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issue #2  ·  photocopied at 2am  ·  free, always

ONEROOTtwoRAINBOWS

WHERE THIS CAME FROM

Every word of the argument below is lifted from a course in our own library: Neurodiversity and Gender: Queer and Neurodivergent Liberation are Entwined, stimpunks.org.

Seven lessons, a reading list each, citations kept in their collars. This sheet is the shallowest depth it offers; the course is the deep end and it is still there.

LESSON SIX, IN ONE BREATH

“…queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
— bell hooks, quoted in Lesson 6 of the course. Even in the loudest room, the quote keeps its collar.

THE LAST LINE OF THE COURSE

You hit so hard with all the colors that there are

— Rainbow Shiner, written by Laura Harris, Betsy Wright and Mary Timony, performed by Ex Hex on It’s Real, 22 March 2019. Buy it from the band.

Words this sheet borrowed, each one a door into the glossary:

autigender · neuroqueer · bricolage · minority stress · neuronormativity · chosen family · queer

The same impulse that tells an Autistic kid to put their hands down tells a trans kid their gender is a phase. Both are orders to perform a self that is not yours. Both name the performance normal and the person underneath disordered.

Two rainbows. Two coming-out stories. Two sets of people deciding what we are allowed to be. Gender-diverse people are far more likely to be Autistic, and Autistic people are far more likely to be gender-diverse.

We are not a coincidence the literature keeps stumbling over. We are a population the pathology paradigm was never built to hold.

The hand stilled and the gender denied come from one root.

SEVEN LESSONS, SEVEN LINES

One idea per line is the course’s own device, not ours.

  1. The hand stilled and the gender denied were trained in the same room.
  2. Gender is not a binary or even a line. It is a copia, an identity you assemble.
  3. Two stigmas compound: more stressful situations, fewer resources to meet them.
  4. Neuroqueering queers neuronormativity and heteronormativity in the same move.
  5. Chosen family is not a consolation prize. It is how we cope and survive.
  6. Queer is a horizon of possibility, not a class of pathologies.
  7. Bathroom bills hurt Disabled, neurodivergent and trans people in one stroke.

Distilled by Stimpunks from our own course. Quotations belong to the people named on them, and the reading lists behind every line are in the source.

who made this noise? →

ONE SHEET, NO COLOUR

Print it. It fits, it is black on white, and nothing on it needed the colour to make sense.

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so.