Here is my proposal for a change in the equality act to include Neurodiversity as protected characteristic !
Here is my proposal for a change in the equality act to include Neurodiversity as protected characteristic !
I understand what you are saying but the idea here is not to take away the capacity of people claiming disability but instead add an additional lenses.
Could you make the case that someone who is being discriminated against for having narcissistic or psychopathic traits is protected under the equality act (I guess my question here is can they claim disability) ? or someone who does not possess a diagnosis and doesn't want to subscribe to a medical model is protected under the equality act?
We want to expand the lenses and not force people who are only circumstantially disabled to have to claim a disability and having to prove it in court. I do not subscribe to the medical model I have never been diagnose and yes I possess autistic traits shouldn't I be able to be protected?
Okay here’s my understanding; neuro diversity as a category will almost invariably fall under the equality act.
The equality acts definition of a disability is “A person (P) has a disability if P has a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on P's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.”
Important thing to remember is that when they talk about Ps ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities they mean relative to what P would have been without the impairment not relative to people in general.
So for example consider an athlete who twists his ankle and permanently injures it leaving him unable to compete in Olympic events. Competing in Olympic events is not a day-to-day activity. So you might think that if the athlete can still do normal day-to-day activities like walking to the shops he is not disabled. However that’s not necessarily the case because if this athlete now takes 10 minutes to walk to the shop where is before he took five, if walking to the shops now involves a lot of pain which an ordinary person might struggle to bare, but this guy because he’s dealt with years of painful athletics he’s able to bear, then in comparison with his life before he might now be disabled.
The effect on his life, on his ability to walk to the shops is more than trivial and therefore substantial. that is the definition of substantial in the equality act.
Autism affects the ability to socialise to interact with people in a social setting which is a normal every day activity. ADHD affects your ability to focus, to do paperwork, to respond to letters and emails which are normal every day activities. Tourette’s will affect one’s ability to simply be in a public space without attracting attention and possibly causing offence which is an every day activity.
Nerodiversity is always going to fall under this definition of disability whether or not you like it. And that really is a point isn’t it. it’s not a question of whether or not the equality act protects neuro diverse people. what people seem to be objecting to here is whether or not neuro diverse people should be classified as disabled.
I understand that argument from a philosophical point of view you can argue that Neurodiversity is more a kin to race than a disability. It’s a physiological characteristic, albeit an invisible one, which marks people out as being different from their peers and is very often hereditary. It confers a mix of advantages and disadvantages in different situations. Much in the same way black people in the north generally have poor vitamin D levels but at the same time are very resistant to sunburn and skin cancer.
Of course unlike race there doesn’t tend to be a shared language or shared culture or even necessarily a shared geographical location.
But the point I am making is pragmatically disability law is far more suitable for protecting neuro diverse people than any other form of discrimination law in the equality act. Only disabled people benefit from reasonable adjustments and from section 15 which prevents them from being discriminated against because of things that happen because of their disabilities.
I do not think it is worth messing with a well tested piece of legislation for the sake of applying a different label so people can feel better about it. Especially if the functional effect might possibly be that neuro diverse people actually have less protection because their new category is interpreted differently by the courts compared to disability.
As I’ve said before the real issue with Nero diversity is as an invisible disability it is not something that there is a particularly good level of awareness of amongst other people who are obligated to make concessions and special arrangements for neuro diverse people. It’s also conceptually a lot more complicated than other disabilities like being confined to a wheelchair which means that courts are more likely to require special experts and to want to take much longer and more involved trials to look at cases involving Neurodiversity.
So the issue really is that the lack of awareness and the lack of simplicity means that Neurodiversity cases under the equality act are almost always going to go to court, as opposed to out of court settlement, and almost always going to go to the fast track which is expensive and involves real financial danger for those who bring the cases.
Unlike a disabled person in a wheelchair who can probably expect to see his lawsuit under the equality act seen in the small claims court where he can have confidence he is very unlikely to have to pay for the other sides lawyer the average person with Neurodiversity is probably going to face an up hill struggle to get to the other side to take their case seriously and is probably going to have to go to an expensive court where they will require a lawyer and may end up having to pay for the other sides lawyer if they lose.
That is why in my opinion the most important thing that we can do to improve the equality act is to make sure that people have better awareness of how neurodiversity fits into it and to change procedural rules so that qualified one-way cost shifting now applies to equality act cases. We already have qualified one-way cost shifting for personal injury cases that is why you can get a no-win no fee arrangement. And the basic rule is if you win they pay for your lawyer, if you lose you don’t have to pay for their lawyer.
I notice there is a petition for qualified one way cost shifting in equality act cases right now on the petition Parliament website. <_< maybe you should all go sign it.
Triggers within the environment. ...that's quite broad as it's very different for different people. A lot of difficulties come down to differences in communication...how do you legislate for that?
Spot on. Apologies if I can't explain myself better but as this relates to lived experience it is very hard to abstract.
It seems really hard to manage when there is covert abuse and gossip and people getting targeted.
Forgive me, I don't understand the point you are making..."what" seems really hard to manage?...and "who" is getting targeted, and targeted for what?
It seems that The Flower Umbrella is referring to the difficulty of dealing with people secretly starting demeaning rumours against one or more others ~ as a means to socially segregate, humiliate and violate them psychologically or also physiologically, for the sake of decreasing their target's credibility and thereby further increasing their own as a powerful individual or group of individuals.
But I do get your point that neurodiverse accounts for the whole population. It should be a protected characteristic still and separate from disability I believe
I think people can be more than one. Like race someone can be both black and white and some people can be both male and female.
Forgive me, I don't understand the point you are making..."what" seems really hard to manage?...and "who" is getting targeted, and targeted for what?
It seems really hard to manage when there is covert abuse and gossip and people getting targeted.
Thank you for sharing ! I found one study between the dark tetrad and a link to entrepreneurial behaviour...
https://fbr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s11782-021-00103-y
Neurodiversity cannot be a protected characteristic because it means everyone. It means the natural variation in a group of minds. One person cannot be neurodiverse, as they only have one brain.
ND also includes the dark tetrad in your view ?
For those who have no knowledge of the 'Dark Tetrad' as being: Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Sadism, and Narcissism ~ here follows the abstract and link to the summarised article 'Examining the Dark Tetrad and Its Links to Cyberbullying':
The is light and dark in us all, for sure, whether NT, ND or any other concoction of classification one might choose, in my opinion.
ND also includes the dark tetrad in your view ? Some traits need to be managed, traits that can lead to abusive behaviour. If we are looking at the dichotomy of NT Vs ND is the dark tetrad ND or NT ? I think most people are hybrids and different traits will come out or be perceived based on the intersectional environment (cultural, political, economic, physical and social ). From my personal experience most people act out of ignorance but there should be a way of protection of those who are suffering from bullying even if they don't see themselves as being targeted based on a disability or as the current act puts it " mental impairment".
Understood, I just think the complexity and universality of these issues (both for NT and ND folk) render the proposition unweildy. But again, I do wish you well and admire your pursuit of your own convictions.
Thank you yes this is tremendously useful feedback.
Neurodiversity in this context is a subset of Biodiversity.
The goal is to protect not only disabled people but also people whose environment is disabling them and who might not perceive themselves as disabled.
It also should raise awareness about traits and triggers within the environment. Which is why I ask for an intersectional approach to disability and relationship to the environment be it physical cultural social economic or political.
