As a neurodivergent person, I’ve spent much of my life feeling like I’m reading from a different script than everyone else. Social cues, small talk, the unwritten rules of “how to be” — they never quite clicked for me the way they seemed to for others. Yet strangely, that very difference didn’t always push people away. More often than not, it drew them in. Not the classical outcast story. My bluntness was labeled “brave.” My idealistic streak was called “refreshing” or “inspi

How progressive spaces sometimes exclude the very people they most want to protect Close-up view of a stack of books with a cup of tea I’ve spent most of my adult life in leftist, queer, feminist, and disability-justice spaces. These are the communities that first gave me words for things I’d never been allowed to name—words that helped me understand my own neurodivergence, my queerness, my rage at injustice. Many still do. Political quizzes reliably place me far left, and mo