#which i dont. and now im back to my petty first emotional response. nardole voice: hey we got there

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

oh i thought you just ignored my posts whenever that happens

the doctor isnt neurodivergent or autistic or adhd or nonbinary or genderqueer or asexual. what the doctor is, is Not From Here

[rowanthestrange]

bless u for thinking there’s structure as to whether i manage to miss a post or not, tungl on ‘mobile web browser’ is a crapshoot

#new friendship level unlocked <3#im not.....entirely sure we've got the same thesis here tho#maybe we do i wouldnt be that surprised if you disagree#but like ive not even formulated my own thesis here properly so im not sure i know it or what you understand of it#/which part of it you disagree with#bc i was........pettyannoyedposting#that word doesnt really work but it's on the pattern of vagueposting#but so first level of my post here was just 'stop calling the doctor neurodivergent especially in canon it annoys me'#second level 'and it misses the point'#third 'and i can prove it' (not convinced i can but)#fourth (getting somewhere into the area of what my actual thesis would be probably) 'the doctor as a character (by design or evolution or#bit of both) is a perpetual other which is an experience that resonates with most people in one way or another#(fun bit of paradoxicality there) and what makes an other is not about (doctor) who/what you are#but rather about what everything around you is. the narratives youre captive in (social identities nationalities racialisation alienisation#what is Normal and how do you respond to it. how do you construct yourself/are you constructed through this response.#and i know what youre thinking now 'dimitri how the fuck did you get here' and also 'you dont know what a thesis statement is'#and you are correct#however how the fuck i got here is autism and its kin (dsm/icd diagnoses) are constructions of (ab)normalcy as heterosexuality and whitenes#and to diagnose the doctor i think doesnt work in a couple of ways#first of which is that a diagnosis i think only means something in the context of treatment#the second of which is that i think it stops what could be an interesting conversation/exploration as a theme in dw#the third of which is that it accepts the authority of the dsm/icd/psychiatrist and the validity of 'neurodivergent' as a concept#which i dont. and now im back to my petty first emotional response. nardole voice: hey we got there#and im missing a lot of aspects of the othering here clearly and also i dont know what im talking about CLEARLY ive never made an essay but#*gestures vaguely* was this the thing you disagreed with? ghkghjgh

Yeah, no, I do get it I think. From this and your previous tags and things, I think so. So here’s my essay i guess. Not a rebuttal just my general take, long, rambly, not exactly structured and best argued cus i’m just killing time til art supplies arrive and my brain wants to do that instead. Feel free to skip sections or all of it tbh, I really don’t care about this all that much despite essay length, do not take this as me giving a shit about minor differences in opinion if that’s even what these are. Headings are in bold for easy skippability.

Personal Views (not Dr Who. This was part of my conclusion but fuck it i’m making it the top actually):

I believe in normalising the not-normal, but I don’t think people saying “everyone’s weird and we’re all a bit different :) ” is actually the way to do that. I think that’s the “I don’t see colour” approach. I don’t think it works and I don’t think it particularly helps, neither people on an individual level or the wider society practically.

Love disability. Love neurotypes. Love definitions that flex as people lean on them differently year to year. Think diagnosis is incredibly helpful unless there’s a contraindication (like if god forbid you desperately want to join the army, and you think you might be a little autistic, hey, if it doesn’t impact your life that much, don’t need to be barred from getting your dream job just for that but also get a better dream job). Pro medication to be whatever you need to be, be that a woman, a non-depressed person, or someone able to hold down a job. Meds are Accessibility.

I think that some people prefer not be considered abnormal, and I get that, but knowing you’re in a small area that most aren’t in the spectrum of human existence is ultimately helpful. Pretending that some experiences/disabilities aren’t disabilities but actually based on our ‘cultural expectations of x y and z’ are often cope meant to validate negative emotions towards that aspect of the self or that person’s relations with their proximal environment; without true reference to the fundamental experiences of people with disabilities, and the points that actually bind us together across the world to our kin in other countries. And being broken compared to other people can be fine actually. But identifying it helps both internally, socially, and medically.

My General Philosophy - Not Dr Who related, whether relevant or not depends on if I was understanding you correctly:

So I disagree with the general thesis usually put forward in left spaces that ‘mental illness/neurodivergence’ is a socio-cultural construct created by white people, and terms we’ve constructed related to such, like “ADHD”, are therefore fundamentally rooted in that and why should cultures of non-white people be pathologised using these terms.

Here: The Doctor isn’t [earth term] they’re [not from our culture].

This also is often dovetailed with the social model of disability. Which I’m sure you know, but that’s stating ‘disability’ as consequence of a world not built for you i.e. the idea that in a world of wheelchair users you would not be disabled.

On a philosophical level, while I understand them, I generally disagree with both.

Going in reverse.

These often are rooted in people seeing ‘disability’ (and here substitute for any other non-normative words I just don’t want to fill this with /queer/minority-gender etc) from an external perspective. I think it’s probably the least dangerous way for a normative person to think if you have to feed them a lazy solution, but it’s still lacking in nuance. And ultimately It’s a….validation response. “There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s the world that’s wrong” which ew. Cus I don’t think either is ‘wrong’ - a non-normative person or the world. It flattens the concepts.

And while helpful in a ‘please god just make accommodations like ramps’ way, and it is, it so is, please don’t let the non-disabled people read this; it doesn’t have the fundamental core of truth in this world we live in. I.e. if you can’t make a world of all wheelchair users, and you can’t, then with all the feasible accommodations in the world you’re still ultimately going to be disabled. Because you can’t change the heights of everything to a wheelchair user without making taller people have to bend painfully a lot etc. and none of it stops the variety of people that are wheelchair users where some can do some things, others can do others, and none of it gets rid of things like pain and hygiene difficulties and whatever, just says ‘but it would be easier to access painkillers, rest, etc’. The social model of disability purely used, is a good broad base for disability rights, but also in that pure form doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny unless you bring things back to one singular individual.

Example:

When my brain is full of cats, if I was in a world of people whose brains are also full of cats, we’re all still disabled because we can’t effectively communicate our ideas with each other.

Is it only useful to see this as a disability in order to access treatment/medication? I’d argue no. Knowing how and why you’re different is helpful on a fundamental level I feel. And in a world where most people’s brains aren’t full of cats, I get to benefit my psychological situation by knowing the details of how their brain broadly works and my brain broadly works, and having academics having researched people like me, and them, etc. etc. And if you would consider that self-treatment, then that folds so fundamentally with ‘living how i can most happily exist minute to minute and day to day’ that it may as well be indistinguishable.

Now, for socio-cultural construct. You’re not American, so I don’t need to do the whole ‘there’s no such thing as ‘white’ culture’ thing, I’m gonna assume you know all the nuances there, whatever.

There are definitely cultural differences in how people think. Huge ones. Have you ever been to Japan? Awesome place, but I think really shows some of those distinctions in a clear way. The general desire for things to be neat and ordered is so palpable that if you haven’t been there I can’t describe it. It’s like an aura. And don’t get me wrong, despite the amount of people sometimes, my autistic ass felt very at home. In fact because people were more ‘ordered’ the crowds were actually easier than in other countries. But I was still autistic. Still disabled by it. And Japan, like many places, is only just now coming out and trying to help and accommodate people with autism and other disabilities rather than them being in the house all day. They’ve only recently got around to even properly diagnosing ‘adult’ autism. And while there’s such a long way to go there, that’s helping people a lot, that they’re not just called ‘shut-ins’ anymore but they’re starting to be seen as legitimate people.

And this is what we forget when we talk about ‘pathologising’ people. Yes it can definitely go too far, but having someone not just be A Failed Person is also very very important. For them and for the people around them. All very well to go ‘what if we see nobody as a failed person’ cool but we won’t. Even you and I won’t sometimes.

And the reason why a lot of mental illnesses/neurotypes change some symptoms border to border but keep basics is because well, that’s the disability for you. Those are the bits that are wrong with the body and that’s fine. (And while things like “ADHD” may be underdiagnosed if say, you’re black, because people’s racism says ‘all black boys are hyperactive and don’t pay attention’ that’s a racism problem with the diagnoser, the disability is there). And cultural differences are very real, but that’s also one of the reasons why every country has their own diagnostic procedures. So imperfect, very very so, but not to the point of throwing out areas of study. Areas of study that truly have been studied across the entire globe. Fine, a white French person came up with this theory in 1904 but it’s been studied worldwide ever since - we’re going to say “schizophrenia” is a white term if it’s been studied in every continent?

Certainly these things have more weight when it comes to ideas of gender expression and sexual preference. America’s masculine ideal is not English, English masculinity not Finnish, Finnish masculinity not Japanese etc. etc.

However usually discussing this has two real world roots. Are we physically trying to change something in ourselves, or denoting a personal understanding of a boundary. Either way, given all people’s rights are equal (and they are rarely, but I’m pro that part of ‘western hegemony’), that does mean different cultures will view what makes a transgender person differently. For some people an amab’s desire to cook and look after children might cause a question of gender identity where in other cultures it wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean the terms we’d use in regards to that are less meaningful, just nuances of them shift depending on culture.

(Someone is choking their lungs out outside. Hope we’re ready for the real world deconstruction of the diamond of the core of social disability model which is ‘the majority of people aren’t disabled’, cus hoo boy)

Finally The Dr Who Bit:

Out-Universe:

Doctor Who is a celebration of Being A Weird Guy.

But also not.

Because on one hand it’s quirky is good, good to be childish sometimes, and the other is This Character Is Fucked Up Don’t Be This. Both of those are Four, who much like Ten, gets the last but sanded down in people’s minds.

Doctor Who tells us being weird is good, that you should be kind even if it’s weird, helpful even if it’s weird, be clever even if it’s weird, and if you’re an interesting enough person you can even dress super weird if you like.

But it also shows us where being weird is…not good. For us and others around us. Yeah, maybe you should get help for that, go see a therapy group, take some respite, identify your partner as a problem and leave.

And many times it’s neutral. We write them with the differences so that an ADHD or Autistic person can go, ‘hey that’s me :) ’ and characters and writers and actors labelling them so helps those people feel seen. It’s become almost a staple of main characters now to have some sort of identifiable characteristic to people, but wasn’t always so, and I really do think Doctor Who helped a lot with that. Back when freaks weren’t heroes.

One shouldn’t feel the need to have to label every bit of themselves, as a capital-Q Queer I don’t. But having things to guide you is lovely. I came from a very country place in England that’s perpetually stuck in the worst parts of the 60’s. Pre and early days of internet. I didn’t get to know what things like autism, adhd, sexuality, or gender divergence, most races (not joking, exceptionally white, didn’t see a black person til I was like 9 that wasn’t on kids tv or crime watch — as in i know exactly where i saw him, that specific — and there was 1 black kid in our school of 600+ who came when we were 16), even most physical disabilities. If I hadn’t had CBBC I genuinely wouldn’t have had most of what I did. Hadn’t heard of ‘muslims’ until 9-11. I’m talking a deeply stagnant place.

But finding out there were different aspects of people but far more importantly, different WORDS for that? Huge. Game changing. You can’t actually look these things up otherwise. There was no library book that could tell me what I meant when I said I felt like the Doctor. Took a magazine scan on Doctor Who Forum talking about the character to actually say the word ‘autistic’ and help me in any way.

(Also turned out my mother had been fleeing various medical professionals trying to get me an autism diagnosis since the age of four. THANKS.)

Having a label helped me…de-alienise myself. I wasn’t alien any more, I was a person, just a specific kind.

So I’m pro-diagnosing (even if frequently distrusting of the people who are in theory supposed to be equipped to actually do that irl but aren’t). And I’m pro labelling the Doctor. While also giving enough freedom so that anyone can still headcanon the one that’s most like them. But saying Twelve has ADHD does no harm to anyone’s headcanons while also helping ADHD people, things like that are good in my book.

In-Universe:

The Doctor’s culture considers them a freak. If they truly have terms for mental differences I doubt it, they’re eugenicists, we know their go-to for depression is forced-regeneration i.e. suicide-by-murder.

Even the nice ones are not like the Doctor, seem little different to us, or at least those high in politics or money.

Within the Doctor’s own culture, they are extremely different, and if their culture had the words for autistic/adhd/genderqueer/whatever they would be them by their own society’s culture too, not just ours. Saying that they’re not those things they’re just Not From Here doesn’t make sense cus the Place They’re From thinks it about them too.

For it to be a they’re ‘Not From Here’ thing the Doctor would fit normally within their own society but they don’t.

Maybe this was part of the autschizadhdfirework-brain jump

'the doctor as a character (by design or evolution or#bit of both) is a perpetual other which is an experience that resonates with most people in one way or another#(fun bit of paradoxicality there) and what makes an other is not about (doctor) who/what you are#but rather about what everything around you is. the narratives youre captive in (social identities nationalities racialisation alienisation#what is Normal and how do you respond to it. how do you construct yourself/are you constructed through this response.#and i know what youre thinking now 'dimitri how the fuck did you get here'

Trying to follow. But might not be, the idea that you can’t label the ‘other’ parts would seem to contradict that - that the Doctor and us share the same sorts of experiences of othering (despite alien society) that allows one to see ‘same hat!’ and label it so would…fit that, wouldn’t it? Perhaps with the same fluidity we give them on assigning a political spectrum to them, but ‘being defined by what you aren’t’ is surely labelling of ones’ characteristics in a nutshell. That is the construction of ones’ sense of self. The definition of one as an entity and how best to navigate the world with those tools.

But ymmv.

I’m not one of those people who needs people to see things the same way I do. I’m not big on philosophical discussions or whatever, I promise.

the doctor isnt neurodivergent or autistic or adhd or nonbinary or genderqueer or asexual. what the doctor is, is Not From Here