Read on Twitter
as someone who doesn't feel an instinctive ickiness about giftedness/2e, but considers both terms (though moreso 'giftedness') to be a failure of language, I have Some Thoughts https://twitter.com/ADHDdesigner/status/1380173587500261382
I think most in the ND community including gifted people themselves agree that 'giftedness' is a failure of language that doesn't even accurately convey what it represents descriptively, AND creates/exacerbates misunderstanding about what giftedness is
I agree with replies in that thread that say they prefer terms like 'asynchronous' or 'spiky profile' and that's where I am preference-wise too. except I'm not sure synchronous development is really a thing, especially if we didn't have institutions force that as a norm
my hot take as a nobody on the internet, is that the instinctive ickiness over the labels that a lot of ND/gifted people themselves feel isn't necessarily ENTIRELY about the stigma over cognitive giftedness
my own political views factor into this view of course. I think a lot of the instinctive ickiness over the labels comes from people who genuinely do value different disability/ability profiles, brilliance, asynchrony etc
but the instinctive ickiness seems to come from the implications of the giftedness label within the context that the giftedness label operates in (a context which is deeply ableist, doesn't value ANYONE, gifted people and non-gifted people alike)
intelligence of course has a checkered history, I don't want to go into definitions here because that's not the point, but it's intellectually dishonest to divorce it from how the eugenics movement weaponised it
when I talk about how we live in a wider, ableist context that doesn't value anyone, it brings me to the question of what it means to really value someone in an ethical and true way?
in a basic way, valuing people is about not abusing/exploiting people, seeing people as holistic humans and not their use value in a fucked up economy, respecting people, attempting to listen to and take different people's experiences seriously (understanding may not be possible)
for as long as we live under capitalism, I doubt that any disability/ability like intelligence, or any person, can be valued in an ethical and humane way
intelligence isn't actually valued, it's fetishized. whoever is tagged with unintelligence & disability is often abused and treated badly materially and socially.
but also, even the small subset of gifted people who may have been recognised as such early and received some material benefit for it are not actually being valued as humans
gifted people and people tagged as intelligent are fetishised for their "potential", for their use value in a capitalist system of labour, are often exploited in classrooms as well as in the workplace (this is not to say they cannot exploit others though)
as a mixed race Chinese-Indian person who's undergone the extremely weird racism of racial fetishization in Singapore, I think a lot of ickiness I see gifted people feel towards giftedness/2e/intelligence are reactions of discomfort towards fetishization
I don't think ND people on here are necessarily against the cause of destigmatizing cognitive giftedness? it just seems like they're having a complex emotional reaction to ableist implications of intelligence attached to giftedness, especially in our current political context
I'm not actually valued as a human if someone has a fetishistic sexual preference for people of my race, even if I were a person who supposedly had an edge over others in gaining sexual partners or whatever
same thing with cognitive giftedness/intelligence. a white suburban kid with a stable home and school environment who's gifted and identified for gifted ed isn't necessarily being valued as a human in this system even if they accrue almost every material/social benefit imaginable
a thing I've learned is that even the most privileged of kids who have ridiculously rich parents aren't necessarily loved or valued or nurtured or Seen or Understood. everyone is dehumanised to some extent because we live in dehumanising systems
what does it mean to be rewarded arbitrarily for supposedly possessing fetishized qualities like intelligence, whether accurately or inaccurately? it means you aren't seen for who you really are, apprehended that way, and are taught conditional worth
in this sense, I think there's a whole lot more to the picture for cognitive giftedness than just stigma. the dehumanisation that accompanies fetishisation is part of it, and this can't be decontextualised from capitalism as an economic and political system or kyriarchy
reactions to labels are often rooted in deeply political experiences. you can compare this to the complex emotional reactions people have to being told they're an "sjw", or to any political label thay may descriptively apply to them which has a lot of baggage (like "disabled"!)
it's common to feel ickiness at labels which are loaded with the oppressive associations and projections of others. being dehumanised and having (even positive, unwanted) qualities projected onto you isn't fun, and is even less fun when you know eugenicists exist for example
I respect the gifted/2e advocates who're responsible for a lot of community awareness & organizing & advocacy. they have to work with whatever shreds of shit we've got right now under broken systems in order to get people connected and sharing their experiences to feel seen
but I also respect the experiences of anyone who feels discomfort about giftedness/2e as a label. the fetishised nature of intelligence (which is just ableism written in glittery ink) and the neoliberal implications of 'potential' make it difficult to feel empowered by the labels
