bodyncoherence

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parents being emotionally immature is still a form of abuse. like even while they likely need community and care themselves it doesn’t make it not emotional abuse. the way ppl use it i always see the examples being described as yelling at their kids, hitting them, telling them my house my rules etc

this is likely in response to this post. i just personally have zero respect left for the concept of 'emotional immaturity'. what it supposes is that there is a timeline of social & emotional accomplishments to have reached at certain ages, associated with certain challenges to meet: the challenge of independence, of intimacy, of productivity, of generativity, and so forth. what is then considered 'emotionally immature'? - not settling down - never marrying - not being able to hold on to a job - never finishing any training - never building 'your own' family - dressing 'not according to your age' - not 'taking responsibility' (for your lot in life) - not being able to perform certain feats of emotional self-regulation and self-control i.e. crying when criticised - inability or unwillingness to perform adult sexuality - etc - and obviously, all the items of misbehaviour and immoralities associated with 'personality disorders' i.e. being 'impulsive' 'self-absorbed' 'lacking empathy' 'unable to learn from one's mistakes' 'avoidant' 'defensive' 'putting the blame on others' and so on and so forth it's just not a useful concept or framework to think through problems for me.

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Pour celleux souhaitant se former à l’autodéfense psy dans le but de créer des groupes d’entraide, des réseaux entre amis, dans vos groupes etc. je voulais faire une liste de quelques ressources que je trouve centrales pour l’autodéfense psy, un peu le « par où commencer » (selon moi).

Il y a pas mal de ressources qui ont été produites et je pense que c’est nécessaire parce qu’il y a plein de situations, de vécus, possibilités etc. Je pense qu’il en manque même, on a encore du taf. Mais je comprends qu’une personne qui arrive devant nos collections de ressources puisse être perdu. Ce que je liste dessous permet de prévoir pour soi comme les autres, d’avoir quelques bons réflexes dans l’approche et des ressources qui servent par défaut. Comme vous le lirez, l’important c’est d’être flexible face aux personnes, de ne surtout pas vouloir imposer un modèle en particulier et de laisser la personne décider pour elle-même.

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rising, always rising

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this is a topic i've been trying to think through lately and this post has been sitting in my brain ever since i read it scrolling through a tag a few days ago. trying to get my thoughts in order:

i think that calling the medicalisation/psychopathologisation of asexuality 'conversion therapy' is politically unhelpful and likely to be confusing, since conversion therapy as it's usually understood is an ongoing industry specifically aimed to cure gayness and suppress transness, where asexuality might even be seen as a partial remission from at least not outwardly sinning, though of course full remission is achieved with heterosexual procreation and family life. the methods to cure gayness and transness historically were and still are also more abusive than the methods to cure refusal of sex, though there are some overlaps (i.e. i'd consider the medical directive to make a woman endure sex until she enjoys it also very abusive).

the assumption that the medicalisation/psychopathologisation of asexuality is merely doctors gently asking if there might be a problem that you want solved is incorrect, though. this assumes that this is all an honest mistake. but living an unpartnered and unsexual life is psychopathologised openly, even if stated as a personal choice and will. (as in, patient might explain they don't want sex because they are asexual, doctor/therapist will consider this self-designation part of the psychopathology, and will tell you as much). a psychopathologisation that went hand-in-hand with the construction of western ideas of sexuality, some of the early sexuality theorists that wrote of the evils of asexuality/sex-refusal/frigidity are the same that wrote of the evils of homosexuality or masturbation, and pioneered conversion therapy, so the 2 issues are not fully separate. sherronda j. brown talks of this history for instance in her book refusing compulsory sexuality. but it's ongoing, i.e. i experienced it in the 21th century.

obviously the problem here is that if one has grown with sexual abuse/complex trauma before the start of puberty (not uncommon) or if one is neurodivergent/mentally ill of the kind where there is no 'before' to recollect (also not uncommon), it might be impossible to tease out whether one is 'naturally' averse to sex and partnership or only became so as result of trauma/and so on. which makes therapeutic attempts to fix and push towards self-betterment of the person always defensible on these grounds.... but of course what's also happening here is that embracing sexuality, building a partnership, and a family form, ideally of the heterosexual kind, or at least some not-too-disturbing approximation, is considered the healthy norm, and refusals and inabilities to do so are considered diseased. otherwise, there wouldn't even be a problem to fix at all. and 'sexual healing' and 'finding love' wouldn't be seen as desirable outcome.

gay conversion therapy: emotional abuse, physical assault, electroshock therapy, being given drugs to induce nausea and forced to watch gay porn until it makes you throw up, literal camps you get sent to and can stay at for years, etc

asexual conversion therapy: a doctor asks if your lack of sexual attraction is an issue you'd like to solve with medication

[bodyncoherence]

Crocodile

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gooped up and evil

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The connection between sex, capital, and the economy inevitably makes way for the constitution of sex as productivity, and our productivity is the bedrock of the capitalist system as the principal driving force behind the wealthy class’s ability to hoard capital. Under capitalism, being productive is what makes us valuable to the system itself, and this has long been conflated with our value as human beings. If we are not being productive and using whatever free time we have to work toward ways to become even more productive or “useful,” then we are not doing enough to make ourselves valuable. This system, which encourages us to understand ourselves and our value through our productivity and labor, makes it more and more difficult to view ourselves as having any purpose outside of laboring within and for the system. We become only bodies for the nation-state’s use, and our bodies become instruments for amassing capital that marginalized workers will never be able to partake of as long as this system persists. Those who deprioritize or divest from sex—and often marriage and reproduction along with it—regardless of the reasons why, become a threat to the established systems that rely and thrive on the exploitation of and extraction of labor from our bodies, including sexual and reproductive labor. In this system, those who exist outside of normative sexuality, particularly those socialized as women who do not perform adequate sexual and reproductive labor for male partners, are disordered problems to be fixed.

-- Sherronda J. Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality

this, i'm thinking on, because of course imo the way care & reproductive work (paid & unpaid) is organised is that some people are supposed to perform it and some people are supposed to remain excluded from it. like some women are supposed to have sex, be a wife and have babies, some women on the other hand are supposed to be available for sex, but are not suitable as wives nor should they have babies, but it is true that no woman at all is allowed to be unavailable for sex. some people are discouraged from active self-directed sexuality with others. i.e. institutionalised intellectually disabled or severely psychiatrically disabled people are discouraged from choosing sex with fellow inmates, them wanting and having sex (or even babies!) is considered a problem to contain, often via forced sterilisation, and no-relationship-on-the-ward rules. this is also btw why personally i thought - and maybe still think - that asexuality as a coherent mark of disadvantage doesn't quite work: clearly it is easier for some people to be asexual, i.e. gay men in religiously abusive communities that want to remain in these communities, or i.e. incarcerated disabled people 'not supposed to' be sexually active. though as i write down those exceptions i notice that really only the most sexually oppressed could possibly 'benefit' somewhat from asexuality, only those considered so profoundly diseased that we fully exempt them from procreation/humanity, and wouldn't it be cynical then to speak of asexuality as conditional advantage? most every one else obviously is supposed to "be human" aka to love, desire, and willingly have sex, even if they are also supposed to contain their loves and desires, and population control (who procreates; what kind of new humans do we create for state & capital) remains a concern. anyway. regardless of all that, yet, as evidenced by the statistics on sexual assault of disabled girls and women (5 times higher than nondisabled), sexual availability, a body that sex can be done upon in impunity, still remains a must. and asexuality, even in those where it's extremely convenient that they be asexual, would still be considered an additional proof of non-humanity or 'sadness' of someone's life. we somehow manage to always have it both ways.

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both of her analysis of asexuality as 'refusal to grow up' and asexuality as 'stubborn refusal to submit' so fascinating to me because both these things were precisely what i was diagnosed with. as in, not metaphorically, but literally. my failure to accept my sex, to inhabit an adult sex role was explained as fear of growing up/immaturity, and also as 'Hingabestörung', hard to translate, literally it would mean "disorder of nonsubmission" but think less blatantly fasch and more "someone that's unable to fully engage an experience, to allow themselves to be swept away" kind of vibes.

[bodyncoherence]

Wilhelm Stekel, an Austrian physician and psychologist who became one of Sigmund Freud’s earliest followers and a loyal protégé, published Frigidity in Women in Relation to Her Love Life in 1926. In this work, Stekel declares, “To be roused by a man means acknowledging oneself as conquered,” then, at the conclusion of sex when she can take no more, she should acknowledge herself “defeated, subdued, in the game of love” by the man who has dominated her. Moreover, he declares that “sexual frigidity enables woman to domineer, to triumph over man. [Frigidity], therefore, is to be interpreted as a phase in woman’s struggle for equal rights; it is distinctly a social manifestation.” For Stekel and his followers, it was feminism and women’s desire to play “men’s roles” and be in “men’s positions” that was actually producing so many cases of frigidity. Therefore, according to Stekel, the “only hope for relief from an epidemic of frigidity lay in a return to traditional roles: A woman can never become a man.” All that was needed was a “return to the calling of motherhood under equal political, social and sexual rights.” This abandonment of feminism alone would “furnish woman the opportunity for love without humiliation.” The conflation of appropriate “femininity” with proper gender performance for women as it relates to sexual, social, and reproductive obligation appears repeatedly in these conversations among men. There is a strong connection between anti-feminist attitudes and anxieties about frigid or asexual women causing the decline of white supremacist civilization by eschewing traditional cisheteropatriarchal roles.

-- Sherronda J. Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality

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Along with this view that “most apparently frigid women were thought to be simply alienated from their own true desire and pleasure and might well come to be reconciled with it”31 also came the accusation that some women remained “cold” toward men out of resentment, stubbornness, or ill will. Le Mensonge du féminisme (The lie of feminism), by Théodore Joran, a story published in 1905, follows a character who does just this. “As if on purpose, she remained the passive, inert being,” Joran describes. “[She is] the living corpse who puts up with embraces but does not return them, who carries out the divine act with the indifference one brings to a chore. She remained the one who paralyses the flesh and chills the heart.” Cryle and Moore highlight that her male suitor identifies “the inhuman temperament that lies at the heart of feminism: frigidity is diagnosed as a stubborn refusal of normal, male-centered sexuality.”

-- Sherronda J. Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality

[bodyncoherence]

Sex, particularly cisheterosexual sex with the potential for procreation, continues to be regarded as a rite of passage and a marker of maturity. According to dominant cultural beliefs, following this socially established chronology is more than simply a rite of passage but a prerequisite for true adulthood under cisheteropatriarchy. Through this ideology, asexuality becomes understood as liminal—as an intermediate life phase or condition, a state that is merely in between, transitional, on the cusp. Asexuals are expected to always be working toward moving out of this perceived liminality and into what is accepted as maturity and adulthood. This is what it means to “bloom,” and we mark ourselves as queer and socially other when we live contently in the “phase” that society regards as one that we are all required to transition out of by a certain time. And so, asexuals who deprioritize or completely divest from sex—who refuse to “bloom” and emerge from the liminal space—will never truly grow up.

-- Sherronda J. Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality

[bodyncoherence]

The Fishes

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this reminds me of the comparison between 'how long does it take to get ready' or 'bathroom times' for heterosexual couples or how women are assumed to make a political statement or considered ungroomed or unprofessional if they let their face and neck hair grow (to the point that many people don't even know how many women grow lots of these), the hair on their limbs especially legs, don't "do their nails", often even when they don't wear make-up! & many women also internalise all this as necessary. but also hair is such a common site of anxiety, for men there are so many products to hinder or hide hair loss, women with thin noncurly hair will struggle to get 'volume' or 'life' into their hair and also spend lots of energy and products, for long stretches of recent history 'puffing up' flat hair with gel, sprays, or perms, was/is normalised, and 500 routines exist for people whose hair greases quickly with some imagined health ideal to 'need to' wash it only once a week, and so forth. at the end of the day, everyone could let their hair just be how it is, or cut it very short if they dislike it long, but some would be considered 'ungroomed' to the point of unemployability and some would merely be considered slightly frumpy and 'not making much effort', an also racialised disctinction.

is it legitmately more difficult to take care of curly hair than straight hair? I feel like this is an idea that has remarkable sticking power because it aligns with people's ideas of curly hair as innately "uncivilised" "unkempt" "unprofressional" "recalcitrant" &c., and not because it has ever been actually proven.

what does "more difficult" mean? how would you meaningfully test or verify the hypothesis "it is more difficult to take care of curly hair than straight hair"?

not to say that you need to design and run an observational trial about every little thing people say, but rather, I don't think people even think about what this concretely, practically means or what it would take to test it, because it's just such a truism

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untitled, mixed media, 11″ x 14″ bristol

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the resurgence of Thin being In has made thin people so much more fucking annoying i keep seeing recipe and gardening videos or tiktoks that look good or are informative but the (very much thin!!) creators can't stop going "oh gotta get my FAT ASS to work in the garden!! 😂 making some tortillas because i'm a FAT LARD ASS, sorry for adding two tablespoons of oil to this i'm such a fucking BIG BACK FAT DIPSHIT aren't i 😂😂" are you not embarrassed

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Paula Duró (Argentine, 1981) - Utopía (2020)