only one circling the idea. Walker credits Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillon, who came up with the same word independently, and Remi Yergeau, who was developing a related concept of "neurological queerness." ^[1] Ibby Grace was also part of the early conversations. ^[2] Walker gathered her fuller theory in the 2021 book Neuroqueer Heresies. ^[3]

So the word has a messy, collaborative origin story, which feels right for a word about refusing tidy boxes.

So what does it mean?

The word combines two ideas. "Neuro" points to how minds work. "Queer," in the academic sense Walker draws on, is used as a verb meaning to unsettle a norm, to play with it, to step outside what's expected. ^[1]

Put together, to neuroqueer something is to break away from the expectation that your mind should work in the standard way, and to do it in a way that also plays with other norms, like gender and how people are "supposed" to express themselves. ^[1]

Walker describes it in a few overlapping ways: something you can do, something you can be, and a lens for making art, scholarship and culture. ^[1] A neuroqueer person is someone whose identity is shaped by doing it. An artist doing it makes work from that place. A reading done that way looks at a book from that angle.

What it looks like in real life

It's easier to feel than define, so here are some examples of the spirit of it.

Stimming in public and not apologizing. Talking about your special interest at full speed and full joy. Dressing for texture instead of trend. Letting your face do what it does instead of performing the expressions people expect. Writing in the shape your thoughts actually take.

None of these are rules. That's the point. Neuroqueering isn't a new standard to meet. It's permission to stop running the old one.

Why a verb matters

Nouns sort people into boxes. Verbs describe what people do, and doing can change.

If neuroqueer were only an identity, you'd have to argue about who counts. As a verb, it's open. You can neuroqueer a classroom by letting kids move. You can do it to a meeting by sending the agenda in advance. You can do it to a poem by ignoring line breaks you never liked.

It also changes the energy. A lot of language about minds like ours is about what we lack. This word is about what we make.

The flat-circle part

There's something cosmic about a word that refuses to sit still. Some physicists and philosophers like to say that "things" are really processes: an atom is a pattern of activity, a flame is a process that looks like an object, you are a river of molecules that keeps the same shape.

Walker's word makes the same move with identity. You're not a fixed object to be classified. You're something happening.

Rust Cohle would probably say everyone's playing a role anyway. Walker's word just asks a better question: since you're playing one, why not write your own?

Want more like this? Ideasthesia is made by and for neurodivergent minds.

Sources

1. Walker, N. "Neuroqueer: An Introduction." Neuroqueer.com. neuroqueer.com
2. Zurn, P. "Re-Citing the Origins of Neuroqueer." Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (2024). doi.org/10.1353/ken.2024.a958998
3. Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.