The author really does not do a great job, here, at least in saying something sensible as a response to DeBoer's piece. The core premise seems to be that:
> I find it so very irritating that there is no term for my so-called ⸢attention deficit disorder⸣ that does not have the word “disorder” baked into it. I know what a disorder is, and this isn't one.
But the author then argues against a strawman:
> Why does any deviation from the standard have to be a disorder? Why do we medicalize human variation?
It doesn't, and in fact, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and many other disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder rather than not interfering with someone's life.
What the author really seems to be criticizing is that he learned and began identifying with the medical term for a disorder ("the ADD really is a part of my identity") and now he'd like a different way to describe his experience.
Fair! But get the cause-and-effect the right way around: we don't need to "stop labeling every difference as a disorder," we need to not adopt diagnostic terms and apply them to ourselves inappropriately. That's a part of what DeBoer is criticizing—that people self-diagnose and then "perform their various personalities."
To be clear, I agree with the author that it would help to have terminology for people who don't feel negatively impacted by their brains being different in a way that we can label, not just for those who do. Maybe the author could get started with that by dropping the "disorder" bit and just identifying himself as someone with an attention deficit.
> I find it so very irritating that there is no term for my so-called ⸢attention deficit disorder⸣ that does not have the word “disorder” baked into it. I know what a disorder is, and this isn't one.
But the author then argues against a strawman:
> Why does any deviation from the standard have to be a disorder? Why do we medicalize human variation?
It doesn't, and in fact, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and many other disorders require that the deviation amount to a disorder rather than not interfering with someone's life.
What the author really seems to be criticizing is that he learned and began identifying with the medical term for a disorder ("the ADD really is a part of my identity") and now he'd like a different way to describe his experience.
Fair! But get the cause-and-effect the right way around: we don't need to "stop labeling every difference as a disorder," we need to not adopt diagnostic terms and apply them to ourselves inappropriately. That's a part of what DeBoer is criticizing—that people self-diagnose and then "perform their various personalities."
To be clear, I agree with the author that it would help to have terminology for people who don't feel negatively impacted by their brains being different in a way that we can label, not just for those who do. Maybe the author could get started with that by dropping the "disorder" bit and just identifying himself as someone with an attention deficit.