#it is literally just ''survivors I agree with'' vs ''survivors I disagree with and therefore don't exist''

[troonwolf]

thank you for speaking up about the cult tactics used in the pro endo community. even though i Was mostly syscourse unaligned leaning anti, the pro endo community gave me a really bad vibe. seeing a lot of shit they say screamed “cult” to me too but i didn’t feel comfortable enough calling it out because i’m not a cult survivor and i don’t know a lot about cults. i was also never pro endo so it’s not like i could speak from personal experience either. so i kind of brushed off my gut reaction and told myself i’m overreacting about something i don’t know a lot about. so i’m glad to know more now and know that the pro endo community does harm beyond what i even initially thought. i’m definitely more anti endo now because the pro endo community is absolutely the anti vaxers of the neurodivergent community. also notice how many of them support the demedicalization of autism too. idk if you remember that but i’m referencing specifically the time a few months ago when some prominent pro endo bloggers were jumping down the throats of autistic anti endos because they called their autism a disability.

Ty for your input anon! Interesting to read other folks perspectives and experiences on all this.

The funny thing is I literally only started talking about how I myself am a cult survivor because everytime I try to talk about cults in the system community, people have this knee-jerk reaction of having to respond to you with essays on how unless you're a cult survivor, you shouldn't be talking about cults.

Now first off that's obviously not true and pretty stupid. Tons of academic professionals and researchers and etc who are involved in widening our understanding of cults, were not themselves victims of cults. That's like saying I can't talk about the black plague because I wasn't there.

But literally just to make people stop having that response to me I was like welp guess I'm gonna have to talk about specific details of my trauma of being lured into a doomsday bunker in the mountains by my mother even tho both sides of this debate are constantly talking about how we shouldn't pressure people to have to talk about or reveal their trauma.

The idea of cults and cult victims have a weird status of reverence in the community, we're almost treated like a mythological creature. "Oh no, don't talk about cults! There might be a...*whispers* cult victim here...." It's very very bizarre.

Cults are an age-old phenomenon with tons of research put behind them. We actually know a fucking lot about cults. Saying you need to have been in one to be able to understand them is ridiculous.

Comparing this to other things: you don't need to have been abused as a child to have a good understanding of child abuse. We have a pretty informed understanding of what child abuse is and how it functions by this point. You can still call something out as being child abuse without having experienced it yourself.

With that said I'm glad there are people who understand my point, but honestly after this experience I've concluded both sides of the anti/endo discourse are a bunch of clowns who just want a tumblr pvp social club. People are involved literally just to be part of the community, whether anti or endo. Folks actual reasons for being against endos is dumb shit like "they're just dumb teenagers who don't know what they're doing", when if that's really the case then why are you "anti" in the first place? Idc what dumb teenagers are doing, why do you?

I hate endos because they cause harm but most people in this discourse legitimately seem like they're just anti-endos because they think it's cringe and want to be a cool tumblr hater.

[gabibrann]

Week 9 Content Response

1.) Emerge pgs. 36-50: I took a lot of interest in the discussion of “reductionism” - the belief that the human body is nothing more than organized cells. I have never understood how someone can cane reductionist beliefs even without looking at it from a “nature of human beings” point of view. From a strictly physical reality standpoint, there is an unfathomable amount of irreversible complexity in the physical world even when just viewing a single cell. It’s crazy to me that people so simply fall back on reductionism when, according to their “scientific” beliefs, every cell in existence had to descend from another cell... so where did the first cell come from? There is no possible way that one day the perfect types, ratios, and ions of atoms came together to interact in such a way to create the most basic building-block of life. ---The rest of the reading was interesting too. I just take a particular interest in this topic.

2.) “How Artists Explore Identity”: Before watching this video, I didn’t know much about Frida. After the beirf background they did on her, I found that her self portrait had so much more meaning behind it than it did before. I see so much emotion and reason behind her painting with the scissors, cut hair, and suit. It was like her way of saying “my identity is not my husband”. There is a strong sense of independence and freedom behind it.

Also, my unpopular opinion regarding Glenn Ligon’s “Runaways” is that he is combining his identity with the problem of slavery and creating a present problem that does not necessarily correlate. If I were to ask my friends to describe me as if I had gone missing, they would describe me in a very similar way to how Glenn’s friends describe him. Glenn did not ask his friends, “how would you describe me”. He asked, “how would you describe me if I went missing?” which shifts the description from his primary qualities to his physical appearance. Don’t get me wrong- I have seen what runaway slave posters from the past have looked like and it is extremely dehumanizing, disturbing, and at its root, evil. I also understand how his cultural identity is effected by that his ancestors went through. I just don’t agree with how he presents his thoughts and correlations between topics. For instance, my family is Lithuanian and fled Lithuania on foot because of the Nazis and communists during world war two. The first-hand stories of what they experienced are bone-chilling to say the least. But I am definitely not going to draw parallels between them and myself and say I am a survivor - I have absolutely no right!! I have never experienced anything close to what they have. My identity therefore is not “I am a survivor”, rather, it is “I am free” because of the sacrifices they made to come to America.

3.) “Exploding the Myth of the Scientific vs Creative Mind”: I thought that this article did a great job in simplifying a much bigger discussion. Yes, just like any other function of the human body, there is a balance to maintain in thought and reasoning. For example, working at the pediatric therapy clinic, several children come in with either extension pattern problems or flexion pattern problems, both of which strongly effect their mobility and lifestyle. In order for us to develop and have full mobility, there has to be a perfect balance between flexion and extension muscle tone. The brain acts similarly when forming thoughts. There must be a balance between convergent and divergent thought for a method of thinking to reach its full potential.

4.) “The Myth of the Starving Artist and Other Misconceptions about Creativity”: I understand what this article is getting at but while it’s all good in theory, I have to disagree.  The article said, “What I think we all fear is not discovery of or compensation for our work. But I think that we creatives are afraid that in caring too much about marketing or business, we will somehow lose the purity of our art. And that’s a valid concern, but not an entirely rational one.“ I think this is rarely true especially in this day and age where we live in a world where our artistic - and maybe even personal - value is determined by likes and followers. More and more so, people are feeling like they are entitled to being discovered. Social media has created a platform where everyone has the opportunity to brand their essence so a lack of likes and followers could be taken as a lack of interest in an individual on a much more personal level. As much as we try to make it about the purity of what we put out into the world (art in this case), we will never truly be able to do so because of basic human psychology.

I also have to agree with the claim that the starving artist myth is not true. A lot of people take this stereotype too literally. I’m know that a good amount of artists don’t have trouble putting food on the table. I also know several artists who are swimming in wealth. Personally, I look at the stereotype from the viewpoint of security. I never had the option to pursue art because of all of my pre-existing health problems. I need a job where I know for a fact that I have good medical care - it is a life or death concern for me. There is rarely security in the art industry and a lot of us simply do not have the option to take that risk.