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#it's also bullshit pseudoscience like all of eugenics is
aro-culture-is · 10 months
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Aroallo culture is constantly feeling like a degenerate
I have... more than a few things to say on this topic, but I will restrain myself to the two major points that have caused me to delay posting this.
For one: Internalized sex negativity ahoy!
In all honesty? I genuinely do not understand how sexual attraction without romantic attraction (or any other form of attraction, really) is supposed to be bad. I genuinely cannot tell you how wild it is to think that sexual attraction, one of the instincts that has generally been selected for among all sexual species similar to us, is somehow... morally incorrect? How much must we hate ourselves, see ourselves as the monster in a bedtime story, for the invisible Thought Crime of feeling like another person is attractive? It's okay. Literally the only "bad" is if your actions in response to a feeling are performed in malice or cause harm, and even then there's nuance that requires thought and communication, not mind-reading and assuming others will be disgusted.
Sincerely, please please please look into sex positivity. Read about it. Follow sex positive accounts, movements, and people. Let yourself feel in response, and ask yourself what does and does not speak with you. Engage in the topic. You don't have to believe it right away, but I promise you, it is well worth your time to expose yourself to resources that teach you another perspective that does not demonize the vast majority of the world in some strange and non-productive way, producing shame and little to show for it.
Secondly... degeneracy.
What a very, very loaded word. To summarize some points from Wikipedia, in terms of fact: the concept of degeneracy in this usage originates from the 19th century theory of social degeneration. The concept of heredity had yet to be fully understood in social degeneration's 18th century development, and this movement largely believed that habits of parents changed their child's biology. This, in turn, was used to explain a perceived decline in civilization. It took little time for the theory to appear in medical and zoological works, with the intent to explain why different ethnic groups exist. You may recognize this concept by a directly related one: eugenics.
The theory of degeneracy first grew fame when used to explain racial differences, and quickly spread from the medical field to psychiatry (ie, mentally ill individuals will produce more severely mentally ill children, and therefore should not continue their lineage) and criminology (particularly when combined with phrenology). It was associated with authoritarian political attitudes such as militarism, scientific racism, and support for eugenics. The development of degenerate theory both partially predates and partially follows the works of Gregor Mendel in describing the theory of evolution, and frankly, largely based its so-called scientific backing on incorrect understandings of evolution and poor science, using such understandings to prop up eugenicist beliefs.
Why do I say all this? I think it is very, very important to recognize the sociopolitical bullshit that props up the absolute pseudoscience that social degeneracy revolves around, and to state that anyone who truly believes in degeneracy does not actually have the best interest of other's in mind or heart except that of the current in-groups. if people in your life are using these theories and words, I want to empower you with knowledge that they are, scientifically and historically, very much in the wrong. I want you to be able to look at their words, and understand the context behind their beliefs, even if they themselves do not.
also, real talk: if you can, form other social networks. join a club, play social games, go to community events, anything it takes to experience people outside of those who give you this message. it'll do wonders for you to build social circles outside of that stuff.
tl;dr:
the origins of the theory behind the word "degenerate", as used today, are scientifically bullshit, politically and socially motivated, and largely were used to justify eugenics. i would recommend not trusting people who genuinely believe in degeneracy to have anyone's best interest at heart but their own, and that you are perfectly normal and fine as you are.
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creature-wizard · 6 months
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Nothing like folks coming at me about my not being a "real pagan/witch" because I don't bother with the pseudoscience known as astrology. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for ages we thought the planets were gods, so that's why early physicians applied astrology to their medicine. Then we learned planets aren't gods, so now it's the gravitational pull or whatever that the planets have on people because of when and where they were born. There are still people who believe this. Gravity doesn't choose individuals. If the pull of Jupiter is doing anything to us, it's doing it to all of us, and has nothing to do with whatever constellation you were born under. Then there's the bit about there having been 13 signs rather than 12 in western astrology. One was omitted because of superstition or convenience, but I can't remember the details. Then, of course, the location of constellations has changed over time, and what was gemini 2k years ago is now taurus, but not because if we include the 13th sign it gets all kinds of messy.
Astrology is bullshit, mercury retrograde is nonsense, and whatever your sign is has less than nothing to do with your life.
It gets especially bad are the people who hard-core believe this shit. They believe it so hard they blame your sign for why you are rhe way you are. I've had to deal with pagans/witches who, rather than getting to know, will spend 10 minutes listening to me talk and ask me if I'm this or that sign because only those signs act or think like this. I had a nurse who told me I've got [insert medical condition] because I was born under [this sign] on a Friday. How tf did they get through training with all that in their head.
I wish people would stop using horoscopes and astrology to figure out who/what to blame for whatever fuckery they're dealing with/caused. It's exhausting repeatedly hear their noise.
I'll never forget when I got on somebody's nerves and they demanded to know if I was a Gemini, because they were convinced that Geminis were the demons ever. And lemme tell ya, this person was the sort who refused to do any self-reflection and consider that maybe they were wrong; instead, they just demonized anybody who didn't just treat them as this infallible deity (they did, in fact, believe they were an infallible deity).
Astrology really is one of those things that gives very mean and self-centered people a tool to divide people into "good" and "bad" categories, as well as define precisely what kind of "bad" person they are. It's unfortunately one of our worse impulses as human beings, and many people will exploit any framework that seems to justify it. (The ones who like to reckon themselves as scientific intellectuals tend to reach for eugenics and pop psychology.)
Also you're not like, not really wrong about the history of astrology or anything, but there's a ton of stuff you're definitely missing here, which IMO is absolutely fascinating. Like the fact that astrology as most of us know it was invented in Babylon, where it reflected Babylonian seasons and seasonal mythology. And the whole stellar ray theory, and how people thought that metals were formed deep in the earth when certain places were exposed to certain stellar rays. TBH, astrology has a ton of interesting history and lore attached to it, so I'm just gonna suggest anybody who's interested watches ESOTERICA's videos on astrology, because yeah it's genuinely very fascinating.
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bookshelfdreams · 2 years
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So. Phrenology.
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The study of the human head!
Not quite.
Phrenology does concern the human head, but it's more accurately described as the attempt to extrapolate personality traits and biographic facts from the size and shape of the skull. It's based on the assumption that each function of the brain is situated in a specific area and those expand or atrophy depending on how much they are used, like muscles. This is reflected in bumps and dents in the skull; if you know which area of the head corresponds to which brain function, you can "read" the skull of a specific person.
Note that "brain function" largely does not mean what we would consider actual brain functions, like speech, motor skills, or memory but more vague personality traits and such.
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Doing phrenology as a parlour trick is kind of like astrology, or palm-reading. You build this whole system of arbitrarily associating personality traits with easily observable features people have no control over, and being successful largely depends on how good you are at exploiting the Barnum effect. It's not difficult to pull this off at all, but Stede screws up spectacularly. This is because he's a terrible liar, bad at reading people, and not confident enough to be a convincing conman (Frenchie would have killed it).
I am 100% certain that this very moment is the first time Stede ever hears about the concept. (It was developed in the 1790s and, like most pseudoscience, is more of a 19th century thing, but we're gonna ignore that, historical accuracy is for losers). When you watch the scene and focus on Stede it's a hilarious string of wtf expressions.
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(wish I could gif that scene)
He's able to deduct it has something to do with feeling people's heads but he has no idea what he's supposed to learn from palpation. He makes a guess and fails because he doesn't recognize that literally all he has to do is tell Antoinette that she's a born fashionista, the smartest person in the room, and hot as hell.
There's something else that I find significant about it. At its heyday, phrenology was an integral part of all manner of gross, misanthropist bullshit pseudoscience, it was used to "diagnose" criminal tendencies and educational prospects. Of course it has its place in scientific history; for example, phrenology was also one of the first theories that proposed that the human brain is malleable and rehabilitation an option.
Overall though, it's outdated and bigoted, and even at the time, some people recognized that it's largely bullshit. It has contributed a lot more bad than good to the world. It's foundational to racism and eugenics, which of course culminated in the detailed categorization of human beings into "races" under national socialism. Culturally, this idea that outer beauty is reflective of moral purity and good character is still pervasive.
And this is an idea that ofmd rejects at its very core. In this story, conventional beauty and attractiveness has no bearing at all on character or worth. You are not what other people think of you. You need not let society's preconceived notions define you.
They bring up phrenology deliberately to discount it, to make fun of it; Stede, who is well-read and educated, doesn't even know what it is. Because it is insignificant. It's nothing more than a funny anecdote.
Look at these rich dumbasses, they actually believe the shape of your skull has any bearing on who you are as a person. lol.
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hearthhag · 2 years
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hi, in mundane life i’m a history/humanities student! i study disability, fatness, queer life, magic, and all the intersections those entail; particularly (at the moment) when they intersect with fascist movements and ideology.
why am i telling you this? because we need to talk about nazis and fascism.
why? because unfortunately fascism has a long history of using occultism, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory to spread white supremacist ideas, racism, antisemitism, ableism, & antiziganism.
before i get started, i wanna make sure we’re on the same page about what these things are.
occultism - the study or practice of non-mainstream or novel belief systems, especially as they pertain to the supernatural, mystical, magical, and metaphysical.
pseudo- (prefix) - not based in any accepted fields or findings.
pseudoscience - ideology that has been “translated” to sound scientific. not based in real science.
pseudohistory - ideology that has been “translated” to sound historical or like historical fact, or uses historical motifs. not based in real history.
let’s break down what that looked like in the 1930s: (we’re going to be looking at untranslated documents from the NSDAP— if you don’t want to see that, i completely understand, feel free to scroll to the point where there’s red text like this.)
so here we have the two big, prominent, fonts used by the NSDAP; Futura and Fraktur.
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futura was— and is— the font of choice for scientific [sic] writing, reports, and ‘good’ modern art.
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fraktur was the font of choice for history [sic], ideology, ethics, morals, and emotional writing, and aimed to appeal to a sense of historical german glory. it’s also known across europe as the nazi font for this very reason.
these two documents are from the same year. which one feels older or more foundational? if its the antisemitic book set in fraktur, you’re like most people.
here is the line of red text for people avoiding triggering content.
fascism relies on calls to history, especially one where we [sic] were better off in the past than we are now. (see: Make America Great Again)
fascism also relies on looking toward a future where its scapegoat no longer exists. (see: drain the swamp)
when we’re studying marginalized people and their history, and when we’re studying pre-christian and early christian european practices, we need to be particularly careful of white supremacist ideas, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory.
let’s say you wanted to learn about your personal heritage and what folk practices you might want to reconnect with. you decide to look online for something like a human migration map. (again, scroll away to the green text like this to avoid.)
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you find this.
i mean, it looks legit, right?
wrong. this is a map by prominent eugenicist madison grant.
he made all of this data up to confirm his ideology— that’s pseudoscience being used to create pseudohistory.
this is a line of green text for people avoiding triggers.
so, now that you’ve been throughly inundated with primary sources, let’s discuss this.
one, the nazis straight up did not come up with nordicism, they took it to its extreme. nordicism has its origins in the us, as does eugenics as a whole.
two, look how innocuous all this bigotry is. you are not immune to propaganda isn’t just a meme! the point of propaganda is to blend in and to be subtle. it’s not going to stick in your head if you think it’s bullshit.
three, just like how nazis used american white supremacy, they co-opted a lot of ideologies from a lot of different cultures. some they took to use for hate and didnt change much, others they took something that wasn’t hateful (like an alphabet) because it just looked cool, and they made it hateful.
four, and really this is where i cut this post off to make a part 2 because #4 is so large, nazis justified co-opting symbols and ideologies with their belief that there were these vast, connecting elements and traditions and this former glory of “the aryan race” that were being covered up or polluted by whoever the marginalized group of the day was, usually jewish people. anything that even seems a little like that is probably fascist.
my goal here is to help you develop your nazi detector. america has been parroting fascism for a long time, and we’re in serious trouble. remember, if you’re not actively against them, you’re for them, or you might as well be.
i’m going to leave you with umberto eco’s 14 core elements of fascism and some further watching (videos that do a good job explaining what i’m talking about but in different ways) while i go write pt. 2.
eco grew up under mussolini’s regime, and these are from his 1995 essay Ur-Fascism.
The cult of tradition.
The rejection of modernism.
The cult of action for action’s sake.
Disagreement is treason.
Fear of difference.
Appeal to social frustration.
The obsession with a [secret] plot.
The enemy is both strong and weak.
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.
Contempt for the weak.
Everybody is educated to become a hero.
Machismo and weaponry.
Selective populism.
Fascism speaks Newspeak.
dissecting turning point usa’s americafest
let’s talk about broadway
how did the nazis even happen in the first place
what does eugenics even mean
why do all of today’s op-eds sound really similar
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haha-antha · 5 years
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Why I hate the fat sex therapist
Look, I don’t hate the body positivity movement as a whole. I agree that people shouldn’t be ridiculed and abused for their weight. I agree that thinness isn’t the be-all end-all of health and beauty. But what I do disagree with is people who make bullshit claims like that weight has no effects on a person’s health whatsoever, or that type 2 diabetes and blood pressure issues are caused by “weight stigma” rather than obesity itself, or that dieting is Nazi eugenic pseudoscience. Sonalee Rashatwar’s body positivity isn’t just body positivity, it’s dangerous. Her statements like “you can’t call it feminist art if there aren’t fat people in your body of work” just don’t make sense. She isn’t referring to people who have a few extra pounds of body weight, or even someone who carries 50 or more pounds of excess fat. She’s referring to “infinifat” people, as in the kind of fat bodies that might appear on My 600-lb Life. News flash: if somebody is so fat that they’re bedridden, their obesity is negatively affecting their health and almost all aspects of their life, and frankly, just because I may be Indigenous, bisexual and female, I am not in any way obliged to depict imagery of people in my art who have no choice but to shit their pants and soil their bedding because they carry so much extra weight that it’s too much effort for them to walk a few metres to their bathroom.
Which brings me to my next point. Sonalee Rashatwar often begins their lectures with an Indigenous treaty recognition, which also is illogical: she claims that fatphobia is a result of white settler colonialism, but I certainly don’t think that obesity was an issue amongst my ancestors hundreds of years ago when food was attained by hunting, harvesting edible plants, and trading with groups of people from other parts of the Americas. However, now, after the effects of European imperialism have set in, it’s basically a fucking epidemic amongst my community and my own family. Type 2 diabetes just wasn’t really a problem until recent years.  But what do I know? I’m just a lady with thin priviledge. Sonalee Rashatwar has to make issues of race or religion all about fatphobia, which was painfully evident when shortly after the events of the Christchurch shooting, she talked about how unsurprised she was that the shooter was a fitness instructor, because white supremacy types also tend to be fatphobic. She absolutely lacked sympathy for the victims of the shooting, and why? Because she had to insert and centre herself and her issues into an issue that had nothing to do with fatphobia. That man didn’t shoot up a mosque because of his intense hatred for fat people, how ingnorant and uncaring does one have to be to genuinely think like that?  Sonalee refers to any kind of diet, even a “diet” as unrestrictive as “eat less junk food and exercise a little bit more” as disordered eating. This does literally nothing for people who actually have EDs like Anorexia and if anything, further alienates and tries to demonize them.  And the cherry on top of this disgusting sundae is that, time and time again, Sonalee has said things that people view as anti-Semitic that she claims is just pro-Palestine, and when called out on this, she tells Jewish people what they should and shouldn’t find anti-Semitic and blocks anyone who even slightly disagrees with her.
Rant over, reminder that being over or under weight both take a terrible toll on your health, your yoga instructor probably isn’t a Nazi, nutritionists aren’t all eugenicists and trying to lose weight isn’t a criminal offense. 
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aunti-christ-ine · 5 years
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A new study has found that the more literally a person understands metaphorical statements and the more religious they are, the more likely they are to share pseudo-profound bullshit on social media. 
The new research, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, replicated Gordon Pennycook’s 2015 study on bullshit receptivity — meaning the propensity to interpret nonsensical sentences as profound statements — using a sample from two Eastern European countries. 
But, unlike the original study, the new research also examined the willingness to share bullshit. 
“We were studying cognitive biases and their relationship to various unfounded beliefs, such as paranormal claims, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience,” said study author Vladimira Cavojova of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. 
“Focusing on these kinds of unfounded beliefs made us aware that social media is full of nonsense (e.g. pseudo-profound tweets that are also part of this study), and Pennycook and his colleagues came up with a very original way to test this kind of general receptivity to bullshit. 
“We were also interested in the propensity to share bullshit statements, because social media also allows for the rapid spread of this kind of content,” Cavojova explained. 
In the study, 76 Slovak and 45 Romanian participants completed several measures of bullshit receptivity, willingness to share pseudo-profound bullshit, cognitive abilities, and thinking dispositions. 
Examples of pseudo-profound bullshit included statements like “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty” and “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena.” The researchers also included 10 of Deepak Chopra’s tweets, including one which read: “Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation.” 
The participants were asked to rate how profound they thought the statements were and how likely they would be to share the statements on social media. 
Cavojova and her colleagues found that people who were more receptive to bullshit and more likely to say they would share it tended to be more prone to ontological confusions, more likely to believe conspiracy theories, and more likely to be religious. 
“People more prone to judge nonsense statements as profound are also more likely to believe in other unfounded things. Moreover, it seems that especially more religious people and people with troubles to differentiate between various ontological categories (e.g. differentiating metaphorical statements from factual statements) are more vulnerable to transcendental sounding bullshit like the one we measured,” Cavojova told PsyPost. 
For example, ontologically-confused people interpret phrases such as “Old furniture knows things about the past” as more literal than metaphorical. 
The researchers also found that statements that were rated as more profound were more likely to be shared. But the willingness to share bullshit statements was lower than their profundity ratings. 
“The positive message is that even though people often fall for this kind of bullshit, they are generally less willing to share it,” Cavojova added. 
The study — like all research — includes some limitations. 
“The major caveat is that the measure we used – the Bullshit Receptivity scale – is based on pseudo-transcendental bullshit which can be criticized as being too tightly related to spiritual (and mainly New Age) beliefs. Even though the items were randomly generated and thus have no intended meaning, people still could find some personal meaning in them (based on their vagueness and their personal beliefs),” Cavojova explained. 
“Therefore, it is necessary to study bullshit also in a non-transcendental context, allowing us to determine what features of bullshit makes it so likeable, controlling for the role of personal spirituality.” 
“We are currently working on a scale that would enable us to measure receptivity to bullshit in non-transcendental domains, such as health or interpersonal relationships. Preliminary results show that people don´t trust too obscure statements, but rather simple-sounding but untruthful statements relying on imprecise metaphors or analogies,” Cavojova said. 
The study, “Reception and willingness to share pseudo‐profound bullshit and their relation to other epistemically suspect beliefs and cognitive ability in Slovakia and Romania“, was authored by Vladimíra Čavojová, Eugen‐Călin Secară, Marek Jurkovič, and Jakub Šrol. 
We recommend: 
 ✜ People who are more receptive to ‘pseudo-profound bullshit’ are less likely to donate to charity   -PsyPost   ✜ Schizotypy and bullshit receptivity predict belief in conspiracy theories   -PsyPost   ✜ High cognitive ability not a safeguard from conspiracies, paranormal beliefs   -PsyPost 
  Eric W. Dolan  
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themyskira · 5 years
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Wonder Woman: Earth One, Vol 2 - Part 2
Previously, Morrison’s Amazons are the same awful people we met in book one, now with added mind control. Diana wonders whether her mission might be easier if she just conquered the world and forced everybody to follow the Amazon way.
This time, Doctor Psycho the pickup artist gets his hooks into Wonder Woman.
Steve is test-piloting a cutting-edge experimental aircraft. He races Diana in her vagina plane, struggling to keep up with her. The effort of maintaining the speed causes Steve’s plane to explode, and Diana rescues him.
Steve tries to explain to Diana that the military’s top brass perceive her as a potential threat and that she needs to tread carefully.
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Steve: And on that subject… you still planning on leading that big angry ladies march?
um, excuse you?
Big angry ladies march?
What was wrong with ‘women’s march’? Why did Morrison feel the need to colour this line with sexist language? Is he suggesting that Steve Trevor believes that women who take part in political protest are angry and hysterical? Or was he just so busy polishing off his Homeric meter that he didn’t even notice he was being a sexist arse?
Well, all of it goes in one ear and out the other, anyway. Diana just shrugs and goes, ‘welp, they can’t hurt me, and if they provoke us then we’ll just crush them, soooooo…’
The military asks for Diana’s help rescuing an American negotiator who was captured by terrorists while attempting to secure the release of a group of hostages in the Middle East. She gets another very cool outfit for the mission:
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She saves both the negotiator and the hostages with ease, of course. Afterwards, back at a US military camp, she shares a bottle of whisky with the hostage negotiator.
He’s interested in discussing Amazon philosophies. Submission to loving authority as a model for all human relationships, for instance. Surely that would be dangerous, unless one could be assured that the authority was benevolent. “Well, of course,” says Diana blithely. “That’s why women are best placed to lead.”
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He points out that she comes from a civilisation that practices eugenics and uses mind control technology. That, moreover, she’s an outsider who comes to this world from a place of hyperprivilege, with no understanding of the societies she’s trying to transform. “How can you hope to understand us, let along change us?”
(Those of you who’ve figured out who this guy is yet, please join me in facepalming over the fact that this evil slug of a human being has managed to talk more sense in one and a half pages than Diana has in the entire book.)
At one point he also asks her if she’s “ever thought about submitting to the loving authority of a man”, and somehow it doesn’t end with his face being punched in.
Before they part, they exchange contact details, agreeing to meet up again in DC. Diana tells him, “I’ve enjoyed our adventure together, Dr Zeiko.”
Yeah. This is Morrison’s take on Doctor Psycho. While I have problems with the execution, it’s actually a reasonable base concept. Whereas Marston’s Doctor Psycho uses hypnosis, mediums and ectoplasmic illusions to deceive and manipulate people, Morrison’s Zeiko is a pickup artist-type who works in psy-ops, employing a combination of scientific techniques, staged simulation and good old-fashioned manipulation to identify and get inside people’s defences, and destroy them.
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Zeiko: ‘Wonder Woman’. They’re all just the same. < by dr-psycho > If I had just one piece of advice, one precious axiom to impart to you losers, cucks and gamma dudes, it would be THAT singular nugget. Beautiful, smart, wise, powerful, principled. They’re all just the same.
There are a few things I like about this: it reimagines Doctor Psycho’s misogyny and his manipulation of women in a form that is both recognisable and relevant to today. Whereas the original is a cartoonishly depraved gremlin -- an exaggerated, ableist caricature of a misogynist who hates women because they laughed at his ugliness — this Psycho cuts a far more recognisable figure: a white, able-bodied, heterosexual man who abuses his position of power to manipulate women.
But it bothers me that Zeiko’s ability to control people draws so liberally from the pickup artist’s playbook. According to Morrison,
We really went deep with it in the sequences between Psycho and Diana. When he sits and talks to her, it's based on the actual script used by pickup artists with the movements he makes, he mirrors all her gestures, he makes this 'casting off' gesture every time he wants her to perceive something as negative. It was really tightly worked out to follow those scripts.
Pickup artist tactics are rooted in thoroughly debunked pseudoscience like neurolinguistic programming (which is specifically referenced as Zeiko’s field of expertise) and evolutionary psychology. Yes, these are men who prey on and seek to manipulate women, but let’s not afford them any more power or legitimacy than they’re due. By basing Zeiko’s power over women in his mastery of pickup artist theory, and ultimately having him successfully use these tactics to overpower Wonder Woman, Morrison appears to validate some very toxic, pseudoscientific ideas.
In the same interview quote above, Morrison says that he sought to draw awareness to this kind of predatory behaviour:
Part of it was my revenge on having seen [this level of manipulation] actually done to someone. You can see the narcissist type, the sociopath type and how easy it is for them get to people -- people you wouldn't even imagine could be that manipulated by anything. It's a very real problem for young people in the world. There are people out there who are quite willing to use these techniques so I kind of wanted to draw attention to it, but, you know, on the Wonder Woman scale where the guy is a supervillain. I wanted to put these paragon of femininity up against that threat and see how she deals with it -- because even paragons of intelligence and grace I've watched having real trouble with people like this. Here are the techniques. If you see anyone using these techniques against you, the warnings should go off.
Here’s where I think he goes wrong with this.
First, as I mentioned, he attributes Zeiko’s ability to get in Diana’s head directly to bullshit pickup artist theory and neurolinguistic programming. Morrison’s intention may have been to express disapproval and alert readers to predatory behaviour, but he’s nonetheless presenting pickup artist tactics as highly effective, affording them a level of power that’s neither warranted nor constructive.
This is where I think it’s helpful for Doctor Psycho to retain a measure of supernatural power. A writer can still incorporate manipulative and gaslighting behaviours and phrases that are familiar to women into such a character. His uncanny abilities may afford him a greater capacity to inflict wide-scale hurt than the average abuser, but at his core are attitudes and behaviours that many people will recognise. And rather than deriving a near-mystical ability to control women from the vile, pseudoscientific ideas of a real-life community of misogynists, he’s just another creep who abuses his power over people. It might not be a power that exists in our world, but it’s power all the same.
That’s the first problem. The second is that — spoilers — Zeiko kind of wins.
Well, okay, he does end up being captured by the Holliday Girls and sent to Amazonia for brainwashing, so it doesn’t end great for him personally. But ultimately, he achieves everything he sets out to do in the book. He plays Diana like a fiddle, he gloats over her weakness, and she only breaks free of him when it’s far too late to change anything. She is never allowed to triumph over him.
At the start of the book, Zeiko says he’s never met a woman that he couldn’t break, and this book proves him right. His methods never fail.
So at this point, it’s clear that the entire rescue mission was a set-up. General Darnell, we discover, has been ordered to go along with it, and he’s not happy. Even less so when he’s introduced to the secretive Project A.R.E.S.
It’s basically exactly what it sounds: a project aimed at producing highly advanced war machines capable of taking on even the Amazons. Max Lord shows Darnell the fruits of their labours: the Armed Response Environment Suit. It’s now being produced en masse.
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A horrified Darnell confides in Steve what he’s seen.
Next, we cut to Amazonia. After some gratuitous perving on naked ladies as Hippolyta and Nubia bathe in the Fountain of Youth, Mala arrives with a bound Paula in tow. The temple was found vandalised again with a swastika, and Paula was found lurking in Hippolyta’s chambers. When asked to explain herself, Paula will only say that she yearns for Diana, her idol. Okay...?
Hippolyta consults the Fates, and returns to Nubia and Mala looking grave and resigned. It’s not explicitly stated, but it’s clear from her reaction that her death has been foretold.
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Hippolyta: How I love you, Nubia. Your skin, your mind, your great heart. The time we’ve spent together. And Mala, sisters both, and lovers, and my friends ‘bove all. I’ll miss you all so much.
wait, Hippolyta is sleeping with her daughter’s ex-girlfriend? That is nasty.
(In fact, come to think of it, Nubia was originally Diana’s twin sister. Just to add an extra layer of ick.)
Back at Holliday College, Etta and Steve warn Diana that the government is out to get her, and Zeiko is part of it.
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Steve: They’re onto you, Diana. Powerful, dangerous people. Think about how you’ve changed since you started hanging around with this Zeiko dude.
How she’s changed?
No, piss off, mate. Diana literally has not appeared on page since her first meeting with Zeiko. It’s not just that we’ve seen no change in her behaviour, we haven’t seen her at all. I realise that you’re working with limited page space, but if your characters are going to stage an intervention, then you need to at least make a token effort at seeding the warning signs.
Steve tells Diana that Zeiko is deep into psy-ops, mind control, neurolinguistic programming (which is NOT A FUCKING THING), the works. Diana laughs and surmises that Steve simply doesn’t like Zeiko.
Later, Diana hangs out with Zeiko at the firing range, inviting him to shoot at her while she deflects the bullets with her bracelets. When they’re done, Zeiko appears troubled. He feels sick to his stomach, he says! That he — who hates weapons — could so easily talk himself into firing a gun at a woman! At somebody who means so much to him!!
Yeah, Morrison is going there.
Zeiko kisses Diana, then immediately leaps back apologising, saying he doesn’t know what got into him. Diana’s just amused — is that what the men of this world consider a kiss? She decides to school him with a real kiss, and Zeiko bemoans that he feels like he has no control over his actions when she’s around. Oh god, he’s so confused! He’s saying all the wrong things! He doesn’t usually get close to anyone, not like this! He needs to prove that she can trust her!!
ugh, god, this is gross.
Anyway, it ends in Zeiko, under the power of the Lasso, revealing just enough of the truth to serve his ends: that the US military thinks she’s an advance scout for an Amazon invasion, that he was brought in to compromise her and uncover her weaknesses, and that he’s tried to tell them there’s a better way.
Diana runs off, devastated. Zeiko gloats.
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< by dr-psycho > Target achieved. Wonder Woman emotional meltdown. Beat that, boys! God, I love my job. She’ll take off in her magical jet. No one treats a princess this way! But she’ll blame HERSELF — superior types always think it must be THEIR fault things went wrong. It has to her her fault for misunderstanding the rules of “Man’s World”. What will she have to do to be treated with the respect she deserves? This princess, this super-10. This prey of the day. What will she give up? How can she prove to me she’s for real…? At her speed… I give her 20 minutes. She gives me 19. Pushover.
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PS, we’re eighty-odd pages into the graphic novel, and thus far Diana has done nothing but hit a baseball and get yanked around by the villains.
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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The Boys Season 2: What Is The Church of the Collective?
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 2 episode 7.
The ongoing presence and practice of politics within democratic societies should represent the pinnacle of human achievement: the fair and equitable ordering of communities, city states and nations; the voluntary outflow of power from the people to their chosen representatives. 
In reality, however, the true power rests not in the hands of the people, but in the gloved fists of major institutions: including corporations and religions, the balance of power between those two behemoths varying from country to country, all around the world, western or otherwise. Certainly in the U.S., no man or woman can ascend to the presidency without the backing of at least one of them, and Amazon Prime’s superb superhero satire The Boys understands this bleak state of affairs perfectly. While the show is at heart a reaction against the implausibly virtuous world of the comic-book superhero, it’s also a searing indictment of the intersecting worlds of corporate power, consumerism, and celebrity culture. 
Vought International – the business-suited big bads who keep the show’s superheroes in their pocket in order to fatten their own – is savagely adept at using its corporate power to flatter, curtail and manipulate both the populace and its own employees. It’s hard to keep God-like beings in check, but Vought management is smart and cynical enough to understand that even potentially planet-ending supes aren’t immune to the allure of celebrity. 
The Boys season 2 introduces the yang to U.S. corporatocracy’s yin with The Church of the Collective, a none-so-subtle parody of the Church of Scientology. The Deep (Chace Crawford) has been pulled slowly in by the tentacled embrace of the church to the point where we find him, in the penultimate episode of the second season, brainwashed into following its codes, without really understanding its purpose, aims or reach. We, the audience, are similarly in the dark, though the parallels to The Church of the Collective’s real-world counterpart, plus the narrative hints we’ve already been given, can help us imagine what this mysterious cult might have in store for the supes, ‘the boys’, and the world at large.
Cultish Context  – Scientology
The Church of Scientology was founded in 1953 by the pulp sci-fi writer and former Naval Officer L. Ron Hubbard. Throughout the early 1950s Hubbard popularized a branch of pseudoscience called Dianetics, which slowly evolved into the core tenets of his new religion, coincidentally not long after the therapeutic applications of Dianetics were uniformly rubbished by academics and psychologists. This became something of a trend with Hubbard. Don’t like my contribution to the field of modern psychology? Fine. I’ll use it to start my own religion. Don’t want me in the Navy? Fine. I’ll start my own navy (which he essentially did with Scientology’s naval-based fraternal order “Sea Org”). 
Scientology gets its hooks into prospective church members – usually the needy, the narcissistic, the unfulfilled, or the damaged – by promising them enlightenment through auditing. This process – part talk-therapy, part spiritual confession, part future blackmail – works by breaking down and analyzing a subject’s life (and past lives) in order to purge them of those traumatic, or unhelpful, memories (engrams) that may be negatively influencing their behavior in the present. While Scientology needs a large rank and file to sustain itself it’s also shrewd enough to target celebrities – it has a whole department dedicated to their pursuit – whose presence in the church guarantees money, media attention, and free, recruitment-based marketing. Scientology knows that it’s celebs and profits, not saints and prophets, who will rally crowds of the spiritually empty to their doors.     
The Church of the Collective uses similar strategies, both of which converge on The Deep at the start of the second season, being that he’s both a celebrity, and a damaged vessel. Things have never looked worse for the disgraced submariner: cast aside from The Seven; isolated; reviled; drunk; full of doubt and recrimination. He’s also the #metoo poster boy. 
Simply put: he’s easy prey. 
The Church offers him a way back into The Seven via a journey of self-and-bodily acceptance, ostensibly a combination of talk-therapy, interrogation and mind-altering drugs. The Deep is quickly broken down then built back up again. The Church even stage-manages him a wife (an allusion, perhaps, to a certain fighter-jet-flying, cocktail-mixing actor who’s long been Scientology’s most famous recruit) to repair the PR already done.
The Deep is recruited by Eagle the Archer (Langston Kerman), a washed-up, Travolta-esque supe who dangles the story of his own success and redemption before him like a hypnotic carrot. The Deep, in turn, brings A-Train (Jesse T. Usher) to the Collective, although A-Train’s entry into the fold is a little less wide-eyed and willing. He can see past the bullshit, and wants no part of it, but nevertheless is ensnared by the Church’s smooth-toned, immaculately-groomed leader, Alastair Adana (Goran Visnjic), who knows all about A-Train’s spiraling debt, drug abuse and heart condition, and implies that such knowledge could only be kept private for a price.
“The church knows all kinds of things,” he tells a suddenly cognizant A-Train, “But don’t worry. We also know how to be discreet… especially for our members.”
Adana is a thinly-veiled approximation of David Miscavige – Scientology’s current leader – in that he’s a man who projects a smiling, sophisticated veneer to the world, beneath which lies barely concealed torrents of ruthless cruelty and rage. Allegedly.  
When Eagle the Archer refuses the Church’s request to break off contact with his mother, the organization releases a damning and embarrassing sex tape to the media. Adana declares Eagle a toxic person (Scientology labels its enemies “suppressive persons” or “SPs”) with whom no-one in the Church should associate. The Deep doesn’t hesitate to cut his new friend out of his life, showing that even supes are susceptible to the power of suggestion and a little psychological surgery. A-Train observes all of this with quiet but troubled detachment, doubtless wondering how high a price he’ll have to pay for his past… and for how long.
What Is The Collective Up To?
So far it seems that the Church has been biding its time, waiting for an opportunity to infiltrate Vought, or The Seven. Each time a smaller fish has been sent to catch a bigger fish. There’s little reason to assume that this chain will stop with A-Train. Who’s next? The CEOs and head honchos of Vought itself? Black Noir – leveraged into the fold with the threat of revealing his crippling tree nut allergy to the general public? Maeve – if the Church gets its hands on the footage that was filmed onboard a certain doomed civilian airliner? And who, or what, is its ultimate target? 
Homelander?    
While the loony, laser-eyed lout regularly expresses a desire to unleash his unrestrained fury upon the helpless world, adoration and popularity really are important to him, which is probably the only reason he’s held himself back from going full superhero postal. Vought, however, can only fluff Homelander’s vanity insofar as it doesn’t upset the shareholders, whereas the Church of the Collective can offer him the one thing he truly craves: uncritical, unquestionable, unending Godhood and adulation. 
This wouldn’t be Homelander’s first religion rodeo. In season 1 Homelander bent Christianity to his, and Vought’s, will, claiming that superheroes like him – living miracles – had been chosen by God to carry out His plan for America: so why shouldn’t they join the War on Terror? The discovery that supes were created by Compound V rather than God destroyed that useful illusion, but perhaps The Church of the Collective represents a second chance to co-opt a religion. A marriage made in heaven this time.    
Stormfront is the only snag here, given that she already has her claws into Homelander and there’s bad blood between her and the Church. Once a member, she rejected it on the grounds that its inclusive membership criteria was an affront to her deeply cherished Nazi ideals of racial purity. If she was declared a toxic person by the Church, though, what was her punishment? Why is she allowed to operate with impunity? Is it possible that she’s secretly working for the Church – or at their command – to recruit Homelander, and the whole eugenics angle is part of their true and hidden design for the planet? 
Unlikely. It’s more likely we’re about to see The Church of the Collective try to take down their fallen angel. Or take over Vought. Or both.  Corporate might versus religious zealotry, with supes on both sides, and the boys trapped – as always – somewhere in the middle.
And if that’s the case, who should we put our money on?    
The Church of the Collective, like its real-life counterparts Scientology and NXIVM, apes the marketing methods, structure and language of the modern corporation, projecting the power and seriousness of the boardroom rather than the prattling of the pulpit. While these quasi-religious entities need money to survive and grow, and indeed mercilessly pursue it, money is but an adjunct to the real prize of power, which makes them at once more deadly and much harder to defeat (that isn’t to say that The Church of the Collective isn’t set on getting what The Church of Scientology already has: tax exempt status). 
You can bring down a business; it’s a little harder to snuff out faith, especially at its most zealous and jealously guarded. It’s the reason The Sparrows were able to take over Kings’ Landing in Game of Thrones. It’s the reason you’d rather meet a Ferengi in battle than a Klingon. 
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Whatever chaos the Collective is about to unleash on the world of The Boys, you can guarantee that it’s going to be messy. And a whole load of fun.    
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