Girls Self-Diagnosing on TikTok Aren’t Why Ableism Happens

A response to Freddie deBoer’s “Of Course People Make Up Disabilities”

A reading list for a Marxist who cares a great deal about neurodivergence and disability but apparently has not read any relevant theory on it?

I gotta admit I read Freddie deBoer’s newest Substack entry Of Course People Make Up Disabilities the moment I saw it in my inbox. Before diving into my critique, you can read it in full here:

Of Course People Make Up Disabilities

I find deBoer to be an incredibly effective writer whose ideas sometimes challenge me in a beneficial way, and I enjoyed much of his latest book (which I asked him for an early copy of, and he was kind enough to give me) — but I’m consistently frustrated by his takes on disability.

For a Marxist, deBoer steadfastly refuses to engage with numerous Marxist writers’ critiques of psychiatry and the pathology paradigm of mental illness; when he does set his sights on criticizing contemporary thinking about disability, it’s people being annoying on Twitter and TikTok that draw his focus. In this most recent piece, girls on TikTok who say they have dissociative identity disorder, or DID, are deBoer’s main concern.