#white racism white pathology

[whitesupremacyisanoxymoron]

[unproduciblesmackdown]

"normal" meaning "unquestionable" & the embrace of that cropping up anywhere such as an aim to be on the unquestionable side of a Normal / Weird binary, thus surely being a comfortable effortless indelible version of Good that stems from "just be normal"

ppl out here like freud 2.0 where well they had the sufficiently normal Nuclear Household family(tm) experience so they're sufficiently normal for it, versus the weirdos who had the Questionable family times so as to end up with Issues, surely unlike all those who are Family Issue free, i.e. normal, no question. like how also Going To School is Normal, so of course there's that idea that anyone who didn't go to school normal style or did but Did That Wrong are the people made Weirder with Issues. & when what's Normal is what's Good is what's Unquestionable it's like why would i need to question it when it's so normal? why wouldn't some rando asshole nepo man be Meritous & Good at business when he's so Successful at it. speaks for itself, same as Your role of being treated entirely differently does, this can't be questioned, blame it on your own failures; again how the supposedly "questionable" experiences (unlike other ones, which need no Legitimate questioning) are pathologized like. people talking about disabled ppl's lacking "social skills" being this meaningful Driver of ableism just like poor people's lacking "financial literacy" being that darn cause of classism & resource extraction, the already Questioned vulnerable [you're just doing it wrong / failing] people are the cause of their own mistreatment, Normal people who are so socially & financially successful are helpless, this victim blaming (can't question it. Normal) sure totally doesn't speak to abuse being "normal" as well

which, good thing abuse totally isn't Normal i.e. in the territory of unquestionable things (with, obviously, the idea that Abuse (Real abuse, if you like) must be Exceptional in addition to, if not to Really be, "obviously" questionable) since if something can't be questioned then surely it's also How Things Were In The Beginning, Are Now, & Ever Shall Be (catholic prayer paraphasing re: god, for referential context) & there's just nothing to do but invest in & play into it For Success & resent / punish / try to eliminate disruption, like people just existing but doing it Weird, c'mon, be a better person please, obviously....meanwhile people out here approaching queerness in a way that accepts & acts according to the unquestionable normal of abuse of queerness, such that oh the "abnormality" of being queer (that is, "normal" people's abuse in the face of awareness of queerness) is unquestionable, such that Oh No, investment in that abuse now & forever world without end amen, & now punching down on the people who are just Being Weird & Disrupting this embrace of the norm: radfems invested in "all bodies will be classed as men & women & the former abuse the latter" & hate women who already disrupt this premise; pointing out ace exclusionism as terf logic just applied in the different context where queer vs nonqueer binary is neatly detected just as the gender binary is & people who already prove that & the way it's defined is not the case are the real problems, infiltrating Unquestionable (Normal) Queerness & delegitimizing it i.e. being The Cause of e.g. homophobic abuse, which will also unquestionably exist, so if we're gonna blame someone as Needing To Change it'll have to be uhhh already also affected Weird people who are ruining things, they're the Real causes of this abuse, so they're basically men, basically cis, basically straight. boooo to trans ace bi pan aro nonbinary gnc people....hardest to be binary gender "same sex" "romantic" "visible" Truly Queer couple currently holding hands in public or in front of family, & it's You Mfs who make it harder, not, yknow, the people who were already always embracing & perpetuating the abuse bolstering Normal(tm) Cishet Just Being Normal. and of course don't forget going after poly people & others disrupting / not accepting premises about Unquestionable Relationship Structures/Requirements. so not just being normal

also the beloved concept broken out that, of course, Being Normal = Being Good, b/c hello, unquestionable?? where it's like meaningless ideas that abuse is Abnormal like ":( hurt people hurt people" (inherently a framing to counter any response to [person is hurting me] that's not silent secret sympathy forever i guess. nobody's using this catchphrase to argue for Hey Quick let's all intervene to stop someone being hurt, lest they go on to hurt anyone themselves) like & yet everyone is hurt, yet not everyone is doing shit where these arguments are broken out after they're already getting away with nonsense & we're telling others to just stop complaining, while also not everyone isn't getting shit on for being "disruptive" & perchance the real hurtful problems for trying to Stop being shitted on, or just have a little more breathing room to day to day live while it happens. everyone's hurt bitch let's get you some "what's the actual patterns & context of supported power imbalance made emergently evident by whose choices & life are constrained & undermined & made smaller" like. or the expanded idea as that well all abuse comes from Being abused, i.e. the Cycle, never mind that abuse is everywhere as per its being Normal, & nobody's intervening every time it manifests despite its supposed exceptionality thus rareness & supposed indication that someone's Being abused to cause it. just gotta roll with it, wow. & pathologize being victim to it, abuser in the making, Vulnerable People are dangerous, those insulated & given more access to systemically backed power in an oh so Normal way are surely oh so Safe as well. the very rich families are all lovely havens. the abused people are treated so well & embraced & supported by all the more Normal people they encounter, certainly not Also isolated, bullied, victim blamed by these Normal friends family coworkers new partners randos in public randos who are "professionals"

but yknow uh literally just be normal lol. aaand post. and like "lol being Anti Being Normal? just like a weirdo" like yeah of course. and what, i'm gonna try to win the heart & mind of someone like "of course you have blue hair & pronouns" & convert them, as would definitely happen if only all transgenderists were Normal about it? and the perspective of "what Unquestionable Good is ever actually coming from striving to get to point at Others as Weird" involves going like "nooo i wanna see myself & be seen as Just Being Normal" instead of like having ideas / arguments about how to be considerate towards people which can be articulated in any other way & involve effort & said consideration (ft. anything able to be questioned)

[miriamforster]

Fuck it, I’m bringing this back because people keep proving me right.

And my thoughts on the white social contract from another thread.

We need to heal our white person trama y’all.

[chemicalarospec]

It's a great day to be indirectly accused of being a Nazi for calling out subtle whitewashing (??????????????)

[maaarine]

Men Just Don't Trust Women -- And It's A Huge Problem (Damon Young, Huffington Post, Mar 16 2015)

"Generally speaking, we (men) do not believe things when they're told to us by women.

Well, women other than our mothers or teachers or any other woman who happens to be an established authority figure.

Do we think women are pathological liars? No.

But, does it generally take longer for us to believe something if a woman tells it to us than it would if a man told us the exact same thing? Definitely!

This conversation is how, after five months of marriage, eight months of being engaged, and another year of whatever the hell we were doing before we got engaged, I realized I don't trust my wife.

When the concept of trust is brought up, it's usually framed in the context of actions; of what we think a person is capable of doing.

If you trust someone, it means you trust them not to cheat. Or steal. Or lie. Or smother you in your sleep.

By this measure, I definitely trust my wife. I trust the shit out of her.

I also trust her opinions about important things. I trusted that she'd make a great wife, and a trust that she'll be a great mother. And I trust that her manicotti won't kill me.

But you know what I don't really trust? What I've never actually trusted with any women I've been with? Her feelings.

If she approaches me pissed about something, my first reaction is "What's wrong?"

My typical second reaction? Before she even gets the opportunity to tell me what's wrong? "She's probably overreacting."

My typical third reaction? After she expresses what's wrong? "Ok. I hear what you're saying, and I'll help. But whatever you're upset about probably really isn't that serious."

I'm both smart and sane, so I don't actually say any of this aloud. But I am often thinking it.

Until she convinces me otherwise, I assume that her emotional reaction to a situation is disproportionate to my opinion of what level of emotional reaction the situation calls for.

Basically, if she's on eight, I assume the situation is really a six.

I'm speaking of my own relationship, but I know I'm not alone. (…)

There's an obvious parallel here with the way (many) men typically regard women's feelings and the way (many) Whites typically regard the feelings of non-Whites.

It seems like every other day I'm reading about a new poll or study showing that (many) Whites don't believe anything Black people say about anything race/racism-related until they see it with their own eyes.

Personal accounts and expressions of feelings are rationalized away; only "facts" that have been carefully vetted and verified by other Whites and certain "acceptable" Blacks are to be believed.

So how do we remedy this? And can it even be remedied? I don't know.

This distrust of women's feelings is so ingrained, so commonplace that I'm not even sure we (men) realize it exists."

[transmutationisms]

do you know any texts on the connection between fascism/the right and cleanliness/hygiene (purity) rhetoric? anything that goes a bit in depth on the topic?

Getting Under Our Skin: The Cultural and Social History of Vermin (2021). Sarasohn, Lisa Tunick. ISBN: 9781421441382

Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (2007). Campkin, Ben & Cox, Rosie (Eds.). ISBN: 9781845116729

The Sanitation of Brazil: Nation, State, and Public Health, 1889-1930 (2016). Hochman, Gilberto. ISBN: 9780252099052

Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States (2015). Zimring, Carl A. ISBN: 9781479826940

Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Phillipines (2006). Anderson, Warwick H. ISBN: 0822338041

Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics (2017). Chakrabarti, Pratik. ISBN: 9781580465908

The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (2018). Vann, Michael G. & Clarke, Liz. ISBN: 9780190602697

Soap and Water: Cleanliness, Dirt and the Working Classes in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (2010). Kelley, Victoria. ISBN: 9781848850521

Contagion: Disease, government, and the “social question” in 19th-century France (1999). Aisenberg, Andrew R.

Rome, Pollution, and Propriety: Dirt, Disease, and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity (2012). Bradley, Mark & Stow, Kenneth R. ISBN: 9781107014435

Sanitizing South Africa: Race, Racism and Germs in the Making of the Apartheid State, 1880-1980 (2015). Fabio Terence Palmi Zoia. PhD. Dissertation, Indiana University. Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1682266398)

there are also a few theoretical texts in social / cultural anthropology that will be frequent touchstones here, including norbert elias's 'the civilising process' (first published 1939) and mary douglas's 'purity and danger' (1966). i don't honestly think it's worth it or necessary to read these directly, both because they're dated in certain ways and because i think the historical studies are generally more useful. but you will probably notice these two texts & a handful of others repeatedly cropping up in introductory footnotes on this topic.

[trans-axolotl]

also: I mostly switched over from saying "antipsychiatry" to psych abolition after I started to see more groups like CPA use it, and thought I'd share some of my thoughts on it.

antipsychiatry is a fundamental part of psych abolition for me, but i think my definition of psych abolition contains a lot more. first, there's a lot more things than just psychiatry that i want to abolish and transform--the whole mental health system and many different belief systems, types of providers, forms of treatment, and types of incarceration that are encompassed in that. i think it's important to name and identify the particular harms of psychiatry as a value system in the way it is the strictest example of pathologizing, medicalizing, and the strongest adherer to the purely biomedical model of illness and how this creates so much harm. but i think that there are also so many other harmful structures + belief systems within the whole mental health system. i also sometimes see therapists, for example, portraying themselves as alternatives to psychiatry, and while that's true in the sense that they are a different treatment option than a psychiatrist, they are often still harmful actors in their own rights and entangled with the state in an equally bad way.

second thing for me is that i think it's really important to intentionally build cross movement solidarity, especially with the prison abolition movement and to expand the way psych survivors currently support support people fighting for abolition of all forms of incarceration. (i drew inspiration from sins invalid and the 10 principles of Disability Justice). I see so many people in psych survivor spaces saying " I can't believe we were treated like prisoners on the ward" with the implication that it's fine if prisoners are treated that way, but it's bad when it happens to them. i think that's fucked up and i think that any psych survivor movement that doesn't actively support people incarcerated in prisons is a movement that does nothing to dismantle white supremacy. we need to be able to recognize the ways carceral logics operate in many different structures, and approach our activism as a shared struggle, where we constantly are led by those most impacted. so i think that naming what we're doing as "abolition" is important (with the important caveat that our organizing must then actually be abolitionist, and especially for white organizers, that we need to learn about the history of abolition, actively support the Black leaders and thinkers who have created the prison abolition movement and not center ourselves, that we actually have to be actively involved in supporting abolitionist work happening in your area, instead of just stealing the work of Black abolitionist scholars to use it for our own benefit without any credit or reciprocity, that we need to actively interrogate ways white supremacy culture and antiblackness are showing up in our movement places so that we aren't inviting our comrades who are people of color into spaces that are not safe for them, or exploiting our comrades of color by expecting them to do the work of dismantling the racism within our shared organizing spaces--don't call yourself a psych abolitionist if you still call the cops on your homeless neighbors, if your solutions to psych incarceration contribute to gentrification, if you refuse to support currently incarcerated comrades, for example.)

third thing is that antipsychiatry as a specific term is often associated with the sociologist theory from the 1960s, some of which i think is useful, some of which comes from antisemetic and racist psychiatrists who should not be given any legitimacy. antipsychiatry also often gets associated with cults like scientology. although i think that scientologists bastardize a lot of antipsychiatry stuff and weaponize it for their own ends, a lot of the public thinks of them if you say antipsychiatry, and it can cause misconceptions. also think that people sometimes assume antipsychiatry is inherently against medication and while i don't think that's our responsibility to clear up every time people misread our words on purpose, i think it's been a lot more helpful for me to talk about medication in the context of autonomy, harm reduction, war on drugs, and the ways that psychiatry creates issues to consent, autonomy, informed use, risk reduction, etc etc etc. and i think psych abolition helps me do that a little better.

i get in a lot of conversations with people who say "well from what i've seen you are just against institutionalization. why not just say that instead of attacking psychiatry?" and my answer is always if we want to end institutionalization, we have to end the structures, belief systems, and power dynamics of psychiatry--psychiatry is one of the logics that enables institutionalization to continue, and abolishing institutionalization without abolishing the structures that allow it to continue mean that it just pops up again in a new form with a new name (asylums to hospitals to group homes etc etc etc). so i think psych abolition to me is a clearer way to encompass the ways that all these systems are interconnected, and that when we're fighting for mad liberation, the right for mad/neurodivergent/mentally ill people to access care, support, healing on our own terms, to be free from institutionalization and violent treatment, and have the right to exist as mad people, whether or not we're "cured."

TL;DR: I switched to saying "psych abolition" rather than antipsychiatry even though there are many core ideas of antipsychiatry that I agree with. I think that for me, psych abolition helps clear up some misconceptions that people have about antipsychiatry, more clearly connects to prison abolition, and makes it clear that we need to transform more of the mental health system than just psychiatry.

[hiiragi7]

Endogenic Plurality, Disability, & Ableism

Note: For simplicity's sake, this post will be focused on endogenic plurals without a CDD, and uses endogenic interchangeably with "endogenic without a CDD" to be less wordy. Disability and disorder are also used somewhat interchangeably here.

I've been thinking more on the "do endogenic plurals experience ableism for being plural" debate, and something which I really would like to explore more in discussion is how plurality's proximity to disability impacts the ways in which endogenic plurals are treated.

While I see some fair points in each argument, statements such as "if you don't have a disorder, you do not face ableism" and "endogenic plurals only face misdirected ableism" are vastly oversimplifying the actual issues here to the point that they are actually misleading at best and harmfully incorrect at worst.

I have been reading Cripping Intersex lately and it has changed a lot of the ways in which I view disability politics. One thing that this book has made very clear: Saying "I do not have a disorder" does not prevent you from being subjected to discrimination based on an ableist system, and in fact rejecting the disability framework entirely not only does nothing to dismantle that ableism but even reinforces it.

This is not to say that endogenic plurals are "actually disabled/disordered", but rather that plurality as a whole has a proximity to disability in such a way that it is almost inherently subjected to ableism. There is absolutely a socially and medically enforced view of self which excludes any sort of overt plurality, especially in a Western colonialist context. Whether your plurality is actually disordered or not, that does not matter when you are working within a systemic framework which seeks to eliminate anything not defined as normal or acceptable. It doesn't even matter if your plurality is non-pathological; if it is not socially accepted as "normal", it is treated as disordered and to be fixed.

This sort of ableism is not only related to ableism more common to DID, but ableism as a whole. It is related to disability as a socially prescribed status through discrimination rather than black-and-white categories or objective truths regarding disorder and non-disorder. It is related to how saneism defines what is and is not normal and acceptable, rather than what psychology or the medical field defines as "actually" pathological and disordered (though it is important to acknowledge that these two systems heavily interact, as well, and that oppression impacts how the medical system defines pathology).

I reject that ableism towards endogenic plurals is simply "misdirected". To call it "misdirected ableism" is so often used to say that endogenic plurals are not the intended target, but I argue that they absolutely are included as intentional targets because plurality as a whole is a target, explicitly named or not. The determining factor for ableism is not whether someone is "really" disordered or not, but that they are treated as such due to societal standards regarding acceptable and unacceptable ways of being. When "unacceptable" is equated to "disordered" through a saneist lens, you are treated as such - and, you are, therefore, vulnerable to ableism.

I heavily agree with those who have so far spoken about how what people call pluralphobia is so often just ableism (though I also view it as often intersecting with anti-spiritual/religious views and racism), however I feel that we need to take this conversation even further to examine exactly how ableism works and who it affects. This post is also not meant to say "endos are oppressed for being plural", but rather that endos are oppressed through the same ableist systems that affect all plurals/people with CDDs and to expand on that to open conversation about it.

On a final note, I'd like to reflect on how rejection of disability has gone for various movements in the past and how that relates to the modern plural community and its approach to "plural acceptance".

As someone who was diagnosed with autism in the 2000s and saw a lot of push from autistics back then to de-medicalize autism to avoid further forced "normalizing treatment" like ABA, I can say that rejecting the framework of disability and ableism did not help us to dismantle systemic medical violence against autistic people and even isolated many severely disabled autistics who rely on medical interventions and support.

As an intersex person, I can say that the intersex community rejecting the framework of disability and ableism did not help us to end "normalizing treatments" against intersex people and even isolated many intersex people who do identify themselves as being disordered due to their intersex condition.

And as a person with DID, I have learned about how the empowered multiples movement had attempted to reject the framework of disorder and ableism to avoid medicalization and forced fusion, and how that did not help systems who did need medical intervention nor did it do anything to dismantle medical violence or stigma against multiples.

Any sort of wider "Plural Acceptance Movement" that comes into existence will fail if it is not also simultaneously and inherently a disability movement, and this is not just due to the existence of CDD systems. Seperation from disability does not exempt you from ableism or ableist frameworks and systemic oppression. CDD or not, we all as a community are impacted by ableism and cannot find any widespread acceptance while ignoring that. Plural acceptance is disability acceptance.

[gryficowa]

Here are the common features I saw among Zionists on the Internet:

They have the Israeli flag on their profile picture (Seriously, it's weird, I can understand the Palestinian flag, because it's not the first time people showed support like that, it happened with the French flag at one point, but yours? Strange)

They often have Hebrew in their descriptions (Although their blog is usually in English) and mention that they are Jews (It's probably not a crime, but it does its job with Hebrew… I don't know why, but when I came across Zionists, their description always has words in Hebrew and mention that they are Jews…)

Of course they are bullshitting around the clock on October 7 and blaming Hamas (Because even the Palestinians themselves are Hamas to them)

David star, related to the flag of Israel, but sometimes you can come across a Zionist with this symbol on his profile, not every person with this symbol on his profile is a Zionist (I saw one person in the tags about free Palestine who talked about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, so yeah , compared to the flag of Israel it is not so certain, is anyone a zionist?

Of course they will deny the existence of Palestinian Jews, what do you require? That they accept other Jews who are not European?

They will use your ethnicity and origin as an attack (Poles, Germans and Muslims)

Of course you will meet Zionists who will claim that other Holocaust victims are "Stealing Jewish things"

Profiles without profiles, but entire blogs are fucking porn

They will attack other Jews in the comments for supporting Palestine, using the texts "You hate yourself" or "They would kill you there"

Of course they will defend Israel's crimes, because the Torah told them that they deserved this land, so fuck the indigenous people (Which they are not, because they are Europeans, or possibly Asians)

Threatening with rape because their level is typical of housing estate pathology

Everyone is anti-Semitic, even Jews, what the fuck don't you understand?

They use information as fresh as a student's sandwich left in the haversack all summer long

Of course, for every crime committed by Israel, they will go into "But Hamas!" mode

They love pinkwashing and homonationalism, unlike LGBT+ people who don't buy this shit

They love to see themselves as victims when real victims want to hit them with a frying pan

Racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Zionism in a nutshell

Their empathy went out for milk and didn't come back for decades

Sure they will call you a Nazi even though they collaborated with the Nazis, which sounds legit

They swear more than a typical Pole

They don't know the difference between manja and swastika, but they themselves wouldn't want their star to become a symbol as they see manja, which has nothing to do with Nazism, and also has a rich history and has been around longer than Hitler stole it, yes, it makes a lot of sense , yes, it references the Pokemon controversy because oh god! In the Japanese version there is manji, and this kata was imported! Obviously it's time to cancel Japan!

They are so fucked up that they enjoy raping Palestinians and dying children…

Yes, Polish anger, when Damian Soból died, Israelis started memeing it and calling him a Nazi (And from Hitler), so I don't have much to add, I won't forget it

I don't know why but a lot of Zionists are LGBT+ which is weird, it just sounds sus (I'm aroace)

Many Zionist blogs have "Anti-Semitism" in their names, which is interesting

They consider Poland a country that cooperated with the Nazis, which is a lie, Poles were victims of the Nazis, and many died in concentration camps along with the Jews

Of course they appropriated the watermelons, because Zionists only know how to steal (Oh, you can see how much Polishness they have)

You can fight for Sudan and Congo, but you will be an anti-Semite because you are also fighting for Palestine, what don't you understand, you stupid non-Jew?

A text about Ukraine, because of course, white people have to be in the spotlight all the time, and the rest? They not white so they has to die, typical mentality…

Of course they use the Jewish tag, because it is known that Zionists must represent the Jews, no, good plan (They probably think they are safe, no, you won't be safe, we will harass you for supporting the genocide)

Yes, these are many of my observations (But probably many others had them too)

Zionists are simply trying to disguise themselves, but the truth is that it looks like manipulation to them, which is shit

[genderqueerdykes]

do you think that poc should be discouraged on avoiding white people because of racism, much like how women (as you said in your last post) should be discouraged in avoiding men because of misogyny? why/ why not?

if you live in the united states of america it's literally virtually impossible to pathologically avoid white people, like, literally you will encounter at least one white person every day if you leave your home (unless you live in a very black, latine, etc. neighborhood, and even then, i guarantee you will find at least one white cashier, uber driver, tourist, trucker, etc.)

when it comes to racism, it's another form of trauma, and you can't force yourself to completely avoid a trigger forever. that's denial, that's pretending it doesn't exist, that's not healthy. it's absolutely fine for a person of color to limit the amount of white people they have in their close social circles, for example. that's totally okay because they may just get tired of having to deal with the hurdles of even liberal white people still being frustrating to deal with or straight up verbally abusive in casual friendship settings.

one's social circles are relatively within their control. if a person of color chooses to carefully curate their close social circles, even their online circles, and chooses to primarily center that around other people of color, that's a totally healthy and natural perspective. i think it needs to come from a perspective of focusing on one's self and one's own community in order for it to not be a paranoid avoidant type of behavioral pattern that won't really benefit either party.

i've known black men who are terrified of white women because white women love to call black men aggressive, for example. i think it's fine for this type of person to want to limit the amount of white women they have in their personal social circles. obviously this person can't avoid white women forever, that's literally impossible, you cannot control the entire world around you, but this person can try to limit who they introduce into their social sphere for their own

i'm a person of color who has dealt with a shitload of racism from my own white mother and family and it has never occurred to me to just avoid white people. i am naturally on edge around most white people but if i find out they are receptive to being taught what's racist and what's not, i'm fine. it's not okay to pathologically avoid whatever hurt me for the rest of eternity, especially when it's literally impossible to do so.

[oplishin]

what are your thoughts on patho 2 re race

i don't think you were looking for such a long response but uhhh you're getting one!!!!! smarter people have discussed this better, but i have a lot of feelings.

the good:

the broad strokes of artemy's relationship to his race: everytime i have replayed p2, i find myself surprised by how much artemy's angst resonates with me. he can fit into the broader, white culture of the Town, but that acceptance is always conditional. his friends have this "you're not like them" attitude, or they're just outright racist to him. they hate his people but like him. He's also not accepted by the Kin- he's spent too much time both in the Town and outside of it. the way elders in the community chide him is too real, haha. artemy discovering that the cultural practices he ran away from in his youth actually really, really matter to his identity is a feeling i find uhhh really relatable!!! this aspect of p2 just rings really emotionally true.

i like the way (some of) the racism is written: vlad jr is obsessed with learning about the culture of the Kin, he's even gained some trust with them, but wow, he does not give a shit about them when it comes down to it. they're an object of study to him, artifacts to collect, not actually people. andrey takes the cultural art of twyre tinctures and uses it to make a profit and to get really high. he keeps a dancing herb bride in his bar as entertainment. rubin's deal feels similar, he's learning kin traditions because of his weird weird relationship with isidor, but he hates the people. i like that foreman oyun sells out his culture, and that he hates himself so much for it.

okay. it's only downhill from here.

the bad. there's a lot:

the endings

i think the endings are cynical to the point of being unnuanced and un-interesting. the tragic mulatto trope played as straight as possible to a comically extreme degree. either almost every NPC you've met dies, or you destroy the remnants of your indigenous culture. it's just. i don't know. it wouldn't be very pathologic for this to have an actual magical solution- there isn't a magical solution in real life, the status quo just churns onward, and indigenous bodies and lives are discounted. i don't know. i don't know!

i hate that the game presents the diurnal ending as better than the nocturnal one. this is the part where my faulty memory is troublesome- i may be getting the way the fandom treats the endings mixed up with the way the game does. sorry if that's the case! the diurnal ending is bright, the town you've spent so much time saving is safe at last, all your children and friends are rebuilding their lives in interesting ways that you get to take part in. but it's fucking disgusting! the bodies and lives and culture of indigenous people are utterly discounted. this includes artemy, who's doomed to forever try to fit into white society, to never be able to pass on his cultural traditions, who just has to let himself die. the only person who mourns is a dying Aspity, who was one of the last people to carry on and teach tradition anyways. it's terrible.

i,, honestly do not remember much of the nocturnal ending, and a lot of went over my head when i played it. the majority of people read the nocturnal ending as "the bad ending"- all your friends die. and even though they're all super racist, you care about them, probably.

whyyyyyy are the indigenous characters written Like That????

it is fucking embarrassing that 26/29 of the Bound are white. i cannot believe this did not change with 14 years of hindsight post p1. well, the game did add nara, and she deserves her own paragraph!!!! wow, lucky her!!!!!!!!! the kin are so fucking underrepresented within the major characters. the white characters are given complex, differing perspectives about the nature of government, spirituality, morality and guilt. pathologic 2 writes the Kin as a mystical, esoteric hivemind. the non-diversity in the perspectives within the Kin was always something that bothered me, even when I was 15. They do not feel like a real, breathing living group of people. minority groups are not monoliths. i think the game wants to represent them as a collectivist culture, but is too racist to know that people within collectivist cultures uhhh have opinions about things.

p2's racism is just slightly more subtle than p1's, to the point where my stupid fucking 15 year old self didn't pick up on it as much. but god, it also asks the incredible question "what if racist stereotypes were true? wouldn't that sort of justify mass genocide? isn't the diurnal ending just as valid as the nocturnal ending?"

so much justification for the white characters' racism within the fandom comes from "but the indigenous characters did [x] bad thing! but their culture is misogynist!" which 1) fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you 2) someone made the active choice to write the indigenous characters like this. now why would they do this??

the misogyny

god i fucking hate the herb brides. i know that the fandom has tried to reclaim them in interesting ways. i just really cannot. why are these dancers all soft and curvy in the correct ways? why do their clothes fall off to look like they're wearing raggedy skimpy swimsuits? why are gamers soooo horny?? i'm. i cannot! i can't. this game has an asian women fetish. no thanks!

this brings me to the nara thing, which, okay. i'm about to get really mean!!! nara is this demure, docile, exotically sexy lady who's totally cool with giving up her agency artemy and being killed by him because the game has deemed it necessary. sorry, i do not care abotu the diegetic reasons for this. there's a dream sequence where her sexy sillohuette dances in the void. why? this game has a misogyny problem! and a yellow fever problem!! so much of her dialogue is dedicated to "ohhh i'm trying to make you less uncomfortable with this, artemy :(. i'm indifferent i promise :((" she doesn't protest in her death, she just says lore at the player. i'm not happy. i find the attempts to reclaim her in fandom admirable, i'm just. disgusted! by all of it! this game owes me reparations.

[scandalousadventures]

A thought I had about Pathologic 2 Eva Yan is that she's a physical reflection of the player character's motivations and narrative throughline. This is only a thought (I hesitate to say Theory. You get it) insofar as only Haruspex is out, but with news of Bachelor approaching is worth considering. Pathologic Classic HD Eva is a Utopian, reflective of Bachelor. She remains a Utopian for all three routes, unchanging from an ideological standpoint. In Pathologic 2 Haruspex route, however, she's wildly different; perhaps the character with the biggest redesign, visual and ideologically. But her personality is the same. She's airheaded, spiritual, and incredibly naive. In Pathologic 2 Haruspex, now consider her a reflection of Artemy. Not a friend, but a parallel; a manifestation of his narrative strapping itself to Eva. That leads her to appropriating his culture, donning a facsimile of what herb brides wear and dancing among them despite being wholly and fundamentally at odds with their way of life. But she will not back down, forever determined to join them. She will die in the nocturnal ending, of course. She's not immune. But she's not a tabula rasa. She's not reflecting Artemy's motivations one-to-one, but steeped through what is fundamentally Eva. She's reflecting not only him and his route, but on an in-game AND narrative level, the racism of the town. She's a white lady after all, and there's no nonracist way a white lady can reflect the Indigenous traditions and culture of the Kin. Seeing a glimpse of her redesign for Bachelor route makes me interested in seeing her portrayal in his part. I think she will be different than her portrayal in P2 Haruspex route, and instead be more similar to her Classic HD characterization; rewritten into a reflection of the Bachelor's goals and his story's throughline. I think she will be an earnest sycophant towards him, dreamy and romantic about the capital, or perhaps about death itself. That's certainly in line with her characterization in Classic HD. And then, in a thousand years, we would see how she's portrayed in Changeling's route as a reflection of her ideology. Pathologic 2 Eva is a character not only doomed by the narrative but sculpted by it too. Sculpted by the motivations and ideologies of the PC. On a story level she's a woman who once an idea forms in her head, will follow it to its conclusion without a second thought, dreamy yet adamant in her procession. She embodies the soul of the cathedral, embodies the Utopian ideal! Just as she embodies the holistic methods of the Haruspex, for better or worse. I've spoken of Eva on many different levels of meta here. I don't think it will "be confirmed" in the upcoming P2 Bachelor route that she is wholly shaped by each narrative, but I think it would be interesting if they explore her this way. I would, anyhow.

[katherinakaina]

Think what you will of Daniil Dankovsky but his story is NOT a white savior story. Not even a little bit.

And it's peculiar, isn't it? We are so accustomed to white savior narrative, so when we see a character who's in the perfect spot to become one, but doesn't, we read him as hostile. How can you see this struggling population and NOT decide to lead the revolution to save them? Are you a heartless monster?

Racism in Pathologic is not its strongest storyline. But it is fairly realistic. It shows all aspects of discrimination. Starting with slave labor segregation and lynchings and ending with prejudice microaggressions and cultural appropriation (*coughs* Stamatins) simultaneously with cultural genocide. We see how the whole society is shaped by this conflict and there's not a part of it that isn't affected by colonialism. Once again the town on Gorkhon is our world.

And into this centuries worth of history arrives a dude on a completely unrelated mission. And he is appalled by what he sees but what is he going to do? Singlehandedly solve racism? Maybe one day, but here and now he has a bit of a more urgent situation at hand.

In the end Daniil seems to be resenting the town. Not as much as to destroy it just out of pure hate. But he will not go out of his way to save it either. And he thinks (I think he is correct) he has a valid reason why it should be destroyed (still, it shouldn't be).

People sometimes read his hatred for the town as his disdain for the local culture but the culture is racist! Most of the town is segregated white settlement. Most of the people Daniil interacts with are white racists and he hates them.

He doesn't believe in local myths but why would he? He was not raised with them and he does not fetishize them either (*coughs* Vlad the Younger). He does believe in local medicine and his own vaccine is based on Isidor's methodology (that's why Rubin actually creates it, not Daniil). So he is willing to adopt the practices that are useful but now I gather people will say he exploits them (which is a more interesting point, I'm surprised that I've never seen it made before).

So yes, Daniil doesn't abandon everything to save the Steppe culture and liberate the Kin. He believes that the town's foundation is rotten to the core. The plague is a metaphor for fascism and it keeps coming back. We have to start anew. The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. And Daniil is willing to bulldoze all of it.

You could even say that in some galaxy brain take way he IS a white savior, because he destroys the entire system. But no. The future utopia led by the Kains does not look like a multiracial democracy. It seems like the Kin were pretty much severed from their land and culture even more, if they even survived at all. It is not good. I disagree with the utopian ending.

Daniil is not a character who can do it alone. A white guy will not be able to consider everything when it comes to the perfect future. He can't figure it out. He is not a savior. It is not because he's malicious. But oh boy does he have shortcomings.

Give him a girl friend and a steppe friend. I bet they'll be able to get along.

[mitchipedia]

Attempting to talk about the movie “American Fiction” without using the word “woke.”

We watched “American Fiction,” a 2023 movie which opens with a blank screen and the unmistakable squeaking of a marker on a whiteboard. We pull back to see a college professor addressing a class, but we cannot see what’s written on the whiteboard behind him. A student says the word on the whiteboard is wrong. The teacher says he’s pretty sure he spelled it right. The student says the word is offensive. The camera pulls back to show what’s written on the whiteboard: It’s a title of a story by Flannery O’Conner. The includes the N-word.

The professor says, “This is a class on the literature of the American South. We’re going to encounter some archaic thoughts and coarse language, but we’re all adults here and I think we can understand it within the context in which it’s written.”

“Well, I just find that word really offensive,” says the student.

“With all due respect, Brittany, I got over it. I’m pretty sure you can too,” says the professor, who is Black. The student, who is white, exits the classroom upset.

I am going to avoid using the word “woke” in this review because I hate that stupid word. But it’s hard to avoid because “American Fiction” is in part a movie about wokeness.

The professor, we learn, is Thelonious Ellison. Most people call him “Monk.” He’s not doing well. He’s unpopular with students and colleagues; following the N-word incident, he’s suspended from teaching at the school. He’s bitter and angry, and turns that anger inward, expressing it outwardly by witty insults aimed at the people who bother him, which seems to be most people. The comments are funny and entertaining to us, the audience, but you can see how being around a person like that would be toxic in real life. Nonetheless, as a fictional character, he’s likable and fun. And when he turns off the nastiness, he’s a warm and loving person.

He’s a novelist, and his books aren’t selling. He blames it on a kind of racism. He’s a literary writer. His agent explains to him that publishers don’t want that from someone like Monk. They want a Black novel. “This IS a Black novel.” Monk says. “I’m Black. This is my novel.”

Monk spontaneously decides to write the kind of novel publishers want. Violent, semi-literate, about angry Black people living in the ghetto and shooting each other and being murdered by police. He calls it “My Pathology,” and then changes the title to “My Pafology.” To show his contempt for the publishing system, Monk has his agent submit he novel under a ghostname, “Stagg R. Leigh,” with a persona that “Leigh” is a fugitive from prison. Monk does interviews and meetings as Leigh, affecting a deep-voiced terse grunting speech. “My Pafology” and Leigh are cheap ripoffs of “The Wire.”

And Leigh’s book, unlike Monk’s literary fiction, sells. It becomes a bestseller. Monk was trying to ridicule white guilt and wokeness (ugh, that word), and instead he’s feeding it.

Monk lives and teaches in L.A.,but he returns home to Boston for a literary conference and to visit his family, from whom he is estranged. Monk’s mother is advancing into Azheimer’s and Monk finds himself with the duty of becoming primary caregiver. His family is affluent—both his late father and two siblings are medical doctors, and they have a live-in maid—but not as well off as they once were. What’s shown and not quite said explicitly is that Monk is appalled at the ruse he’s perpetrating as Stagg R. Leigh, but he needs the money to get his mother the best possible care.

We also see Monk’s attempts to overcome his emotional isolation and connect with his family and a pretty neighbor.

The whole thing reminds me of a Richard Russo novel, and I love a Richard Russo novel.

What ties the two plots together is a comment by Monk about Stagg R. Leigh’s novel, and books like it, “My life is a disaster, but not in the way you’d think reading this shit.”

The movie stars Jeffrey Wright as Monk and a solid cast of names and faces that I didn’t recognize, although I did recognize Leslie Uggams as Monk’s mother. I remember her turning up a lot in the 70s on game shows and second-tier talk shows like Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin. Then she surprised me with a starring role on “Roots,” paired up with Sandy Duncan—I remember thinking, holy shit those two can actually act. Then she fell off my radar until she reappeared as Blind Al, Ryan Reynolds’ roommate in the “Deadpool” movies.

Also featured is Sterling Brown, from “This Is Us,” as Monk’s brother, Cliff.

The screenwriter and director is Cord Jefferson, who previously worked as a writer on “The Good Place” and “Watchmen,” making his directorial debut. [imdb.com]

Jefferson talked in an Esquire interview about a scene where Monk is writing a sequence from Stagg R. Leigh’s novel. [esquire.com]

The scene in the novel features a young criminal confronting an older criminal. The younger criminal is brandishing a gun. Jefferson chose to cast two first-rated actors to play the two characters—Keith David, known to me as Childs, one of two characters who lives to the end of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982) and Okieriete Onaodowan, known to me as Hercules Mulligan in “Hamilton.”

Jefferson said:

We’ve all seen that scene of the writer pounding the keyboard frantically, then taking a big sip of coffee and getting back to it. That’s how you depict somebody intensely writing. But I thought, ‘We can’t have that. It’s tropey and silly, and it doesn’t get the audience’s minds going.’ So why not have these characters manifest in front of him? When I wrote that scene, I wrote the language to be very silly. It had to be ridiculous so that everybody could see how stupid this book is and what a sham it is. Then we got Keith David and Okieriete Onaodowan, who are both such tremendous actors. All of the sudden, it wasn’t silly anymore. They made it seem like the book might be good. I love what the scene became in their hands: suddenly you’re questioning whether or not the book is good, which is evidence that something as ridiculous as this book could become a hit.

A character named Sintara Golden is both Monk’s nemesis and inspiration. At the outset of the movie we see she is already fabulously successful playing the same game Monk plays: She went to Oberlin, got a job in publishing, and then made a success for herself writing a book affecting illiterate victimized Black voices. Her book is titled “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.” But unlike Monk, she’s doing everything in the open. Despite this, Monk thinks she’s just as cynical and pandering as he is. We come to see more of her, and learn that she’s playing a more sophisticated and sincere game than she first appears to be.

In an Esquire interview, Jefferson says he sometimes agrees with Monk and sometimes agrees with Golden.

The actor who plays Sindara Golden is Issa Rae, who apparently first become prominent on YouTube. [imdb.com]

About that first scene: Monk is right to push back against banning the N-word even in discussions of racism—even when used by Black people. But he didn’t have to be such a jerk about it to his student, “Brittany.” She’s just a kid. He’s being a bully.

Monk’s punishment for using the N-word has a parallel in real life: Black writer Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins novels, quit a job as a writer on “Star Trek: Discovery” in 2019 after he was chastised by the studio human resources department for using the n-word in the show’s writer’s room. Mosley was quoting someone else’s use of the word; he was making a point about racism. [hollywoodreporter.com]

Additional reading:

Cord Jefferson Wants You to Argue About American Fiction [esquire.com] That’s the Esquire article I mentioned earlier.

Did You Catch the Meta Nod of Sintara Golden’s Current Read in ‘American Fiction’? [themarysue.com]

Director Cord Jefferson was formerly a jouranlist, who often wrote articles about race and racism. Here’s his 2014 essay: “The Racism Beat.” [medium.com]

[toskarin]

isnt it basically just barely-masked code for immigrants/jews/etc

what, amerivangelical nephilim conspiracies? no, but it's symptomatic of the same kind of thinking

it must be impressed: amerivangelicals actually do believe things like that. they might also talk about "lizards" with a bit more of a nudge-nudge towards antisemitism and racism, but they also very much believe in the threat of mythical monsters coming to invade the world

if anything, the nephilim war thing goes more arm-in-arm with a pathological usamerican fear of muslims projected outward. see: the giant of kandahar (or elsewhere in that twitter thread where it's asserted there was a weaponised prisoner archangel in the middle east)

it is a white nationalist thing, don't get me wrong, but it's also a very literal belief. those who talk about this believe the giants are real.

[skittlespizza]

poking you like a cat, what's pathologic about? ^_^ like generally story-wise

HEHEBE OKAY WAIT SO it's about a town more than anything. The town is calles the Town-On-Gorkhon (Gorkhon = River in the Steppe language)

Here's some screenshots from the second game. The entire story focuses on the town as it's ravaged by a plague called the sand pest. The game itself is weird, trippy and no one speaks right. Has a huge cast of characters, several queer side plots and more.

This intro is from the first game. It introduces you to the main characters you play as.

Daniil Dankovsky, the one with black hair and the gloves is the first protagainst. He's a doctor who wants to cure death and goes to the ToG to try and talk with a man who's "supposedly" immortal. He dies before Daniil can talk to him. He plans to go home afterwards but then the plague- the Sand Pest- begins to spread and the trains halt. No one is allowed in or out. He spends the game being manipulated by those in power. He's annoying, he's awful, he's a bitch bastard who is incredibly selfish but deep down he has a heart of gold. His story is about Capitalism and how it kills passion. How politics uses people as pawns and how we have no control over what we can and can't do under a dictatorship. This game was made in Russia for context. Daniil is a complex character rooted in self doubt, self worth and even his racism. He's not a good person but he tries.

I didn't mention this earlier, but when you aren't playing as one of the healers, they still do their own things and follow vaguely the same story but make all the worst choices. Artemy is a mixed race indigenous man who is returning home after years studying at the Capital (same place that Daniil comes from). He's the son of Isidor Burakh- one of the people that Daniil wanted to interview about immortality. Artemy is immediately accused of Patricide and spends the game trying to clear his innocence, balance his life between his indigenous Kin roots and his whiteness. His father was the folk medicine doctor to the Kin and left all his stuff to Artemy. Artemy is a story about family and love more than anything. He adopts two kids, helps unite the town and Kin (or in the 2nd game, he's forced to choose between the two), while also dealing with the grief of losing his last family member.

Clara is my favorite. She's a girl who- well. Okay. To put it simply, she woke up in a grave and suddenly has consciousness but no memories. No identity (wow) and is forced to deal with the adults who use her. She has the magic ability to cure people of the plague but in turn, she takes on their pain. Clara is a story about teenage abuse. The adults in the Town use her for their own gain. She's neglected, called useless, forced into homelessness and has the weight of the world on her shoulders because the adults can't take care of her. She's also expected to cure the plague as well. She has always been my favorite and means so much to me for so many reasons but especially if you have a disassociative disorder. She has an evil twin sister who does things in her name and she can't control it. She is an ocd allegory. She's a teenage abuse allegory. She's a girl trying to find her identity when all the adults push labels onto her.

The game itself is a survival horror game. I highly recommend it if you like stories about the plague, russian literature, theatre or philosophy. All of the side characters mean a lot to me too, Anna Angel in specific. Quick thing though, the game is REALLY FUCKING DIFFICULT and unfair. If you know the game F&H imagine that as a first person survival game. The game is not easy and that's the point. You will kill, you will rob and you will do awful things just to live. You're in a hopeless town that wants you dead. You are nothing but a human. A doctor.

Beautiful game, amazing soundtrack, wonderful characters. I've loved this game for four years now and no game will ever mean as much as this game has and 100% you should watch a video essay on it.