#ontological wrongness

[hyperlexichypatia]

This survey of why parents are estranged from their adult children is such an interesting illustration of how neurobigotry functions in society and interpersonal relationships. People accuse their estranged family members of being Mad/neurodivergent, because Madness is synonymous with being at fault in a relationship. It's considered inherently Reasonable and Justified to cut ties with a Mad/neurodivergent person -- especially an untreated-by-choice Mad/neurodivergent person -- because to be Mad/neurodivergent is to be inherently wrong, inherently unreasonable, inherently burdensome, inherently the one who is not abiding by the social compact.

Or as one of my friends put it, "Mental illness exists as a sociopolitical concept of ontological wrongness."

One of the pervasively enduring aspects of neurobigotry is that people who have been abused by neurobigotry will, instead of rejecting neurobigotry, simply accept it and turn it around on their abusers. People think they're really onto something with "No, it is my abusive parents who are mentally ill and need therapy" or "No, it is the people in power who are mentally defective" or "Racism/capitalism/bigotry are the real mental illness!"

But you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. Pathologizing your parents doesn't correct the power imbalance of being pathologized by them, and using pathologization as a way to convey wrongness is still reifying pathologization and neurobigotry.

The context of family estrangement reminds me of this thought process I started about the construction of "cults." When the anti-cult movement began, it was centered on family members of people who'd joined new religious movements. The premise that people who joined religious groups their families didn't approve of were victims of "cult brainwashing" who needed to be "rescued" and "deprogrammed" (against their will, of course) was a tool of controlling families trying to deny their (usually) adult children's right to freedom of religion and general life choices. The idea that "cults" caused family estrangement was an integral aspect of the moral panic around them.

But over the decades, the stigma on "cults" has shifted. The contemporary anti-cult movement is fueled by people who grew up in abusive religious communities and chose to leave. It's applied as often to older, larger, established religious groups as it is to newer, smaller ones. While the original anti-cult movement largely centered on parents trying to control their adult children, the newer anti-cult movement largely centers on adults who've broken away from their parents' control.

Except. Except. It still uses the pathologization framework established in the 1970s. It's still a reversal -- No, it is you, the parents, the church, the authority, who are the Mentally Ill, the cult, the deviant, the ones in need of being fixed -- rather than a rejection or reframing: Actually, young people should be free to choose their own path in life.

It's not only applied in relationships between parents and children -- it's even more commonly invoked in breakups between former friends or partners. People feel the need to establish which party was Mentally Ill and Needed Therapy as a proxy for which party was At Fault in the breakup. In reality, breaking up doesn't necessarily mean either party was At Fault, but it's more socially acceptable to say "We had to break up because he's Mentally Ill and Refused To Get Help" rather than "We just didn't get along." Discussions of bad and badly-ended relationships are just constant rounds of uno reverse allegations of Madness/neurodivergence.

One of my least favorite examples is trying to "rebut" the neuromisogynistic trope of "Women are crazy" with "Men cause women to become crazy." Why are you validating "Women are crazy" by trying to "explain" it? Why are you accepting the premise that "crazy" is a bad thing? Why are you reifying the idea that being "crazy" has to be "caused" by something "bad"? If a man says "I broke up with my ex-girlfriend because she's crazy!" why validate the neuromisogyny with "No, you're crazy!" or "You must have made her crazy!" instead of challenging it with "What's wrong with being 'crazy'? What does that have to do with anything?"

If someone says "I stopped speaking to my child because they refused to seek therapy," why validate the neurobigotry with "You're the one who needs therapy!" instead of challenging it with "Why is their choice whether or not to seek therapy any of your business?"

[51-queer-frogs]

you leave paper under an old pipe ONE TIME

[aliusfrater]

compartmentalised identity rejected ❌

[rubiatinctorum]

friendship advice is SO FRUSTRATING! show that you're interested in people's lives but be careful not to idolize them or else they'll think you think you're beneath them and then they'll start to think it too. provide some incentive for people being your friend but don't live in service of your friends because then you'll attract people only looking to use someone. do things worth admiring but don't talk about them to people or else you're asking for too much attention. be attentive but not too attentive or else you're creepy, take initiative but not too much or else you're clingy, and never ever ever ever ever hope for anything better than your lot.

[rabbithaver]

listen i will always support the idea that being mean to complete strangers based on their appearance is bad actually.

like yeah the patriarchy sucks and should totally be dismantled! but how the fuck is being an asshole to individual people because of a trait they can't help going to like... do that? you don't know shit about kevin on the street corner. you have no idea if he's a feminist or not. all you know about kevin is that he fits your definition of what a man looks like.

frankly i think there's a lot of "leftists" out there who just want there to be a group it's okay to lash out at because they're scared

[miss-m-calling]

Ontologically speaking, is the sky *something* or merely what is left over because everything else has edges.

Anne Carson, "Lecture on the History of Skywriting" (Wild Norma)

[swifterjackie]

what they dont tell you about transitioning young is that you'll get to experience all of that distrust, ostracization, and punishment of being an out woman as developmentally foundational experiences

[crearuru]

Another year of frieren discourse ahead lads

[j2zara]

I hope this isn’t too dark of a joke but I do think fucking j3 and being trans is the main reason j4 isn’t stuck in like the second wave era of feminism

[textualviolence]

I think there's nothing in the world that makes me feel like a rabid dog more than people who claim to be engaging in postmodernist deconstructionism and actively just fucking aren't.

[apocalyptic-dancehall]

i think the scariest thing i've come across on the sexypedia is that bandit heeler is in the white twink humanization category

[flint9]

Fun fact: this logical solution to philosophy is actually a school of thought in philosophy known as 'realism'! (more accurately, 'realism' is a common ontology) Realism is basically the statement that there is an objective truth to anything concrete in nature. That there is a way to measure everything and that this measurement is not dependent on interpretation. The final image here is a very clear example of realist thought, where observation is inherently proof of something being true, and that this act of observing is able to be objective when done right.

A similar idea is seen in the set of panels to do with clones. Because a realist says that any difference between two things must be objective and measureable for it to be meaningful, it is fair to inversely say that there being a measureable difference must mean there is a meaningful difference. And this meaningful difference must hold true for everyone, regardless of their perspective (I assume the counter-argument the philosopher is using is that the second version could fairly state that the first is a clone of it).

For those who are curious, two common other ontologies are 'relativism' (that all facts are interpreted by our own subconscious, so no two people will completely agree on all objective truths), and 'critical realism' (a combination of the two that states there is an objective reality but we are unable to truly perceive it and thus have to rely on subjective experiences).

Realism is fundamental to fields of science, as to have any meaningful knowledge, the knowledge has to be able to be provable. Relativism is then more connected to the arts, where embracing subjectivity is sometimes seen as the truest form of expression.

I myself ascribe to 'new materialist' thought, although it is a 'new' way of thought and isn't completely seen as an ontology, so I could be incorrect in putting it in that category. Otherwise, I am a critical realist.

I find it kind of stupid how 'half full' vs 'half empty' is framed as an optimist/pessimist thing. If it starts full and gets halfway drained, it's half empty. If it starts empty and gets halfway filled, it's half full. If you don't know the starting state it's both simultaneously.

[cryptosexologist]

that burger poll is making me apoplectic

[comradecowplant]

hmmm

[mikkeneko]

I've been musing a bit on that one post that went around during the recent holiday season, to which someone added their family tradition of Present Practice. My god! Imagine actually telling kids what behavior is expected, instead of expecting them to intuit it and punish them when they get it wrong!!

Separate post because this topic is a little tangential to that, but I think it does a great job of unearthing one of our very well-hidden internal biases, which goes as follows:

Good people don't need to be taught.

A good person (in this case, a good child) shouldn't need to be told to be gracious and grateful when given a gift. A good child should just know that a holiday tradition of gift-giving is a social performance to strengthen family bonds and that personal preference or genuine reactions are secondary to that performance. A good child should just know how to value gifts, how to express thanks, how to praise and compliment. No caretakers in their lives should need to put any effort into instructing or modeling these things.

Good people should just know how to be good. If they were really Ontologically Good, their inherent goodness would simply intuitively guide them to correct behaviors. If they can't do that on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.

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...Which all sounds very reasonable and obvious, and surely a mistake that only fundie christian families would make! Except that people in the social justice sphere also do this all the time. It's not anybody's job to educate you. It's 2024, how do you not know this already? If you were a Good Person, you wouldn't need to be taught. You would simply intuit the correct philosophies and gravitate to them according to your superior internal moral compass.

If you were a Good Person, you would already know that everything you were taught by your family and/or background was wrong. You should have rejected it already. You should have cut off your family, your heritage, everything about your childhood and upbringing that was Bad and Wrong. You should have known it was all a lie.

If you were a Good Person, you should be able to find the correct way yourself. You should be able to seek out the proper educational resources, and distinguish them from bad advice leading you astray, and make sense of them all according to your own internal moral code.

If you were a Good Person, you would have found your way by the proper, dignified, official channels, not by reading a comic or watching anime. You shouldn't need entertainment or art to guide you. You should just know.

And if someone can't do these things on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.

[spaghettioverdose]

Really annoying how often a sci-fi or fantasy setting will have genuinely interesting parts to it but all of that gets shoved in the background because we gotta focus on shit like Ubermensch McCoolguy, the 500 marketable stormtrooper variants, epic race science, elven great replacement theory, genocide (but good this time because the other guys are ontologically evil we prommy), objectified women, fictional religion but make it just Catholicism again, civilisation that falls due to "degeneracy", matriarchal society but it's evil unlike the epic good guy patriarchal societies, racist/antisemitic caricature culture/religion/race/species (very marketable), Eugenics McMalthus (even if he's evil he's never shown to be actually wrong) and the stupidest "cool" weapons and armour you can imagine (present in at least 50% of promotional art).