Isn't it mentally exhausting to be perpetually, willfully misunderstood and misrepresented? (FWIW I have felt free to disagree with you at times while never having to pretend I don't know what you're talking about.)
The older I get the more I realize that ‘perpetually’ actually started long before I realized it. When young you’ve got shared momentum. Now that I’m not it be like...a more individuated unfolding fate. Or something.
"the neurodiversity movement really is the perfect target too. it’s being championed by women and queer people, is gaining traction in the black community, and empowers disabled people. it makes sense that it would trigger so much of ppls internalized misogynoir and ableism"
It's so bizarre that people still think this way. The vast majority of black, gay, mentally ill, etc people don't think like this. It's bizarre people acting like their obscure views on these subjects represents some sort of broader public rather than a tiny elite.
Also, a banger from the Unherd comments section:
"They used to say that you wouldn’t be ashamed of a broken leg so why should you be of mental illness? Perhaps it now needs adding; you shouldn’t celebrate breaking it either."
I've used the term "neurodivergent" but I didn't realize what it has become. I thought the purpose was to communicate that some conditions (autism, ADHD) are neurodevelopmental disorders. I didn't realize it's now used for any mental health diagnosis, with the goal of turning it into a status symbol.
ADHD sucks. Executive function is critical for succeeding at work, being a good partner, and just keeping up with all of the mundane tasks required to be a functional adult. People sympathize, in the short term--but if you're not keeping up with basic shit, they lose patience fast. Telling people with ADHD to expect endless deference and accommodation won't help them, because they're not going to get it. There's no way to avoid your responsibilities without negative consequences.
Also, I think some people are full of shit and don't really have anything. Life is hard, and and the fact that stuff is hard for someone doesn't imply mental illness. I'm not denying that you have ADHD, but I do think some people mix up mental disorders with the normal difficulty of life. I can also assure the divergent crowd that focusing at work is pretty hard even for us normal folks.
Also, I really wish people knew about the Big 5. Way better form of "self discovery" than most of the alternatives
For sure. The current moment incentivizes self-diagnosis because it's not falsifiable, like claiming to be queer. If someone questions a self-diagnosis, they call it oppression because some people don't have access to healthcare, or they say marginalized people are less likely to be taken seriously by clinicians.
A psychiatrist suspected I had ADHD when I had no clue (I was there seeking treatment for anxiety). I was conflicted about the diagnosis until I got the four-hour psychological testing. There is a subjective chunk where you describe your own experiences, but other parts were more objective than I expected, especially comparing different components of the IQ test to evaluate working memory and processing speed, and a computer test (like a boring game) of reactions where the computer calculates everything.
Now that I've done more reading, it seems obvious that I've had ADHD my whole life, but I wouldn't be certain without the testing. But when my spouse refers patients for testing, they resist it because they feel sure and just want Adderall.
I think the current moment incentivizes self-diagnosis, also, because the impostor syndrome it causes keeps you invested in the kind of "identity market" that drives online communities. That's why it's so linked to queer identity, among other reasons.
Plus, for young women, the last thing you want to be, in a progressive online community, is a "cishet normie". But you don't want to be a "try-bi trender pick-me cool girl faking for clout" either, so you want a version you can't help, which is mental illness.
I think at the heart of it is this idea that we're the number one expert on ourselves, which is supposedly so affirming and positive and "validating" and so on. Not only is it incredibly harmful, it's also basically a total short-circuit on the diagnostic process. For me, if my diagnosis was based just on noticing certain behaviours in myself, it would be suspect. Even before seeing a mental health professional, I sought out neuropsychological tests online so I could measure according to something that wasn't just asking me whether I can keep my home tidy or pay the bills on time, especially because I had cause to worry that my memory and cognitive capacities were fucked in some way. I then officially got tested by a professional (IQ and executive functions), and got a psychiatric diagnosis. So much of what enabled professionals to diagnose me was stuff I'm barely aware of, or stuff that happens while I'm asleep.
Self-validation comes at the expense of self-awareness. Plus, the whole process I just described is relatively cheap where I live, some of it is even totally covered by nationalized health insurance. Whereas in the US, falling downstairs can be an unaffordable luxury. So it's mighty convenient that doctors and testing are Society oppressing you, and you can replace it all with social status and etiquette.
Neurodiversity might be couched in feelgood terms, as a kind of "letting go", but really it's another thing for people to beat themselves up about. It's not really a licence to loosen control, where the behaviours that can make you feel un-housebroken are just quirky markers of difference - that would imply they're just bad because of Society's gaze, which isn't true. It's just a new thing on the list, or a kind of "and" to add to the other ones where you have a new set of standards to fail to live up to. You had a public crying and screaming fit because you lost your keys, well, you feel bad because that shit feels bad - and now you have to soul-search because the fact that you feel bad is a sign of internalised ableism and you're harming your community. It's just a totally artificial, needless way in which you need to "be better", instead of the real ways in which you can do better.
I was just about to point out something similar. It’s difficult for me to describe exactly what I mean because I DO think all of these diagnoses are real, and certainly some are debilitating beyond what the vast majority of people experience. But I think the analogy with physical health might be helpful in explaining. Nearly everyone has SOMETHING physically wrong with them. Similarly, nearly everyone has something they are dealing with in their mental health. I have a specific mental health diagnosis but I don’t think that makes me in some special category of people that “normal” people couldn’t possibly ever understand. I DO think people with specific diagnoses have all sorts of challenges that other people might not but that doesn’t mean everyone else is living a golden life with no problems. I don’t know if I’m explaining it quite right, because I’m not trying to play down the challenges of having a mental illness or disability - I’m more trying to play up the challenges of the human condition in general.
Yes this is where the human capacity for empathy comes in, but so many activists seem to think empathy is not possible. Just because someone hasn't had the exact same challenges or experiences as you doesn't mean they'll never be able to understand; it may mean they haven't yet had to think about your specific ones. And not having *yet* considered something is not the same as will never consider, can never consider.
I thought the UnHerd review was great, and I'm a woman with (a couple of) those diagnoses. It's like they think criticism is unfair just because the author is claiming a marginalized identity. But since Freddie also has mental illness, they can't say he has neurotypical privilege.... so the problem is that he's criticizing a movement "championed by women and queer people."
When my 4 year old presents me with artwork, I tell him I love it and give him a hug. That's not how you treat a professional author. When someone writes and sells a book, for money, an honest review is more respectful than patting her on the head.
In a multicultural society, it's probably not heathy to magnify the idea that people with different races, sexes, mental states etc are so different that they can't understand each other.
Comment of the month! Because that, in one sentence, is why SocJus will never bring about a harmonious society. A house divided against itself… #MuhTruth
But hey — Justice is just around the corner: just keep “doing the work.”
Insistence on irreconcilable differences is so humorless, leaden, and dreary. And for what? A pose of moral turf claiming? Nobody is all that unassailable.
Lack of accountability is a core aspect of these victimhood-categorizations. And, as FdB points out, do enormous harm. The problem is the harm is long-term, while the benefits are readily apparent, tempting, but short-term.
E.g. I don’t think it’s so good for women to swim in a pond where if you have a bad date, that’s “sexual abuse” or “misconduct.”
I was going to say tweet reads like it was written by a bot.
But perhaps, it felt more like someone fulfilling an essay marking scheme:
1) Did the candidate mention that a protected group is under attack because of frequently targeted other protected group (one of: LGBTQ, Trans, Queer, Disabled, Women, Black, BIPOC)?
3) Did the candidate accuse the target of a form of discrimination using an accepted technical term(Abelism, racism etc)?
5) Was the idea of finding / belonging to community successfully implied to be a panacea?
7) Did the candidate imply that the critique is really part of a larger pattern of attack that puts many vulnerables group at risk?
9) Did the candidate successfully call into question the validity of the critique by identifying inherent characteristics of the commenter that disqualify them from having a valid opinion on the given subject?
5/5 A
4/5 - B
3/5 - C
2/5 or less is a failing grade. Must try harder
To go instantly *global* myself (as twitter is want to do) and extrapolate out *extremely* from a single idea, how much does how we mark make young people think like this?
It feels like this would happen anyway because most people just want to be told how to be good (Turchin's Moralists perhaps), but I wonder if how you assess young people over time makes them engage in this box-ticking mentality. Getting angry that you feel someone is having a go at a vulnerable group is something I've felt - I get it. Ensuring a standard litany of criticisms that are often arbitrary to the precise point at hand, has been successfully assembled, I do not.
I am so so SO sick of the non-argument, “Yt man says what?” Together with broad-brush thoughtcrime accusations: “misogynoir!” “TERF!” Which are near-meaningless sloganeering. This stuff has vitiated the discourse bigly. I think these people no longer know how to engage (prove, disprove) an argument. And, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, that’s really bad.
Also interesting is the cartoonish good/bad dichotomy, like old Westerns where the good guys wore white hats & the bad guys black hats. Being kind to the neurodivergent is good, so OF COURSE it’s mainly found among PoC. Of course it was good that Biden won, so it was mainly black women (except it was white suburban men). Or David Hogg saying something along the lines of, black trans women have always been in the forefront of gun control efforts. Gun control is good! Black trans women (unlike white men) are good! Voilà!
It reminds me of the Orwell quote about the gramophone mind (paraphrased): It doesn’t matter what record is playing, the problem is the gramophone mind that slavishly transcribes it.
lol'd when I found out what "Yt" means; misogynoir was like a thousand other academic rubber stamps; and TERF was already familiar. Got any more good ones?
People have always stereotyped and been prejudiced against the straw men they invent. It’s always been true that religion has been used to demonize the “other”, throughout history. And still today. The Church is still far more powerful that a group of Twitter trolls.
What’s different now is the impact of social media, to amplify and share the extremists of all sorts and exaggerate the level of disagreement.
Most of what most people argue about (including you here) is a fantasy of some large and powerful group that controls discourse, instead of a fringe and mostly powerless group that is probably best ignored.
It will amaze me forever that the neurodivergent movement, founded on the premise that not every cognitive difference should be treated as inherently disabling and that permitting a diversity of “types of brains” to flourish enriches society, finds it so hard to grasp that somebody might have a different way of thinking about their mental illness than they do.
I haven’t read a lot of Andrea Long Chu, but I have thought often of something she said about liberal diversity - that it loves when people *look* different from each other, but can’t handle when people *think* differently from each other. She was talking about both ideological and neurological differences there, I think, but the neurodiversity movement is as guilty of this as the mainstream culture she criticizes.
...Anyway I think it was ALC who said that. After my Phoebe Maltz Bovy/Kat Rosenfield mixup of last week I’m second-guessing myself. If it wasn’t, sorry!
I think there’s a normal amount of “identifying with” something that, I think to a greater degree than other identities, kind of *is* you. Some people treat their mental illness as something outside of “them,” a foreign force exerting influence over a complete self that would exist independently of it. I think that’s probably not quite right, either - your mind is your mind, made of everything you’ve experienced and the way you’ve experienced it, and I think our minds are probably the closest thing to “ourselves” there is.
But I do think there’s an overidentification with diagnosis that tends to overlap with someone not having much else going on. Like Freddie noted in his review - the author’s weird sense of pride and excitement in getting yet another label to add to the list in her medical history, totally divorced from the relief of learning you have a specific condition with specific treatments available. Treating any of the conditions to full cure is unthinkable.
By the way, it was totally Julia Serrano who said that. God damn it.
"Some people treat their mental illness as something outside of “them,” a foreign force exerting influence over a complete self that would exist independently of it. I think that’s probably not quite right, either - your mind is your mind, made of everything you’ve experienced and the way you’ve experienced it"
That's true, but I was thinking more normative than descriptive. I touched on this in my last article, but I think people should strive to remove these sorts of things. They'll be themselves with and without these disorders, by definition, so it really comes down to which version is better.
I'll still be me if I stop lifting weights, but that would be a crappier verison of me, so I'll pass
“They’ll be themselves with or without these disorders, by definition, so it really comes down to which version is better.” Yeah, I would agree with that. I do think with mental illness there’s often a degree of being without the disorder that isn’t possible - but I would definitely say that the version of yourself insistent on being defined by the disorder is going to be the crappier one.
I think the piece on Rachel Dolezal was my first introduction to FdB, and it's still sharp. In today's language, it might be said that she wanted to "transition."
It's so weird how race (which does not have a precise biological definition) is now supposed to be inherent and unchangeable, while sex (which does have a precise biological defintion) is now supposed to be "fluid" and determined by internal mental state. And yet both these ideas (race is immutable, sex is infinitely maleable) are firmly embedded in the successor ideology of identitarian politics.
Please point me to a serious person who says “race is inherent and unchangeable” preferably someone with some sort of influence. I have never heard that before, though it is perhaps the Latin American influence in California, where race is considered very mutable.
The mainstream point of view seems to be “race is a social construct” which is a simplification but at least closer.
Dolezal was not allowed to say she is Black, no matter how much she believed it. Society would not let her do that. And of course earlier there is a long history of Blacks attempting to pass as white, and suffering severe consequences when discovered. They could not simply declare, "I am now white", and be accepted as white by society. In this sense, race is inherent and unchangeable.
The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American, NPR, Vox, The AMA, Oxford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Psychology Today all arguing that race is a social construct. And that's just in the first two pages.
It is pretty clear that the dominant mainstream narrative, at least among the intelligentsia, is that race is a social construct. The belief that race is inherent and unchangeable is at best a marginal belief, which it appears that you subscribe to. You are welcome to do that!
There is certainly an unfortunate history of Blacks attempting to pass as white and suffering severe consequences. But we are talking about today and now in the United States right?
Just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it isn't real with real consequences. Racism is real and has consequences for both individuals and society. I am not denying that.
Dolezal is an odd case, she still identifies as Black so it's not really true that "she was not allowed to say she is Black". She was not jailed or anything like that. She lied about a whole bunch of things that destroyed her credibility, including the claim that she was African-American. She also lied about being racially harassed and targeted, lied about her parentage, committed welfare fraud and a host of other fraudulent activity. She had plenty of defenders though, including the NAACP, among others.
I only recently learned that Rebecca Tuvel's controversial paper on "transracialism" was meant to be a sincere defense of Dolezal. A lot of people assumed she made the comparison to criticize the idea of gender transition, but actually she supports both.
To me, the Dolezal case is straightforward because she lied. That's unethical. But it's interesting to think about the concept since we have a growing mixed population, plus DNA tests that can turn up unexpected heritage. It's getting more muddled.
If we continue to obsess over racial identity (sigh), we're going to have to consider how much to honor the self-ID of someone like Elizabeth Warren, for example, who has very distant Native heritage. Warren and Dolezal both look completely white and have white parents, but the reactions have been different since Warren has "evidence" and didn't do anything blatantly dishonest like darken her skin. But really, they're both white people who preferred to identify as something else.
At the same time, some aggressively try to push other groups into the white category as they fight over resources. Asians are "white-adjacent" and Hispanics got kicked out of the BI part of BIPOC. Just this week there is a Medieval Twitter shitstorm where two scholars were feuding, and one accused the other of not being Black. (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/arts/medieval-race-twitter.html )
How did Dolezal lie? If she believes she is Black and says so, are we not obligated to take her at her word? Should we not give anyone who claims to be Black legal access to, say, grants from the Minority Business Development Agency? https://www.mbda.gov/grants
Surely applying any sort of objective biological test would make us all haters and phobes!
FWIW, I think it's bad policy for the government to apply racial tests for benefits. I think there should be economic tests only. Support "small" buisness, but not "minority" business.
I fear ableism is the next cab off the identity rank and that the effect will be the same as it has been with gender and sexuality i.e. that the legitimate needs of a genuinely marginalized / vulnerable population will be swamped by the desire of privileged people to use these identities as a shield or as part of their ‘brand’. I already see people with wheelchairs in their Twitter bios who have self-diagnosed with ADHD because they lost their car keys.
On the lousy Roe decision being overturned "Yes, you’re outraged, and it’s right for you to be outraged. " -- how many pro-life folk do you know? How many pro-choice (-abortion)?
How many kids do they have? [Freddie, where are your kids?]
I have 4, and now 2 grandkids.
"Cause and effect" (haven't we heard that before?). Pro-life couples have more kids ... over time the culture becomes more pro-life. That's how evolution works - survival of those who reproduce. A "March for Life" has happened every year for 50 years now.
It was demographic destiny that Roe would not last.
I know plenty of people who are pro-life and pro-choice. Most of the pro-choice people I know have fewer children that they invest more resources in and their offspring are more successful. Most pro-life people are not as smart or educated and have more children who tend to do middling well. Both are valid strategies.
If your argument based on demographics were true, we would find the anti-abortion position to have grown in popularity but it has not.
I have two children and no grandchildren. My siblings are all over the map. I have 15 nieces and nephews and four grand nieces/nephews. Is that a thing or are they just cousins?
Your last remark seems to imply that overturning Roe must be a politically motivated decision, rather than the result of dispassionate judicial reasoning.
Back when I was more involved with the ASD community than I am now, ‘neurodiversity’ was a popular term for a couple of purely practical reasons.
First, autism is hard and expensive to diagnose, and it doesn’t really have a singular treatment - ASD kids need interventions based on their specific challenges, which vary widely from person to person. I met a number of kids with poorer functioning than my officially diagnosed son who nevertheless themselves didn’t have diagnoses for various reasons. Parental denial was a big one. I once counseled a parent not to pursue an official diagnosis because he didn’t yet have his citizenship and one thing an ASD diagnosis can get you in Australia is ‘kicked out of the country because you might later become expensive’. So it could be helpful to label *services* with the term ‘neurodiverse’ because it made them easier to access by kids who can use them, without worrying about who was ‘official’ and who wasn’t
The second thing is that there are a lot of related comorbid conditions with names - ASD, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Executive Function Disorder, Aspergers (now rolled into ASD) and so on. And a lot of those kids could use the same services. So again, neurodiversity was a helpful word.
However, what’s helpful when you’re a *service provider* offering services that people pay money for becomes a monster when seen as an identity. The ‘paying money’ aspect when providing services automatically shrank the boundaries of who wanted to consider themselves neurodiverse. As an identity, it can grow without limit
Any given person with a psychiatric diagnosis is attended by at least one mental health professional. Usually more than one. If the diagnoses are longstanding, the numbers can get large quickly.
Some of the responsibility for the strangeness FdB describes in the Unherd review belongs directly with the professionals. ME is singing the song she’s been taught to sing.
A mental health professional has a line to walk: encouraging someone to benefit themselves, do whatever they can to recover and heal - while not blaming them. Because being shamed by big medical assholes doesn’t help. But taking refuge in the “I was born this way, nothing I can do” is - for many - not the truth.
Saying they are born that way is safer for the mental health professionals, though. If it’s not fixable, not improvable, no metrics or benchmarks - the health professional never has to come up with a way for the person to get better. No “brief psychotherapy” here, no solution-focused anything. It’s all unsolvable. So the therapists don’t have to face the grief if they happen to try and fail.
It doesn’t correlate with the real world. It does correlate with a profession that lacks tools and a society that lacks patience. By the time ME has written that book she’s been thoroughly dosed with “you can’t help it.”
Getting diagnosed is bad enough (been there.) Possibly worse is what comes next - being required to believe you will never get better. “Shut up, take your meds, you were born this way” has now morphed into “write a book celebrating yourself, take your meds, you were born this way.” But like FdB points out the healthy future is still missing.
It’s easier to blame the school social workers for the “secret school-based trans identity” problem. But the whole mental health field has been doing this to kids and adults both, at least since the 80s. “We’re the only ones who can help you with your secret, lifelong problem!”
Some argue that the private place of total acceptance is necessary after trauma. I can buy that, at certain times it helped me. If people fear blame they might not reach out. But even, forgive me, even the goddamn domestic violence shelters, who exist to be trauma-informed - even they get to a stage, of supporting the survivor while they look at what they did have control over before and during the abuse - to debrief, reclaim power, learn to do whatever they can to make sure it doesn’t recur. Even the places that are the origin of not blaming/not shaming eventually get to the re-responsibilitizing.
Abandoning the possibility of getting better creates this. “Admitting you’re sick is the first step to surviving your illness,” right? So when ME first darkened the door of a mental health office, it began, the encouragement, the requirement to say one is sick. There she goes, saying all the right things: there they all go. They were coached.
The mental health establishment is a huge and powerful industry. The culture of low expectations is not the same as healing, but healing is difficult & chancy, so waving the banner of low expectations is a better career move for the industry.
Blaming the girls with the long list of diagnoses is one thing. Yes, they have agency. But I have yet to see a psychiatrist who supported the patient to stop medication and gave them enough other effective coping skills. I know psychiatric survivors who buy their lithium at the health food store & won’t touch doctors. I know people whose symptoms shifted when they became elderly. But that’s it. It’s a one-way valve most of the time.
If I had a suspicious bent I’d say a lot of the medicalization of strong feelings was intended to interrupt workplace organizing. If feeling dissatisfied and destructive is an incurable illness, rather than a response to oppression under capitalism, then the solution is better mental health care - not economic reform. Deny people grief, and some do break - restricting the appropriate range of expression to “illness” will indeed make some people ill, by definition and also by trapping them until they wound themselves in their attempts to mourn. Transformative grief is risky.
What would ME write about if not her diagnosis? It is the alpha, the omega, the be-all and the end-all, overseen by big pharma and the medical associations.
That bit about the fire safety lecture - it speaks to the power of belief. She had the ability to believe so deeply it would alter her perception.
Maybe someone got hold of that belief and manipulated it. Now the influencers are the industry’s free advertising. What kind of incentive is there now to chart a path out of this?
All the fights about merit obscure the fight about functioning at all.
"I demand that you give me what I demand because of my condition, but also it makes me deeper and more interesting than you”
This covers a lot of ground explaining our social condition today. I have had a seed of understanding and empathy for people that feel somehow outside or below the norm of acceptance... either from an identity perspective, a general mental or psychological health perspective, an economic circumstances perspective, or... take your pick. Probably because I have been there too... I think most of us have at times in our lives. But my care filter wilts on the vine when it becomes full blow victim mentality, and then dies when I see it become a weapon of victim identity superiority.
If I am not a woman I cannot know the victim of woman. If I am not black, I cannot know the victim of black. If I am not... I cannot...
How about, if I am not you and you are not me, neither can know the victim of either?
Excuse me people, but you have no fucking idea what challenges and struggles I had to overcome. But you will not hear me talk about them because I know that that is the first step toward adopting a destructive victim mentality. The key to removing that from addictive attraction is to just accept that EVERYONE has their own struggles. How can one claim that theirs or someone else's struggles are more difficult than others... when struggles are relative to infinite variables... including the function of that miraculously complex elector-chemical computer system known as the human being? You look at me now and I look like I have my shit together. But do you know anything?
This is what frosts me the most about identity politics. I get the basis for explaining that people belonging to certain groups owning some history of more bias and discrimination have unfair disadvantages. So you are a white male from an upper middle class family with deep education credentials... and you have a mental health issue. In the identity politics rock, paper, scissors game... you are dirt.
How do you even combat that crap without just returning the favor to say that the so called victims turned bullies are the dirt? I wish I knew another way. I don't.
Isn't it mentally exhausting to be perpetually, willfully misunderstood and misrepresented? (FWIW I have felt free to disagree with you at times while never having to pretend I don't know what you're talking about.)
why yes, yes it is!
The older I get the more I realize that ‘perpetually’ actually started long before I realized it. When young you’ve got shared momentum. Now that I’m not it be like...a more individuated unfolding fate. Or something.
On the subject of book reviews I will just mention again that I think The Siege of Krishnapur would be an EXCELLENT choice for the future.
I think that is one of the best books I have ever read. I think about it often.
Agreed. It is an extraordinary book.
"the neurodiversity movement really is the perfect target too. it’s being championed by women and queer people, is gaining traction in the black community, and empowers disabled people. it makes sense that it would trigger so much of ppls internalized misogynoir and ableism"
It's so bizarre that people still think this way. The vast majority of black, gay, mentally ill, etc people don't think like this. It's bizarre people acting like their obscure views on these subjects represents some sort of broader public rather than a tiny elite.
Also, a banger from the Unherd comments section:
"They used to say that you wouldn’t be ashamed of a broken leg so why should you be of mental illness? Perhaps it now needs adding; you shouldn’t celebrate breaking it either."
I've used the term "neurodivergent" but I didn't realize what it has become. I thought the purpose was to communicate that some conditions (autism, ADHD) are neurodevelopmental disorders. I didn't realize it's now used for any mental health diagnosis, with the goal of turning it into a status symbol.
ADHD sucks. Executive function is critical for succeeding at work, being a good partner, and just keeping up with all of the mundane tasks required to be a functional adult. People sympathize, in the short term--but if you're not keeping up with basic shit, they lose patience fast. Telling people with ADHD to expect endless deference and accommodation won't help them, because they're not going to get it. There's no way to avoid your responsibilities without negative consequences.
Also, I think some people are full of shit and don't really have anything. Life is hard, and and the fact that stuff is hard for someone doesn't imply mental illness. I'm not denying that you have ADHD, but I do think some people mix up mental disorders with the normal difficulty of life. I can also assure the divergent crowd that focusing at work is pretty hard even for us normal folks.
Also, I really wish people knew about the Big 5. Way better form of "self discovery" than most of the alternatives
For sure. The current moment incentivizes self-diagnosis because it's not falsifiable, like claiming to be queer. If someone questions a self-diagnosis, they call it oppression because some people don't have access to healthcare, or they say marginalized people are less likely to be taken seriously by clinicians.
A psychiatrist suspected I had ADHD when I had no clue (I was there seeking treatment for anxiety). I was conflicted about the diagnosis until I got the four-hour psychological testing. There is a subjective chunk where you describe your own experiences, but other parts were more objective than I expected, especially comparing different components of the IQ test to evaluate working memory and processing speed, and a computer test (like a boring game) of reactions where the computer calculates everything.
Now that I've done more reading, it seems obvious that I've had ADHD my whole life, but I wouldn't be certain without the testing. But when my spouse refers patients for testing, they resist it because they feel sure and just want Adderall.
I think the current moment incentivizes self-diagnosis, also, because the impostor syndrome it causes keeps you invested in the kind of "identity market" that drives online communities. That's why it's so linked to queer identity, among other reasons.
Plus, for young women, the last thing you want to be, in a progressive online community, is a "cishet normie". But you don't want to be a "try-bi trender pick-me cool girl faking for clout" either, so you want a version you can't help, which is mental illness.
I think at the heart of it is this idea that we're the number one expert on ourselves, which is supposedly so affirming and positive and "validating" and so on. Not only is it incredibly harmful, it's also basically a total short-circuit on the diagnostic process. For me, if my diagnosis was based just on noticing certain behaviours in myself, it would be suspect. Even before seeing a mental health professional, I sought out neuropsychological tests online so I could measure according to something that wasn't just asking me whether I can keep my home tidy or pay the bills on time, especially because I had cause to worry that my memory and cognitive capacities were fucked in some way. I then officially got tested by a professional (IQ and executive functions), and got a psychiatric diagnosis. So much of what enabled professionals to diagnose me was stuff I'm barely aware of, or stuff that happens while I'm asleep.
Self-validation comes at the expense of self-awareness. Plus, the whole process I just described is relatively cheap where I live, some of it is even totally covered by nationalized health insurance. Whereas in the US, falling downstairs can be an unaffordable luxury. So it's mighty convenient that doctors and testing are Society oppressing you, and you can replace it all with social status and etiquette.
Neurodiversity might be couched in feelgood terms, as a kind of "letting go", but really it's another thing for people to beat themselves up about. It's not really a licence to loosen control, where the behaviours that can make you feel un-housebroken are just quirky markers of difference - that would imply they're just bad because of Society's gaze, which isn't true. It's just a new thing on the list, or a kind of "and" to add to the other ones where you have a new set of standards to fail to live up to. You had a public crying and screaming fit because you lost your keys, well, you feel bad because that shit feels bad - and now you have to soul-search because the fact that you feel bad is a sign of internalised ableism and you're harming your community. It's just a totally artificial, needless way in which you need to "be better", instead of the real ways in which you can do better.
I was just about to point out something similar. It’s difficult for me to describe exactly what I mean because I DO think all of these diagnoses are real, and certainly some are debilitating beyond what the vast majority of people experience. But I think the analogy with physical health might be helpful in explaining. Nearly everyone has SOMETHING physically wrong with them. Similarly, nearly everyone has something they are dealing with in their mental health. I have a specific mental health diagnosis but I don’t think that makes me in some special category of people that “normal” people couldn’t possibly ever understand. I DO think people with specific diagnoses have all sorts of challenges that other people might not but that doesn’t mean everyone else is living a golden life with no problems. I don’t know if I’m explaining it quite right, because I’m not trying to play down the challenges of having a mental illness or disability - I’m more trying to play up the challenges of the human condition in general.
Yes this is where the human capacity for empathy comes in, but so many activists seem to think empathy is not possible. Just because someone hasn't had the exact same challenges or experiences as you doesn't mean they'll never be able to understand; it may mean they haven't yet had to think about your specific ones. And not having *yet* considered something is not the same as will never consider, can never consider.
But the tiny elite has seized control of key institutions throughout society, most importantly the educational establishment.
Here's some interesting background on the historical roots of that from communist pagan Rhyd Wildermuth: https://rhyd.substack.com/p/sexual-fascism-and-the-childrens
I thought the UnHerd review was great, and I'm a woman with (a couple of) those diagnoses. It's like they think criticism is unfair just because the author is claiming a marginalized identity. But since Freddie also has mental illness, they can't say he has neurotypical privilege.... so the problem is that he's criticizing a movement "championed by women and queer people."
When my 4 year old presents me with artwork, I tell him I love it and give him a hug. That's not how you treat a professional author. When someone writes and sells a book, for money, an honest review is more respectful than patting her on the head.
In a multicultural society, it's probably not heathy to magnify the idea that people with different races, sexes, mental states etc are so different that they can't understand each other.
Comment of the month! Because that, in one sentence, is why SocJus will never bring about a harmonious society. A house divided against itself… #MuhTruth
But hey — Justice is just around the corner: just keep “doing the work.”
But this is a core tenet of today's identitarian politics and culture.
Indeed. Which is why we are royally screwed.
Good thing there aren’t major geopolitical powers relishing watching us tear ourselves apart. Oh.
It's unhealthy for a monocultural society, for that matter. To the extent that those even exist any more, in the 21st century.
Insistence on irreconcilable differences is so humorless, leaden, and dreary. And for what? A pose of moral turf claiming? Nobody is all that unassailable.
Indeed, but if you’ve created for yourself a cushy new job curing a disease, you’re not going to be eager for news that it’s an imaginary one.
Lack of accountability is a core aspect of these victimhood-categorizations. And, as FdB points out, do enormous harm. The problem is the harm is long-term, while the benefits are readily apparent, tempting, but short-term.
E.g. I don’t think it’s so good for women to swim in a pond where if you have a bad date, that’s “sexual abuse” or “misconduct.”
I was going to say tweet reads like it was written by a bot.
But perhaps, it felt more like someone fulfilling an essay marking scheme:
1) Did the candidate mention that a protected group is under attack because of frequently targeted other protected group (one of: LGBTQ, Trans, Queer, Disabled, Women, Black, BIPOC)?
3) Did the candidate accuse the target of a form of discrimination using an accepted technical term(Abelism, racism etc)?
5) Was the idea of finding / belonging to community successfully implied to be a panacea?
7) Did the candidate imply that the critique is really part of a larger pattern of attack that puts many vulnerables group at risk?
9) Did the candidate successfully call into question the validity of the critique by identifying inherent characteristics of the commenter that disqualify them from having a valid opinion on the given subject?
5/5 A
4/5 - B
3/5 - C
2/5 or less is a failing grade. Must try harder
To go instantly *global* myself (as twitter is want to do) and extrapolate out *extremely* from a single idea, how much does how we mark make young people think like this?
It feels like this would happen anyway because most people just want to be told how to be good (Turchin's Moralists perhaps), but I wonder if how you assess young people over time makes them engage in this box-ticking mentality. Getting angry that you feel someone is having a go at a vulnerable group is something I've felt - I get it. Ensuring a standard litany of criticisms that are often arbitrary to the precise point at hand, has been successfully assembled, I do not.
Are you obsessed with power relations and limited to two or three stock responses? You too may have Woke Brain-Rot Syndrome.
excuse *me,* my Woke Brain-Rot is a *superpower*
*makes vaguely approving gestures*
These sorts of argument are incredibly effective within their social circle. They're just jarring to everyone else
I am so so SO sick of the non-argument, “Yt man says what?” Together with broad-brush thoughtcrime accusations: “misogynoir!” “TERF!” Which are near-meaningless sloganeering. This stuff has vitiated the discourse bigly. I think these people no longer know how to engage (prove, disprove) an argument. And, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, that’s really bad.
Also interesting is the cartoonish good/bad dichotomy, like old Westerns where the good guys wore white hats & the bad guys black hats. Being kind to the neurodivergent is good, so OF COURSE it’s mainly found among PoC. Of course it was good that Biden won, so it was mainly black women (except it was white suburban men). Or David Hogg saying something along the lines of, black trans women have always been in the forefront of gun control efforts. Gun control is good! Black trans women (unlike white men) are good! Voilà!
It reminds me of the Orwell quote about the gramophone mind (paraphrased): It doesn’t matter what record is playing, the problem is the gramophone mind that slavishly transcribes it.
lol'd when I found out what "Yt" means; misogynoir was like a thousand other academic rubber stamps; and TERF was already familiar. Got any more good ones?
Hey, I’m dancing as fast as I can up here. I think misogynoir is about as weird as it gets, but I’m no expert. Maybe cisheteropatriarchy?
yeah, that one has shown up on my social media feed. But then I unfollowed in the hopes I wouldn't have to read it used (earnestly) again
Misogynoir is actually a good one though. I like it.
I am shaking my head in the manner of a grumpy old man
People have always stereotyped and been prejudiced against the straw men they invent. It’s always been true that religion has been used to demonize the “other”, throughout history. And still today. The Church is still far more powerful that a group of Twitter trolls.
What’s different now is the impact of social media, to amplify and share the extremists of all sorts and exaggerate the level of disagreement.
Most of what most people argue about (including you here) is a fantasy of some large and powerful group that controls discourse, instead of a fringe and mostly powerless group that is probably best ignored.
Is there a Van Morrison record after the early 70s that is actually good? Real question.
There isn't a Van Morrison record before, during, or after the early 70s that is good. Real answer.
Don’t feed the trolls
It will amaze me forever that the neurodivergent movement, founded on the premise that not every cognitive difference should be treated as inherently disabling and that permitting a diversity of “types of brains” to flourish enriches society, finds it so hard to grasp that somebody might have a different way of thinking about their mental illness than they do.
I haven’t read a lot of Andrea Long Chu, but I have thought often of something she said about liberal diversity - that it loves when people *look* different from each other, but can’t handle when people *think* differently from each other. She was talking about both ideological and neurological differences there, I think, but the neurodiversity movement is as guilty of this as the mainstream culture she criticizes.
...Anyway I think it was ALC who said that. After my Phoebe Maltz Bovy/Kat Rosenfield mixup of last week I’m second-guessing myself. If it wasn’t, sorry!
You ever just think that some people are just boring? I think someone that identifies with mental disorders doesn't have much else going on
I think there’s a normal amount of “identifying with” something that, I think to a greater degree than other identities, kind of *is* you. Some people treat their mental illness as something outside of “them,” a foreign force exerting influence over a complete self that would exist independently of it. I think that’s probably not quite right, either - your mind is your mind, made of everything you’ve experienced and the way you’ve experienced it, and I think our minds are probably the closest thing to “ourselves” there is.
But I do think there’s an overidentification with diagnosis that tends to overlap with someone not having much else going on. Like Freddie noted in his review - the author’s weird sense of pride and excitement in getting yet another label to add to the list in her medical history, totally divorced from the relief of learning you have a specific condition with specific treatments available. Treating any of the conditions to full cure is unthinkable.
By the way, it was totally Julia Serrano who said that. God damn it.
"Some people treat their mental illness as something outside of “them,” a foreign force exerting influence over a complete self that would exist independently of it. I think that’s probably not quite right, either - your mind is your mind, made of everything you’ve experienced and the way you’ve experienced it"
That's true, but I was thinking more normative than descriptive. I touched on this in my last article, but I think people should strive to remove these sorts of things. They'll be themselves with and without these disorders, by definition, so it really comes down to which version is better.
I'll still be me if I stop lifting weights, but that would be a crappier verison of me, so I'll pass
“They’ll be themselves with or without these disorders, by definition, so it really comes down to which version is better.” Yeah, I would agree with that. I do think with mental illness there’s often a degree of being without the disorder that isn’t possible - but I would definitely say that the version of yourself insistent on being defined by the disorder is going to be the crappier one.
I think the piece on Rachel Dolezal was my first introduction to FdB, and it's still sharp. In today's language, it might be said that she wanted to "transition."
It's so weird how race (which does not have a precise biological definition) is now supposed to be inherent and unchangeable, while sex (which does have a precise biological defintion) is now supposed to be "fluid" and determined by internal mental state. And yet both these ideas (race is immutable, sex is infinitely maleable) are firmly embedded in the successor ideology of identitarian politics.
Who says that race is inherent and unchangeable?
The people who say that Dolezal is white.
Please point me to a serious person who says “race is inherent and unchangeable” preferably someone with some sort of influence. I have never heard that before, though it is perhaps the Latin American influence in California, where race is considered very mutable.
The mainstream point of view seems to be “race is a social construct” which is a simplification but at least closer.
Dolezal was not allowed to say she is Black, no matter how much she believed it. Society would not let her do that. And of course earlier there is a long history of Blacks attempting to pass as white, and suffering severe consequences when discovered. They could not simply declare, "I am now white", and be accepted as white by society. In this sense, race is inherent and unchangeable.
https://www.google.com/search?q=race+is+a+social+construct&=race+is+a+social+construct
The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American, NPR, Vox, The AMA, Oxford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Psychology Today all arguing that race is a social construct. And that's just in the first two pages.
It is pretty clear that the dominant mainstream narrative, at least among the intelligentsia, is that race is a social construct. The belief that race is inherent and unchangeable is at best a marginal belief, which it appears that you subscribe to. You are welcome to do that!
There is certainly an unfortunate history of Blacks attempting to pass as white and suffering severe consequences. But we are talking about today and now in the United States right?
Just because something is a social construct doesn't mean it isn't real with real consequences. Racism is real and has consequences for both individuals and society. I am not denying that.
Dolezal is an odd case, she still identifies as Black so it's not really true that "she was not allowed to say she is Black". She was not jailed or anything like that. She lied about a whole bunch of things that destroyed her credibility, including the claim that she was African-American. She also lied about being racially harassed and targeted, lied about her parentage, committed welfare fraud and a host of other fraudulent activity. She had plenty of defenders though, including the NAACP, among others.
I only recently learned that Rebecca Tuvel's controversial paper on "transracialism" was meant to be a sincere defense of Dolezal. A lot of people assumed she made the comparison to criticize the idea of gender transition, but actually she supports both.
To me, the Dolezal case is straightforward because she lied. That's unethical. But it's interesting to think about the concept since we have a growing mixed population, plus DNA tests that can turn up unexpected heritage. It's getting more muddled.
If we continue to obsess over racial identity (sigh), we're going to have to consider how much to honor the self-ID of someone like Elizabeth Warren, for example, who has very distant Native heritage. Warren and Dolezal both look completely white and have white parents, but the reactions have been different since Warren has "evidence" and didn't do anything blatantly dishonest like darken her skin. But really, they're both white people who preferred to identify as something else.
At the same time, some aggressively try to push other groups into the white category as they fight over resources. Asians are "white-adjacent" and Hispanics got kicked out of the BI part of BIPOC. Just this week there is a Medieval Twitter shitstorm where two scholars were feuding, and one accused the other of not being Black. (Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/arts/medieval-race-twitter.html )
How did Dolezal lie? If she believes she is Black and says so, are we not obligated to take her at her word? Should we not give anyone who claims to be Black legal access to, say, grants from the Minority Business Development Agency? https://www.mbda.gov/grants
Surely applying any sort of objective biological test would make us all haters and phobes!
Remember how we’re not supposed to have endless, repetitive discussions of inflammatory topics? It’s the 2nd link up above.
I'm replying to you, on the topic you wrote about.
Apologies for assuming you were making a rhetorical point about a different topic. I will ponder your sincere question and get back to you.
FWIW, I think it's bad policy for the government to apply racial tests for benefits. I think there should be economic tests only. Support "small" buisness, but not "minority" business.
I fear ableism is the next cab off the identity rank and that the effect will be the same as it has been with gender and sexuality i.e. that the legitimate needs of a genuinely marginalized / vulnerable population will be swamped by the desire of privileged people to use these identities as a shield or as part of their ‘brand’. I already see people with wheelchairs in their Twitter bios who have self-diagnosed with ADHD because they lost their car keys.
"dstbunny" demonstrates quite clearly that twitter itself is a mental illness. Every single word of that thread is performative.
On the lousy Roe decision being overturned "Yes, you’re outraged, and it’s right for you to be outraged. " -- how many pro-life folk do you know? How many pro-choice (-abortion)?
How many kids do they have? [Freddie, where are your kids?]
I have 4, and now 2 grandkids.
"Cause and effect" (haven't we heard that before?). Pro-life couples have more kids ... over time the culture becomes more pro-life. That's how evolution works - survival of those who reproduce. A "March for Life" has happened every year for 50 years now.
It was demographic destiny that Roe would not last.
I know plenty of people who are pro-life and pro-choice. Most of the pro-choice people I know have fewer children that they invest more resources in and their offspring are more successful. Most pro-life people are not as smart or educated and have more children who tend to do middling well. Both are valid strategies.
If your argument based on demographics were true, we would find the anti-abortion position to have grown in popularity but it has not.
I have two children and no grandchildren. My siblings are all over the map. I have 15 nieces and nephews and four grand nieces/nephews. Is that a thing or are they just cousins?
I want to know where all these parents are who can ensure their children hold the same political opinions as them. I sure never met them.
Your last remark seems to imply that overturning Roe must be a politically motivated decision, rather than the result of dispassionate judicial reasoning.
Back when I was more involved with the ASD community than I am now, ‘neurodiversity’ was a popular term for a couple of purely practical reasons.
First, autism is hard and expensive to diagnose, and it doesn’t really have a singular treatment - ASD kids need interventions based on their specific challenges, which vary widely from person to person. I met a number of kids with poorer functioning than my officially diagnosed son who nevertheless themselves didn’t have diagnoses for various reasons. Parental denial was a big one. I once counseled a parent not to pursue an official diagnosis because he didn’t yet have his citizenship and one thing an ASD diagnosis can get you in Australia is ‘kicked out of the country because you might later become expensive’. So it could be helpful to label *services* with the term ‘neurodiverse’ because it made them easier to access by kids who can use them, without worrying about who was ‘official’ and who wasn’t
The second thing is that there are a lot of related comorbid conditions with names - ASD, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Executive Function Disorder, Aspergers (now rolled into ASD) and so on. And a lot of those kids could use the same services. So again, neurodiversity was a helpful word.
However, what’s helpful when you’re a *service provider* offering services that people pay money for becomes a monster when seen as an identity. The ‘paying money’ aspect when providing services automatically shrank the boundaries of who wanted to consider themselves neurodiverse. As an identity, it can grow without limit
This is a good point!
Any given person with a psychiatric diagnosis is attended by at least one mental health professional. Usually more than one. If the diagnoses are longstanding, the numbers can get large quickly.
Some of the responsibility for the strangeness FdB describes in the Unherd review belongs directly with the professionals. ME is singing the song she’s been taught to sing.
A mental health professional has a line to walk: encouraging someone to benefit themselves, do whatever they can to recover and heal - while not blaming them. Because being shamed by big medical assholes doesn’t help. But taking refuge in the “I was born this way, nothing I can do” is - for many - not the truth.
Saying they are born that way is safer for the mental health professionals, though. If it’s not fixable, not improvable, no metrics or benchmarks - the health professional never has to come up with a way for the person to get better. No “brief psychotherapy” here, no solution-focused anything. It’s all unsolvable. So the therapists don’t have to face the grief if they happen to try and fail.
It doesn’t correlate with the real world. It does correlate with a profession that lacks tools and a society that lacks patience. By the time ME has written that book she’s been thoroughly dosed with “you can’t help it.”
Getting diagnosed is bad enough (been there.) Possibly worse is what comes next - being required to believe you will never get better. “Shut up, take your meds, you were born this way” has now morphed into “write a book celebrating yourself, take your meds, you were born this way.” But like FdB points out the healthy future is still missing.
It’s easier to blame the school social workers for the “secret school-based trans identity” problem. But the whole mental health field has been doing this to kids and adults both, at least since the 80s. “We’re the only ones who can help you with your secret, lifelong problem!”
Some argue that the private place of total acceptance is necessary after trauma. I can buy that, at certain times it helped me. If people fear blame they might not reach out. But even, forgive me, even the goddamn domestic violence shelters, who exist to be trauma-informed - even they get to a stage, of supporting the survivor while they look at what they did have control over before and during the abuse - to debrief, reclaim power, learn to do whatever they can to make sure it doesn’t recur. Even the places that are the origin of not blaming/not shaming eventually get to the re-responsibilitizing.
Abandoning the possibility of getting better creates this. “Admitting you’re sick is the first step to surviving your illness,” right? So when ME first darkened the door of a mental health office, it began, the encouragement, the requirement to say one is sick. There she goes, saying all the right things: there they all go. They were coached.
The mental health establishment is a huge and powerful industry. The culture of low expectations is not the same as healing, but healing is difficult & chancy, so waving the banner of low expectations is a better career move for the industry.
Blaming the girls with the long list of diagnoses is one thing. Yes, they have agency. But I have yet to see a psychiatrist who supported the patient to stop medication and gave them enough other effective coping skills. I know psychiatric survivors who buy their lithium at the health food store & won’t touch doctors. I know people whose symptoms shifted when they became elderly. But that’s it. It’s a one-way valve most of the time.
If I had a suspicious bent I’d say a lot of the medicalization of strong feelings was intended to interrupt workplace organizing. If feeling dissatisfied and destructive is an incurable illness, rather than a response to oppression under capitalism, then the solution is better mental health care - not economic reform. Deny people grief, and some do break - restricting the appropriate range of expression to “illness” will indeed make some people ill, by definition and also by trapping them until they wound themselves in their attempts to mourn. Transformative grief is risky.
What would ME write about if not her diagnosis? It is the alpha, the omega, the be-all and the end-all, overseen by big pharma and the medical associations.
That bit about the fire safety lecture - it speaks to the power of belief. She had the ability to believe so deeply it would alter her perception.
Maybe someone got hold of that belief and manipulated it. Now the influencers are the industry’s free advertising. What kind of incentive is there now to chart a path out of this?
All the fights about merit obscure the fight about functioning at all.
"I demand that you give me what I demand because of my condition, but also it makes me deeper and more interesting than you”
This covers a lot of ground explaining our social condition today. I have had a seed of understanding and empathy for people that feel somehow outside or below the norm of acceptance... either from an identity perspective, a general mental or psychological health perspective, an economic circumstances perspective, or... take your pick. Probably because I have been there too... I think most of us have at times in our lives. But my care filter wilts on the vine when it becomes full blow victim mentality, and then dies when I see it become a weapon of victim identity superiority.
If I am not a woman I cannot know the victim of woman. If I am not black, I cannot know the victim of black. If I am not... I cannot...
How about, if I am not you and you are not me, neither can know the victim of either?
Excuse me people, but you have no fucking idea what challenges and struggles I had to overcome. But you will not hear me talk about them because I know that that is the first step toward adopting a destructive victim mentality. The key to removing that from addictive attraction is to just accept that EVERYONE has their own struggles. How can one claim that theirs or someone else's struggles are more difficult than others... when struggles are relative to infinite variables... including the function of that miraculously complex elector-chemical computer system known as the human being? You look at me now and I look like I have my shit together. But do you know anything?
This is what frosts me the most about identity politics. I get the basis for explaining that people belonging to certain groups owning some history of more bias and discrimination have unfair disadvantages. So you are a white male from an upper middle class family with deep education credentials... and you have a mental health issue. In the identity politics rock, paper, scissors game... you are dirt.
How do you even combat that crap without just returning the favor to say that the so called victims turned bullies are the dirt? I wish I knew another way. I don't.