Aural Diversity (Drever, 2021) argues that every listening body is unique in threshold, sensitivity, fatigue, perceptual focus, spatial processing and affective responses. Hearing is not a binary between “hearing” and “deaf”; it is a spectrum shaped by sensory processing differences, trauma or tinnitus, APD, neurodivergence, chronic dissociation, psychosocial stress and gendered conditioning around silence and self effacement. Thus, the auraltypical model that is deeply ingrained in society and science is a fiction.
The concept of auditory normalcy within disability studies intersects critically with theories of minority stress and gendered listening norms. While the academic field of disability studies attempts to ‘reverse the hegemony of the normal and to institute alternative ways of thinking about the abnormal’ (Davis 2006,15), disability services in China have never been prioritized. In fact, it is not only individuals with physical disability who struggle to gain appropriate respect and self-esteem in China, but the entire society lacks the awareness of neurodivergent community.
Nick Walker articulated 3 fundamental principles of the neurodiversity paradigm in Neuroqueer Heresies (2021, 19):
- Neurodiversity–the diversity among minds–is a natural, healthy, and valuable form of human diversity.
- There is no “normal” or “right” style of human mind, any More than there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture.
- The social dynamics that manifest in regard to neurodiversity are similar to the social dynamics that manifest in regard to other forms of human diversity (e.g., diversity of race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation). These dynamics include the dynamics of social power relations–the dynamics of social inequality, privilege, and oppression– as well as the dynamics by which diversity, when embraced, acts as a source of creative potential within a group or society.
In recent years, Even as people are getting to realise they might be neurodivergent through internet short-videos, they remain unable to secure professional aid or official diagnoses from public institutions such as hospitals or schools. In that case, I started to think about the connection of all of these – while short-video platforms might catalyze dissociation, they simultaneously empower neurominority members to stop self-judgement within the neurotypical constraints or the pathology paradigm, instead, this awareness helps them build the confidence and recognition of being themselves.