#neurobigotry

[hyperlexichypatia]

Neuroscience is real and important (while still beset by the same implicit and explicit bias problems as all human science and medicine), but pop culture understanding of neuroscience has absolutely made society worse, and I hate it. Every popular invocation of "dopamine," "serotonin" "trauma," "the prefrontal cortex," and "epigenetics" is used to justify some logically and/or ethically terrible conclusion. Recently I saw someone say that she lift weights to boost dopamine "Because my body doesn't make its own." My sibling in neurochemistry, that is your body making its own! A chemical your body produces when you exercise is still being produced by your body! Furthermore, why are we repeatedly told that exercise is good because it boosts dopamine, but video games and social media are bad, because they boost dopamine? Are dopamine-boosting recreational activities good or bad? The obvious answer, of course, is that it's just moralistic judgment -- exercise is Virtuous, games are not -- dressed up in neurochemical justifications. People even talk about being "addicted to dopamine" as if being "addicted" to a substance produced by one's own body can even be a meaningful or coherent concept. I'm not saying there aren't evidence-based things people can do to protect their neurological health (one that I strongly recommend is wearing a helmet). I'm saying that pop neuroscience is not a sound basis for logic, philosophy, ethics, morality, law, or public policy. If you're going to make an ethical or public policy argument using "the brain" or "brain chemistry" as a justification, consider, instead, not doing that. Instead, consider that other people know what's best for their own brains without your expounding on "dopamine" and "trauma."

#neurodiversity #mad pride #neurodivergent #neurobigotry #neurochemistry #dopamine #brains are weird #brains don't work that way #your brain is made of cholesterol #are you really going to argue what people should do based on cholesterol

[handoferis]

not my white ass just reading the word "neurobigotry" with my own two eyes

#what do this mean

[chokit-pyrus]

Can I please take a moment to rant about Alice Madness Return’s portrayal of mental illness!???!

Alice Madness Returns by American Mcgee is a horror story about mental illness. And it never ONCE demonizes the mentally ill. Alice is a deeply traumatized individual. She has intense PTSD after the death of her family that left her in a comatose state for years. She then wakes up and leaves the asylum she was kept at and goes to see a therapist. Alice is struggling with PTSD, depression, and possibly more things that she’d likely never be diagnosed with in her current setting: 1870s England.

That is what the game is about, a psychological gory horror game about a mentally ill young woman. Yet the fear and horror doesn’t come from her. It comes from the abuse she has suffered. The images she faces in her wonderland are monsters trying to keep her in her suffering, representations of her trauma and survivor’s guilt. It’s people she faced in real life, doctors who performed terrible experiments and “treatments” on her, like leeches and electro shock.

The main villain in Madness Returns is her current therapist who has been hurting and abusing her. He’s the one that made her wonderland worse, he’s the one that forced her back to her coping mechanism. The ENTIRE concept of wonderland in the games is a mentally ill person’s fight against their illness and their struggles to recovery when faced with no support system, and being treated by a society who sees her as a freak or monster, that fails to understand her, and only damages her mental health.

She’s forced back to her wonderland after the first game because of her therapist, because of his abuse. But she’s able to move past it when she rejects the way she’s been treated. When she confronts him on the evil things he’s been doing to his patients. (and quiet satisfyingly, pushing him in front of a train)

It could have been so easy to make it into another story that uses mentally ill people as a way to scare neurotypicals. But instead it’s a power fantasy for people isolated and struggling with their mental health. At least, that’s how I view it as a neurodivergent person. I always thought that Alice was so inspiring. She even has a great moment with her previous nanny, basically saying that society is going to chew you up and spit you out, and it’s up to you to protect yourself. It’s up to you to fight for the way you need to be treated.

Even in the scariest, goriest, grossest part of the game, during the Asylum level, the fear is watching poor hurt Alice being tortured by the monstrous doctors and caretakers. A tragic truth about what real people when through back then in those kinds of facilities.

The real horror isn’t the mental illness. It’s the abuse mentally ill people go through from society.

And I am just SO THANKFUL we have these games. These crazy, gory, action, horror games that gives us an AWESOME mentally ill protagonist!

TL:DR The games could have just used mental illness to exploit harmful stereotypes but instead used it as an inspiring story about overcoming trauma and an abusive system that rejects mentally ill people.

#alice madness returns #txt #american mcgee's alice #mental health #alice liddell #horror #mental illness #tw neurobigotry #neurodivergent #neuroatypical #positive mental attitude #positivity #positive mental health #mentally ill characters #mental illness representations #rant #tw gore #tw horror #horror games

[graydalestairs]

So I know many of us are dealing with one or more real problems like biphobia, racism, religious persecution, homophobia, neurobigotry, ableism, narrow-minded families, crippling anxiety, erasure, meaningless acts of violence, horrifying political leaders 

but y'all i am trying to put my leftovers away and fighting with my tupperware WhY dO ThE LiDS noT MaTCh the cOntAinERs??? This is my real struggle right now against Food Storage Supremacy

#food storage supremacy #i hate you tupperware #why do i have more lids than containers #whyyyy #how does this happen #leftovers battle #please tell me im not alone

[hyperlexichypatia]

While I’m saying things: I got into disability liberation through neurodiversity. I identify with the neurodiversity paradigm. I identify as neurodivergent. I believe that the core concept of the neurodiversity paradigm -- that all brains are different, and all brains should be accepted -- is integral to our liberation. But I’m really getting the sense that “neurodiversity” is becoming to “mad liberation” as “body positivity” is to “fat liberation.” “Neurodiversity” is being used by behaviorists, therapists, and teachers who are still practicing behaviorism and hierarchy. It’s being differentiated from “mental illness” that needs “treatment.” It’s being applied to plucky, cheerful people who can still contribute to capitalism in their own way, but not to people with extreme emotional states, people who experience voices and visions unknown to others, or people who score very poorly on IQ tests. It’s not being used to critically interrogate, let alone dismantle, oppressive concepts like “normalcy,” “sanity/insanity,” “competence,” or “general intelligence.” It’s not being used to challenge eugenics, or question whether “mental health” can have a useful meaning outside the pathology paradigm. It’s not being used to imagine what concepts like “happiness” or “good parenting” or “a fair distribution of resources” would even mean in the absence of pathologization, oppression, and hierarchy. We have to start using “neurodiversity” better if we want it to still have meaning.

#neurodiversity #neurodivergent #mad pride #mad liberation #disability rights #disability justice #mental health #parenting #behaviorism #neurobigotry #sanism

[hyperlexichypatia]

“Narcissistic abuse” is not a real thing.

I have repeatedly written on this page that there is no such thing as a neurodivergence, disability, illness, or mental condition that “causes” someone to be abusive, violent, bigoted, or otherwise harmful to others.

First of all, a “personality disorder” cannot, by definition, be a cause of someone’s behavior. The diagnosis of a “personality disorder” is a description of (real or perceived) observed behavior, and an assumption (accurate or inaccurate) about the emotional motivation for that behavior. It is circular and nonsensical to say that someone behaves a certain way “because of'' their “personality disorder” -- it would only be accurate to say that because the person behaves in a certain way, someone has classified them with that diagnosis. (I could point out that this labeling and categorization process occurs in the context of an oppressive, kyriarchical system which interprets marginalized people’s responses to oppression through a pathologizing lens, but that would be too big a topic shift for one post, and wouldn’t be that relevant to debunking the concept of “narcissistic abuse,” which is mostly applied to privileged people, anyway.)

Some people are self-centered. Some people are abusive. Some people behave in an abusive, self-centered way. None of these facts are in dispute. When we say “Narcissistic abuse is not a real thing,” we are not saying “Self-centered, abusive people are not real.” We are saying that being self-centered and abusive is not an intrinsic condition of the brain, a “disorder,” a disability, or “caused by” anything other than one’s own choices.

Why do people cling so fervently to the concept of “narcissistic abuse”? Why are people so insistent that there’s such a thing as a “brain disease” that can “cause” someone to be self-centered and abusive?

One reason might be that pathologization is used to convey intensity or extremity. In the popular conception of psychopathology, pathologized conditions are “extreme” versions of “normal” traits. In this framework, one might insist on pathologizing someone’s abusive, self-centered behavior as a way of conveying that the behavior is really, really, extremely abusive and self-centered, and differentiating it from allegedly “normal” abusiveness or self-centeredness.

Another, perhaps more insidious reason, is that classifying someone’s abusiveness as a “disorder” frames it as an intrinsic aspect of the person, rather than a choice they make. It codifies “just intrinsically a Bad Person” as a (pseudo)-scientific reality. If someone’s abusive or self-centered behavior is “caused” by their “brain disorder,” then they are an inherently unforgivable and irredeemable person. Sometimes, pathologizing people’s behavior is used as a reason to excuse them from blame or responsibility -- “They couldn’t help it, The Disorder made them do it.” But in the case of so-called “personality disorders,” the reasoning seems to be the opposite -- “The Disorder made them do it, so they’re Just Inherently That Way.” The line is drawn neatly between The Narcissist and The Innocent Victim. No one needs to examine the dynamic further when one party is an inherently evil Narcissist.

Additionally, the framing of abuse as caused by a “brain disorder” obscures the real cause of abuse, which is power. As long as people have power over other people, at least some of them will use that power abusively. Blaming abuse on “brain disorders” shifts discourse away from the abuser’s choices, the moral code that allowed them to make those choices, and the structure of society that gave them power to abuse someone else.

“Narcissistic abuse” isn’t a real thing. “Personality disorders” can’t “cause” behavior, abusive or otherwise. And if we really want to stop abuse, we have to dismantle social power structures, including the power structures of ableism, neurobigotry, and pathologization that classify some brain-types as “disordered.”

#neurodiversity #ableism #mad pride #disability rights #neurobigotry #psych abolition #anti psychiatry

[hyperlexichypatia]

Written July of 2022, as part of my "How to Be Pro-Choice Without Being Pro-Eugenics" series. In the the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health U.S. Supreme Court case, which ruled that, contrary to decades of precedent, states do not have to respect a person's right to terminate a pregnancy, a lot of public arguments have sprung up about the right to access abortion. To be clear, this is an unambiguously pro-choice space. Bodily autonomy is a human right. No exceptions. I do not ever host discourses in support of government infringements on the bodily autonomy of any people, ever, including pregnant people. However, many arguments in favor of abortion rights are actually covertly (or overtly) eugenicist. So, presented here, the Hypatia Guide to Problematic Abortion Rights Arguments, Why They're Harmful, and What To Say Instead. *CLAIM: Without abortion, poor people will have children they can't afford. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: The eugenicist message is obvious here. Everyone who wants to have children should be able to. In a just society, there would be no such thing as poverty or inability to afford children, because everyone would have the resources they need to survive and thrive. The solution to "poor people having children they can't afford" isn't abortion; it's universal living wages, universal housing and healthcare, universal access to resources. I wrote about this also in this post. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Everyone deserves equal access to the resources they need for themselves and their families. Everyone deserves equal access to the resources to make the family planning choices that are right for them. *CLAIM: People need abortion for fetal anomalies, because it would be horrible to give birth to a child with no quality of life. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Being born disabled or having a disabled child is not a bad thing. There's no such thing as "no quality of life." Disabled children should be welcomed and celebrated. The pervasive cultural narrative that a pregnant person who is expecting a disabled child "has to" have an abortion is extremely harmful to disabled people and their parents. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: All disabled people deserve acceptance, support, and equality. Everyone has quality of life. Since anyone could become disabled at any time, anyone who chooses to have a child should know that their child may be disabled, either from birth or later in life. *CLAIM: People need abortion to prevent the births of children who will have expensive medical needs, because the children will only live until the parents' money runs out, and then the parents will be bankrupt when the children die. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Where to start... this is an argument for universal healthcare, not an argument for abortion. The fact that lifesaving medical care would be withheld from a child because their parents run out of money to pay for it is horrifying. The fact that parents can go bankrupt because of their children's medical bills is horrifying. The fact that anyone would feel the need to choose abortion because they can't afford lifesaving medical care is horrifying -- this is not a "choice", this is being held hostage by a cruel system built on profiting from human suffering. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Every child born should be entitled to necessary lifesaving healthcare over their entire lifespan regardless of their or their parents' financial situation. *CLAIM: Young people need abortions, because they're not mature enough to be mothers. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Plenty of young people choose to have children. Young parents deserve the same rights, acceptance, and resources that older parents do. There is nothing wrong with being a younger-than-average parent or with being an older-than-average parent. The assumption that young parents are bad parents is based on the overlap of ageism, neurobigotry, and classism that I wrote about in this previous post. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Young people deserve access to the full spectrum of reproductive choices, from birth control and abortion to the resources they need to raise children if they choose to. *CLAIM: Students need abortions, because if they have children, they'll have to leave school and never get to graduate. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Stigma and lack of support for student parents is pervasive, but solvable. It's entirely possible for someone to raise a child while going to school, if they choose to, so long as they have access to resources like housing, childcare, and student aid. Furthermore, the idea that parents can't go to school relies on a very narrow, elitist understanding of what "school" means. 22% of college students in the U.S. have children, and a majority of college students are over age 25. The assumption that only single, childless people below age 23 can pursue education is not only rooted in oppression, it's also not rooted in reality. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: We need more resources and support for student parents. We also need more family planning resources for students. People need the resources and freedoms to make the educational and family planning choices that are right for them. *CLAIM: If your daughter got pregnant, you'd want her to have an abortion. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: This may very well be true -- but it should not be up to you. Parents and other family members do often pressure or coerce their relatives into abortions. They also coerce their relatives into giving birth. This is absolutely a human rights violation. We should oppose it. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: If your daughter got pregnant, she should have the choice whether or not to have an abortion. You shouldn't get a say, and neither should anyone else. *CLAIM: If men could get pregnant, no one would object to abortion. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Some men can get pregnant. Some women can't. Some people who are neither men nor women can get pregnant, and some can't. Furthermore, it's no coincidence that there's such overlap between the anti-reproductive-rights movement and the anti-transgender-rights movement. Both are rooted in the same oppressive worldview that biology should be destiny, that people should be forced to live within the social roles of their birth-assigned genders, including reproducing and having families in socially-prescribed ways. The agenda is centered on forcing anyone with a uterus or potential uterus to be a woman, to heterosexually marry a man, and to bear children for her heterosexual husband. The agenda also involves forcing anyone with capacity or presumed capacity to impregnate someone else to be a man, heterosexually marry a woman, and bear children with his heterosexual wife. Cis-hetero-normativity and reproductive control are a package deal, and we need to put the entire package in the trash. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: No one's rights or freedoms should be abridged based on their reproductive anatomy. *CLAIM: Men will change their minds about abortion when they have to pay child support/ if they have to take care of the children. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: As I touched on in the previous post about adoption, the entire premise that people "should have to" take care of their children is fundamentally dehumanizing to the children involved. Children deserve to be loved and wanted. Forcing children to be cared for by someone who has to be forced to care for them is cruel to the children. A common anti-choice argument is that pregnant people should be forced to give birth and raise the resulting child because the pregnancy is "their fault" for which they should be "held accountable" and "learn a lesson." This argument accepts that same harmful premise, but applies it to the biological father instead. This is not progressive; it still views children as property and forced parenthood as punishment. This is something that I used to believe until fairly recently, despite being nominally a youth rights advocate. I would openly say that if men were required to perform half the child-care tasks, they would take their role in family planning more seriously by, e.g., using condoms. Why did I think that? Well, because I was an adult, thinking from an adult's perspective. I wasn't thinking from the perspective of a child being resented, getting bare minimal care from a parent being "forced" to provide it. Like most adults in our society, I wasn't thinking of children as whole people. All adults, even those of us who profess to be pro-youth, have unexamined ageism to unpack. I know I have a lot more to go. Furthermore, as I also touched on in the previous post, the cultural assumption that women raise children while men pay child support is limiting, sexist, reductive, and inaccurate. There are plenty of custodial fathers and fathers who are their children's primary caregivers. There are plenty of loving families in which children are primarily cared for by grandparents, other relatives, foster or adoptive parents, or some family structure other than a present biological mother and an absent biological father. State-mandated child support, however, is primarily focused on penalizing or discouraging custodial parents from seeking social services to which they should be entitled. There are much better ways out there to structure family support policy. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Children deserve to be cared for by families who love and want them. Forcing someone to care for a child against their will is cruel to the child who will grow up unloved and resented. Children are people, not burdens or punishments. *CLAIM: What if we mandated vasectomies, and men could only have them reversed when they were financially and emotionally ready to be fathers. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: First, see this previous post about the construction of "financially and emotionally." Poor people are just as good at parenting as rich people. Neurodivergent people are just as good at parenting as neurotypical people. Younger people are just as good at parenting as older people. But also, this hypothetical situation is the reality for many disabled people. Forced sterilization of disabled people is legal and common. Buck v Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling which affirmed forced sterilization of disabled people, is still in effect. Disabled people under adult guardianship can be forcibly sterilized under the orders of their guardians. While the original goals of forced sterilization of disabled people were to prevent the births of disabled children, today it is more often justified using the logic of this claim, that certain disabled people cannot be good parents. Having a neurodivergent parent is classified as an "Adverse Childhood Experience" alongside traumas like poverty and abuse. I wrote in this post about this idea as applied to neurodivergent mothers. Applying it to neurodivergent or disabled fathers is less common, but not unheard of. The bestselling 2016 book "To Siri With Love" features the author's described plan to force her autistic son into adult guardianship and a forced vasectomy using this rationale.  This article gives a brief overview of how disability rights and reproductive rights are inextricably linked. *CLAIM: In other first world countries... / The U.S. is becoming like a third world country. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Some background -- during the Cold War (the time between the end of World War II and the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were involved in various proxy wars with each other), analysts divided the world into the U.S-aligned countries called the "First World," Soviet-aligned countries called the "Second World," and unaligned countries called the "Third World." Unaligned countries generally had lower gross domestic products than countries aligned with a world power, which is why Americans started using "Third World country" to mean "poor or under-served country." The U.S. and American-aligned countries, meanwhile, tried to prevent their own workers from demanding socialist governments. One way they did this was by implementing social welfare policies, such as the New Deal and Great Society programs in the U.S. and similar programs in much of Europe. Meanwhile, moves toward austerity led to reductions in these programs, and the U.S.S.R. dissolved rendering the entire "three worlds" classification meaningless. And that is the shortest, most oversimplified summary of the Cold War you will ever read. But that's just background. Right now we're talking about the argument that the U.S. should allow its citizens to have rights and resources because it is a "First World country," and that denying its citizens rights and resources is the behavior of a "Third World country." That's not what those terms have ever meant, but, more fundamentally, human rights should be for all humans. No country on earth has a perfect human rights record, but we cannot advocate human rights for all by starting from the premise that there are inherently good countries and inherently bad countries, and our own citizens inherently deserve better than the rest of the world. Rights are not pie. Advocating for pregnant Americans' rights does not mean opposing the rights of people of other nationalities. No matter how nominally progressive this argument is spun as, it still comes down to "Those other people deserve to be oppressed, but we don't." The specific fetishism the U.S. has with "Europe" as a concept, as either a pinnacle to emulate or a scare story of "falling civilization," is rooted purely in racism. Europe is not the world. Various articles have been written both asserting, and debunking, the claim that "Europe" has stricter abortion laws than the U.S. This is flawed framing both because Europe is not a monolith, and because we are not required to emulate Europe. We can advocate reproductive rights in the U.S. and also be allies to people advocating reproductive rights in the rest of the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and everywhere else in the world, because human rights are for all humans. (Next time, we'll talk about how continental divisions are also more socially constructed than you think!) *CLAIM: There are too many children in foster care waiting to be adopted -- adopt those before requiring more children to be born. *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: This is simply a gross oversimplification. As I mentioned in my previous post, U.S. family law, is fundamentally broken and harmful at every level, especially within the foster care system. Most foster children are not available for adoption. Many have been removed from their families of origin only because their families of origin were poor, disabled, or non-citizens. They may desperately want to return to their families of origin, who desperately want them back. Others may have families of origin who abused them, abandoned them, or simply died. Meanwhile, there are many roadblocks in place for people wanting to become foster parents. There are many children who need families, and many people who would love to provide families for children, but do not meet the qualifications to become foster or adoptive parents. It is not nearly as simple as "There are too many children who need homes, so more shouldn't be born." *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: We need to dismantle and radically restructure family law throughout the U.S., and rebuild a family law system to ensure that all families, biological and nonbiological, have the spaces and resources they need to survive and support their children, and to ensure that all children have loving, supportive, safe families. *CLAIM: Bodily autonomy/ "my body, my choice" (if you don't mean it). *WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Because most of y'all don't mean it. Anyone who follows this page knows that I am all about bodily autonomy and medical freedom in all contexts. But most people who profess to believe in bodily autonomy... don't. Until fairly recently, I avoided most organized abortion rights activism, despite deeply supporting the cause, because I was sickened by hearing people go on and on about bodily autonomy as pertaining to this one issue, while being silent on all other bodily autonomy issues.  I wrote about this a bit in this post. The right to choose abortion IS a bodily autonomy issue, a human rights issue. Absolutely it is! But it is not the only one. It's not even the only one currently under threat in the U.S. If you feel so strongly that the government shouldn't tell people what to do with their bodies (A sentiment I could not possibly agree with more strongly! Bodily autonomy is the most fundamental of human rights!), then why aren't you standing with us on transgender rights? On abolishing involuntary commitment and forced drugging? On abolishing conservatorship/ adult guardianship? On drug legalization? On systemic racism? On opposition to forced medical treatment in all forms? On youth rights? On medical experimentation on people of color? Even if you are narrowly focused on the issue of reproductive rights specifically, where are you on forced sterilization and forced abortions for disabled people? On medical violations of pregnant people, like forced caesarian sections? On youth rights to reproductive bodily autonomy? If you're for bodily autonomy only for abled, cisgender women seeking abortions, you're not really for bodily autonomy. If you're for reproductive rights, but only the right not to have children, you're not for reproductive rights. You're just a eugenicist who has coopted "choice" and "bodily autonomy" as slogans. *WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Bodily autonomy is a human right for all humans (and actually mean it). We have to stand up against any infringement by governments or other authorities against the bodily autonomy of any human, from abortion bans to involuntary commitment to guardianship to the war on drugs. Tear down the system and rebuild a free, egalitarian society with bodily autonomy, cognitive liberty, and equal resources for all. *BONUS ROUND: "Okay, maybe in a perfect world, you would have a point, but as it is, shouldn't we prevent children from being born into poverty/ disability/ young parents with no support?" *ANSWER: NO! We do not combat oppression by reifying it. And if you truly believed that oppression of poor people, disabled people, young parents, etc. was unjust, you wouldn't advocate eugenics as a solution to it. People who truly believe that sexism is wrong don't advocate sex selection. People who truly believe that racism is wrong don't advocate eugenics against people of color. People who truly believe that queerphobia is wrong don't advocate eugenics against queer people. If you truly believe that classism, ableism, and ageism are wrong, you won't advocate eugenics against poor, disabled, and youth populations. We do not combat oppression by demanding that fewer members of the oppressed classes be born. 

#eugenics #reproductive autonomy #reproductive justice #disability rights #youth rights #mad pride #neurobigotry #poverty

[hyperlexichypatia]

Written July of 2022, as part of my "How to Be Pro-Choice Without Being Pro-Eugenics" series.

Disclaimer #1: I am an American writing within a United States context because that is what I am familiar with. Many other people have written about family law issues in other countries or in international contexts. Disclaimer #2: I am not an adoptee, nor am I currently a parent involved in adoption. Adoptees are the most affected parties in adoption, and as such their perspective should always be given the greatest weight. Parents involved in adoption are the second-most affected parties whose perspective should be given the second-most weight. Please listen to adoptees over me.   With that said, let's talk about why almost all discourse around adoption in the U.S. is rooted in harmful underlying assumptions and structural inequalities, especially the oppression of children and framing of children as property. Family law in the U.S. is deeply flawed and limiting. This is true not only in the context of adoption, but in every family situation other than that of two cisgender adults married to each other, sharing a household, and solely raising their shared biological children. Every other type of family situation (including single parenting, extended family co-parenting, adoption, fostering, step-parenting, and any other type of family structure) is contorted to fit into an approximation of this nuclear family model.  Multi-parent families are not acknowledged, with children allowed only two "real" parents. Non-biological parents can only gain parental status if biological parents lose theirs. Parenthood is equated with marriage or romantic partnership between parents. Mandatory child support is imposed on families who are not seeking it in order to qualify for public benefits that should rightfully be available for all. Custody disputes center around the "rights" of adults over children rather than the wishes or best interest of children, and when the interests of children are considered, they are interpreted through the lenses of sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and heteronormativity. Disabled parents and poor parents are considered inherently inferior to wealthy abled parents (I've written about this in other posts, most recently this one). Poor families can have their children removed from the family simply because they lack money to pay for their children's needs, and states will transfer the children to foster or adoptive parents, who receive state subsidies to pay for the children's needs. In short, the system is broken, and everything is wrong with it.   The system is so broken that, in a rare national consensus, almost everyone agrees that the system is broken, even if no one agrees on how to fix it. But because the problems are rooted in pervasive, unquestioned societal prejudices such as ableism, classism, racism, sexism, and most of all, ageism, most analyses of the problem and proposed solutions also perpetuate those same pervasive, unquestioned societal prejudices. Many people, including elected officials and supreme court justices, argue that the ability to place a child for adoption is a reason that pregnant people have no need to access abortion. Other people, attempting to rebut or expose the "hypocrisy" of those people, argue essentially that no one wants adopted children, or that since biological mothers are forced to have custody of children (which they are not), someone other than the biological mother should be "forced" to have custody of children. Many people (purporting to be from varying points of a political spectrum) oppose adoption across the board, and especially oppose state-mandated termination of biological parents' custody, from essentially a property-rights stance ("taking" "their children"). Others oppose nonbiological families based on children's perceived intrinsic need to be raised by their two biological parents -- but the fact that they don't oppose all nonbiological families equally (for example, very few people oppose sperm and egg donation on this basis) reveals that their belief is less than sincere. These arguments do not acknowledge the humanity, needs, or agency of children -- specifically, their need and human right to be loved and wanted by their families, whether biological or nonbiological. These arguments also do not acknowledge the humanity, needs, or agency of parents of origin who choose to place their children to other families. In addition, these arguments do not differentiate between parents who abuse their children or otherwise make intentional choices which make removal necessary for children's safety and well-being, and parents who either fail to conform to societal norms or lack the material or external resources to meet a child's needs. So let's run through some common conditions for which adoption is proposed as a solution, and clarify whether or not adoption is the correct solution to the issue at hand (or what the correct solution would be).

Note: This is about whether the CONDITIONS for adoption are correct or incorrect, not whether the individual adoption SITUATIONS are positive or negative. Conditions in which adoption is necessary can still lead to harmful individual adoption situations. Conditions in which adoption is not necessary can still lead to beneficial adoption situations. Defer to adopteees on their own adoption situations. Condition: A parent does not have the money to pay for their children's physical necessities, like housing, utilities, food, or healthcare. Is adoption the correct solution? No. The correct solution is to make subsidized housing, utilities, food, and healthcare available to all members of the family. Condition: A parent is disabled and needs additional assistance to perform activities of daily living or to help their children perform activities of daily living. Is adoption the correct solution? No. The correct solution is to assign the family a publicly subsidized personal care attendant to help with activities of daily living as needed.

Condition: A parent is psychiatrically disabled and behaves in ways that are perceived as "odd" or "strange" by those around them. Is adoption the correct solution? No. The correct solution is for the people around them to get over their neurobigotry and accept neurodivergent people as they are. Condition: A parent does not have the skills or knowledge to effectively care for their children. They make make choices that endanger or harm their children, but motivated by ignorance, not malice. Is adoption the correct solution? No. The correct solution is to provide the parent with education on child care, and ensure that they have the material resources to implement it. To prevent this situation from being so widespread, the correct solution is to make child care and child development classes standard in every public school. Condition: A parent is an immigrant or noncitizen in the U.S., and has a native-born child who is a U.S. citizen. The parent is being deported to their home country. Is adoption the correct solution? No. The correct solution is to abolish deportations and allow citizen and noncitizen families to live together.

Condition: A parent has conceived a biological child, but for whatever reason, does not want to take on the role of being a child's primary caregiver. Is adoption the correct solution? Yes. Many people who conceive children do not actually want to be primary caregivers or do not feel that this familial role is right for them. They may love and care about their children, and want them to be raised by loving parents, but do not want to be those parents themselves. This is entirely fine and valid! Raising a child, even under ideal circumstances, is an intensive physical and emotional commitment, and if a parent does not feel that this is the right familial role for them, allowing their child to join another loving family unit is a loving, justified, and good option. Condition: Parent(s) and a child's family of origin have died or are otherwise unavailable to be full-time caregivers. Is adoption the correct solution? Yes, it can be, although it is better for a child to be adopted by someone close to them, someone they already know, so as to minimize the traumatic disruption to their lives and the trauma of losing their family of origin. Condition: A parent intentionally, repeatedly chooses to physically abuse or neglect their child. This is not a result of ignorance or lack of resources, but because of the parent's own choice. Is adoption the correct solution? Maybe. It can be. Children are not property, and parents should not have the right to abuse their children. Children may need to be rescued from abusive parents. And child abuse is, in fact, a choice, not an aspect of "needing help." The nominally progressive discourse that there is no such thing as a bad parent, only a parent who "needs help," equates a parent who is poor, a parent who is disabled, and a parent who chooses to abuse their child as the same thing. Two of those parents need help (material resource help, not psychiatric treatment (unless they choose it)), while the third needs to have their child rescued from them. Choosing to abuse a child is not attributable to disability or circumstance; it is in fact, a choice for which individuals can and should be held accountable. But more to the point, children have a right not to be abused. Children have a right to be rescued from abusers. If parents refuse to stop abusing their children by their own choice, the best way to keep their children safe may in some cases involve transferring them to another family unit. Condition: A person is pregnant and does not want to, or cannot safely, use their body to gestate and give birth. Is adoption the correct solution? No. Adoption can only happen after birth. The only solution to this condition is to terminate the pregnancy.   In short -- any discourse on whether adoption is correct based on the family of origin's CIRCUMSTANCES (poverty, disability, age, singlehood) rather than the family of origin's DESIRES and CHOICES is inherently the wrong framing. "Poor/disabled parents should just place their children for adoption" is wrong, but so is "Adoption is wrong because parents just need help." Parents "needing help" is not the only reason that adoptions happen. Parents also choose to place their children of their own volition, or choose to abuse their children of their own volition and choose to create a situation from which their children need and deserve to be rescued. Parents are capable of making choices. "Biological imperatives" are fake. Everyone who conceives a child should have every opportunity and every resource necessary to raise that child, but should not be compelled to if they do not want to. Nor should their parental rights override a child's rights to safety and freedom from abuse. This is part of my existing series "How to Be Pro-Choice Without Being Pro-Eugenics" written in July of 2022. For information on adoption from adopted people:

bastards.org

adopteerightscampaign.org

adoptee-voices.com

adopteevoicesrising.org

thisadopteelife.com/community

#adoption #eugenics #disability rights #ableism #neurobigotry #mad pride #reproductive autonomy #reproductive justice

[hyperlexichypatia]

*Establish the legal and social acceptability of violence against people you claim are "threatening" or "make you feel unsafe"

*Classify neurodivergent ways of existing, communicating, or behaving as inherently "threatening" or "dangerous"

*You have now legalized and normalized mass murder of neurodivergent people

#neurobigotry #ableism

[hyperlexichypatia]

Apparently a couple of my posts blew up in the past couple of days and I got a bunch of new followers (yay, welcome), but unfortunately, it happened while I'm down with COVID and high on cough syrup, so it's anyone's guess whether anything I say makes sense right now.

Things you can expect from my page:

Absolutist stance on cognitive liberty. Medical/psychiatric coercion is always wrong in all circumstances, yes, even that one.

Eugenics is always wrong in all circumstances, yes, even that one (yes, this includes "People shouldn't have children they can't afford"; no one should be so underpaid that they can't afford to support a family).

Young people should have far, far more rights than they have now, and should have 100% of their rights by ("by" meaning "no later than") age 18 (although really for most things I would advocate for younger). Yes, even if they make choices you think are bad for them. Yes, even in that circumstance.

All brains/bodies should be considered equal in value, desirability, and rights.

I refer to disabilities as disabilities under the social model of disability. I do not refer to mental differences (neurodivergence/madness/mental disability/psychiatric disability) as "illness" or "disorder." If you are in one of these categories and want to describe your neurodivergence in that way, that is your choice. But I don't.

I post long rants intermittently followed by long dry spells. I try to link back to previous long rants so I don't repeat myself too much.

I'm into some fandoms, current obsession is Star Trek, others are X-Men, Agents of SHIELD, and any mythology/fairytale retelling I can get my hands on. Random fandom analogies show up in my disability rights posts, because the Mutant Registration Act and the Eugenics Wars are upon us.

People are the genders/identities they say they are. Racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobia, classism, eugenics, neurobigotry, any bigotry gets the boot.

I love getting asked questions and will try to give a thoughtful answer to any question unless it's an obvious troll.

#welcome #new people #random stuff about me #sickposting #cough syrup #youth rights #neurodiversity #mad pride #fandom shit

[hyperlexichypatia]

Classism and Neurobigotry

 Classism and neurobigotry are inextricably linked, as the (largely unquestioned, including by progressives) assumption that poor people are cognitively or psychologically inferior to rich people is used to justify and naturalize their poverty.

Notice how often "financially and emotionally" are grouped together, especially in the context of fitness for parenthood. How often do you hear people say that people should only have children if they're "financially and emotionally ready," "financially and emotionally capable," or my favorite, "financially and emotionally stable"?

Why are you linking those things together? Why do you assume that rich people are emotionally superior? It's quite convenient for the ruling class to justify exploiting and underpaying workers because they're not "emotionally ready" for a living wage, isn't it?

Anyway, this is eugenics. No one should be in poverty, and no type of neurology, cognition, or emotional way of being should be classified as superior to any other. Poor, neurodivergent, and Mad people make great parents.

#eugenics #classism #neurodiversity #ableism #stop being ableist #capitalism #poverty

[hyperlexichypatia]

Neurobigotry and Ageism

 Neurobigotry and ageism are closely linked, overlapping forms of oppression. A major component of neurobigotry is that neurodivergent people are never allowed to be real adults -- sometimes literally, in the form of guardianship, we're forever relegated to the status of children. A major component of ageism, especially American upper-middle-class ageism in the form of infantilizing teens and young adults, is rooted in neurobigotry (the biologically meaningless claim that "the brain doesn't fully mature until" some ever-increasing age). So invoking ageism to combat neurobigotry, or vice versa, will always be a terrible idea. Young people (whether neurotypical or neurodivergent) who commit acts of violence deserve to be held accountable as people who've made choices. Their violent actions should not be blamed on "mental illness," "immaturity," or any failed obligation to "get them help." Young people deserve to be free to participate in public policy discourse and have their opinions and experiences taken seriously. When young people's public policy advocacy is neurobigoted and oppressive, this should be called out like any other neurobigoted and oppressive public policy proposal. Young people who advocate oppressive policies should neither be excused as "just kids" nor cited as examples of "clueless children" who are inherently too young to be listened to. This sounds like I'm talking about March for Our Lives discourse -- and I am -- but it applies to a lot of other issues, too. Some of the most stigmatized psychiatric disabilities tend to start to be evident to outsiders during adolescence and young adulthood, which is used as an argument for stripping rights from psychiatrically disabled people (because they're Just Kids who should still be under their parents' authority anyway, with their immature brains) and as an argument for stripping rights from young people (because they might spontaneously become psychiatrically disabled at any moment). It applies to culturally fraught issues like health, sexuality, relationships, and parenthood. Control of young people and neurodivergent people is heavily centered on preventing them from exercising sexuality, and especially on preventing them from having children. Neurodivergent young parents face a stigma that is greater than the sum of neurodivergent-parent stigma and young-parent stigma. Colleges are under pressure to police the "mental health" of their students, nearly all of whom are legal adults, on behalf of their students' parents. Neurodivergent young people aren't allowed to make their own choices in life because they're "too young, and they never get to be considered "old enough," because they're neurodivergent. Short version: Don't use ageism to combat neurobigotry. Don't use neurobigotry to combat ageism.

#ageism #youth rights #ableism #stop being ableist #neurodiversity #mad pride #liberation #psychiatric survivors #march for our lives

[hyperlexichypatia]

Real Age

 I'm seeing the ableist, oppressive concept of "mental age" or "developmental stage," that has long been (oppressively, baselessly) applied to developmentally disabled people, begin to be more frequently applied to psychiatrically disabled people. Apparently, according to this idea, people who were psychiatrically disabled as children never had a "real childhood," and therefore failed to grow up to be "real adults."

Please don't buy into this.

Humans, neurotypical and otherwise, experience a varied range of childhood circumstances. Some children grow up with a loving and supportive family, a fulfilling social life, a strong sense of identity, material security, and a well-rounded education. Some children do not. Their childhoods are no less "real." Neither are the adulthoods that follow them.

If you are neurodivergent, you will always be infantilized. Your experiences, your learning, your identity, will always be seen as lesser than that of a neurotypical person. That's part of pervasive neurobigotry. Whatever "standard" (upper-class, abled, neurotypical, white, American) childhood experiences you lack, this is not the cause of your alienation. The cause is pervasive neurobigotry.

#ageism #ableism #psychiatric survivors #mad pride

[hyperlexichypatia]

A Challenge

Challenge: Try to avoid using the words "healthy" and "unhealthy." Health is variable and often subjective. Healthism is closely tied to ableism, neurobigotry, sizeism, classism, and other forms of oppression.

If you don't rely on reflexively using "healthy" and "unhealthy," you might need to put some thought into the precise qualities you're trying to describe. For example:

Instead of "Fast food is unhealthy"

try "Most fast food doesn't have enough vitamins or fiber."

Instead of "Honest communication is part of a healthy relationship"

try "Honest communication is part of a mutually satisfying relationship."

Instead of "Snooping through your partner's phone is unhealthy"

try "Snooping through your partner's phone is disrespectful."

#challenge #language #stop being ableist #mad pride #ableism

[chokit-pyrus]

#txt #mental health #mental illness #mental help #mental instability #mentally ill #mental ill health #meme #humor #ableism #ableist language cw #tw ableism #tw neurobigotry #neuroatypical #neurodivergent #neurobigoty

[chokit-pyrus]

#joker #joker movie #cw mental health #mental illness #mental health #joker2019 #joker 2019 #article #tw neurobigotry