Neuroqueering Masculinity
This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.
About the autistic author markerSmith, C. J. (2026). Neuroqueering Masculinity. Northumbria Student Academic Journal, 2(1), 20-29. https://doi.org/10.19164/nusaj.v2i1.1874
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Abstract
This paper adopts an analytic autoethnographic approach to explore how a neurodivergent, queer man’s shifting gender expression and experiences of sexual identity illuminate the limits of binary understandings of masculinity and femininity (Anderson, 2006; Ellis, Adams and Bochner, 2011). Drawing on queer theory, neuroqueer theory and Jungian analytical psychology, it examines how social pressure, masking, diagnosis, crisis and psychedelic experience shaped my movement between more masculine and more feminine forms of self-presentation. The paper argues that gendered expression is better understood, in Jungian terms, as a dynamic interplay of psychic energies rather than as a fixed binary, and that neurodivergent and queer lives may make this instability especially visible. In tracing my own experiences from childhood to the present, I suggest that unmasking and individuation can be read as parallel processes of becoming more integrated, less performative and more internally coherent.
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