I recently asked some friends to describe a typical child with ADHD. I doubt you’d be surprised to hear that the answer to my question was mostly met with tales of naughty little boys who were unable to sit still, who were disruptive and prone to angry outbursts. Pre-diagnosis I probably would have given you the same answer. This little boy is real, it is likely that as I describe him you are brought back to your own school experiences. We’ve all had a little boy like this in our class.

“But what about the girls? ”

— CALICO BOYLE

Photograph by Annie Spratt

Recent research has proved that ADHD is just as likely to be present in girls as it is boys. So why are girls less likely to be diagnosed in childhood and why is there an alarming rise of grown women getting diagnosed later in life?

One theory is that our symptoms are more subtle. Not everyone who has ADHD presents as hyperactive. Studies have found that girls are more prone to having the inattentive aspect of the disorder meaning they will present differently to their male counterparts.

Due to the lack of research on the variation of symtoms they are more likely to slip through the net and left to suffer in silence. This systematic failure means that many of them will go without treatment until adulthood while facing a lifetime of critique over things that they have no tools to deal with.

Without intervention, women and girls with ADHD face huge risks when navigating life. An undiagnosed girl is more likely to have to retake her exams whereas a boy with a confirmed diagnosis will be given additional support. A lesser known trait of ADHD is perfectionism so whilst these girls can achieve great things they have to work much harder than their neurotypical peers.

Photograph by Annie Spratt

Recent research has proved that ADHD is just as likely to be present in girls as it is boys. So why are girls less likely to be diagnosed in childhood and why is there an alarming rise of grown women getting diagnosed later in life?

One theory is that our symptoms are more subtle. Not everyone who has ADHD presents as hyperactive. Studies have found that girls are more prone to having the inattentive aspect of the disorder meaning they will present differently to their male counterparts.

Societal expectations and gender stereotypes are also very damaging when it comes to being a woman living with this disorder. In family dynamics, women are expected to be the primary parent at home, the organiser, the housekeeper, the ones who remember birthdays, anniversaries, bills, shopping lists, home work deadlines and social events.

As we move into an age where we have workplace equality, we are also expected to achieve this whilst holding down a successful career. These are unrealistic expectations for most neurotypical women but even harder for women with ADHD. It’s important that we understand that these gender stereotypes are damaging not just to women with ADHD but to feminism as a whole. 

If Survivor of Violence is a trigger warning for you then this is that kind of piece but here at MW the Survivor and language shouldn’t be the trigger, the trigger should be the way survivors are treated and demonised because never will I be the same again.

Never Will I Be The Same Again

They hate survivors, by the way.

They hate you – they think you’re – they’ll call you manipulative and like you’re therapising the group with whatever you touch or describe because your tongue is dirty now

It’s grubby

It taints art

And people.

But if they like what you’re saying they won’t hear it come out of your mouth.

They’ll say to someone else “Yeah wow it’s like…” repeating your words in the same way out of their mouth and everyone will hear it and be like wow yes

But those were my words, and I just said that.

Btw. in case this is already resonating with you: 

You’re not – by the way (manipulative) though they’ll attempt to say you are until you’re black and blue.

PTSD does not need to be diagnosed

My crying out of nowhere or the way I react, over-react, cry, cry, cry

Is seen as

Unprofessional

Hysterical

Crayyyzzeeeeee

Cray cray cray

Inability to form relationships

Let people get close

Pour your heart n soul in others

Gotta love yourself first

Perhaps I do love myself,

That’s why I cry, when you don’t listen

That’s why I cry, when you don’t have time

That’s why I cry when you interrupt me smiling with your patronising smile and you’re

“ah.. Hmm.. yeah.”

or

“yes, yes… anyone else?” 

That’s why I cry when you’d never cry

You say you’re passionate about autism but you’ve just slagged me off about my autistic traits and demonised me in the letter…. you’re treating me like a neurotypical person even though you’re in the wrong for not being transparent and for thinking you could profit off my naivity

Yes I’m naive but I can also lead

they’re two different things

They don’t tell wheelchair users to get up and run – but they burn holes in our skulls for not behaving like them even though we say it loudly again and again we are – I am autistic and ADHD

even my mum said “disability is just so wide but no one understands autism and ADHD it’s the most demonised of them all because they misinterpret your behaviour all the time. and they don’t think or even realise it but they’re blaming you for your behaviour which is a direct trigger or reaction to them not being transparent, explicit or doing the tasks you asked them to carry out.

I cry loudly down the phone to her:

But they’re just so Nasty cruel horrible to me 

Your email: how dare you use your heart condition as an excuse. (I didn’t, I told her I was really very sorry but  was very unwell and have a heart condition and it’s Covid19 and I was very dizzy with vertigo so couldn’t facilitate that day, I knew it would ruffle her feathers but not to the point she’d violently beat me up with words. 

(yeah, words hurt, as much as sticks and stones, and she beat me real good, with a bat as I’m down on the ground, she caved in my head.) 

I cry for me.

And for me

And for Gem, who didn’t experience this in 2017, when I’d invited her to be in my play about it. (Way to the pretty). 

She saw a man get violent in front of me and though she murmured, he was inappropriate to me, and was always and has always been an ally it took until she was a survivor too for her to delete him and realise the extent of his violence, and so many more people’s violence for that matter.

“I get it now” 

She always got it – that’s why I don’t mean to patronise her or any of you back, but until you’ve been violated 

Had violence poured all over you in equal measures 

Then it dawns on you.

He was at the play

about surviving rape and courts

and a court case that ripped you apart

and now you’ll never will i be the same again

and he watched that play

and had raped her too. and been violent. and been violent. and he had watched my play.

I feel guilty for casting her in it.

Guilty

Gemma performing at the Minories Gallery, Colchester

But they speak about autistic people as if they need to overcome the struggles. 

Don’t talk to me as if I talk about struggle. 

Talk to me as if I am you’re equal. 

You can’t. 

(Game plan: They don’t mean the above, (as in above above)  unless you can do it in the way they want it)

Soooooooooo Never will I be the same again.

Never will I be the same again

After you hit me in the playground

After you called me names because I asked to play with you the wrong way

Never will I be the same again

After you told me to show my wee wee to prove I was a girl on the school bus

You teased me and your sister telling us both we weren’t girls

You were her brother making her show your vagina to you and you now have a daughter. That’s fucked up. 

You told me to turn my face away in school because URGH you’re so fucking ugly.

You told me my name and asked me without letting me answer you, why I always do that, why do you always have to ruin things?

What things? I want to ask  but it took 20 seconds for my mind to catch up and by that point you’d turned your head back to the blackboard and I didn’t know how to answer you 

(these are all different people, but they are all men/boys) 

Maybe life would have been different if I’d gone to an SEN school, learnt in ways that excited my brain and my heart and I wouldn’t feel like there was so much more I should be doing with my life, instead there’d be simplicity, 

 Or the time I said to the Dance therapist during placement how I liked hanging out with people with Downs Syndrome in Wales because they are good dancers, many of them, And he corrected me and began to patronise me that they were individuals and not all of them like dancing. He made me feel very small – but he was being patronising because he’d never dream of hanging out with them – they were just his patients or clients and I stared through him, losing respect for him, oh I said, well all my friends with Downs love dancing. 

And he was the fucking Dance therapist for goodness sake, I was trying to be complimentary of his profession and his work. Instead it ended with him making me feel like an awful human being, and like I should top myself (RSD).

Then he said, Friends? 

I nodded. Yeah. Friends. 

Because that’s when I saw it – the break in his humanity. 

We can’t be friends with Downs but we can correct people for saying they don’t all like dancing because we are social justice types but we pick people apart to make them feel small by being social justice types. 

Do you ever write down what you’re going to say before you say it?

She asks me for my notebook.

I see her breathe as her shoulders, throat and face relaxes, breathes, strains, heavy, looks on

You write beautifully,

You write creatively on the lines

But here in the corners sound like conversations, like every day ones… you’d say to the waitress? 

Cocks her head to the side. 

Never will I be the same again. 

Did you 

Did you 

You did didn’t you 

Yellows the barrister – yells it loud and loud 

I didn’t realise he’d lie, I realised how idiotic that sounded about a year after it happened. (a rapist, lying? ) well i thought, you know, i just thought.. I was about to say he’d tell the truth 

But i catch myself 

Because i realise then that i am stupid

It’s a revelation of sorts. 

That I’m slow. I’m stupid 

But it’s easier to demonise us who went to mainstream school deemed too bright for SEN but I need and want a community centre to do puzzles, and eat sandwiches, and play pool and paint in an art studio and exhibit and make art and show it world over 

i’ve written so many times to SEN communities and all have slammed the door in my face and said …

well they didn’t reply.

nor did UCL autism centre, or any other academics who say they’re dedicated to women and autism.

Not victim they say, but i was a victim, I am also a victim to every single neurotypical I come into contact with 

Every blaming email 

Every long worded letter that accuses me of (being too autistic and too ADHD) but in their words it’s all the traits and behaviours of autism and ADHD… so….. maybe they’re stupid?

(They sound it – says a friend, I mean, they’re treating you like a neurotypical, expecting you to be a neurotypical whilst supporting you as an autistic person….. that’s thick as pig shit.

that’s disgusting

i mean, another voice pops up – it’s pretty …. insulting actually.

Or the support worker who accused me of being too slow and never being ready in the morning because i’d needed her help but she was too busy smoking weed outside and then made a complaint about me not having lunch ready when that too was her job to pack the lunch and call the time to eat, because I forget to eat and don’t eat.

it certainly reads stupid.

(and that the whole world is out to demonise autistic people… autistic women).

You’re rude and how dare you do this and how dare you do that (their voice)

Or the time, I couldn’t find pens in my bag. 

Or lost my passport in Rome and forgot my bag in the taxi after securing the passport 

Or lost my keys in my hand and looked everywhere for my keys and then only when i wondered what that sharpness of metal was in my hand realising then that 

My key was in my hand. Never will I be the same again. 

Stupid 

You just need to have more confidence in yourself 

If only elinor tried harder 

She isn’t living up to her potential 

Elinor should listen more 

It never happened did it 

You’re a liar 

You’re a liar 

Pants on fire 

Pants on fire 

Just die already 

Just die already 

Just die 

The hardest thing so far

Has been realising that it doesn’t go away

That you will always be left needing to do the work

It takes

Just to get out of bed in the morning

Just to feel like you deserve to have another day.

And that

They probably don’t even think about you

Not day to day

You are in the past

A discarded possession

But they are in your present

They are still hurting you

Every single day

And it is exhausting.

I don’t sleep well any more.

Every little noise on the street is a worry,

Because he knows where I live

Because at night

He knows I will be home

Alone.

Dumbfounded and numb

And frightened for my life

And so so completely crushed

By the loss of self and the loss of trust and the loss of the love that I thought was there

And it is exhausting.

Constantly being in a state of reacting to crisis

Flight flight flight but lost and arms flapping uselessly

Wearing concrete boots

Fixed in time and place

The awful blank space

That means I cut off completely and hid

So far inside myself

I’m not sure I’ll ever come out again

To fight

To fight

Did he watch the performance I did

About survivors

And look at the disgusting statistics

About the lack of justice

And deep down feel confident he could get away with it.

Even I hate to think it

And I am so ashamed of the compassion I have for him

And at first I thought

Hopefully we can still be friends

Because I can’t believe I was so disposable to him

Except I know I was

Just a clearly dissatisfying object in the end

But hopefully we can still be friends…

Because maybe pleasing him will protect me?

But he told me to disappear

Vanish

And that is what he wants.

To destroy

And leave no trace.

Finally verbalise

And the words

Just spill out  

And once they are in the world

You cannot stop them

But that doesn’t mean you have exorcised the damage

I really hoped that it would

Once the words are out there

You have to take responsibility for them

You cannot just bring them into the world

And then abandon them

I had hoped I would feel more protected

And people have been surprisingly good at listening

Mostly

But there are a few

Who don’t want to believe that they were friends with a fiction

And

I can see how that is hard

I would like nothing more than to put this behind me

But

He murdered so many things in me

But they are still festering

Attached

Like a rotting extra limb.

And even if I try to amputate

I will still feel it’s ghost

Whereas he

Was just trying me on

And walking about in my skin

Until he got bored

Or it didn’t give him what he expected or wanted

So he peeled it off

Put it in a shoebox under the bed

Because he didn’t want it any more

But he didn’t want anyone else to have it

Especially not me

And he really didn’t want anyone else

To see

Who he really was

Or what he had done.

2020 has been an interesting year so far. And watching from a distance, from within the walls of our houses, has helped to clarify some things. It has made the unacceptable unavoidable. We have been given the space to really think on both a global and local scale and the lockdown has been perforated deafeningly with stories of injustice. When placed so firmly on the doormat of our own houses we have had to face up to these issues.

My neurodiversity is always a problem for neurotypicals. Particularly for neurotypical people in the music industry and the arts. It’s not a problem for me because I can do the work, often to a prolific scale, but I struggle without effective access and I struggle without trust. I struggle without the corridors and the bridges.

Gemma performing during Lockdown

How do we become actively anti-ableist?

Very often it starts with language. It seems pretty obvious but adapting our terminology can be an enormous first step in any egalitarian battle. Back in the depths of lockdown, the streamer, comedian and autistic human Ian Lane made a video essay in reply to the behaviour of another streamer, Xanderhal. It explained how labelling odd, annoying or irrational behaviours, people or things as ‘autistic’, usually accompanied in this case with a sly snicker, was indeed an ableist slur. It seems more common in America but with the rise in popularity of streaming during the pandemic it is important to challenge these verbal tics before they become normalised.

Gemma performing at the Minories Gallery, Colchester

Or worse. It can go ignored. Because you fit in well enough you are expected to operate within a neurotypical framework that doesn’t account for your needs, until something happens and suddenly you become an inconvenience or a disruption. No empathy or understanding is extended to help deal with the barrier you have met, you seemed fine until then…but now you are a problem.  And you will be dealt with as such, with no consideration for the fact that you are disabled.

And unfortunately this situation is generally amplified by the genders we present.   

Which leads me onto the hardest part of this argument, because it brings me to my own experiences and makes me acknowledge the moments when I could have done more myself to be actively anti-ableist.

And here is the kicker. Fundamentally people don’t believe or believe in us. Because people do not trust us, they either do not listen to this honesty or do not think that we know ourselves. So when we overcommit, talk over other people, when the words just wont stay in our mouths, when we speak plainly, when we are insistent, hyper focussed or release an outburst in a moment of overwhelm we are punished.

In tears and howling with pain.

Because despite being clear and open about her autistic traits to people who pretend to understand neurodivergence, she is ignored and then villianised for the very behaviours that she clearly outlined she displays. People who are supposed to, and paid to, help her meet her barriers and thrive often abuse her disability and then place the blame at her feet. I have listened to their terrible damage and tried to help as much as I can when she has been hollowed out by their hatred.

I have had the most incredible neurodivergent woman I know on the phone to me in tears, regularly, maybe once every two months. In tears and howling with pain.

I have witnessed the same sorts of neurodivergent behaviours in (often white) men being described as renegade, mercurial, eccentric or virtuosic. Not always of course, but usually greater allowances are made and greater respect is paid if you happen to have been born and continue to identify as a man. This coupled by the general rule that boys tend to get diagnosed earlier on in life than girls/women means that we can be set at a disadvantage medically, often developing problematic co-morbidities with anxiety and depression that can present so much more profoundly than if we had been granted our answers, and the help that can come with them, much earlier on.

And what if you are neurodivergent and black, or trans, or non-binary?

Well then you are deemed so counter to the prevalent culture that it can sometimes illicit an almost murderous rage. And this awful truth is unacceptable in modern society. We have to do better than to allow this as human beings. I have to take a stand. That is why I must write this appeal for you all to be actively anti-ableist.

This can be frustrating for us when we are trying so desperately to be heard and understood and it can be intimidating for others that don’t seek to understand it. 

But we shouldn’t be frightened to take pride in knowing that language.

We should wear it on our sleeves like a beautiful corsage.

The very fact that we think and speak in a different language gives us an imaginative power unknown in the neurotypical sphere. We can make links and connections between things that would never occur to a neurotypical mind. We can complete task others may take days to manage. Different things are obvious to us and this alternative perspective is valuable even if it sometimes requires an interpreter. And if only we were trusted with this, my goodness the things we could achieve would be wonderful. But so often we are not…we are seen as a threat, or as a risk. 

So often neurodivergent individuals move through life like it’s snakes and ladders…with no working ladders. This is not an uncommon experience for many disadvantaged groups. But because our ‘difference’ can often be quite invisible, or even romanticised, we need to push ourselves forward more assertively in the quest for an equal footing in society or risk remaining lost.

So I am incredibly thankful for the loud keening of the black community, for the folk spilling in great numbers onto the streets of Belarus, for the people sending masks over to the displaced migrants in Greece. They have given me the courage and the terminology to stand in solidarity with them, to aim to lift them up at the same time as I try to take a more active role in seeking to address the unfairness in our society that is levelled at neurodivergent people. 

Gemma Abbott performing

There is something truly fundamentally wrong when we cannot name Neurodivergent leaders in the industry who are women/womxn.

Yet there are many, they just haven’t been given the opportunity, space or platform yet.

My residency at Drake Music is extremely rare because I never get chosen at interview – I get to lots of interviews off the back of my applications, but when I am interviewed in person, so many neurotypical panels can see something in me that I can’t and I flounder and sometimes go mute. I trip up on my words and the block between my mind and my mouth is like a room I can see in an upstairs apartment building but simply can never connect them. There is no corridor for the words or messages to go down.

But I can do the work.
I am that person in the written application.

But so many people can’t trust words, they need to see the human form. But they’re disappointed when they meet the human form. It’s not how they expected a neurodivergent woman to be.

That is why my residency at Drake Music is so extremely rare because I was chosen after they met me in person, twice, once in a room and the second time over Skype, and a third time on the telephone.

My neurodiversity is always a problem for neurotypicals. Particularly for neurotypical people in the music industry and the arts. It’s not a problem for me because I can do the work, often to a prolific scale, but I struggle without effective access and I struggle without trust. I struggle without the corridors and the bridges.

Sia & Trust

Charlotte Colombo wrote a brilliant article about Sia ‘s new film in the Metro on Sunday 22nd November:

“Like her costume, Maddie Zeigler will be able to remove her autism after a long day on set and continue to live her neurotypical life. People on the autism spectrum can’t do that. When I’m having a meltdown or experiencing sensory overload, I can’t just take my autistic costume off. I have to live with it.”

This Lockdown, Drake Music experienced me in severe meltdown. They have experienced my voice raise octaves. They have not always trusted me, but they are open to learning and I am still here in my residency with them though it’s been a struggle for both of us sometimes, because they are neurotypically led and I am neurodivergent. We clash due to language barriers and my barriers with emails, thinking and technology.

I had applied to do this residency to get out of my bedroom and travel nationwide to meet and get to know them, their partner organisations, people and projects. Instead, Lockdown forced me back into my bedroom and meetings were often regimented to time limits and the flow of expressively free working did not occur as much as craved. But, they recognised I was in distress and experiencing barriers and organised for me to have access in the form of a Music Tech and Creative enabler paid for by Access to Work.

This is why, Colombo hits the nail on the head when she says that people on the autistic spectrum (and also those with other neurodivergent conditions) “simply don’t have the luxury that Maddie Zeigler has” with taking off her costume or mask at the end of the day. We have to live with it.

Autistic women have to live with the persecution and the expulsion, often being fired from jobs they excel at due to behaviours or traits they cannot control, pushed out, and excluded from so many organisations and opportunities.

Because of Neurotypicals’ perception of low functioning and high functioning autistics then autistic people are never believed or trusted when they are perceived as high functioning and this can be very damaging to the music and arts careers of so called high functioning autistic women who struggle – and really struggle against so many access barriers.

Neurodivergence and the arts

In the arts alone I have reached out several times to charities that invest in “learning disabled and autistic” people and have received no replies because I am deemed not “the kind of autistic or learning disabled person” they help.

It was a conversation though with a fellow neurodivergent that made me realise, that’s it!

She told me, “They don’t want you because they can’t exploit you.” 

And perhaps this is incredibly controversial right now, but perhaps that’s why the so called high functioning autistic women get kicked to the kerb for opportunities – we get overlooked because we are deemed as problematic, not inspiring and this is why so many organisations reject or exclude us. And why we are so often demonised.

So we remain stuck in our bedrooms.

We may be the women who excelled at university but who couldn’t for whatever reason survive in the “successful jobs” field and pretty soon by our mid thirties we are all having massive burn outs and breakdowns, going on extended periods of sick leave. Perhaps for many of us those breakdowns end up also being breakthroughs, but one thing is certain, it is rare to find any opportunities, or support out there for us – autistic and neurodivergent women – where we are trusted to lead, acknowledged for our contributions and truly heard. Where we are commissioned and paid for our work.

“We need to somehow have “superpowers” or “be inspiring” but what if we simply, are trying so hard to exist and sustain an art practice when all the doors are shut to us? ”

— ELINOR ROWLANDS

For some perspective, I run Magical Women, and even so many neurodivergent women/womxn artists continue to expect or treat me as if we’re neurotypical – but we’re not – I’m not – I’m neurodivergent and I struggle. I struggle without access and we need access to lead and we need access to run projects but not because we can’t do the project and not because we can’t lead a project but because neurotypicals make it so hard for us to lead because of the very ableist tendencies of what a leader should or must look like, how if you’re not a confident person or if you stutter you’re not able to lead … Who says? Who decided those things? Neurotypicals.

When we look at trees, we love the diversity of them, we experience their differences in age and style with awe. But not with humans. With humans we perceive them out of fear, out of disgust and often out of ignorance because we never gave them space to be.

Change the system

Education is forced to look at children in a way that sizes them up, and feedback is often given in such critical ways that it shuts out and excludes those of us who are so incredibly sensitive. And the arts are wrong when they tell us to grow thicker skin – our masks are heavy enough – instead we need a changing system, ND led ways of nourishing not persecuting. The average autistic and ADHD children will hear 20,000 more negative things said about them by their 12th birthday than non autistic/non ADHD children (Dodson, 2019). So enough of blaming trauma on why we experience barriers and instead, we’d like neurotypicals to own up to their part in why we might experience horrific social anxiety due to their role in the trauma, whether done intentionally or not.

But when Neurotypicals are told that autistic adults without a learning disability are 8x more likely to die by suicide than someone without autism, neurotypicals will often not believe autistic adults, fobbing them off or telling them that men are the highest group. Neurotypicals have an answer for everything.