Neuroqueer identity: how being neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ intersect with each other
Interviews
Jae Halton, Assistant Legal Counsel at the Financial Times, spoke to myGwork about the experience of finding out they're neurodivergent later in their life and career. They also discuss how their LGBTQ+ identity intersects with being neurodivergent, elaborating on the 'neuroqueer' paradigm.
To start us off, please introduce yourself and describe your role
at your workplace.
I'm Jae Halton, and I’m Assistant Legal Counsel at the
Financial Times. I advise a wide range of FT business areas on contracts and other
commercial issues, and manage a number of other lawyers on the team.
In what ways do you believe being neurodivergent
impacts your experiences in the workplace, and how do you navigate any unique
challenges that arise?
Like many neurodivergent people of my generation, I’ve
spent most of my life and career not knowing that I’m neurodivergent. It was
only in the past couple of years that I’ve discovered that I’m ADHD and
autistic.
Looking back, I can now see how being neurodivergent
has impacted my experiences throughout my career, and how I've adjusted
unconsciously over the years. For example, I moved to my current in-house role
at a point in my career where remaining in a law firm would have meant more
emphasis on things such as networking and marketing — things which I always
found difficult, and which I can now see were linked to being AuDHD rather than
“personal failings”.
Can you share with us some personal achievements you are proud of as a neurodivergent person in your professional
life?
The very fact I have the career I have today is
something I’m proud to have achieved, now I realise how my undiagnosed
neurodivergence has affected me, especially when I was younger.
At university, I really struggled with executive
function — the basics of attending lectures, doing the required work for
tutorials, generally applying myself to my studies, and also in terms of
broader life skills like laundry and cooking. I can see now how this was ADHD,
but at the time it looked like I was just “lazy” and “disorganised”.
I’d had similar struggles at school, but had been able
to achieve good marks in exams despite this. At university, though, I reached
the limits of what I could “power through”, and ended up scraping a 2:2 in my
degree.
But ADHD turned out to have its positive side once I
encountered a field (the law) which really interested me. ADHDers are sometimes
described as having an “interest-based nervous system”, and when we find
careers that engage us, we’re often able to “hyperfocus” and think quickly and
creatively about what we’re doing. This is something I can now see being a
positive factor throughout my career.
How do you see the intersectionality of being
neurodivergent and belonging to the LGBTQ+ community influencing your
professional journey, and how do you utilize it to your advantage?
Realising that I’m queer (bisexual and nonbinary) has
come just as late in my career as realising I’m neurodivergent. That’s probably
why I’m a big fan of the “neuroqueer” paradigm – for me, my neurodivergence and
queerness are just different manifestations of the same experience.
Even if for much of my life I've been unconscious of
them, looking back I can now see how they’ve given me a different perspective
and helped me provide a distinctive approach to how I practice the law and work
with my colleagues. I can certainly now see why I never felt fully at home in
the very neurotypical, very cishet culture of the typical 1990s/2000s law firm.
Have you encountered any specific barriers or
biases as a neurodivergent person in the workplace? How have you navigated
those, and what advice would you give to others facing similar challenges?
Many of the barriers and biases have been the ones
I've internalised. I grew up in an era when ADHD didn't exist as a diagnosis,
and autism was seen as something that affected only a tiny minority of white
boys with high support needs. So I internalised the message that I was
disorganised and lazy (rather than ADHD) and socially awkward and weird (rather
than autistic), and over the years learned to mask these sides of myself as I
constructed my “professional” identity.
We also have to be realistic about the difficulties of
being open about neurodivergence in the workplace. There are good reasons why
many neurodivergent people don’t feel able to be open in the workplace — and
indeed many neurodivergent people struggle to hold down jobs at all. Negative
perceptions of autistic people, in particular, are deep-rooted in our society.
Neurodivergent people need to feel able to keep their neurodivergence
confidential until they choose otherwise.
Indeed, my own AuDHD status may well come as a
surprise to some of my colleagues who read this. As I gradually open up to
people about it, I know I’m running the risk of changing how people perceive
me, and not always for the better. It helps, though, that I already have
experience of the FT, and my colleagues, being open and accepting.
Can you share any personal or professional role
models who have inspired and influenced your journey as a neurodivergent person
in the workplace, especially during Neurodiversity Week?
I couldn't point to a single role model as such – but
I wouldn’t want to, anyway. What has inspired me and enabled me to understand
neurodivergent identities, and to come to understand my own neurodivergence,
hasn’t been one highly visible role model. Instead, I’ve gradually become more
aware of those who are open about their neurodivergence, and realised the ways
in which their experiences resonate with mine.
I suppose the lesson I’d draw is this: even the
smallest acts of openness about our identities and experiences as
neurodivergent people can contribute to someone else’s journey of
self-discovery, and help to guide them to greater self-understanding, and to
the community and support we all need.