We’re going to say the quiet part out loud. More of Community have been doing this lately. Let's make it more than just a trend. We don’t need more conferences. Or symposiums. Or expos. Or summits. Or whatever shiny word is being used this week to package exhaustion with a lanyard.
For many Neurodivergent people, especially Autistic people, these events are not just opportunities. They are obstacle courses in business casual. They ask us to mask in rooms where the sensory overwhelm hums louder than the speakers. Yes, even at neuro-affirming ones. They still ask us to be somewhat “professional” in spaces that were not built to support sensory seeking or avoidance. They ask us to travel when travel already costs us days of recovery we don’t have. They ask us to buy tickets that disappear faster than spoons. They ask us to show up whole while we are already rationing ourselves into parts. It’s not just bodies that get drained. It’s language. Constant talking. Constant listening. Constant translating ourselves into something acceptable. Quick responses. Polished opinions. Correct facial expressions. The format itself is not neutral. It is neurotypical by design.
And yes, we know. Speakers deserve to be paid. Organisers deserve to be paid. Labour is labour. But when tickets are priced beyond the very community the event proclaims to serve, something has gone sideways. When access becomes a luxury item, it stops being access and becomes branding. So many of these events aim at “professional development” and “academic excellence” while shouting lived experience. They reward polished voices over those of us who trip over our own voices. They elevate people within known networks and those who can endure small talk and marathons over those who can’t.
What we end up with is a strange loop. Events about inclusion that exclude. Panels on burnout that cause burnout. Spaces about dismantling hierarchy that rebuild it with name badges. Because conferences don’t just share information. They sort people. Those who attend become “connected.” Those who don’t become “out of the loop.” Those who present become “experts.” Those who can’t travel, can’t afford tickets, or can’t survive the sensory load become invisible. It creates a ladder inside a community that keeps saying it doesn’t want ladders.
And let’s talk about health, the mindbody, because this is the part that is becoming more prominent on program schedules. Many Autistic and Neurodivergent people are chronically ill. Fatigue, pain, migraines, gut issues, immune conditions, nervous systems that already run on overdrive. Conferences ask these bodies to stay "engaged" for hours, ignoring pain signals and overriding shutdowns, and all-the-while stating that accommodations to prevent this can be made. Many of us mask illness the same way we mask Neurodivergence. We perform wellness to stay present. We trade tomorrow for today. We leave early or collapse quietly. And it doesn’t end when we leave the building. There is sensory debt. Air-conditioning. Microphones. Applause. Overlapping voices. Perfume. Visual clutter. The bill arrives later as shutdowns, flares, meltdowns, lost days, lost weeks.
Accessibility is often reduced to ramps and captions. Real accessibility asks a harder question. Who can afford to be here without harm? And then there’s time. Autistic and Neurodivergent people are already time-poor. Therapy. Support workers. Medical appointments. Recovery. Paperwork. Advocacy. “Just attending” isn’t a day. It’s planning, transport, masking, and then repair. Even thinking about adding more commitments can tip someone into burnout. The pressure to keep up with the conversation becomes another invisible tax on already stretched nervous systems.
We’re told conferences are for networking. But networking is just another word for proximity to power. These spaces often become marketplaces. People pitch themselves. Organisations pitch for funding. Recognition becomes currency. Visibility becomes survival. This is not neutral. It’s capitalist logic dressed in community language. And capitalism loves urgency. It loves scarcity. It loves “limited tickets” and “don’t miss out” and “exclusive access.” It turns knowledge into a product and belonging into a transaction. Knowledge does not belong to stages and institutions. It lives in stories, relationships, bodies, land, and collective memory. It doesn’t need microphones to exist. It needs time, trust, and care. Representation without power is performance. Autistic speakers can still be managed. And safety is often assumed, not built. There is risk in speaking honestly. Risk of being tokenised. Risk of being seen as “emotional”, disruptive, burdensome instead of credible. Risk of professional consequences for telling the truth. Even the idea of “professionalism” is not neutral. It rewards masking. It rewards discomfort tolerance. It rewards bodies that can sit still and voices that sound confident. It quietly decides who looks legitimate.
Some will say, “But we have online options.” Digital doesn’t automatically mean accessible. Cameras and chats can be overwhelming to keep up with or spit attention between. Recordings still get locked behind paywalls. Fatigue still counts. The issue isn’t location. It’s structure. And then there’s the grief piece. Watching others go to events you can’t attend. Seeing leadership consolidate elsewhere. Feeling less visible inside your own community. That is relational harm. It’s not petty. It’s human.
So what do we want instead? We want slower sharing. We want resources that don’t expire after three days, three weeks, three months. We want conversations that don’t require plane tickets. We want learning that happens in bedrooms, lounges, group chats, and quiet corners. We want access that doesn’t demand stamina as an entry fee. We want community that doesn’t turn into hierarchy. We want collaboration without competition. We want connection without performance.
This isn’t anti-knowledge. It’s anti-gatekeeping. This isn’t anti-paying people. It’s anti-pricing out the people who matter most. This isn’t anti-gathering. It’s anti-extraction. Because too often these events extract stories, labour, emotional truth, and lived experience, then turn them into credentials, grants, and job titles that never circle back. And the people left behind don't need to be told they “missed out", they see it, feel it, live it.
But we don’t think they missed out. We think they were protected. Protected from low-lighting theology. Protected from forced optimism. Protected from the pressure to be inspirational on demand. A truly neuro-affirming future does not need more stages. It needs more rest. More trust. More horizontal spaces. More ways to belong without performing. So no, we don’t want another conference. We want care as infrastructure. We want capacity, not schedules. We want participation that looks like lying down, logging off, or listening later, especially in digestible segments. We want community that doesn’t require travel to be heard. We want access that doesn’t come with exhaustion attached. We want belonging that doesn’t need a badge. And most of all, we want a world where no one has to hurt themselves to participate. A world where we are not following the neuronormative scripts to be heard, live in community, exist. That’s not radical. That’s just listening to our bodies and believing them.
In solidarity