Glossary

Queer

Queer is an umbrella term used by members of the LGBTQIA+ community to refer to any identities that are not heterosexual or cisgender. Many people use queer to describe themselves as non-cisgender or non-heterosexual when specifics aren’t required. The term also has utility as a way to indicate that sexual orientation and gender identification can be fluid or impossible to describe in a single label. 

Historically, “queer” was used as a synonym for weird or strange, but later found use as a slur for gay and lesbian people. Eventually, through the efforts of LGBTQIA+ activists and allies, the word “queer” was reclaimed and transformed into an umbrella term to be used to describe the community. The choice to keep a previously harmful word like queer in the modern LGBTQIA+ lexicon is representatitive of the turbulent history of sexual minorities in hetero/cisnormative environments.

Racism

Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or fear levied against a person or group of people based on their race or ethnicity, or the belief that certain racial or ethnic groups have inherent biological, physical, or mental advantages over others. Racism is often interpreted as inherently interpersonal, but it can be (and at least in the U.S., very much is) embedded into the legal, political, and economic institutions of a country. The enslavement of Africans in the U.S. and the Jim Crow laws of the post-Reconstruction era are explicit examples of institutional racism.

Interpersonal racism is what most people think of when they talk about racism. It is sometimes accidental; it can be based on inherent biases that were developed and reinforced over time. However, interpersonal racism often involves the deliberate misinterpretation of statistics to perpetuate negative stereotypes and reinforce bigoted beliefs. A common example of misinterpreted statistics is insinuating that the higher rates of crime in some areas with a large percentage of ethnic minorities is due to an inherent penchant for crime instead of the lack of resources in these areas resulting in increased desperation and stress.

Savant Syndrome

Savant syndrome is a rare condition where someone with a developmental disorder such as autism has an immense wealth of talent in a specific field. Many savant skills are related to incredible memory-based abilities, like being able to replicate a piece of music on an instrument after hearing it once, being able to remember license plates after seeing them in passing, or having the capacity to draw detailed city skylines from memory. Only around ten percent of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are reported to have some kind of savant skills, with the rate being 1 in 100 for individuals with other intellectual/developmental disorders.

Some famous examples of people with savant syndrome include: Ellen Boudreuax, a visually impaired woman with the ability to replicate any musical piece she’s ever heard and to tell time down to the second without a clock, and Kim Peek, a man known as a “megasavant” with the ability to calculate with both hemispheres of his brain simultaneously, giving him the ability to read and memorize two books at the same time.

Schizoaffective Disorder

Schizoaffective disorder is a mental health condition that contains the symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder. Schizophrenia affects how the world is perceived, while mood disorders affect feelings and behaviors. As a combination of the two types of disorders, schizoaffective disorder has both the characteristic hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia and the depressive feelings and low energy of some mood disorders. In some cases, people with schizoaffective disorder may also experience mania, or periods of high energy, euphoria, and increased irritability along with depressive episodes, resulting in a disorder reminiscent of bipolar disorder.

Schizoaffective disorder is very rare, with only around 0.3% of adults being diagnosed with it within their lifetimes. This could be due to how difficult the disorder is to diagnose, as many who could potentially have the disorder may receive a diagnosis for bipolar disorder or schizophrenia instead. Some potential causes of schizoaffective disorder include genetics and chemical changes in the brain. The use of psychedelics or hallucinogens may also induce schizoaffective disorder in those genetically predisposed to it.