Neurodiversity – Phil Pool

We are tasteful – it’s not porn – or, why are there no vulvas in my photos. Pubes…

I’m asking myself this question – I don’t want to create porn, or perhaps even worse, soft porn, but why are there no vulvas especially visible in my photos. Vulvas, and arse holes, are not (do not equate to) porn, they are just parts of our bodies.

Very few people with penises come forward for my projects, but they neither show off nor hide their cocks and balls. So why are the Vs hidden.. Are they hidden, or did they just not end up being seen.

I guess it’s because vulvas are, largely, hidden. To see them closely in photos it’s going to be necessary to choose to do so – to ask the person to open their legs or to bend over. If my subjects wanted to sit or pose, legs apart, they would – not many have.

It’s an active way to see their genitals which is not relevant with penis owners. To see them, there mostly needs to be an active attempt to show them. Or, actually, the shots would need to be of actions that would inevitably, obviously, show them – like some yoga poses.

I observe on the naturist beach that far more women keep their knickers on even though their genitals will always be less visible than those of men just by being between their legs. And when they don’t wear knickers, unlike the men who have little left to be revealed, most keep their legs closed. It’s not unintentional – I’ve watched women turn from laying on one side to the other, with their legs clamped together, rolling log like.

It wasn’t always like this. Women were mostly not sat, legs wide apart, but they weren’t clearly clamped together. I wonder if it’s the lack of pubes. Obviously the near ubiquity of the baby-bald look is fading as many women say fuck that, but it’s still very common.

I wonder if, without that wonderful, soft, fur, which inevitably blurs the lines of the outer lips, the embaldened (sic) are now feeling exposed in a way they cannot avoid without legs near crossed. Pubes don’t do anything to disguise a penis and balls so perhaps those of us with them, just get used to the exposure.

I wonder why I feel cautious about suggesting poses that would tend to be more revealing – I’m hardly prudish. I think it’s possibly as I have such an internalised self-critic that is telling me that people must think I’m a bit of a perv.. so I avoid any shots that might be seen as sexual.

I have made vulva casts, but they are hard work and I was helping a friend with her project – her vulva. I’ve been asked several times to cast people’s genitals, but can’t really locate my own reason for doing so – isolated, they are interesting but not ‘my’ art. Other than ‘Nipple Stars’ not much of my casting felt like I had a reason for it.

But I can’t escape my own shouts of ‘hypocrite’ at myself. A big point of this whole thought process is that bodies are bodies, showing a vulva isn’t a sexual act and, really, it’d probably be good if more were shown generally in ways that are not intended to be sexual.

What do you think? Comments [shitty ones will be deleted – this isn’t a democracy].

Email to Dr James Brown – ADHD – the heresy of NPNPD.

Hi James, … what is NPNPD …

I was in the audience in Brighton last night – thanks really interesting. I didn’t have a question, more a point to explore – here goes.

I’m 58, I’ve had ADHD all my life, I’ve only recently got the official badge ✅ I’m strongly into the neurodiversity paradigm, it fits v well with the social model of disability and with the formulation of neuroqueer heresies, as in Nick Walker’s brilliant book. I’m also digging into (basic!) neurophysiology as I’m training in hypnotherapy.

So the reframing of ADHD, and other forms of ND, and how our brains are different interests me massively. And, I’m guessing you spot the potential conflicts between that social model/neurodiversity paradigm and the medical, neuro-pathology model of it’s all wiring and genetics etc. Potential, not actual conflict – understanding not value attachment.

I don’t like the term disorder – I suspect though that my views inspire some disorder.

But, I also get your point that the different ways of thinking defo impairs many people’s quality of life. I have dyslexia too, my typos and inaccurate reading are a serious pain – the disability has been 1970/80s schooling, being hit for being stupid, and not actually absorbing info that others could. The anxiety, the PTSD from the years of abuse, have been way worse than shit spelling.

I get it that ADHD has a disorder like impact on many people; I find it hard to focus when that is really needed and yep, I’ve turned up a month early for a flight or all manner of daft, embarrassing, costly things. I’m a civil servant and focus is a need, a value. Some of that is disabling for sure when I’ve a batch of dull options to consider and none of them look great – doing so feels like physical pain.

What is more disabling is the lack of understanding (bless them they may not know how) of many people. It’s a level of misunderstanding that, in the 70s came with being hit for not paying attention and frequently leads to conflicts, to unemployment and, as you pointed out, to prison.

You also mentioned that some people consider it to be a ‘superpower’ and, forgive me if I misread you, I wonder if that makes you puke a bit – it does me. We’ve had to endure so many shiny, patronising badges – special, differently-abled and so on.

It isn’t a sodding super power, but in my view it can be extremely useful and, without the crap attitudes of those in the majority, those people who have the firm view of what is normal and not-normal, it’d be seen to be the asset it has the potential to be.

I’ve worked in the civil service or 33 years and there’s an awful lot of potentially, extremely useful people who are, sadly, afflicted by NPNPD (patience, I’ll tell you in a mo). It leads them, year after year, to consider the same sort of points, to debate and go around the same sort of issues and, to proudly find the same ‘solutions’ that, unsurprisingly, don’t work just as they didn’t 5, 10, 15 etc years ago … 33 years I’ve been witnessing this … They are so focused… Help them…

When I got my ADHD assessment I spoke to my ‘big’ boss about it. She wasn’t surprised as I’m always driving them mad suggesting things like ‘why don’t we look more broadly’, ‘why are we excluding all of these other important factors’, ‘why do you all get paid to run in a straight line with blinkers on when obviously, the answers are not to be found on a continuum between the only two points you insist we consider!’

I get angry about it, I had a breakdown about it earlier this year – “why – won’t – you – just – won’t – fucking – listen” I wrote in a furious email to the senior management as I went off sick for 2 months.

I get warnings about it, I get friendly reminders, I have software, and workplace adjustments that’d be the envy of most people.. but still, I don’t focus on the information at hand and work within the prescribed boundaries..

At least, she (big boss – and friend) said something like, you must now be pleased to have the diagnosis, to have it confirmed that it’s not your fault – it’s how your brain is wired, and it’s a medical disorder. We’re all different and we’ll do our best to accommodate you… They do their best, given their (dis)abilities.

Nope I said – I worry for you and for the country we’re failing to run, because you just cannot see how your minds are blinkered by Normal Person’s Narrow Perspective Disorder – NPNPD.

She was upset and annoyed, she said it was patronising to refer to how normal people think as a disorder. I said it’s normal to think as they do, and it’s normal to think as I do, but my way is labelled as a disorder and her’s is not. She got the point.. possibly, it’s hard to tell if people with NPNPD have really got it all, or just the bits they narrowly focus on.

Yes, the spirals I go off on, the webs I get wrapped up in, take ages to untangle, but that isn’t a lack of focus. It’s not even hyper focus.. I reckon that, give ADHDers more time and Way less stress, and better ways to keep track, and we’ll mostly gather the info we need and when we have, we’ll have a way better grip than most people.

And it’s true, I seriously struggle with keeping a grip of it all. But what I need is to have some people with NPNPD to log all of that stuff, to keep track, and not be the ones setting the limits on the focus and not telling me to stop making their lives hard by pointing out that there is some other factor that needs to be considered or X plan will just fail – again.

As, just as ADHD is not a disorder, having a normal (in terms of commonality in the population) way of understanding the world, NPNPD, is not a disorder. As Aude Lorde said ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. I seriously think we need to get out of the medical model neuropathology paradigm, yep, your brain diagram is cool, just as it’s good to know what the medical needs are of any of us, or how we work.

The issue though, as it is with the social model generally, is to remove the barriers and to be cognisant of the risks of chucking medical titbits at those who see us as ‘sick’. Some in the audience are the ‘nice’ ‘bless them’ people who assess us as deficient and, perhaps as a symptom of their NPNPD don’t get it that their tests are, as you pointed out, too long, missing girls, missing different social expectations, muddling a wife focus with not focussing.

Fuck the ‘superpower’ BS – it’s more like Wide Focus and Attention Awareness Outlook or some other thing, I leave the letters to the non-dylexics. Yes, it requires understanding not discrimination, yes, it can be hard and we need support, but no, it’s not in itself a disorder as it the subject of attitudes that disable us rather than enable us.

So – I reckon – we need to shift the issues away from the poor-us and more onto, what are those with NPNPD in charge of the agenda doing, how is it they are driving determinedly in what may be the wrong direction. Is it just because they are better at writing an agenda and booking the room and the tea and biscuits?

All the best, Phil

Fox the System…Fix the System Not the Women – by Laura Bates

I’ve been reading Fix the System by Laura Bates – it’s compelling, hard reading and as she notes, much of what it contains will be no surprise to women but will be alien to most men.

I’m not that far into the book and I deeply get her rationale that the vast ocean of very different ways that women are subject to sexism, must stop being seen as a series of incidents (not ignoring their individual impact) and instead be recognised as aspects of the patriarchy and set in a colonial, abelist, economic and social structure. It’s a structure that endlessly recreates itself, making slots for women to fall into and for men to stand over whether or not they like it.

Those words, fix the system not to women seem really apt to me. I’ve been using them a good deal recently in terms of my views of neurodiversity and the NPNPD (normal persons narrow perspective disorder) based society that dominates. It says it values diversity but tbh, I don’t think it actually understands that any other ways of mind can be anything but pathological.

It, the NPNPD is not just a stasis, it’s nothing like so passive. It must fix us or sideline us as our very existence is a significant challenge to it’s own definition of reality. Like the TERF who pleaded with me that the very existence of people who ‘claim to be women but who are always really men’ threatened her whole notion of self as a woman – we were making a mockery of her existence. . which I said was crap.

She couldn’t see beyond the binary of men and women and in that binary, all men are a threat, always. Her whole social construction pivoted on a clear line between one and the other – to move between the two destroyed her model and it was everything to her. In that context, I understood her horror – if we kicked the turtles out from beneath her she will fall forever.

Usually in life we don’t fall forever. And a jump from a belief to questioning that belief doesn’t lead to much more than standing there wondering why you had not stepped down before – the ground is solid and there is more space than there is upon a high horse.

I don’t think men will wake up just like that and just ‘get it’ that the patriarchy is wrong and dismantle it – it’s not an isolated structure, it sits among and intertwined with others and all farm us and shit their food into the hulk of capitalism.

Us neurodiverse lot are going to have to shout though and demand to be heard – we need to put the disorder into our disorders. I am ceasing to be ok with being fixed or ‘failing’ – it’s failing in a society that does little but harm.