This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
from portcullis
Thanks, Xanthë.
A brand new shiny T’dome! Never been in one this early – always wondered what it looked like without blood on the walls.
@ Hank_Says
It is actually the same ‘Dome. The walls are merely hosed down and then whitewashed with the powdered bones of former trolls.
… and we change the name to Sellafield …
I just got back from my oral surgeon. The titanium bolt he put in my jaw last month is doing fine. I was having cleaning around it so they gave me a little mirror. I should be able to get the fake tooth fitted in two months.
This dude is the best doctor of any type I have ever been to. We had a conversation about Dr. Halstead and cocaine addiction when I was getting the implant.
Anyone else getting a dental implant around here? Do you have one? How is it working for you?
I got a bone graft a few months ago. I think it’s cool I have a dead person’s reanimated zombie bone in my jaw.
I have a titanium fang, or rather a porcelain crown on titanium implant. Hasn’t caused me any trouble, and its been 3+ years. I still do my heavy chewing on the other side of the mouth out of habit.
I want an implant! I want my cavities filled. Sadly, no dental for me right now.
Also, LOL forever at Enopeletus (sp?) Harding.
If you have a sudden craving for brains, get it removed.
I have two gold/ceramic teeth.
They work fine.
Shame Godzilla was so underwhelming. The The fight between Godzilla and Mothra was nice but tge human characters were so uninteresting. It would have been better if all the humans had been killed off, and then we could have Godzilla & Co. fighting each other for world domination.
So I read this:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/creation-museum-dinosaur-exhibit
And all I could think was this:
http://i.imgflip.com/9046f.jpg
The inhabitants of Ethiopia might have something to say about that characterisation: the Italian Fascist conquest and occupation cost several hundred thousand lives.
@ 5, that’s great news! I’m glad you have a good doctor and everything is going well. I really need to go to the dentist soon, but have been putting it off because I don’t have the money or time.
Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door today! They had a moderately offensive pitch about suicide. I want to become friendly with the neighborhood JWs and talk to them about religion, but at the same time, I don’t want to deceive them into thinking I’m a good conversion prospect.
There’s been a military coup in Thailand. This follows months of anti-government protests and opposition disruption of an election, and grossly biased court decisions against the now-ousted government. The opposition’s fundamental problem with the former governing party was that it kept winning elections because of its massive support from the rural poor. It seems very likely that the “reforms to the political system” the army promises will consist of gerrymandering the electoral system so it can’t win again.
No point in copy/pasting, or even bothering to check, when you’re just LOLing at somebody, I guess.
What a pointless, content- and even reference-free, mean-spirited, and multiple-commenting-rule-flouting thing to post.
Surprise, you’re the asshole!
I lost a crown a few months back that I really need to see about getting dealt with, but time/money.
barnestormer
I don’t like to encourage them, they really need to realize that knocking on doors and harassing people isn’t ok. I usually explain to them that if they’re still on the property by the time I’m done dialing the cops, I’ll have them done for trespassing.
Nick Gotts @ 12:
Well, that’s true enough, but it’s also true of the British, the French, the (Imperial) Germans, and worst of all, the Belgians. Also, the Italians weren’t Fascists the first time they tried to conquer Ethiopia. I think Colonialism and Fascism are orthogonal categories.
By now you should have half assimilated the thing and replaced it with your own shiny new bone.
But does this mean you’re now Borg?
@16 Dalillama, Schmott Guy
I think that’s an understandable response, and might be better than what I do. These ladies were very polite and not pushy, so I didn’t feel that I was being harassed, though asking random people if they think suicide is caused by our stressful modern lifestyle is not a great way to strike up a conversation imo.
I like to be friendly to evangelists of all kinds if they’re not just screaming about whoredom (we do have a local guy who just screams about whoredom before football games). I guess I assume that they’ve gotten a lot of guilt trips and bad advice from their leadership, and feeling persecuted by the wicked world won’t help them walk away from that, but meeting a hospitable atheist or two might.
I could be totally wrong about my assumptions above, and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to encourage them, though.
barnestormer @ 19, I’ve always found answering the door naked with an air of impatience, and a “no, thank you very much” followed by a closed door to be good. Gives them plenty to think about, and you don’t have to talk with them. Works well with mormons, too.
I’m at work, and there is a middle-aged man with his teenage daughter in our store right now, and the girl is wearing a (cute, pink) hoodie from the fucking Creation Museum. It says “prepare to believe.” It just makes me SO. ANGRY. at her parents, and I don’t even want to deal with the dad’s smug douchebag face. I hope she grows up, moves out, and does some independent reading.
ARGH. WHY IS THAT PLACE STILL A THING.
/atheist ranting
Thanks to everyone who wished me well about my tooth. I needed a pretty serious bone graft in my jaw because a childhood injury had caused one of my adult bicuspids to have three roots and then die on me over the last couple of years. I had to have part of my jaw chiseled out and larger than normal bone graft put in. Simple plug grafts normally used after extractions usually heal in about three months. This graft took seven months to heal.
Others have mentioned needing dental care but not having the funds. I was in that same boat and have had to call in a few favors to get this taken care of.
I hope every one of you can find a way to get the care you need and deserve. You might try contacting local dental schools. I was on the waiting list at both UT Dental in Houston and UTMB Galveston before I gained the means to solve this problem more quickly.
I just saw this “campaign” from the JW’s at my mass transit stop. I just kept walking because I can’t argue with that much stupid all at the same time. What a horrible, evil thing to make people believe: that suicidal thoughts can be cured by adherence to a religion. If you’re still thinking about topping yourself, well, you’re just not “good” enough! But please, don’t top yourself: that would be a sin.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge@17,
Your response is true, but not particularly relevant: my point was that, contrary to your claim, the Italian Fascists were at least as murderous as the Spanish Military/Falangist regime (particularly as Mussolini gave crucial support to Franco in slaughtering Spaniards during the Spanish Civil War). But in any case, Italian Fascism is surely the type case because it was the first regime of its type – one backed by a mass party of the extreme nationalist and totalitarian right – to be established, and other parties and regimes copied many of its features.
The Orioles have showed up, excitement. Time to buy oranges.
Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates recent Atlantic feature “The Case for Reparations.”
Both an interesting and depressing read, and the predictably negative responses to the article are almost as depressing. It’s a long article and some commenters are talking only about slavery, as if that’s all Coates wrote about (it’s not, there’s a lot on post-WWII era America). So NPR has a helpful guide to help tell who didn’t read it.
@ 23 Seize
Yeah, it’s pretty much the worst, and unfortunately it’s not just the JWs who are pushing that line (as I’m sure you know). I haven’t read the pamphlet they gave me yet, but just hearing the beginning of the script was enough to know that it wasn’t going anywhere good. I almost feel like I should encourage them just to eat up their free time and keep them away from other people.
When they asked me the question about what causes suicide (“Do you think people who turn to suicide do so because they really want to die, or because of all the stress in their lives?” I thought the best thing to do would be to answer honestly. I said that it depended on the situation, and that when I had suicidal thoughts in the past, it was because of depression.
I was a little surprised that they didn’t absorb this new information into the script; it would have been easy enough to tack “or even depression!” onto the list of things that God could help you deal with, but maybe they were too nervous? There was an initial “sad hum and nod” at the personal story and then it was right back to Our Stressful Modern Life as the main cause of suicide.
Sorry to ramble! But yeah, it’s a bad con. :(
The epidemiology of suicide looks to be quite complex. One might refer the Jehovah’s Nuisances to this article as a starting point, but of course, they don’t give a shit about the facts – it’s just a cynical ploy to hook the vulnerable on the part of their leaders. In the UK, suicides have declined significantly over the last 30 years – considerably among women, slightly among men. I feel safe in conjecturing that this is not due to increased numbers of Jehovah’s Nuisances.
Francisco Bacopa
I’ve got a tooth that’s split in half causing an infection and my dentist can’t pull it because she says I need to go to a specialist. I had to get a scan of the tooth and that cost 180€, something like $230, and that’s about a fourth of my monthly income. None of it is reimbursed by French national health insurance. I’m taking morphine every once in a while for it. Am considering an implant (it’s my last chewing surface). But don’t know how I can get the money.
I actually like talking to Jehova’s witnesses, inviting them in for tea and so on. Once one of them became a friend of sorts but his hierarchy told him to stop visiting me because he was black and I was white. They had originally sent him ’round to talk to the blacks on my floor.
@ barnstormer
It’s strange that they couldn’t engage with you at all on your personal story. Wouldn’t that be their goal, you’d think? They must be absolutely terrified of the non-cult public and of all other cults.
Chimera at 29
This is a rare case where health care in the US seems to beat France. The x-rays and consultation with my oral surgeon were only $90.
I never have been sure why dental insurance isn’t a part of general medical insurance.
@ Seize, 31
It was surprising to me that they didn’t really even try, even in a token way. But it probably made them nervous and uncomfortable. Everyone in the JWs is expected to prosletyze and I don’t get the impression that their training is very good. They didn’t even want to talk about the context for the out-of-context Bible verse they gave me and were clearly uncomfortable that I wanted to see the other verses in the chapter, too. Inflexibility about the script is probably the only way for some people to make a difficult, unpleasant activity (that they’re supposed to love) bearable. It’s probably a little like working in a call center in that respect.
@30 chimera
My sister (a Catholic) loves to talk to Jehovah’s Witnesses. She’s been to their meetings and Bible studies, even. I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d like to have these ladies over to tea and talk to them a little outside the script (if they’re willing).
@ 26 HolyPinkUnicorn
I was so excited to see that article as a cover story! Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of my favorite writers. He gets to the heart of things better than almost anyone I can think of.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2014/05/22/american-atheists-denied-standing-to-challenge-church-tax-breaks/
Dave Silverman & AA lose.
Annie Gaylor, FFRF and I win.
That’s the way I see it.
Dave Silverman and the AA had a poor litigating strategy and came up the loser.
However, what the Court had to say about Annie’s (FFRF) and my case, in my opinion, strengthen Annie’s (FFRF) and my case.
See what you think:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY
NORTHERN DIVISION AT COVINGTON
CIVIL ACTION NO. 2012-264 (WOB)
AMERICAN ATHEISTS, INC., ET AL.
PLAINTIFFS
VS.
DOUGLAS SHULMAN
DEFENDANT
(excerpts)
This matter is before the Court on the Defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint.
(T)he Court was advised that on November 22, 2013, the U.S. District Court for Western District of Wisconsin (the FFRF case – RLBaty) issued an Opinion and Order on issues relevant to the controversy before the Court, and the Court ordered the parties to brief the applicability of the opinion to the instant case.
The case law cited by Plaintiffs in support of this argument, including the recently-decided FFRF case, is distinguishable.
The FFRF Court held that the plaintiffs, who could not qualify as “ministers of the gospel,” were not required to claim the I.R.C. §107(2) exemption before challenging the statute and that the I.R.C. §107(2) tax exemption granted solely to “ministers of the gospel” violated the Establishment Clause.
The FFRF lawsuit was filed by the tax-exempt organization Freedom from Religion Foundation (“FFRF”) and its co-presidents, Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, challenging the constitutionality of I.R.C. §107.
The Court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ I.R.C. §107 claim.
(W)hile the plaintiffs’ complaint challenged both I.R.C. §107(1) and §107(2), the plaintiffs narrowed their claim to §107(2) at the summary judgment stage.
At that stage, the plaintiffs did not oppose the defendants’ argument that plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge I.R.C. §107(1) and therefore, the Court granted the defendants’ motion as to that aspect of their claim.
As to the §107(2) challenge, the FFRF Court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, because “ministers of the gospel” receive a tax-exempt housing allowance and Gaylor and Barker could not as they are not practicing clergy.
(U)nlike in FFRF, the Atheists’ alleged injury is not “clear from the face of the statute” that plaintiffs are excluded from an exemption granted to others.
In denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss, the FFRF Court “concluded that plaintiffs’ alleged injury is clear from the face of the statute and that there is no plausible argument that the individual plaintiffs could qualify for an exemption as ‘ministers of the gospel,’ so it would serve no legitimate purpose to require plaintiffs to claim the exemption and wait for the inevitable denial of the claim.”
Plaintiffs in this case never claim that their housing allowance was tax-exempt or that there are plaintiffs who could otherwise qualify for this tax exemption.
The FFRF decision is narrow and does not address standing to challenge any of the other statutes at issue in this case beyond…
Finally, the Plaintiffs in FFRF and the instant case present no facts or authority that establish that an organization expressing atheist beliefs could never qualify as a tax exempt religious organization or church.
The FFRF Court based denial of Defendant’s motion to dismiss on the fact that “the government admits that plaintiffs could not qualify as ‘churches’ in order to receive the exemption.”
This Court does not find the FFRF Court’s finding that “there is no reasonable construction of §107 that would include atheists,” persuasive or applicable to the instant case.
IT IS ORDERED THAT:
Pursuant to the foregoing analysis,
the Defendant’s motion to dismiss be, and hereby is,
GRANTED.
This 19th day of May, 2014.
Signed By:
William O. Bertelsman
United States District Judge
—————————————————–
@barnestormer #33
It’s a long article, but worth it. Just tread carefully in comment sections; I got trolled on another site by some smug, racist jackass saying that blacks don’t deserve anything because they still owe white America a big “thank you” for ending slavery. Apparently anything that occurred after 1865 was all harmless water under the bridge since it wasn’t slavery.
Well, sure! When slavery unexpectedly fell onto the planet from outer space, White America™ mobilized itself immediately to eradicate this scourge! They need to kiss our asses forever for that!
HolyPinkUnicorn
?!??!? Black people owe white people a big ‘thank you’ for no longer enslaving them?!? How the fuck is that supposed to work? If someone was kicking this idiot in the head, would they say they owed that person a big thank you for stopping?
And would this include a thank-you note ever time this person slapped them in the face? After all, they would have been kicking..;
Hey, everyone!
Fuck fucking mosquitos!
@ chigau
You might want to borrow Ms Molly. She obsessively hunts mosquitoes and midges, by leaping up the kitchen counter and onto the ceiling trays. The midgies are particularly funny, as one cannot see them. She sits in the ceiling, working herself into a frenzy, swearing loudly in cat, and lashing out from time to time.
@15, Chas
Speaking from my own experience with him, Harding lied when he blockquoted me as saying this about Africa here:
Source: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/21/hes-not-a-racist/comment-page-1/#comment-800159
when I actually said (omitted parts bolded):
He then blamed me for his mistake/lie as I was apparently not clear enough in my original post. Not that he even bothered to check my meaning before posting my truncated words in a comment to someone else, no, he just took it upon himself to remove crucial qualifiers from my statement so it looked like I said the opposite of what I expressed (alleged uncertainty over that statement aside, my overall point should have been obvious given the context of the sentence he butchered – a comment he obviously read in full as he replied to it previously with some very charming soundbites and unjustified condescension).
This was either cluelessness or clueless dishonesty (going by his other contributions of late it could be either, though I’m leaning toward the latter).
Surprise…
theophontes
My kitteh never hunted mosquitos, even as a young thing.
She is now almost 20 and hunts the food dish.
I would love to see some video of Ms Molly channelling Ceiling Cat.
Hank_Says #41
Chas’s point was not about the content or worth of Harding’s comments, it was about the other commenter not bothering to do a couple of clicks to find the correct spelling.
I actually found that the inflexible script made call center work much, much worse.
@43, chigau – received and understood. Ta!
Hank_Says #45
however
Your comment about Harding was spot on.
Question: A friend has hives and was convinced that one of those stupid all juice diets will cure them. >_<
I'm trying to find info debunking this garbage but all my searches are nothing but alt-med pages promoting it, or science sites debunking juicing as a "detox" or whatever.
Does anyone happen to know where I can find info specifically debunking juicing as a hives cure?
One can follow events on Twitter at #thaicoup. I had to laugh a bit, couple hours ago some Gogo bars in Nana were tweeting “we’re open 3-9pm”. That’s vital info I guess. But yeah, 10pm curfew in Bangkok, english TV censored, some roads closed, military propaganda shows on TV, internet restrictions. I can still exchange SMS with SO for now.
Oh, there is also the hashtag #coupmovies. Don’t ask me why. My favourite so far: “An inconvenient coup”.
*blink*
Hives are due to histamin release from destabilised mast cells in the skin. Since some juices contain serotonin, it could be postulated that these juices might, if anything, make hives worse. If they made them better, we’d all be eating juice capsules already.
here’s what I think, and it’s the same thing the author of the article you cited concluded:
yup. this issue was not resolved at all, and the decision leaves it wide open to a more focused approach.
No, his point was that I’m an asshole for LOLing at EH without thoroughly documenting my reasons for LOLing. This is comment-worthy because I have called Chas an asshole in the past.
(Thank you, Hank, for explaining–that was the main thing I found amusing.)
Even frikkin’ computers are discriminating now…
I look up Oussama Khatib (the roboticist) on youtube, and I get a whole shitload of islamists thrown at me as (computer generated) suggestions. WTF! Is it his name? What has he to do with all the islamist crap? Imagine the profiling the poor professor must endure in meatspace, if even the the frikkin’ computers are pulling this shit. To top the irony, he works for the Computer Science Department.
Religion poisons everything.
David Silverman, bad at strategy? You don’t say!!!!
/sarcasm
@ Sally Strange
My first impression of comment #15:
” blah, blah, blah …. asshole!”
What really should have been said: “Please accurately clarify the person you are addressing.”
(Although “Please accurately clarify the person you are addressing, asshole”, might also be apropriate to the rough-and-tumble of Teh ‘Dome.)
Sooo… Does anyone feel like heading over to the http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/23/virginia-county-board-says-no-followers-of-pre-christian-deities-allowed-to-deliver-prayers/ thread? I’m so sick of everyone invoking ‘american taliban’ whenever christian supremacists are at work. Thread seems not to agree with me….
Y’know, I was so hoping that this would turn out to be the debut of some bad-ass scratchin’ and mixin’ by a camouflage-pants-wearin’, south-east Asian DJ Pam the Funkstress.
Faith in humanity dashed again. Sigh.
It’s 30°C.
In the shade.
heh, first time here and on the Thunerdrome! I would like to share with all of you beautifull Pharingulistas that Judith Reisman is coming back to my town of Zagreb, Croatia next week, afther this, 45:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4BnEJTBDuQ Love to this kids!
@58,
Wiki:
So I’d say to you fuck right off, asshole.
rorschach #59
Agreed.
Oh this is wonderful!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Reisman#Erototoxins
@58
yes, we know Reisman is an asshole, but the point is young student oposing her in a funny way:-)
The Frat Boys across the street are having a party.
The music they are playing sounds like auto-tuned Archies.
I have loved Neko Case for a long time for her songs, her singing, and (yes I am shallow enough to say) her looks, but this makes it Real Love.
pussy-shavers
hehheh
Never heard of her, but sounds like an interesting person. “pussy shavers” is just the most gorgeous insult I’ve heard.
Monitors: newtron the toxic drive-by troll is currently dropping turds all over threads.
The last time Reisman was here, she got her ass handed to her by students at the Faculty of Political Sciences.
If I remember correctly, she was well received at Faculty of Medicine, where she is returning now (among other venues). She’s promoting a campaign “Don’t touch the children” which supposedly exposes pedophilia behind sexual education. The good thing about this is that I haven’t heard of this bullshit campaign before now, which means media is not promoting it (via good or bad press).
The bad part… is everything else :(
—-
Neko Case:
I heard about her in these parts before. Love her music.
rorschach,
Alert sent
Because religious forums are more tolerant of time-wasting asshole trolls?
It’s true that trolls that are actually entertaining are welcome. They aren’t banned until they get stupid, boring, and/or bigoted. You are unwelcome because you start off stupid, boring, and bigoted, and just become worse over time.
For example, you have a ridiculously inflated view of your own importance. You have never demonstrated anything, just made a lot of sneering attacks.
I suspect you’re just jealous that PZ has a successful blog, and you have nothing but a big mouth.
that you feel a need to explain yourself speaks volumes.
not to you, of course, because you’re deaf, but to everyone else.
and you’re simply here to speak for all of them.
LOL
what a git.
In the middle of the Minnesotan night too. So his turds may last a few hours before being cleaned up. Brave hero indeed.
-has tenure track academic position locked up
-his students like and respect him as a teacher (try it, it ain’t easy)
-has a house and a family, son in the military, daughter who will likely go on to grad school.
-is still doing research for publication
-has written a novel that is making money
I should wish for such low reputation and standing.
you sound like the Operation American Spring folks, who blame Obama for the destruction of America and think he should be impeached.
delusional idiots are delusional.
you need to learn that “harassment” and “extortion” are two different things, right?
egads, do you work for a living? I can’t even imagine it.
I know there’s a pot of gold for me
All I got to do is just believe
I’m so happy doin’ the Newtron dance
And I’m just burning doin’ the Newtron dance
Fuck. Seven people killed, including the shooter, and seven wounded in Isla Vista section of Santa Barbara. The shooter, Elliot Rodgers, left a “goodbye video.” He said he intended to go out and kill as many women as possible because they had all rejected him. No names have been released yet.
I predict denials about this tragedy from the usual sources in…3…2…
…I’m not fucking goggling, I know they already exist. It’s a law of douchebaggery.
Louis
The gunman is described as “mentally disturbed” by police and “alpha male” by himself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/us/california-drive-by-shooting.html?_r=0
Mentally disturbed? Oh here it fucking goes…
Ableism, mental health stigma, denialism about rampant cultural misogyny and social reinforcement of entitlement to women’s bodies/attention. Yay! Someone wake me when any of the usual suspects wakes up just one tiny bit.
Louis
Prediction: the role that societal misogyny played in this will be ignored, and people who bring it up will be aggressively shushed.
I have seen a few mentions of MRAs, and the PUA types this guy followed, but on nothing more mainstream than Daily Kos. I do not expect to see much mention of this extremely mainstream new outlets.
The Daily Mail site notes his involvement in a misogynist web forum. I won’t link it, friends don’t let friends click on the Mail.
Also I doubt that aspect of the story will remain in an article already edited a few times that I’ve noticed.
Louis
Three people shot in front of the Jewish museum in Brussels.
The person who was living in our office/guest room for
4-6 weeks10months has successfully moved to new accommodations.I am pleased.
YEEEFUCKINHAAAAW
:shakes head:
I think I have better things to do today, so I’ll go do them.
Chigau:
Time to break out the rum!
Amelia is all over Towel Day.
Oh my goo’ness.
Since the rain isn’t yet, I have gone outside.
I smell a skunk, the FratBoys are partying and
.
the lilac is starting to bloom.
Chigau:
The rain is still busy falling here.
Mine isn’t. Have a good Glorious 25th of May.
I just spent 2 hours cooking a Jamie Oliver “15-minute meal”. I don’t see how it can possibly be done in time, unless one has an army of Gordon Ramseys on speed at hand.
It’s nice though, a Beef Kofta curry. linky
@ Inaji
The virtual rodent pix bring delight. Especially their expressive faces and paws. (Awwww… I almost wrote “little hands”, as they look so much like tiny human hands.)
@ rorschach
Looks nyummy, I am wanting to give this a try.
I also prepared beef (which I rarely cook for myself), this evening, as Spawnphontes came to visit. Seared at very high temperature on a ridged skillet, the steaks were covered with fresh Berggarten sage leaves, then covered in foil (skillet and all) before bunging in a preheated oven (180°C) for ten minutes. The whole operation took 15 minutes.
probably only works if you say “pukka” a lot (and have an army of scullions off-camera).
Theophontes:
:D I do call them hands, it’s impossible to do otherwise when you have them around you. If those little thumb stubs ever start growing…
we’re gonna be in trouble.
Oh, Rodger’s wasn’t interested in women, according to an “expert” on Fox News, he was really a QUEER-MOSEXUAL!!!
Continuing from the discussion in posts 361-432 over in the shooting thread.
Well, my steps of logic were something like:
1) Is it possible? (I never originally claimed it WAS possible. I wondered if it MAY be possible for this problem to be eliminated within a consent culture.)
2) IF possible, is it desirable? Answer is yes almost by definition if it is possible
3) If both possible and desirable, is it still somehow more optimal not to have it? I think not, so then the presence of the problem would be suboptimal
3) I also called this “broken”… but that is just choice of wording.
Some people are disagreeing with my #1, (as I myself did when I originally wrote the original post @361). Though there may be a disagreement over #3, the wording.
As it stands, I don’t see how eliminating the problem would be impossible, in fact I’m leaning towards thinking it is possible. Most likely very difficult even if it is possible though.
In that case an approximation of it could be the “most optimal” state. We DO currently live in an approximation of such a state, but some approximations are closer than others, some are more optimal than others. And I suspect that we are currently suboptimal in this aspect of social organization, like so many other aspects.
I hope I didn’t leave any gaps, so that now people can point to exactly WHERE they disagree with me if they have any disagreement.
Sooooo UKIP’s doing rather well in the European Parliament elections. The French Front National are doing pretty well. A few other far right groups are doing nicely across Europe.
We’ve got shitty memories. This did not go well last time.
Louis
yup.
Never mind.
Superman (or somesuch) will fly back in time (or something) and save us all.
Babies! Of the Robin sort.
Trigger Warning (sexual violence against women)
Dr. Jill McDevitt blogs about the double standard women face regarding their sexuality:
She follows by talking about the horrific murder spree committed by Eliot Rodger (her post includes a screencaps of extremely vile sl*t shaming Tweets, so be warned).
Louis @ 98
This is why I don’t have as much optimism for progress as some would. Everyone seems to think that the GOP has forever shamed itself and that demographic changes will forever keep them out of office. HRC has the 2016 election all tied up. They don’t seem to notice how far to the right state governments are continuing to swing as well are recent campaign finance and church-state defeats in the courts. We all know that the GOP will provide a united front against the anyone the Democrats put forward, especially someone as vilified as Hillary Clinton. The undecideds will have tired of the Dems and come to the conclusion that it’s the GOP’s “turn” and give the White House to the right-wing.
The world’s slide into fascism, and then extinction, continues.
I wouldn’t say they have shitty memories, they just wrongly think that it won’t happen again.
Anyway, continuing my lament from yesterday in a much more appropriate forum…
Just what CAN a 39-going-on-40-year-old, 360 lbs, mentally ill, impoverished, depression and anxiety ridden, SF/fantasy/horror loving, RPG/mini game playing, nerd to do about improving his chances at attracting a woman? I confess, its rather hard for me to make friends, in the first place. Being at the very bottom of the social darwinian jungle that was middle and high school, my formative years were rather hellish and along with having my self-esteem utterly crushed, the development of my “people skills” were severely retarded.
Also can’t seem to get over my first lover. I realize that 17 years is quite a while to be carrying a torch, but she was the only woman who took a sexual interest in me. I lost her affection for me because I didn’t take very good care of my life at the and she became disappointed in my many failures, but I was too smitten to notice until the very end. I don’t think I will meet another person like that again, and I feel awful that I squandered my one and only chance for a lifelong love.
On a side note, with all due respect to PZ, masturbation has gotten pretty dull; it’s almost a chore now rather than a source of fun or release.
EDIT: I lost her affection because I didn’t take very good care of myself at the time…
Akira Mckenzie
Speaking as someone who’s fucked up several relationships in my life to date, I’m not going to say you’ll get over it or the like; maybe you will, maybe you won’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good relationship again. While I’m not exactly in your shoes, I can point to a number of points of commonality, relating to
.
I can only speak in generalities, for the most part, and I can’t promise that it’s helpful, but my 2 cents, for what it’s worth:
Go to local gaming events, when you can manage. (You mentioned Wisconsin, IIRC; I don’t know squat about Wisconsin geography, but I know there are such events sometimes in Madison and Jamestown Many game shops have free events).
Possibly hang out in gaming/scifi forums online, although there’s not many that I can recommend with whole heart, and I’m crap at dealing with social networking programs anyhow; Goodreads appears to have some kind of social networking stuff attached, but i’m fucked if I can make any sense of it).
Try not to let the weight thing bother you too much; I know that sounds trite, and is damnably hard given the kind of body shaming that comes with it, but physique isn’t everything; I’ve known many people of a variety of genders who’ve found fulfilling relationships with a person of their preferred gender while weighing considerably more than commercial beauty standards allow for.
Regarding the anxiety and depression, there are many people, of all genders, out there who understand (in many cases because they have similar issues). Things like that limit the pool of people who might be interested in a relationship with you, sure, but so does pretty much any personality trait, interest, etc.
Taking care of yourself never hurts, of course, and also for things unrelated to relationships, but I know damn well how depression interacts with that, and all you can do is all you can do.
If I had clearer memories of much of anything, I might be able to offer further thoughts; I’ll see what I can dredge up.
Responding to Millssg99’s comment from the lounge
I have many reasons to regret supporting Obama. I have no desire to go looking for more. I’m not some ideologue that seeks out things to read specifically so that I have reasons to dislike/hate people I already dislike/hate. You don’t use the word “hate” in your comment, but the idea that we should read a book **because it will give us more reasons to regret supporting someone** is the language of hatred.
That kind of thinking is fucked up and shouldn’t have a place here.
Finally: Say what you want about an Obama presidency, before he popped on the national scene I didn’t think we’d have a president of color in the next 20 years. Getting him elected, and making sure he got reelected, has done, is doing, and will continue to do a world of good for people of color in the USA just by virtue of raising a whole ton of school kids who didn’t get to graduate high school in a country that had always and ever been presided over by white men. Tracing the legacy of Obama’s election will be the work of decades.
Likewise, the first woman president – even if it’s Hillary Clinton – will have a far-reaching and positive impact.
Babies by Daylight.
Thanks, Inaji, I needed that!
You’re welcome, CD! The robins are nesting everywhere around here!
*sigh* That should have been, the robins are nesting everywhere.
In case neuroguy chooses to respond here, I’m reposting my comment from the ‘Perfect Guy’ thread:
I think we’re at an impasse here then.
You think your intended meaning with regard to ‘right to sexual contact’ is clear.
Several commenters-myself included-do not. For example, your comment @347 does *not* make clear what you mean by “right to sexual contact”:
My reading of your comment is that human beings have needs and as a result are *ENTITLED* to sex and relationships. You feel this is a human right. You make no attempt to explain the nature of this right, nor how this right can be expressed by an individual.
Instead of choosing the clarify yourself, and/or restate your comments to minimize (or even eliminate) the potential for miscommunication, you’ve decided to place the blame for misunderstanding the words you wrote squarely on everyone else.
****
So here’s your chance to clarify what you mean by humans are entitlted to sex and relationships, as well as explain how one could go about expressing their right to sexual contact.
Neuroguy also needs to respond to this comment by Crip Dyke regarding what it means to say something is a right:
And also my comment where I point out that it’s multiple people noticing that neuroguy himself seems incredibly confused about what he is actually saying, and has not yet bothered to clarify whether he regards the ownership of women as a problem generally, or only a problem when it’s rich and powerful men owning the women.
This is transposing from that 500+ post thread. The question is, is there is a right to sexual contact in the same sense as we say there is right to employment and health care?
I am not meaning by this that in a specific circumstance an individual person must provide sexual contact to another individual person. This is not the sense in which I mean “right”. A possible exception is in the case of a legal sex worker where a client has paid in advance: but even here, the worker must either provide the service paid for or else a refund. This is not the sense for rights in employment or health care either; we simply do not legally obligate any employer to hire any specific employee, or any specific healthcare provider to provide for any specific patient (except in emergency situations).
I am also not meaning by “right” a mere freedom. We already have that; there are no legal restrictions on who we can work for, who we can use as healthcare providers, or who we can have sexual contact with.
So what I mean by “right” is a programmatic right; society should be organized in such a way as to provide maximum of opportunities for employment, healthcare, and sexual contact as well.
Now if we can actually increase the signal-to-noise ratio beyond what was on the other thread, there are actually legitimate (not straw man) arguments against this. The main one is that sexual contact is a want and not a need, whereas employment and healthcare are needs. The counterargument is of course that for many people unfulfilled sexual drives cause psychological harm and anguish, and thus can be called “needs” in a broad sense in a sense that Ferraris are not, and that society should not only try to provide life and necessities, but also quality of life. One might also argue that employment is not a “need” in the strict sense, if bills are being paid through public assistance.
Yes, that is actually quite silly. The word “rights” has different meanings in different circumstances, as do many other words in the English language. I kept making the comparison with employment and healthcare. EVERYONE understands what is meant here. Do I feel I have a “right” to a job and do I feel “entitled” to a job? Hell yes I do, after having spent several long years in training in graduate school and afterwards. It doesn’t mean I can march into the business next door and demand they hire me. It means it is something I expect society to be able to provide, or at least society to due its damnedest to provide. (And yes, I am employed. However, I am well aware I am one of the fortunate ones, as many, even after long years of graduate school in the life sciences, still can’t find a job. And I have a quite visceral reaction to glibertarian “Well who ever promised you a job?” arguments.)
Here’s the difference between saying “I have the right to healthcare” and “I have the right to sex.”
A few months ago, I fell on some ice and broke my arm. I went to the hospital and got the bone set. This required the time, effort, and skill of a healthcare professional. In this particular case, I saw a resident in orthopedics. In setting my arm and otherwise tending to my injury (which included writing me a prescription for painkillers and giving me advice on how to tend to my injury after I went home and what sorts of things I should reasonably expect), he incurred very low risk to himself. As I was not contagious with an infectious disease and he took reasonable precautions (he wore gloves when touching me), his risk of sustaining harm as a result from treating me was low. It is possible that I could have slugged him with my other arm or kicked, bit, or body-slammed him (I did not). It is also possible that I could have been verbally abusive (I was not). Most patients are neither physically violent nor verbally abusive towards healthcare workers. Setting my broken bone, handing me some pamphlets, calling a pharmacy, and answering some questions did not impinge upon his right to bodily autonomy in any way.
By contrast:
Sex workers are inherently at risk whenever they go with a client. Many clients are violent, and they are violent with impunity, as sex workers – rightfully – fear that their complaints to police will be ignored, as will news of their deaths. Society has an unfortunate tendency to ignore and diminish violence against sex workers. In addition, they are at risk of sexually transmitted infection and bodily trauma (sex, even not-rough “vanilla” sex, involves significant amounts of friction on fragile and highly enervated tissues, which is why it is in fact possible for someone who knows what they’re looking for to tell if someone has recently been penetrated). Having sex necessarily requires surrendering a certain amount of autonomy.
Even if I grant your framing that people have a moral right to sexual contact, demanding services from a sex worker is not analogous to demanding services from a healthcare worker.
neuroguy:
I haven’t had sex in over a year and I’ve found masturbation takes care of my sexual needs. Unless a guy is unable to masturbate, why is this not a solution to sexual frustration?
Or are you specifically stating that “intimacy with another human being or beings is almost-but-not-quite-a-need”?
Also, do you know anyone who receives public assistance that pays for *all* their bills (such that they don’t need a job)?
Then you don’t understand the concept of “right”.
In other words, bullshit to be properly ignored….
The killer’s problem wasn’t lack of sex, it was lack of being acknowledged to have privileges the killer thought it deserved, without working for them, or training for them. Which is why I have said “cotillion” in the previous two thread, which is partially how to interact with other people, and you have ignored. Why should I believe your unevidenced word versus a real world method to teach young people how to properly interact with each other….
neuroguy:
I find it amusing* that you think several of the regulars are libertarians…
*amusing in a “how much of this blog has this guy read” kinda way
Well, when I say ice cream I actually mean polar bear. It is abundantly clear to any honest person that I could not have possibly meant “ice cream” in the literal sense.
U R MEEN
I am going to C/P my post in the second Rodgers thread to Neuroguy
bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
the last refuge of the moronic incompetant. “all you fuckers just don’t understand me. stop quoting my words at me, that’s lying abuse”
Neuroguy, people have given you a lot of benefits of the doubt. You’re simply unable or unwilling to accept that your words do not say what you apparently think they claim to say. You are unable or unwilling to accept that you are not expressing yourself clearly (at best), or that we see through your wordplay into your actual claims and call them out for being the unmittigated horrible bullshit that they are.
The onus is not on *us*, it is on *you*. You are either expressing yourself shittily, *or* you are a terrible fucking human being.
I’ve written up my thoughts regarding the mental health/othering of the Santa Barbara shooter.
I would appreciate opinions or corrections as applicable, as I want to be as accurate about this as possible.
Link to my blog.
/end plug/appeal
—-Just what CAN a 39-going-on-40-year-old, 360 lbs, mentally ill, impoverished, depression and anxiety ridden, SF/fantasy/horror loving, RPG/mini game playing, nerd to do about improving his chances at attracting a woman? I confess, its rather hard for me to make friends, in the first place. Being at the very bottom of the social darwinian jungle that was middle and high school, my formative years were rather hellish and along with having my self-esteem utterly crushed, the development of my “people skills” were severely retarded.—-
My husband showered, cleaned his house, and hosted a gaming group over at his house.
He also was willing to accept being ‘just friends’ with a woman instead of putting in ‘nice guy’ tokens in the hope that sex would one day fall out.
You’ll find that there are MANY women who were in the same boat you were throughout school.
I suggest going to meetup.com, finding groups that have common interests – board games, video games, scifi reading and writing clubs, and then showing up and not being a creepy asshole.
@neuroguy:
Let me make it perfectly clear:
After your clarification, I understand what you mean. But your zinger, “Hey, don’tcha know the same word can mean different things?” isn’t *my* problem. It’s *yours*.
If by “right” you meant something other than the most common definition – you are entitled to something which someone else has a duty to provide – then you should understand and be sympathetic to others’ confusion.
If by “right” you didn’t even mean the second most common definition, in legal terms a “freedom” – others, most principally the government, have no duties save to refrain from unreasonably prevent you from exercising that freedom – then your lack of explanation and sympathy become even less understandable.
I am perfectly capable of reading you comprehensively and carefully and critically. I take you at your word that what you mean is that this is an issue that deserves thought as we go about structuring society (no more, no less). But this isn’t the definition of a freedom or either of the two most common definitions of right.
In fact, I don’t know of anyone who uses “right” in this way. Healthcare *is* in fact a right in many jurisdictions: the government has a legal duty to provide you that care. Employment is a freedom in the classic sense – the government cannot place unreasonable restrictions on your ability to gain and maintain employment, but has no duty to take positive action (e.g. offer you a job).
Since employment is a classic freedom and healthcare as we mean it here is a classic, first definition “right”, your comparisons did not aid in comprehension.
We don’t need your condescending, “obviously I was clear” statements. Nor do we really need yet another explanation of what you really meant. We’ve got it now. It took a while, but you clarified. Fine.
But stop the douchegabbing insistence that the problem was entirely with your readers being too stupid to consider multiple definitions. I’ve studied the social construction of rights for 18 years and I’ve never run across a definition similar to, “It’s just something we need to consider when structuring society and something which society is better off when it is plentiful.”
You’d get a much better reception if you were just able to say, “Sorry I wasn’t clear,” or “Sorry I was wrong,” rather than condesplaining to people who are actually experts in the area of knowledge you are mangling.
Also;
How does it feel to be saying the same thing as noted misogynist and rapist Roosh?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/25/anti-woman-website-predicts-more-elliott-rogers-if-society-doesnt-provide-them-with-sex/
—So what I mean by “right” is a programmatic right; society should be organized in such a way as to provide maximum of opportunities for employment, healthcare, and sexual contact as well.—
Why?
Food and shelter (things you get via employment) and healthcare are actually necessary for life.
Sexual contact isn’t.
Other than expecting women to get down on their knees and blow any guy who asks, how exactly do you think a ‘maximum of opportunities’ should be provided?
Especially when, as is the case with this piece of shit, the problem isn’t society, but them?
I’ve asked and asked and you keep ignoring the question –
How do you think this guy would have treated a woman who did go out with him? Why should women change? He didn’t give enough of a shit about himself to do a little introspection, so why should we? Why should I risk groping, stalking, harassment, rape, and death in the name of being ‘compassionate’ to one that clearly had no compassion.
You are stuck on this idea that this was a case of a horny guy denied his ‘right’ to get laid. Because women are too picky, or too prudish, or whatthefuckever.
That’s the disconnect, right there.
This isn’t a case of a ‘horny guy’ denied his ‘right to get laid’.
This is an abuser who couldn’t find someone to abuse.
Seriously, do you really think that if a woman had agreed to go out with him that he’d have treated her well? He’d have treated her like a queen, right? Him and Henry VIII.
He wasn’t ‘desperate’. No one is ‘desperate’ for sex. There are mechanical solutions for the ‘wanting sex’ problem. There is plenty of compassion and support available for someone having trouble finding a date. For fuck’s sake, there are approximately 30 zillion websites available for that problem. There are alternatives all over the place, stop pretending there aren’t.
That isn’t what he wanted. He wanted someone to attend to his cock.
Stop trying to pretend this is about a lonely man who wanted a relationship. That’s bullshit. And what’s more, you know it is bullshit. You know it’s an intellectually dishonest way to frame what happened. And you know that is why you are getting called out. So knock it off, alright?
This isn’t a horny guy who just wanted sex.
This is an abuser who thought he had the right to abuse.
I’ve asked the question a couple times now, and you keep ignoring it – How exactly do you think this man would have treated any woman who did decide to go out with him? Think about that for a few minutes. Think that might have anything to do with why none of these women wanted to go out with him?
If his only problem was that he was ‘desperate’ there would be plenty of compassion and support for him. Genuinely decent guys can find womanly companionship if that is what they want. Unfortunately, for most, that isn’t what these guys want. They want a woman that meets their ‘standards’ and so ignore all the other women out there. They don’t just want her, they feel entitled to her and thus never bother to actually see her as a genuine person. He wanted a trophy, a fucktoy, an object.
How, exactly, do you think he’d have actually treated any girlfriend he actually managed to get?
Do you really think he wanted ‘help’? Do you really think he needed ‘compassion’ and ‘support’? Do you really think nobody has ever TRIED to provide help, compassion, and support to these guys?
There was this one lady, you might have heard of her. She tried to give a little friendly advice to a guy so that he could improve his ‘game’ and maybe have a better shot next time he tried to pick up on a woman in whom he was interested. So, she said ‘hey, guys, don’t do that’ about a particular behavior that women do tend to find creepy.
Do you, by any chance, recall what the fallout from her attempt was?
And here you are, doing it again. They DESERVE our compassion and support. We should help them. We could completely ignore that they won’t help themselves and that providing them with our compassion and support puts us in very real danger.
They fear women will laugh at them. Those women fear they will be raped and murdered. So try getting just a tiny bit of fucking perspective.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dating%20advice
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dating+advice
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dating+services
There is so fucking much help/compassion/support out there it’s fucking overwhelming. Get it through your head. A lack of help/compassion/support was NOT this guy’s problem. His problem was he was a fucking entitled misogynistic douche-bag supported by a culture of irresponsible toxic masculinity with a massive ego that completely prevents any sort of critical thinking, self-examination, rationality, or logic.
It really is impossible to understand the first order logical implications as anything other than encouraging society to more frequently tolerate rape and/or to legalize and make readily available direct contact sex services.
But it’s the threat that makes it oh-so-disturbing, and makes the second order logical implications as encouraging society to more frequently tolerate rape, period.
Think about what he’s saying to women:
” Elliot Rodger do not deserve a girlfriend”
That’s the problem, right there. Neuroguy thinks he did.
The reality is, he didn’t. Nobody ‘deserves’ another human being.
WithinThisMind, your comments would read better if you blockquoted.
The answer is no. And the reason is simple. The fulfillment of the “right” to sexual contact is dependent on the infringement of the bodily autonomy of a second party, and as such requires the willing consent of the second party. That which must be dependent on the willing consent of another party is not and can never be a “right”. Period.
Secondly, there is in fact NO “right” to employment or healthcare. If you don’t believe me, go to any country with a universal healthcare system, walk into a hospital emergency, and demand an amputation of your healthy left leg, and see how far that gets you.
What you have is a right to is FAIR OPPORTUNITY for employment and EQUAL ACCESS to healthcare. But just as with sexual contact, in both cases there is no “right” to the thing in question because that thing depends on the consent of another party. No employer is required or should be compelled to give you employment if you do not meet the requirements for the position. And healthcare professionals are obligated to provide you only with the medical care that THEY determine, with their professional training, that you need. You do not have any right to demand any form of medical care that you happen to THINK you need. If you cannot find a medical professional who does not agree with you that you need that particular form of medical care, then you do not get it, period.
There are many people whose unfulfilled desire to own a Ferrari causes them psychological harm and anguish.
And there are many people whose unfulfilled sexual drive do NOT cause psychological harm or anguish.
What then is the quantification for “many”? And who the hell do you think YOU are, neuroguy, to pass judgment on one group, dismissing their deep desire (to own a Ferrari) as unimportant, and the psychological harm and anguish they suffer from this unfulfilled desire as trivial, while reserving the “right” to pass the opposite judgment for another group?
Hell, in the long and sorry history of mass murderers, I have no doubt that at least one was motivated by the psychological harm and anguish accrued from the lack of desired material possessions. Maybe even one that specifically desired a Ferrari. If only society had been willing to provide a Ferrari to all who desired one, at least a few murder victims probably would not have died.
Naturally, while the same word can mean SOME different things, there are also many, many things that those specific words do NOT mean.
@amphiox:
Whyever would you write these hurtful words? I do not kill dogs and keep them in my refrigerator!
WHOA CRIP DYKE that’s some pretty facist thinking you got going there
WHAT THE UNHOLY FUCK
Man Allegedly Shot At Women For Refusing To Have Sex With Him
Inaji @ 112 :
Vouch.
I have just solved and demonstrated a proof for the Riemann Hypothesis. Here’s the answer:
“Badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom.”
It’s not MY fault you don’t understand my words and decry my genius. HOW DISHONEST OF YOU TO TWIST MY WORDS AND DISBELIEVE MY PROOF! It’s all your fault. I DESERVE the Fields Medal. I need it.
Fuck you all you dishonest hacks.
lOUIS
This is starting to remind me of one of the narratives in Pubis Angelical. I read it so long ago that I remember little, and I don’t remember loving it, but that story stuck with me.
jrfdeux – I just saw the same story and posted it on another thread – i didn’t realize you already had put it here, or I’d have referred back to your link.
How many threads does it take to make neuroguy get a clue.
Ok, that seems reasonable.
No dipshit, your unfulfilled sexual desire is no great problem for anyone but you. Your logic train has jumped the shark…again.
There is no counterargument to sex is not a commodity. Just as nobody is obliged to be your friend, nobody is obliged to be your lover If you want more sex, it is up to you to develop some social skills and pursue sex. I assure you it is much easier to progress to sex if you stop treating women as if they are a prize you win in a contest, and start treating them as people.
You sound like every pathetic, whiny sad sack dude ever. “I talk about my sexual needs as if I am a charity case. Poor me poor me, its all about meeeeee. Why won’t anyone have sex with meeeeee?
Its because you’re a selfish, needy ass. Women would rather masturbate than have bad sex with boring man-children. Grow the fuck-up and take responsibility for your own social life. It is not some poor woman’s job to fix you.
Tethys
All women as people, at that. Not just the “hot” ones. The fact is, there are plenty of women with poor social skills who aren’t conventionally attractive and are very lonely, just as there are men. Roughly half the population is made up of people who identify as women. They aren’t some rare commodity, being hoarded by the rich and powerful. They’re all over the fucking planet.
I’m going to repeat this here, because for some reason you keep ignoring despite it dealing with your own words plainly and being as charitable as possible without outright agreeing with you a priori.
Not having a Ferrari can drive psychological anguish.
Here’s an example of lacking he new model of cell phone causing anguish:
“A teenage schoolgirl at the church where he worked approached him on the sly and begged to meet him in secret. He was all worried from the way that she acted that maybe she was in such serious trouble she couldn’t tell her parents, or maybe if he was lucky/unlucky it was a sex thing.
Instead, she revealed she wanted to sell him her phone for far beneath it’s value to him in exchange for quick cash. Why? Because it was an old model, (by three whole months!!!) and all the girls in her clique had bought the new ”in” fashion one. She had asked her parents to buy her a new one, but they said no. Now if her friends found out that she didn’t have one, she would be thrown out of the clique and the resulting stigma would haunt her for the rest of her life. Therefore needed money + savings to quickly buy the new one. As a foreigner he wouldn’t blab about this terrible shame. She was in tears by the way.
He bought it from her and the very next church service she was smiling happily with the cute, perfect girls she always hung around with after the service. Minus two very dejected girls who didn’t get the phone in time and where not allowed to hang with them.”
The parallels are obvious: the anguish at not having the phone; the social importance imputed to having the phone; hell, I’d argue not having the phone is worse, since it lead to blatant ostricization.
I don’t see how getting the new phone in this example is much different from having sex and intimacy. You differentiation between “needs” and “wants” seems to be entirely arbitrary, set to include the things you want, and to exclude enough so that you don’t look blatantly silly. The exact same argument could, with equal merit, argue that we have a right to a new furniture set (so that we don’t feel put upon and frustrated at our neighbours all having nice new furniture sets) but we don’t have a right to airplanes (after, we only want those, and not having them doesn’t cause psychological anguish).
Also from the other thread:
If the problem caused by lacking is solved by not wanting what you’re lacking, I don’t think you need it.
Apparently this is my day for random Spanish literary references. This is the premise of Juan Mayorga’s play Animales nocturnos – an undocumented immigrant is blackmailed by a guy who won’t turn him in if he agrees to be his “friend.”
:)
Akira MacKenzie @105 and so on, I’ll have to get back to you because while I’d like to help, I just can’t with all the menz-ing going on right now. Nothing personal intended. I guess it’ll be a few days.
Throwaway:
:D
Had a great day traveling gravel. Came across a Northern Harrier’s nest today. With mama raptor in it. That was a surprise.
What. The. Fuck?!
Why is it that jacking off is not an option here? Why does Roosh think so poorly of men that he feels if they don’t get sex, they’ll kill people?
I neither watch, nor care about professional (or amateur for that matter) sports. I had no idea cheerleaders were treated so horribly. The sexism and misogyny are disgusting:
1. Little to no pay and long game days.
2. They get *no* pay for practicing
3. Public appearances? Unpaid.
4. They can be auctioned off and made to sit in the laps of the highest bidder
5. They’re fined for incredibly minor infractions such as bringing the wrong pom pom to practice.
6. Those calendars they pose in? They have to buy copies which they can then sell to make money.
7. They have to pass a “jiggle test”.
8. They have to pay for any trips to the salon.
9. Instruction on etiquette and formal dining (apparently some cheerleaders receive manuals that explain how to use a tampon)
Disgusting. Vile. Degrading. Dehumanizing.
Ew. That is gross, Tony. I had no idea.
Could you imagine if the WNBA had all male cheerleaders and what men would say? Oh, wait, I’m pretty sure a lot of them would just find it “gross” and say “I’m not watching that!” But women are supposed to be OK with other attractive women, because that’s also a male fantasy in itself.
Need to enjoy some brain bleach.
I’d be interested to hear these reasons. I’m an anarchist, so voting for me is participating in a system that I recognize as fundamentally corrupt. But I’ll vote for those who are a) less hostile to fundamental rights and less likely to destroy lives and the planet, and b) less likely to imprison and kill leftwing activists, in the US and abroad.
I say “less” because it’s relative. I expect no politician to respect lives and rights in practice, but it’s plain that the Republican party is actively hostile to them. I commented at Ed Brayton’s blog recently and I’m too lazy to find that post, but I’ll recreate it as best I can: the Republican party, in practice, opposes sexual and reproductive rights; hates LGBT people; opposes religious rights; rejects science; is perfectly content with AGW and other environmental destruction; wants to scrap public education and replace it with religious and corporate indoctrination or nothing; supports mass imprisonment; supports racism; hates unions; has contempt for indigenous people; wants greater corporate control, including in the areas most central to well-being; supports the oppression and exploitation of nonhuman animals; loves patriarchy; is imperialistic; wants to spend huge sums on weapons; supports torture; hates protesters; opposes access to health care; opposes children’s rights; thinks existing and increasing inequality is great; hates feminism; disdains the rest of the world and international law; is fine with violence against women; couldn’t care less about veterans; wants authoritarian workplace relations; opposes social support for poor people, including children and old people; hates immigrants; supports corporate concentration;…
It’s not that Obama or any other Democrat is the opposite of this. Absolutely not, as we’ve seen all too well. It’s that they’re relatively less evil. I have little faith that keeping those with the most evil intentions out of office will prevent them from continuing to work for their aims – I’m all too familiar with the histories of Spain, Italy, Germany, and the many countries whose democratically elected governments have been overthrown by or with the support of the US government.* And I don’t think electing Democrats will prevent, in the worst-case scenario, rightwing coups of whatever sort. But Democrats can help support changes that set progressive goals in place, making it just that much harder for them to be overthrown through violence – making the dystopias harder to bring about.
There aren’t any Democratic candidates in this year’s elections, or any elections, that anyone should get behind as people. But anywhere it matters people should get out and vote Democratic, to protect as best they can their rights and values and oppose the appalling agenda of the Republican party.
Then keep struggling.
* The Obama administration has had an unconscionable record on Latin America. A McCain or Romney administration would have been worse. It’s no less unconscionable for that.
Dalillama @ 107
Gah! HTML tag fail! Sorry.
Akira MacKenzie,
Is your area (or somewhere nearby) at all conducive to walking? If so – and it’s not contraindicated for some reason – it’s a great way to get out for a half an hour or so, be in the fresh air, get some exercise, and have opportunities for pleasant interactions (even if just a smile or “hi”).
SC:
That was quite an accurate summary of the Republican Party (the only thing I’d add is something about their pro-gun stance).
SC @ 154
I live out in the sticks. The Milwaukee-area goes from urban to rural very, very quickly, and once you leave the city (such as it is) there is not a lot to do or places to go to. There is no bus service and few sidewalks. If people walk or jog, they do it on the barely-kept country roads that lead nowhere. The countryside is pretty, but I’ve lived out here for 30 years. Seen one oak tree, seen ’em all.
And don’t even get me started on the winters.
I have come to the disconcerting realisation that my lunch looks just like a boxful of scrota. How am I going to unthink this idea? Link to image.
potstickers!
Yum!
who cares what they look like?
But chigau, they have little meatballs inside! Floating in amniotic gravy!
(I solved the problem by dousing them in vinegar and wolfing down the lot.)
…
Where on earth does the term “potstickers” come from?
Many versions had a tendency to stick to the pots in which they are cooked.
My YHWH, Amphiox! One *NEVER* cooks jiao zi in a pot!!!
Such heresy!
And as for frying them in a pan? An abomination!
Indeed yummy shrively scrota…I’d love me some of those!
Well, the cultures that know how to properly cook them don’t call them potstickers!
@153
Another piece of advice? Stop looking at women as something to ‘get’ or ‘hook’. Try seeing them as people with whom you could develop a mutually satisfactory friendship, one without UST on your part.
You want to learn how to get along with women? Think about how you developed your friendships with men. If your menfolk friendships aren’t based around misogynistic behaviors, try the exact same tactic with women.
Don’t just view women as something to get sex from. Yeah, you may get lucky and laid, but there is a hell of a lot more to women than just vaginas. If all you want is to get laid, get a blowup doll. If you want to make friends with women, try being their friend.
If nothing else, having women friends will help make you more comfortable talking to and interacting with women, which will help you develop the confidence necessary to go out and actually ask a woman out.
One, in fact, does, and has had no problems doing so.
How are they supposed to be cooked? I like them fine the way I’ve cooked them, so I’m intrigued to read that the tasty food I’ve been eating was cooked wrong.
Ye Pfffft! of All Knowledge begs to disagree, lising three common ways of cooking the buggers, boiling, steaming, or pan-frying. Certain regional variations are apparently cooked in yet other ways, such as Javanese gyōza, which is fried on on side and then water is added and a lid put on the pan / pot, so the other side is steamed (which happens to be what I tend to do, albeit using a wok).
@Tony / 148:
With regards to some supposed right to sex: I can’t find any references online, but one of the famous books introducing expats to Holland (The Undutchables) describes a few situations in which the town council or insurance covered visits to prostitutes. I’m guessing this would have been back in the ’80s. Don’t think it would ever happen in today’s political climate here, but it’s interesting to think that at some point it was considered something like a right.
Seems ridiculous to me – as you said, it’s not much more than masturbation.
Oh, Akira? Some thoughts:
– You mention not being happy with your body as it stands (and I think that it gets a lot tougher to change your habits after 40). Try just going for a half hour walk every week – maybe listen to Escape Pod or Starship Sofa while you do it. I vacillate between being a couch potato and running half marathons, and I know I feel better about myself (and my wife feels better about me) when I’m actively doing stuff.
– I think everyone’s right on target with their advice that you’re better served just by establishing relationships with women you find interesting, because they’re people you find interesting. It’s probably worth cultivating at least one interest outside of the SF / fantasy / horror / gaming area as well, just to have something to talk about.
– Maybe try taking a class at a local community college, joining a different club (I dunno, maybe a book club?) or volunteering somewhere. To put things somewhat cavalierly, if you can’t find potential partners in your activity, broaden your marketing…plus, doing more and different things can help make you a more interesting person.
– Try Internet dating. You might go out on a few crappy dates, but it’ll help figure out how to behave in a dating situation.
– Really, really don’t worry that you’ve blown your only chance for a relationship. As Dan Savage says, every relationship you’ll ever be in will end. Until one doesn’t.
Good luck!
Akira, I’d like to second what WithinThisMind said in 165. Forget about getting a girlfriend or getting sex for a while, and focus on making friends. Male and female friends. Ask yourself what you would like friends to be to you and be that to your friends. Have fun with being yourself and doing the things you enjoy and treat the women you do meet the way you would treat good male friends.
Do the things people do to make friends: go to game nights and poetry readings (you didn’t say if poetry was your writing focus), book launches, and anything else that sounds like fun. You mentioned that women going to these kinds of things tend to go in order to game and not to be picked up, and you are right, so game with them and have fun and become friends.
I suffer from severe depression and I’m almost pathologically introverted, so I know it can be really, really hard to get up the energy to go to events like these, but believe me when I say that when I do force myself to go, I’ve never regretted it. In the same vein, when friends ask you out, try to go out with them more often than not, and ask them out in return.
I don’t know if you have a job, but the workplace could also be a good place to make friends and hang out with people.
I also second getting involved in some online communities as mentioned upthread. Online communities can be great resources for friendships (and remember, that’s what you are looking for right now).
Whatever you do, do not buy into the “friendzone” myth. In addition to the benefits WithinThisMind lists to having women friends, just the fact of their friendship is already reason enough to pursue their friendship. Eventually, though this might take some time and I repeat, you shouldn’t focus on this part, one of your friends may become something more, or one of your friends (male or female) will introduce you to someone you might like and who might like you, or you’ll meet her during a night out enjoying the things you enjoy with or without your friends, and the rest will become history.
Remember, there are many girls and women who struggle with some of the issues you do.
@blf, #167:
Regional variation? That’s the correct way to cook them. I know because it’s how I learned to cook them before I became an adult and thus is the only way I’ve ever cooked them and thus must be correct.
Right?
TBH: when I would have the steamed-only version in Chinese restaurants I would be half-way through them before I would figure out why I thought the texture was wrong. Ever-observant Crip Dykes FTW!
I haven’t seen this posted elsewhere on Pharyngula so I hope it’s not a double.
BEHOLD. Gun Nut Bingo.
My patience for nerds who think their position as nerds gives them a free pass to say the most awful things things about gay men, women, and people of color in general has worn incredibly thin.
/drive by posting
@Gyeong Hwa:
Nice to see your ‘nym. You’ve probably been posting and I’ve just missed it, but nice to see you after what seems like a while anyway.
As for your drive-by, it’s more than welcome. I think you’ll find a lot of sympathy for the feeling here.
I’ve had several women literally tell me (referencing this: http://tashiliciouslyours.blogspot.ca/2014/05/the-entitlement-to-women-and-sex-they.html ) “I can’t believe you’re a guy and you wrote that! wow!”
’cause apparently, every single guy who writes about this needs to preface it “well not all menz” or “and this is how it affects me as a manz” and so on.
It makes me feel a little proud and a little sick to be honest :<
Pikachu! *hugs*
@Crip Dyke,
I still lurk. But I haven’t posted in a while. I read the articles and comments from time to time.
I made that rant because apparently I’m a discredit to gay men because I’m “bitchy” and too involved in activism and a discredit to men of color because I took a instagram with a model (which they thought meant I slept with him) which means I’m perpetuating the stereotype of sexually promiscuous brown men. This is from a crowd of nerds who felt really sorry for that Santa Barbara shooter because women could have “prevented it”.
@Crip Dyke,
I still lurk. But I haven’t posted in a while. I read the articles from time to time.
I made that rant because apparently I’m a discredit to gay men because I’m “bitchy” and too involved in activism and a discredit to men of color because I took an instagram with a model (which they thought meant I slept with him) which means I’m perpetuating the stereotype of sexually promiscuous brown men. This is from a crowd of nerds who felt really sorry for that Santa Barbara shooter because women could have “prevented it”.
@Inaji
Hello!
a-fucking-men.
I’m gonna start snapping back at people for that shit too.
I just want to thank the many Horders who have been on the Perfect Guy and subsequent threads. Both those like Crip Dyke and many others who have recognised and taken down the crap so informatively and eloquently, and those like Akira who have noted from their own experience that the undoubted hurt of not having relationships is a) nothing to do with Elliot Rodger and how he saw himself and b) doesn’t make you want to go out and kill someone ffs.
One of the people I love most in the world lives with that painful knowledge all the time, which makes me fucking furious when I see entitled idiots using that kind of personal difficulty as an excuse for their misogyny.
Hey, this place is eating my comments. :\
@Crip Dyke
I still read the article from time to time. But I haven’t posted much.
@Inaji
Wie geht’s?
Means your clickity-pointity mouse is hungry.
Re: my nerds rant
I’m being being called a typical gay slut by a bunch of nerds sympathetic to Rodger Elliot. If a gay guy sleeps around (which I actually haven’t been doing), than he’s a discredit to gay men everywhere, especially if he is a man of color. Because “now people are going to believe you have AIDS!”. But God forbids a bunch of nerds don’t get laid. And they gather all this simply because I took an instagram picture with a well known West Hollywood model. And then they don’t want to understand my ethnic culture and how it informs my view of things but I’m totally in the wrong if I don’t get their children cartoon references.
Yeah, I wanted to thank Akira.
What Akira did in the other thread I thought was personally brave. It takes some courage to open up like that about your experience in a venue where the qualities for which you have otherwise been rejected are effectively camouflaged. It’s easy to feel that once those qualities come out *here* in this venue X where they have been previously unknown, one might lose this space too.
I agree that that particular thread was a far from optimal place to do it, but I understand the risk, and at least a large part of the goal was to take down the connection between loneliness/ having few/no sex partners and being a murderous thug. It would have been easy for Akira to double down and get defensive when challenged on the placement of the original comments and/or their scattershot nature that included content that requested personal sympathy/advice in with the more on-topic takedown.
But Akira didn’t do that. In a vulnerable, probably scary moment, Akira was able to listen, to think about what others were saying, to remove part of the discussion to a better venue, and even to ask those who wanted to keep that discussion in the thread to back off.
it was a marvelous example of generous thinking and action in the face of criticism. Akira, I wanted that part celebrated as part of what makes you valuable here – and as yet another example of one of the things I love about Pharyngula: we get to be wrong, and our errors aren’t embraced even while we as individuals are. It makes learning possible for those who wish to learn.
Of course, those who don’t wish to learn find Pharyngula unremittingly hostile, but the internet’s a big place. They can gather a cult to which they can preach unquestioned in some other electron cluster.
Gyeong Hwa:
Good, thank you. How are you? It’s great to see you here, but I’m hardly one to talk, I’m not here much myself these days.
Pikachu:
Assbags. All of ’em.
@brian, #11:
Okay, so I went a week with almost no Horde not long ago, and summer class has started so I’ve been on the laptop a lot more, which allows me to keep up (during breaks, etc.) but also means that when I have extended time I can’t be going back and catching up: I have to read law.
So I hadn’t noticed your #11 until just now and clicked the image. I lol’d so hard I just had to thank you.
My big boss is a jack ass and my manager is incompetent. And I spent six hours last week being in sewage water (as part of work). (I’ve been telling everyone this.)
But actually I’ve been good.
Gyeong Hwa:
Eeeuw. What we’re you doing?
The Uphill Both Ways in the Snow School of Cookery.™
Catching rogue apostrophes?
Utensils are arbitrary cultural constructs anyways.
It’s all a variation of a sharpened stick and an open fire…
blf:
Well, I’m certainly not catching them. Sheesh.
But surely most of the Founding Fathers believed men had a right to sex – with their slaves? Checkmate, feminists!
Jacob Schmidt
Horrifically so! I shall have to consume a few beers now to recover from the shock.
blf
I Pfffffart in the general direction of the Pfffft! of All Knowledge! This is, truthfully speaking, like pouring Heinz ™ ketchup on a Filet migñon con salsa de champiñones. I need to sit down now.
@ CD
Wrong!!! I cannot imagine the horror of growing up with fried dumplings. My eternal sympathies.
I must go lie down somewhere.
@blf, #188:
I love you.
@nick gotts:
The kind of statement for which ROFLsob was invented.
theophontes
Well, great. I’m in desperate need of Jamaican fried dumplings now. I hope you’re happy.
Silly question time; does Aratina comment here anymore?
“I love you.”
Help, help! I’m being repressed! Come and see the ah,
violencegiggles inherent in the system!Wipe the spittle off yer screen, keyboard, and ceiling. And for feck’s sake, go change yer panties. That‘s just embarrassing…
</snark>The Mellow Monkey
Jamaican WRONG dumplings!
.
Teh Thunderdome standards have slackened since we stopped the institution of compulsory Hate Week ™.
A return to full tardigrade control of this thread is, by popular demand, to be instituted shortly.
Afraid I don’t know of (or at least don’t recall) Jamaican Fried Dumplings, but I could sure go for some Jerk Chicken…
And some Dragon Stout.
{aside: HTF! did blf get that cool “[/snark]” tag snuck in there? Technology, the bane of repressive tardigrade regimes everywhere.}
Janine, Aratina Cage shows up now and again, not too often.
@theophotes:
your other ‘nym is “popular”?
@Goodbye Enemy Janine:
Do you mean at all on Pharyngula, or in the Dome specifically?
Go ogle using:
“”aratina cage” site:freethoughtblogs/pharyngula” [without the exterior quotes, but with the ‘nym quotes to keep aratina linked to cage].
on the advanced search page, you’ll get time options. You can search just the past week, the past month, the past year, and I think other options.
When you use time-option searching, it not only limits the returns, but also somehow adds time-prioritization to the algorithm, so more recent things are slightly more likely to come up near the top (though things are by no means in strict chronological order). Glancing through a few pages should give you a good idea of when the last aratina comment was.
As for me, I thought I’d seen aratina’s nym around here semi-recently, but not in the immediate past. It feels like a couple of months, but I recommend something more definitive than my vague memory as a resource.
Oops. And there’s Inaji with a better answer.
My impression was similar – infrequent and irregular, but not gone.
Still and all, the chronological searches can be useful, so I hope the info wasn’t totally wasted.
@ CD
Let’s see:
theophontes (恶 六六六 流行 缓步 动物)
… Mmmmh, that does look a tad better. You might be spared the next, minuscule , purge, after all.
I missed Pikachu?
dammit
Just curious. About a month ago, I got into a rather heated argument with Aratina about some trans issues. Specifically, he supports RuPaul’s use of the term “tranny”. And he hates the term “cis”. Somehow, it sounds to close to “sissy” and therefore, a slur.
He was also fine with wannabe trans gatekeepers like Andrea James using hyperbole like calling trans people who hates the use of “tranny” “middlebrow trans fascists”.
And somehow, all of this would somehow stop gay men from calling each other other “girl” and “she”.
I got angry and cut off the argument and unfollowed him. He has done the same to me.
I now see him having conversations with people from the pit.
@ chigau (違う)
Pikachu could help with the Reinstitution ™?
Ok, go ahead with the invitation. We could finance this initiative by cancelling Owlmirror‘s cheque.
First, Catch yer troll. MRAs, cretinistas, and islamophobes work best, but any troll will do.
Second, Grind the troll into a fine dust. (Safety Tip: Wear goggles and a mask. Troll dust is annoying…)
Third, Zap with about a zillion volts. Or stick in the microwave for a few minutes.
You now have a malleable putty, which can be forged into many things. However, you have to work fast, as it tends to set into an hardened lump rather quickly. You can keep troll putty malleable for awhile with repeated zappings / nukings, but the faster you it use it, the better.
Make an open broket:
<Make a c:
cMake an o:
oMake a d:
dMake an e:
eMake a close broket:
>Continue on with the other bits:
</snark></code>Wait a few minutes for the troll putty to set, and you have a
</snark>!@ blf
I hunted a snark, but returned with a
</boojum>.Please advise!
That explains the circus of
</bandersnatchs>now savagely snapping downstairs.Thanks a lot. May a
</jubjub>tree fall on you.code‽すごい！I got a
snipe!Oooh, this is shiny for q tags:
Why I am reminded of the time we all starting making comments in
-- --- .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. .?We’re going to have to rename this the “Fun With Tags Dome”…
@blf:
Because you’re just a little to young to remember the Horde’s previous outburst of coded silliness
Hey! Who do you think carved the original version?
(Never did get any royalties…)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/23/1301451/-Prior-to-death-Fred-Phelps-had-change-of-heart-according-to-grandson
What?!
*double-take induced whiplash*
A reviewer of Bulfinch’s Greek/Roman Mythology had to say:
Gyeong Hwa and no underwear conversation? I am sad. Another time perhaps.
___
So, I have not made the cut to go back to school. Sadness continues. Now it’s figuring out how to convince school that they really want me hanging around campus. This may take time.
plant it.
Speaking of my gaming hobby, Posthuman Studios, publishers of “Eclipse Phase” posted the following:
http://eclipsephase.com/regarding-mras
Bravo!
Inaji @224:
Oh the irony. That review is *rich*!
Dhorvath:
I’m sorry to hear that.
Okay, over at Butterflies and Wheels I found This shit from Blanche Quizno.
I’ve responded but fuck me this pisses me off.
I held off so much watching fucked up gender crap fly in those Isla Vista/Rodger threads when it was mere casual neglect, but mocking my existence as a way to feel superior?
Fuck you, Blanche Quiznos. You’re the kind of feminist I don’t need anywhere near me.
And I’m not specifically pissed at anyone else, I’m not saying this to say anyone else is evil or anything,* but I really thought Tony!, Sally Strange, and Josh – who were in that thread – had the skills and knowledge to take that shit on.
There were others, too, that I wouldn’t be surprised to see had the skills and knowledge (Jafafa Hots and Throwaway, to name two) but I don’t know as much about what they know, I don’t have the specific memories of them participating in threads that would demonstrate specific skills and knowledge the way I do with T!, SS, & J.
So many chances, and no one calls bullshit on the mocking. Argggh. It’s so fucking frustrating. And it makes it that much harder to have good faith and to blow off the casual neglect of people insisting that they know the genders of the people killed in Isla Vista, because when trans people *are* victims of murders, the media always reports that quickly, correctly, and respectfully, don’tcha know?
All sorts of people have made the point that just because men died doesn’t mean the murders weren’t driven by misogyny.
yes. Absofuckinglutely.
So why were people trying so hard to specify the genders of the victims in the aftermath anyway? Just a few hours ago, cm’s changeable monicker felt compelled to chime in on the perfect guy thread:
Yes. Facts. It’s a fact that four of the ‘six dead women’ were reportedly men.
And, again, I’m not pissed off at cm’s changeable monicker so much as I’m pissed off at the relentless confidence that we just fucking know no trannies were killed. It’s just so easy to be sure that the victims, no matter how many, will all belong to one or at most two genders. Couldn’t possibly be any other way.
I’m fucking tired of it. Mostly I’m just fucking tired of people not seeing that **you can’t end misogyny without substantially taking on and eroding trans* oppression**.
How, precisely, will misogyny end if there are still only 2 permitted genders?
How will you police the boundary of woman without sneering at women who don’t know their place?
What will you do when no woman is murdered unless and until she violates some gender taboo?
Be content?
Really?
Fuck every single comment in any of those Isla Vista threads that pretended for half a second that we “know” the genders of the victims – any or all. No matter what help they did or didn’t provide on this or that sub-issue, every single comment that took that shit for granted is part of the fucking problem.
If you can’t give a shit about the trannies, at least give a shit about the excuses trans* hatred gives to murderers of cis women.
How’s that for a feminist manifesta?
*really, I hope you can see the compliment in a trans* person having faith in specific non-trans* folks ability to have our backs. I couldn’t be disappointed without thinking quite a lot of you in the first place.
CD #230
*hugs*
I composed and deleted a number of responses but they were just inadequate.
Maybe tomorrow.
Crip Dyke:
I’m sorry CD. I failed to recognize the impact of Blanche’s words when I first read them. I need to work on that.
shit oh dear
It’s 2am.
good night
@ chigau
Before you retire: Our uniforms!
If that doesn’t bring sweet dreams, then I don’t know.
(Via Akira‘s linky in #227)
@ CD
I did not read the exchange on B & W, until you pointed it out. However, I am sorry to say that it would likely have gone over my head. I, too, need to work on that.
theophontes:
Ummm, how are you going to fit into that uniform?
Given the image for the current ‘Dome, this is nicely relevant:
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/anatomical-drawing-show-the-guts-of-godzilla-and-other-1580745979
This was an interesting day. Australian IPhones are being targeted by some virus that demands money payments to unlock them.
Facebook was just inaccessible in Thailand for the last hour or so, with Line and Instagram patchy, and all hell broke lose on Twitter, until FB became accessible again, now people are speculating if it was a case of the Junta flexing its muscles or just a gateway problem.
And last but not least Lyle Shelton, creepy Christian lobbyist dimwit from the Ken Ham school of reality, favorited without apparent irony my tweet asking who god might favor in the upcoming “State of Origin” rugby match tonight.
A good day.
Oh wow. This guy made retractable Wolverine claws! Cool!
Oh, and he has boots that let him walk on walls.
Ok I get the notion, but I think you’re off target. Wowbagger, Sally, Josh and the rest of us have been putting in many hours every day for many years now to refute the toxic shit, crap, lies and whatever else gets thrown at decent people on FtB and other internet fora.
But I think it gets a bit ridiculous to complain that “this specific issue I personally had with comment X on forum Y on day Z was not addressed to my satisfaction by commenter A who was present at the time and has in the past addressed similar issues to my satisfaction”.
Come on now. That’s just really ridiculous.
rorschach:
I understand where you’re coming from, but I think Crip Dyke has a point.
Not until he pays you a salary he doesn’t.
He? Seriously?
Please tell me this was an interference from German and you meant “der Punkt”
So she. Or whatever Crip Dyke defines as. I don’t know, I assumed. If “he” is wrong I do apologise. Doesn’t really change the point I made.
That was a hell lot of a notpology. You just misgendered a transwoman who has “dyke” in her fucking username when the point she made was the complete erasure of transwomen in public discourse.
I think, if anything, you just made her fucking point.
You’re crazy. Or you need a hobby. You certainly can’t read for comprehension. What the hell.
And for being so aggressive and attacking, you don’t actually seem to know what you are talking about.
Are all lesbians transwomen now? Or all transwomen lesbians?
My point was about expecting commenters present in a comment thread to live up to some perceived expectation of what they might say to repudiate a made claim. Nothing to do with Crip Dyke in person at all. Just you going off for no good reason. But yeah, whatever.
All lesbians are WOMEN
Unless you want to argue that transwomen aren’t women, if that’s the hill you choose.
Also fuck you for you’re ableism.
@ Rorschach
You realise it was discriminatory? Every day we discuss the problems of privilege blindness here on Pharyngula. You seem to have missed something. Why is that?
Let’s start with Pffffffft:
Obviously logic is not for you. Try yelling some more.
What was?
@ rorschach
Your belittling of Crip Dyke‘s comments.
Why do you trivialise them so? They are most certainly not “just really ridiculous” arguments. They lie at the crux of what we are trying to get across on these blogs.
rorschach:
She has a good reason for going off.
You just misgendered a transwoman and offered a notpology. I trust you can see the problem with that.
Where and when did this occur? At this point I think I would appreciate Crip Dyke, who I dont know well, to come forward and tell me where exactly I offended in their view. Because I surely didn’t intend to, I was merely responding to a comment Tony made in response to @230.
rorschach:
Surely you recognize that trans*women and men routinely have their concerns trivialized and are often misgendered. In the space of a few comments, you’ve done both. You slipped up and made a mistake. Please don’t dig.
Absolutely, I do, and I mean it. My trans friends sensitize me to this all the time because it is a big problem to them. I let them use my bathroom too, believe it or not. What the fuck is your point?
Anyway, enough fake outrage for one night, you guys go right ahead and condemn me in no uncertain terms for many days to come.
Hint for a killer blow: Liken me to Chas. Draw parallels, cite comments from 2008. You can do it.
Well, for me, I’d like to apologize to Crip Dyke for completely missing the implications of Blanche Quizno’s words. Thanks for pointing it out.
Also, misgendering is rude and apology-worthy.
I think so too, if done on purpose. That’s a shitty way of saying fuck you, and a shit move altogether. It’s just that I am not aware of Crip Dyke’s gender, and while you may argue “why didnt you pay attention to that in the last few years, you should have known that”, well I didn’t, and I don’t. So if you would like to condemn me for that, please go ahead, guilty as charged. But there was no purposeful rudeness or “misgendering”.
theophontes #234
hmmm
That could work.
rorschach
I’m pretty sure that lesbians are women.
However, the not-pology afterwards, and the continuing refusal afterward that to acknowledge the point is purposeful rudeness. You can no longer claim ignorance once the misgendering was pointed out to you. The polite, non-rude response would be a simple true apology, followed by dropping the topic entirely.
rorschach:
You’ve been mildly criticized. I see no condemnation.
@ Tony
A limb into each of the sleeves of the armoured suit. (Eight is the perfect number.)
@ chigau
Indeed! With lasers for blasting our eBil Nematode Nemeses!
Nice doubling down rorschach. I especially like you somehow blatantly ignoring the fact that “dykes”/lesbians are necessarily women and then sneering nebulously about “logic” when called out on your inept little evasions. And then you play fucking martyr. What a fucking joke. Stop digging for your own sake.
If the shoe fits.
Well, what have we got:
-Misgendering a woman who has “Dyke” in her name
-Claiming to be unaware of her trans* status while at the same time calling her off-base for criticising trans* erasure (I’m wondering who’s got the sucktastic reading comprehension here)
-giving a notpology (whatever…)
-calling people crazy
-get off about “fake outrage”
-forstalling criticism with “liken me to Chas”
Yes, totally cool, bro.
You obviously can’t read for comprehension either. “dykes are lesbians” is not disputed, in fact that’s what I said and quoted. The inference that was made by someone else is that all transwomen are dykes ie lesbians.
“All transwomen are women. All lesbians are women.” How about a MtF trans? How about a trans identifying as female who is into men, or a gay trans male into females? Reality, it’s not for everyone. Too hard.
Rorschach:
The outrage isn’t fake. You’ve been rightly called out for being a complete assbag. Some of us will remember this particular bit of assbaggery much longer than many days. You had a chance to correct, to understand that there was no excuse for misgendering, even if you honestly missed the dyke in Crip Dyke, because you can always use a person’s nym or a singular they.
Crip Dyke fights like hell when it comes to trans*person awareness, and a lot of us are grateful for that, even though it does result in a minor slap quite often, because thanks to her persistence, we’re getting better and better at being more inclusive. A lot of us who have been around for years on end, putting up with shit every day are damn happy to have CD around, nudging us about when we fuck up, even when that fuck up is by omission.
As you’re using your standard “oh gods, I was criticised, I must run away!” tactic, do everyone a favour and stay away until you figure things out, and don’t do something so fucking embarrassing as try to hide behind a dictionary over the word dyke. Fucking asshole.
None of which is the point. You gendered someone as “he” who gives you a pretty fucking blatant tell in their user name that they’re not male. Even if you didn’t notice that and genuinely had no idea about CD’s preferred pronouns, you’ve been around here plenty long enough to know that defaulting to male pronouns isn’t welcome.
rorschach
Where?
Speaking of reading for comprehension! And logic!
Gilliel first said
They then clarify after your response:
The point is that Crip Dyke has Dyke right there in the fucking name. And yet you still misgendered her. And now here you continue, with notpologies, misreading while accusing others of misreading, and continuing to be a condescending douchebag when a simple sincere apology and shutting the fuck up was the appropriate response. Fucking imbecile.
Well, I said that he misgendered a transwoman who has “Dyke” as part of her name.
Of course, only the “woman” part of transwoman can be infered from “dyke”, therefore this is all somehow my fault. Because reasons. Because . Well, I don’t know. Because there are special general pronouns for transwomen*
*I’ll happily use whatever pronoun any particular trans* person prefers, but as far as I’m aware the pronoun prefered by most transwomen is “she”
Word.
Great fucking job, rorschach.
By all means, keep fucking digging, assclam.
Rorschach #256
Intent. Not fucking magic. Seriously, what is even the fuck?
Inaji @ 266,
Seconded
Crip Dyke @#230:
I can only apologise that that hurt you. I’m not in a good enough headspace to try and explain what I was thinking beyond everyday SIWOTI, but when I’m back, maybe I’ll be able to.
(Meatspace events are about to take me offline for a couple of weeks.)
*olive branches*
http://news.discovery.com/space/galaxies/is-our-galaxys-monster-black-hole-a-wormhole-140527.htm
what.
no, but the one you misgendered is. which is the fucking point.
nope.
[1]A woman.
[2]A straight woman.
[3]what.
It will stop raining by Friday.
Good.
I need to plant.
An Australian Dept of Education takes a dim view of certain christian education materials in a religious instruction program.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-29/victoria-department-of-education-to-overhaul-religion-education/5487274
Linked after 30 minutes and 13 subsequent comments.
Please read and share. Im so angry and disgusted that I can hardly find the right words for a meaningful comment. Again my apologies for posting off topic on P.Zs main thread.
http://www.thejournal.ie/tuam-mass-grave-babies-1488267-May2014/
@ Crip Dyke
I am starting to understand the extent of the problem. Excuse my tardiness.
CD
Urgh, I’m sorry
My only excuse is that it was posted while I typed
No individual is responsible for responding to any one incident.
My listing of individuals before was me relating that I have enough trust in the Horde to feel disappointment… While the original acts of Kevin Alexander or Blanche Quiznos certainly call for individual condemnation, if they’d happened on Salon or Slate or HuffPo, I wouldn’t be disappointed at all by the failure to address them in subsequent comments.
I expect better here because we say we want to be better here. If I was one of a bunch of commenters that failed to address some racist crap, I’d hope that some of our awesomely anti-racist folks would be all over the topic of tolerated racism. It would be up to me to apply that to my own behavior. Perhaps if I had started a comment before the racist crap went up, but a kiddo was on my arm before I finished so I punched submit and walked away, I could be okay with the fact that my comment 5 min after David Duke’s protege’s masterwork failed to address said masterwork.
Or if I’d read it but was on my way out the door to an important thing and was worried about being late, I might feel a different reaction.
There are lots of possibilities. But the point is that the existence of the problem is not sufficient to show how one person does or does not resist/perpetuate the problem.
Specific ire is only for Quiznos and Alexander just now (and, really, the ire for Quiznos has faded with new distractions). Anyone else is not being condemned by me, though I of course encourage anyone to examine their own behavior any time they think it’s possible that they are participating in dynamics of oppression.
So, an hour ago some guy ran up to a pair of women outside my house, grabbed at a necklace (breaking it and cutting her), shoved her to the ground and then took off because the women yelling was causing people to bubble out of houses. While it’s nice to know that if I start yelling in my neighborhood people will come to my aid, the fact that this happened in the middle of the day is damn scary. All I heard was the yelling, and I didn’t actually see the perp, but I ran to the women to see what help they needed.
I convinced them to call the cops. They didn’t want to be a bother and he didn’t actually get the necklace after all…
Then, like clockwork, all of us who were women gathered and began relaying stories of past experiences, how to protect ourselves, other incidents in the area and I was standing there with a part of my mind truly amazed at how we do expect it to all fall onto us. And there was the despairing cries of “We can’t even walk around our neighborhood in the middle of the day without this happening?”
I just… fuck this. Fuck that guy. Fuck everything honestly.
Rowan:
Fuckin A. That’s shitty.
I’m sorry.
*wonderful*
Someone decided to resurrect the ‘How do drive a Brit crazy’ thread…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/10/how-to-drive-a-brit-crazy/comment-page-2/#comment-803680
Rowan
Fucking hell. I’m sorry.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/29/thats-some-mistake/comment-page-1/#comment-803715
This thread pisses me off. Or rather, some of the commenters…
I have a question regarding women’s health. Why do women need to get screened for cervical cancer every year (I see that they’ve rolled it back to every three years recently)? From what I can tell, there are more cases of say, throat cancer every year. But the doctor doesn’t insist I get my throat swabbed biannually. Is there really a good scientific reason to support this practice? Especially for women who were vaccinated for HPV and practice safe sex? In other words, what makes cervical cancer so special that I’m supposed to regularly get screened for it but not for other types of cancer? I’m asking because as a survivor I find the experience nearly traumatic, and after thinking about it, I’m not sure the benefits justify the cost. And I’m tired of every non-female-related medical complaint (for example, a sprained thumb) somehow turning into a lecture about how I need to get my nether regions prodded.
Tony @ 290, it pisses me off, too. More than I can fucking say. Apparently, no apology is going to be forthcoming, either. Honestly, I’d like to think better of the people here.
carbonfox:
I’m not an expert, but…it’s my understanding that cervical cancer will often metastasize quickly if not caught, and it’s easy to deal with if caught early. People should get routinely screened for colon cancer, skin cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer.
I need to get my first colonoscopy soon. I’m only 31, but my maternal grandfather died of colon cancer, and Mom had suspicious polyps at 40.
I’m also continuing the crappy day and therefore going to be incredibly pedantic over on the piss off a brit thread because that’s about the only way I have to cope with today so far.
Inaji, thanks for the explanation. I really respect you and the other regulars and hearing it from you makes me less nervous about the procedure.
Tear ’em a new one, Rowan. Idiotic ideas like that make it easier for brutes to commit crimes like what happened in your neighborhood. I hope your week gets better soon.
P.S. Do you enjoy being a vet tech? My cousin is a vet tech and LOVES her job but it sounds rough.
I absolutely love being a vet tech… and I don’t recommend it for most people. It’s a job that takes a very specific personality to be able to do, as you go through incredible highs and lows, often in the same day, with regards to patients and their people. Working in a shelter, as I do now, is also quite different from day practice. In many ways it’s better, but in some it’s also worse especially as we are in the thick of kitten season and there’s only so many people who can foster bottle babies. Quite a few have had to be ‘most humaned’ because there’s no one available to care for them, and that’s heartbreaking. But then we have cases where we really really try to save something, like right now we have a 3 year old cat who only weighs 3 1/2 pounds (skele-kitty) and is missing half her tongue due to some sort of recent trauma. We’re trying, because even with the amount of pain she must be in, she is headbumping us and purring up a storm. She’ll eat happily from a syringe, and we’re hoping once the swelling and infection go down that she might be able to eat/drink on her own sufficiently. We’ll see.
You also have to be prepared to deal with being peed on, pooped on, anal-glanded on, vomited on, bled on, caused to bleed (scratches, bites), and potentially very seriously injured. I was accidentally bit in the face by a pit bull last year. I leaned over while the very friendly pibble was ‘talking’ and she turned her head while still whine and caught me in the lip. She went super submissive/quiet afterward, which was cute/sad, but I still had to go get sutured up. Fortunately the scar is barely noticeable.
:sigh:
15 min and counting….
though to be fair, it looks like a slow time for commenting around here.
Rowan @294: My family has history as well. During my last checkup, my doctor gave me a kit for collecting fecal samples to send to a lab. Mentioned here, along with a more recent home testing kit. Might be worth looking into, and could cut down on the frequency of colonoscopies, anyway. They are a pain in the arse, though not has ‘orrible as prostate biopsy.
hey!
leave me out of it. Thanks.
Rowan:
Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by “anal-glanded on”?
I eagerly await the reply to Tony!’s #301.
Is there a limit to the number of times you can blockquote within a blockquote?
Anal glands are found in many mammals, including common domestic carnivores. They emit a foul-smelling secretion and sometimes do so in quantity and without warning, or need to be induced to do so.
Cats and dogs have scent glands around their anuses, also called “anal glands”, that secrete substances that allow them to identify each other. We recognize each other by face, they recognize each other by smell and that is why dogs and cats are always sniffing each other there. It is also why they sniff each other’s feces (to see who dropped that pile). When they are stressed, these glands can suddenly empty onto the person handling them.
Dalillama, chimera:
Thanks for the response, particularly chimera (I’ve always wondered why dogs sniff each others’ butts ((and no, I never thought about looking it up)) ).
I responded to the last comment before me in the “That’s some mistake” thread. I didn’t (and might) respond to the transphobic shit going on because of my own inability due to the sheer rage it induces. I’m trying to speak up and be heard, but my fuck is it hard to compose sentences in response to some of the shit I see.
{scene: the stage is hushed, except for an almost imperceptible sound, much like a pane of glass being tickled. A small tardigrade slowly makes its way to the center of the stage and deposits a little gazonklenut…}
.
{a tiny chuckle is nearly heard above the quietness of little claws scritching an exit stage left}
sweetjebus
am I meant to sleep tonight?
@ chigau
Ooops, I should have rather written “cliquez ne pas!”
(Perhaps eat a large block of cheese before retiring to bed.)
A bowl of cherries has been placed on my desk.
.
I must try not to eat them all.
I see that others have answered the anal gland question already. Just let me add, that stuff is foul, and sticky, and you WILL smell like it ALL day, no matter how many times you wash or apply some sort of other-smelling spray.
What’s really awesome is when you get it in your hair or on your face. A smart tech quickly realises that talking during an anal gland expression is a great big pile of ‘Nope!’. It’s also funny to watch people do the Leap o’ Avoidance when the realise they are in the line of fire.
As another example of things technicians do… we had to get urine sample on a dog. We were trying for a cystocentesis sample (needle into bladder) but doggy decided to start urinating. So I caught the pee in my bare hand and the vet sucked up a sample with a needless syringe. Taking ‘free catch sample’ to unexpected levels, and yet a completely ordinary part of the job.
I love my job. I love my job. I swear my boyfriend doesn’t ask me every night after work if I’m safe to hug. I love my job. :P
Rowan, fuck I’m so sorry about what happened and I hope you and the others and especially the immediate victim are OK. And I can certainly see from your description why that job is intense and has its rewards but is not for everyone! The animals are lucky to have you. (It’s a pity they also have some shitty humans, sadly. It’s good that they have you and your colleagues).
rowan
*hugs*
nyarlathotep
I know what you mean.
This week has been fucking exhausting already
Nah. I can tell when I’m not welcome! Friends would and could have noticed that I’m drunk, tired and flaming out having my buttons pushed. Instead maximum malevolence was assumed, and I was jumped on milking every comment for worst intent possible. I can live with that coming from Caine and Gilliel, but not everyone else. So yeah, take care.
I’d just like to preemptively let everyone know that, if I ever say anything shitty around here, it’s because I’m drunk and tired and therefor exempt from criticism.
Well done. Assume the worst charitable. Look, I’m happy for you to pile on, I’m a good target right now and it will give you cred with the most dominant commenters . So go for it. I’m done anyway.
There went another irony meter.
Tony @303:
@carbonfox: what makes cervical cancer so special that I’m supposed to regularly get screened for it but not for other types of cancer?
The short answer is “because we can”. We’d love to have a pap smear or equivalent for a whole slew of other cancers, but we just don’t have them yet. The pap smear is considered a good screening test because it not only catches cancer early, it can catch cancer before it’s cancer (dysplasia) and prevent women from ever getting cervical cancer. Also, it’s uncomfortable but not particularly physically dangerous, i.e. no radiation, no major risk of perforating anything, no big risk of infection since everything’s completely sterilized or disposable. Unfortunately, it’s also a high false negative test, so it’s done every year to prevent cancers from growing unnoticed. The newer tests are slightly better so low risk women often get pushed back to every 2-3 years with a negative test. The other down side, as you mentioned, is the risk of triggering women with sexual abuse histories. I don’t know if anyone’s worked out how to deal with that one. Medical students are taught to be very communicative about what they’re doing and to avoid touching the patient without explaining what’s going on and making sure it’s ok, but whether a rushed gynecologist really does that every time…I doubt it. Sorry, got no good answers for that one.
@CripDyke: I’m one of the people who failed to respond appropriately to the transphobic comments on the “some mistake” thread. I could give you my excuse, but it’s just an excuse so instead I just want to say I’m sorry and will try to do better next time. And thanks for calling me on it.
*plays something on the world’s tiniest violin*
The StevoR-ening begins!
Noted: excuse, yet continued lack of apology.
It’s odd. A few days ago I massively stuck my foot in my mouth, practically back out my anus. It was entirely an accident, something utterly unthinking and unintended. When called on it, I was first quite confused and hurt. After the first response I posted, something clicked in my brain and I understood the issue. I was still hurt, I still thought the level of anger excessive…. but I made a second post and I apologised.
I was standing on ground, and there was a shovel nearby. But I didn’t dig.
And no one seems to hate me, or be holding a mistake against me. I’m going to make mistakes. I’m not perfect. Sometimes these get pointed out in ways that are painful to experience. But I’m going to say ‘sorry’ and attempt not to make that same mistake again.
rorschach:
Of FFS! You were fucking criticized for things you said. Maximum Malevolence? Hyperbolic much?!
Instead of owning what you said, apologizing, making efforts to show that you understand why people are angry, and working towards not making the same mistakes again…you chose the StevoR route. I haven’t interacted much with you in the time I’ve been here, but I’ve read many good comments from you and this saddens me.
BTW, the correct nym is Inaji.
Oggie @319:
You rock!
Thank you, Tony. You just made my day measurably better.
Tony:
Naw. More into folk than rock.
All Hail Ogvorbis, master of the pyramid of editorial terror!
*cowers before the mighty quotestack*
So you kept misgendering Crip Dyke because you were drunk, tired and everyone was picking on you.
How difficult it must be to nail your last limb to the cross all by yourself.
“He didn’t kill for religion, but the truth is that Elliot Rodger was a jihadist—for organised misogyny.”
Dude, it’s not like everyone’s personality changes in the same way or in any other predictable way when they get drunk. Even in my limited experience, I’ve encountered happy drunks, slap-happy drunks, giggly drunks, amorous drunks, huggy drunks, drunks who got thoroughly fed up with all of the stupidity in the whole world, competitive drunks, and drunks in aggressive denial; importantly, despite knowing almost all of those people fairly well before I ever saw them drunk, I had no way of telling beforehand what they would become. Again: some people’s personalities intensify, others become uninhibited, yet others change completely and in seemingly random directions.
This is the Internet. We can’t see your face, we can’t hear your voice, we can’t smell your breath. We can’t even tell that you’re drunk when you are. That means we can’t build up the experience to tell you’re drunk based on what you say!
Apparently you become a contrarian drunk whose ability to think things through is impaired, and who makes ad-hominem arguments*. Good, I’ve learned something. I strongly suggest you simply don’t comment here (or ideally anywhere) while you’re drunk; wait for the next morning, drink a lot of water, and then try again.
I know many people comment here while they’re drunk. I’ve never understood why anyone thought that was a good idea, but when a happy drunk or a giggly one does it, it may well be harmless – that’s just clearly not what you are when you’re drunk.
* You implied quite heavily that whatever Ináji or Giliell** say is irrelevant because of who says it.
** It’s Quenya. It makes sense that there’s one L in the middle and two at the end.
Decisions, decisions.
I did the laundry, hung it outside and now it’s raining.
Bring it in or just let it get an extra rinse?
Chigau, raining here, too. Yesterday was scorching hot, so I gave the new plants a heavy dose of water. Now it rains all fucking day.
Ináji
Yup.
Bin there done that.
That god dude can be real shithead.
@Rowan, #324
Which is why you, Rowan, are just an awesomely wonderful commenter to have around.
…and why I am a bitter middle-aged woman who would be run out of here on rails if she didn’t make such a consistent effort to get facts and logic right.
@someone over there at #332 whose soul is shining so brightly in my eyes that I can’t read the ‘nym:
I used to hang-dry laundry in Portland, OR.
You just plan it as a 5 day process, checking every 6 hours to see if it’s the right moment to bring it in. If you absolutely have to have something dry before 5 days and it’s not done when you need it? Bring in just the articles you need and hit ’em with a hair dryer.
It’s a plan that worked for me for a good 3 years. And Thor can send all the rain he wants, I still save energy & money.
Once, when I was hanging the laundry, a workman who was doing something electrical in the alley, made a kindly meant remark about doing things the old-fashioned way.
I responded with my standard “I prefer to let God dry my laundry.”
He seemed somewhat taken aback.
I assumed he was a Christian but couldn’t really dispute my assertion.
—
In the winter, the laundry hangs indoors, with a fan on to move the air.
So maybe not God.
—
and
hugs, CD
Over at Greta’s, Maureen Brian posted a link to an article by the Independent. I’d quote something, but I’m not going to pay the $.99/month to have full access to their site.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elliot-rodger-videos-police-admit-being-warned-about-killers-youtube-channel-but-not-watching-it-9458006.html
Rowan @296,
That sounds dangerous, lol… My aunt and said cousin are leaders in the local humane society and they have turned them into severe misanthropes because of how people mistreat or abandon their pets, people sending adopted pets to the pound even though the adoption contract says they should return it to the former foster, etc. I was an EMT for all of six months or so before I, being a lesser woman than some of my coworkers, decided that the meager pay and non-existent respect weren’t worth the bodily fluids and back pain. So I have mad respect . I hope skele-kitty gets better!!! I’ve adopted a few kitties and it just breaks my heart that I can’t snatch them all up out of the shelter…but if my landlord caught wind of that, I and the kitties would end up homeless, lol. Keep us updated on kitty of you can.
Dianne @320,
Thanks for the extra input. I was reacting emotionally to what I saw as cruelty and sexism where there wasn’t actually any to be had (I’d got myself to think the pap was a patriarchal pathologizing of female bodies since other screenings are not commin). On top of my assault, I’ve always been somewhat distrustful of medical prodding after I had a bad experience with a doctor; during an exam prior to a surgery, he inserted his finger into my rectum without telling me he was going to do it. I was only 16 and I felt very violated and bothered me for weeks. In hindsight it’s almost humorous how horrified it was, but at the time it was terrible, and the event lodged itself into my subconscious.
Carbonfox:
Unfortunately, that’s not uncommon. I have a terrible time with gyno-exams, they take me straight back to being raped during early childhood. The complete lack of control, it’s…bad. Some doctors are right fuckin’ assholes, too. You often don’t find that out until you end up with an experience like yours.
I’ve tried, but just don’t cope well with a male gynecologist. After looking for quite a while, I found there are some women gynecologists who sub-specialize in care of survivors. It doesn’t make it all roses and unicorn farts, but it sure as hell helps. Your local rape crisis center might be of help in that regard.
chigau @337:
Maybe he was an atheist, and thought you were weird.
Rob Grigjanis #341
hmmm.
naaaah.
I put up a clothesline in my spare bedroom a few weeks ago when, while pushing quarters into the laundromat dryer, I realized that I was spending good money on hot, dry air.
In the Mojave Desert.
[no hugs in Thunderdome! isn’t that a Rule? what, no? never mind]
Chas:
Yabbut…balloons and magic brownies are okay, right?
Chas
That’s pretty funny.
Chas @343:
And people wonder why our species is doomed.
Andrew Smiler over at Good Men Project writes:
Andrew Smiler at Good Men Project lists 19 relationship terms that need to meet a timely death:
(excerpt)
I loved to hang my laundry to dry on the roof when I lived on the Mediterranean. The clips seemed so flimsy and I always thought I’d see my clothes flying by and have to run down to the street to chase them, but it never happened. I don’t know the physics of it, but the clips held up even in strong winds.
For what it’s worth, I recognized that rorschach was probably drunk and tired during that exchange. He seemed more confused than anything, which was unusual, and it seemed like an occasion to just let it slide until the next day. I understand the “how the hell are we supposed to know you’re drunk or stoned and be expected to adjust to your unusual mental state?” but at the same time…well, a community indulges, tolerates, adjusts to some extent. Not infinitely, but to some extent.
Some people want to hang out (maybe even argue) and drink with other people but don’t want to drive after drinking or ask others to stay sober to drive them, or to deal with bars. It’s especially nice when it’s a community of thoughtful and intelligent people. I’m not sure if it was ever “a good idea,” but it seems to me there was once a different atmosphere here, more bar-like. I might be misremembering…
Frankly, comparing the comments from regulars I know are often drunk or stoned and obnoxious and those from regulars I think are sober, I’m not convinced the latter are more insightful or humanistic. My own comments are of course more coherent when I’m sober, but I don’t believe my “angry drunk” comments are any less true for it.
Biopsychiatry is bullshit and everyone should be vegan. There you have my crass, angry drunken outburst. And it’s entirely true.
So put that in your sobriety pipe and smoke it. ;)
oo! oo!
Want to hear my crass, drunk, angry rant?
no?
as you wish
Just a test post
to check
on separating
by paragraphs
Since I’m not sure preview works right for this.
Inaji:
Ofuckmagicbrownies.
So yesterday I discovered the way to stop my back spasms from the car accident. Because I was concerned about my tolerance, I started with half a brownie and waited an hour. I could feel some slight reduction in pain, but not much, so I decided to try the second half. I waited an hour, found that it seemed to have helped a bit but made me woozy, and decided to write off such medication as not being worth my time.
Another hour passed and I was starting to get a migraine, so I took half of one of the antihistamines I use to help knock them out. This antihistamine also happens to be a pretty decent hypnotic and does have “hallucinations” as one of its potential side-effects, but I’ve never had problems before.
And then…everything was magic. So, so magical. *_* Floating on a ship made of rainbows level magic.
Eighteen hours later I got out of bed and my back felt like warm butter, so yay! I’m going to be much more cautious with the doxylamine from now on, though. Yeesh.
That is my wish. Drunk/stoned/sober – that you stop embarrassing yourself.
That one really horrid lie that Slymepit likes to repeat to each other has passed on to some TERFs.
Lovely. Just fucking lovely. Two groups based upon lies are now trading some of their favorites among themselves.
@ Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden
(and anyone else interested)
Responded to you over here on the “That’s some mistake” thread.
Not about anything on this thread at the moment
.
but I notice that, recently, somewhere on the Internets, there was a sale on backhoes.
and the purchasers brought them to FtB to dig holes.
Magic pot brownies?
Yes please.
I can even contribute (my contribution would be the herbal half of the mix).
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-white-guy-got-plastic-surgery-to-look-more-like-a-1584117608
The guy has the right to do whatever he wants with his body, but something about this is unsettling…
on the internet
someone runs
from a choice
of being
becoming
planting pixels
standing ground
Direct from Twitter, the most stupid reason to become anti-abortion
Kind of surprised that joey never threatened to do this.
I was dismissed at Deltoid for not being a proper lady.
(By the way, Maya Angelou came to speak at my girls’ school and was fabulous.)
Janine:
Wow that _was_ bad.
I love that the people who responded mocked that shit.
Not sure I could stand being a trans woman if I also has to be a proper lady.
Part of the reason why I sometimes love Twitter and social media in general.
I get exchanges like this.
It’s an absurd world.
:)
@Goodbye Enemy Janine, 353:
What is that lie, btw? Is there a way I can support you? Or is it aimed at more people than just you? The whole Horde, indiscriminately? That would seem weird for the TERFs, but possible.
@dreikin, 354:
Read it. Thanks.
Also, “dreikin” = 3rd child? or something like that? idiomatic for cousin? Or maybe this is Dr. Eikin, and I’m just unfamiliar with the name “Eikin”.
@chigau, 355:
sorry, chigau, but I had to pay for law school somehow. So I had PZ start some thread on misogyny and crazy blaming right after I bought stock options in Caterpillar. Just an 80cent swing, but netted $40k.
Crip Dyke, the Slymepit lie I am talking about is how we all apologize for a child rapist.
I had a TERF throw that at me after I told off a member of the pit.
I just block and move on.
Just have to love how sometimes the realms of the pit and of TERFs overlap.
@GEJ, #366:
Oh. That one.
If I could dump that lie on a pile of lighter-fluid covered flint chips and jump up and down on it with steel-toed boots, I would.
CD #365
oh well
good cause
@Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden, 365:
You’re welcome. Can’t say it was a pleasure, but it was sticking in my mind, so better to get it out than let it fester.
dreikin = dragon via some linguistic-ish mutations (g->k, on->in, a->”eh” or “aye”). I made it up when I was a lot younger, inspired by the Draic Kin of the Longest Journey and some linguistics reading I’d been doing.
Oh dear. Based on the release date of that game, that was just about half my lifetime ago..
David
Actually it’s Sindarin. The Quenya equivalent (or almost equivalent) is Elenyen.
Gil = Star, like Gil-Galad, the shining star
Last night, I thought “So put that in your sobriety pipe and smoke it” was funny. Not as funny as Disco David Dewhurst, but funny. For some reason.
Another day, another FtB delight.
And that’s before PZ’s bathrooms thread gets going.
Well, at least it took TWO comments.
BTW: Nice try, Nerd.
10 min and counting
More delights.
It’s not like the thread was specifically about an issue raised by trans* people and publicized by theocrats because of their hatred of trans* people or anything, so refusing to acknowledge our existence is probably okay just this once.
There’s a creationist all over the ScienceBlogs version of Pharyngula. He’s very loud and very angry, and just had a meltdown!
Due to crank magnetism, he throws around misogynist, ableist and racist insults at random. It’s sort of heart-warmingly quaint to be called a mongrel, and to turn around and see that PZ has been deemed worthy of the same designation. :-}
Your memory is better than mine.
That makes sense.
:-)
“Washington Redshirts” is a fucking awesome idea.
Oops. Sorry.
Carbonfox:
Inaji:
In junior high and high school, I had fairly regular lower GI pain, discomfort, irritation. The one time that I actually told my parents exactly where I was hurting (later I learned that generic ‘stomach ache’ did not raise concerns), I ended up seeing three specialists. And all three of them put me in positions that, in retrospect, mirrored my experiences from a few years before. I had panic attacks all three times even though I had managed to block, or put aside, or something, those memories.
My doctor tells me I need to start getting colon exams. And holy shit does that scare me.
Chas @343:
When we lived in Death Valley, my mom joked that by the time the last of the laundry was on the line, the first stuff was already dry.
Janine @366:
Fuck. Still? Damn. They really are fucking desperate, aren’t they?
This is a serious question: Has any criticism of Pharyngula, Free Thought Blogs, Dr. Myers, or the Horde, ever NOT been built on lies, or cherry picking, or deliberate misreadings, or outpand-out misrepresentations? Ever?
@David Marjanović, #375,
Fuckin’ crank magnets, how do they work?
==============================
@everyone:
On a separate issue, if I’m becoming another Nerd, let me know and I’ll curtail recent behavior.
Crip Dyke @372-374:
Thank you for doing this. It’s forced me to face my privilege *and* helped raise my awareness of the various ways transphobia manifests. Linking to comments, but not explaining the nature of the transphobia therein has forced me to *think*.
Ogvorbis:
I’ll bet it does. If your doctor is one of the good peoples, have a talk with them if you can. You don’t need to be specific, just explain that the process of a colon exam will be triggering due to childhood abuse, and see if you can get a doc who is knowledgeable about such things, and will go the extra mile for you when having the exam.
Inaji:
My local clinic is a training hospital for general practice doctors. They are really really good. But I change doctors about every two or three years, so every time I start to develop any level of trust (me trusting them), they tend to disappear. Right now, my only contact with my doctor has been via emails.
I’ll keep that in mind when I finally meet her.
Hi Troops,
I have an Insensitive Doctor story. It seems a bit amusing now, but I was truly mortified at the time. When I was 20 I was diagnosed with cervical lesions which required cryosurgery. Essentially, they froze off the first few layers of tissue. Hooray for preventing cancer. However, a week after the procedure I went back to the clinic for a check up on the healing process. The clinic was part of a teaching hospital. As I was laying there spread eagle on the table, completely exposed, in walk about fifteen young, male medical students. The doctor explains to them what my procedure was and the stage of healing and says, to them, “I’ve invited you in to view an extremely educational example of blah, blah, blah.” Never did any of them speak to me. The least they could have done was give me a drape to put over my face. I could tell the young males were no more at ease than I was, but no one uttered a word. They all dutifully peered up my vagina. I was too mortified to speak.
Inaji, Janine:
I still stumble over it’s vs. its.
While looking up the difference and proper usage, I discovered that the word it’s functions as a contraction for it is *and* it has.
(I wasn’t looking to correct either of you, rather, I wanted to clear up my ignorance)
morgan:
That sounds…uncomfortable.
Did the doctor have to get your consent to allow the students into the room?
Tony:
I know it does, but I always read it as “it is”, so I spell out “it has”. Well, most of the time I do.
Morgan:
I’ve made it very clear to every doctor who was in charge of a procedure I was having that it’s not okay to use me as a teaching moment. I know that it’s necessary, but I don’t care to be the model.
Tony, I was just making a reference to the opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus where the man in rags says “It’s…” before it cuts to the animated scene.
Tony,
Nope, no consent. At least I wasn’t asked. If consent was required I was unaware of it. This was in 1969. The laws have changed since then.
Inaji,
Ever since that incident I have also told every doctor that I am not to be used for others’ education.
The thing that pissed me off most was that no one considered that there might be a human being attached to that oh-so-interesting vagina. What a concept.
That was a beginning of my feminism.
Yes, but only the internal ones, ac I can recall. There was the porcupines thing, and assorted episodes of privilege blindness, accidental splash damage, etc, most recently with PZs initial characterization of Eliot Rodgers, and being roundly criticized for same. Of course, the Horde/FtB as well as their members tend to be willing to accept/learn from valid criticisms, and ameliorate the problematic behaviors.
re: medical assholery:
It is rife. I only have a few relatively minor examples of my own, but people of my acquaintance who aren’t cis men have a whole lot more. (Not to denigrate the negative experiences of cis men w/the medical establishment, of course, just that we tend to get less of it.)
The place I was referred to for my colonoscopy essentially put me out for the procedure. Tell your doctor to refer you to one of those places. Some use just “twilight” or other light forms of anesthesia.
Ophelia Benson just posted about Dawkins’ praise of Jaclyn Glenn. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/05/30/mega-facepalm/comment-page-1/#comment-804974
Dalillama:
That wasn’t free of misrepresentation and deliberate misreading, unfortunately.
About sedation for a colonoscopy… I had one recently and the anesthesiologist used propofol, which as we all know is the drug Michael Jackson was abusing as a sleep aid. Used properly, it is wonderful. One minute I was awake, the next minute I wasn’t. The next thing I knew someone called my name, I awoke instantly and was completely awake. No drugginess. No pain from the procedure (although they removed several polyps) and no trauma. I highly recommend it.
yes.
Reading all those stories (and having had a few of my own) I sometimes wonder if some medical profesionals wouldn’t be better suited as car mechanics. Because they seem to treat people as if they had the basic self-awareness of cars
Chas and others, regarding my #376:
Sorry. I was referring specifically to ongoing campaigns (which does include the porcupines) rather than ‘normal’ evolution of commenting and blogging. My bad. I withdraw the question.
Local professor fired because he and his magnificent beard appeared on a local brewery’s beer can.
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/professor-says-csu-fired-him-for-appearing-on-a-beer-can/Content?oid=4930778
I know Paul Roof not well, but I know him . He’s easily one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and was just fired because his likeness appeared on a local brewery’s beer can. He received no payment for this.
He was a professor of Sociology at a local Christian College and they just didn’t think that was very christian to have his likeness on a beer can (some of the money going towards a charity even). Never mind the whole jesus turning water into wine thing.
Yes it’s a christian college but it’s still ridiculous.
If you have time please tweet about it and or write to the School president.
Twitter tags
#charlestonsouthern
#rehireroof
#supportpaulroof
@csuniv
Please be cordial or at least respectful even if you have no respect for them. I don’t.
Jairy C. Hunter Jr., PhD
President
Jones Hall
Phone: 843-863-7500
Fax: 843-863-7533
Email: jhunter@csuniv.edu
to be clear he received no payment for being on the beer can, and I’m just going to assume that applies equally for his firing.
Originally I wanted to post this here, but then I noticed PZ had already linked to one of my sources in a recent thread.
It’s about gun control in a context that many people will find triggering.
Jesus fucking puked:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/06/01/clearly-the-only-reasonable-diagnosis-is-that-libertarians-are-mentally-ill/comment-page-1/#comment-805268
Chas @392:
You answered the question, but what examples did you have in mind?
Injai
Sent an alert already.
I guess Hitler was a Zionist by that logic…
Tony @399:
I withdrew the question.
Giliell:
I am amazed that depth of stupidity doesn’t rear up and bite them on their nose.
Ogvorbis:
I just saw that.
I’m still curious to know what Chas had in mind, but I will retract that if you wish.
Tony:
I just phrased my initial question so poorly that any answer is correct. I will not presume to tell you what you can and cannot ask.
Why I will always fucking hate fucking Rolling fucking Stone.
Just fucking look at this fucking headline.
Rolling Stone muse Marianne Faithfull Hospitalized In Greece With Broken Hip
See the fucking problem?
So…the important bits about Ms. Faithfull are that she’s the former lover of Jagger, she kinda had a hit, but she only dabbled in acting, and hey, drugs!
If Jesus did exist, he’d be crying all the damn time.
Never mind the bullets, here’s the ammosexuals
To go where God knows who has gone before
I am a muse, not a mistress, not a whore
Oh, suburban shits who want some class
All queue up to kiss my ass
Rev @395:
The firing of Mr. Roof is one of Raw Story’s current headlines.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/01/professor-fired-from-christian-university-after-image-of-his-epic-beard-appears-on-beer-can/
Tony:
And that’s a mighty fine beard that’s carrying the good Prof around, too!
Inaji @407:
That article would be stronger, IMO, if Tbogg would ditch the shaming.
No Child Of Mine-Marianne Faithfull
I just downloaded (from B&N) the June Lightspeed Magazine, special edition: Women Destroy Science Fiction!
The editorial, by Christie Yant, opens with a quote from Pat Murphy, at Wiscon 15, in 1991, about how men keep saying that wimmin are just ruining scifi! 23 years later, and yeah, still being said.
Er, the current link: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/issues/june-2014-issue-49/
I love Pat Murphy’s mind bending trilogy that is her tribute to genre fiction. And the creation of different persona for each novel and how they all blend through the novel.
There And Back Again (The Hobbit)
Wild Angel (Western Romance)
Adventures In Time And Space With Max Mariwell (Time Travel And Multiverses)
Damn it! Time to dig up those books and reread!
Christie Yant, Lightspeed Magazine, June 2014
Trying to compose a comment to ask SC about what parts of psychiatry are even real, and if my mental illnesses are even real but for the life of me I cant word them right. Fuck having a malfunctioning brain.
So I’ll just come out and ask it. Are any mental illness or disorders or whatever real? What about PTSD, its classified as a mental illness, is it real?
Arawhon:
I have PTSD, and yeah, from my perspective, it’s all too fuckin’ real.
I know. I suffer from Depression and Social Anxiety, I also have PTSD. I want SC to justify her statements that these things are made up by psychiatrists to push pills on everyone.
Arawhon
In addition to commenting here, SC has a blog.
Click on the name.
Arawhon:
I’ll be curious to read the response (if one is forthcoming). I mean it seems clear that even if psychiatry is complete pseudoscience, people still suffer or have their ability to function in everyday life impaired.
____
On a different note, I’d love a strawberry margarita right now.
Well, since I dont have access to or the time to read her very large list of books that supposedly tell me how its all bullshit, I would like to hear a simplified version that explains how my depression is false while still claiming my experiences of mental illness are somehow still real. Also, I would greatly appreciate an explanation what the hell the “personal, social, and political causes” of a mental illness means. So either its a real issue that can be “fixed” or its not and I get to suffer from “something” for the rest of my life.
I’m not in the mood for this at the moment, so I’ll just write this one response:
No, mental illnesses and disorders are not real. I have provided extensive evidence of that on the “Mega-facepalm” thread and on my blog, and I’ve also listed some reading recommendations several times. (Of most interest to you, in addition to the articles available free online, would be Anatomy of an Epidemic, The Emperor’s New Drugs, Shyness (which discusses the history of “Social Anxiety Disorder”), and Crazy Like Us (which discusses the history of “PTSD”).)
They’re not real illnesses: there’s no identified pathology or identifying biological markers. There’s no reason to believe they exist as disease entities, and after 30+ years, and given what we know about the development of these “diagnoses” (which is quite a lot), the odds against such evidence being found are enormous.
This DOES NOT MEAN that any experiences or emotions that have been included in these bogus diagnostic labels aren’t real, or that anyone should be expected to “snap out of it.” My years-long adventures in grieving are no less real for not being a disorder. That’s not what I’m suggesting, or what any of the authors I’m recommending are suggesting. In fact, many of the organizations with which they’re involved are groups of people who’ve received psychiatric diagnoses, and several of these authors are themselves psychiatrists, psychotherapists, or social workers. I’ve spent a good part of the past several years reading and writing about the tradition of humanistic psychology because I care about people’s suffering and want to see change.
But I have to say: Biopsychiatry is killing people. People are dying. Children are dying. People’s health is being ruined, and their brains are being damaged, in some cases irreparably. Children are being given toxic “antipsychotics.” People are being coercively drugged on the pretext of these fake “diagnoses.” And it’s based on lies. When I write about this for several years, and for several years people refuse even to engage with the evidence and make this about questioning my motives, I get angry. I get especially angry when the people most hostile to reading are those I most fear are being harmed. I understand where you’re coming from, I really do, but if you knew what was going on you would be angry like I am.
Tony:
I’ve never had a margarita, of any flavour.
You don’t need books or even articles for that. They‘re telling you that. When the people in charge of DSMs III, IV, and 5 and the past and current heads of NIMH are telling you that, it’s over. “There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” That’s from Allen Frances, DSM-IV taskforce chair.
SC @ 424,
I’ve stayed quiet so far, but if I don’t say something, I’m going to explode.
My depression and crippling panic attacks, which have been considerably reduced since my doctor put me on an antidepressant? They aren’t real? Yeah, tell that to my numb extremities and faintness and trouble breathing and IBS attacks over even minor worries. Tell that to the mood swings that left me able only to do the basic household chores, and that only because I forced myself.
And mine is a relatively minor problem compared to someone who has PTSD, for example. So sorry, but I think you’re way off base.
It’s like people lose the ability to read. In many ways. Stop that:
Robert Whitaker, Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic; James Davies, Cracked; Marcia Angell, “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?”, “The Illusions of Psychiatry,” and “‘The Illusions of Psychiatry’: An Exchange” (all available free online); Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure and The Bitterest Pills; Irving Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs; Stuart Kirk, Tomi Gomery, and David Cohen, Mad Science; Gary Greenberg, The Book of Woe (I can’t speak to the quality of this one); Brett Deacon, “The Biomedical Model of Mental Disorder: A Critical Analysis of its Tenets, Consequences, and Effects on Psychotherapy Research” (available free online); Jonathan Leo and Jeffrey Lacasse, “Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature” (available free online); Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us.
What I believe SC is saying here is that the drugs being prescribed are not attacking a targeted chemical imbalance or deficiency that has been found to be causing symptoms of what we call mental illnesses. They’re just attacking symptoms which we only classify under headings like “depression” or “PTSD” because they often occur simultaneously in the same person. Additionally, there’s evidence that these drugs are actually harmful.
Why SC can’t just spit that out instead of repeatedly unleashing herds of teal deer and linking a mountain of reading material and wondering indignantly why nobody listens to her is best known to SC.
Yes, it’s all about me and my communication failures. Let’s go with that.
First: I’m not going to do this justice in one comment. So please take this with a grain of salt. I don’t know what exactly to think about SC’s take on it sometimes, but it doesn’t seem like our views are too different. I haven’t studied it like SC has, so again, this is only expressing my perspective that could easily be changed any which way.
It does not mean that your experiences aren’t real. They’re real experiences. (But it’s pretty dodgy to talk about a “real experience” in the first place. What that actually means isn’t exactly clear, when it comes to something like a dream or a hallucination, for example. Let’s just leave those niceties aside for now and say that you had them, in some form or another, since there’s generally no reason to dispute that part.)
The physical descriptions of quite a few (perhaps most) mental illnesses are, currently, inadequate (with some odd exceptions like epilepsy). If you asked “what does schizophrenia look like?” there is no consistent physical/biological description of it. There are a range of phenomena that some people will say characterize this thing they’re calling “schizophrenia,” but they do not use descriptions of brain states to define it. If there is any such neurological cause which really is pathological, you need to do the real work of identifying that and understanding it, not just slap a label on it and call it a day. That would be irresponsible if it were just “ordinary” foundational science, but in medicine it carries an even greater cost.
Furthermore, there many other causes that can be considered for any person’s experiences (which, again, are real), instead of only considering the internal mechanisms of their brain, which at present we don’t know all that much about. This is appropriate because brains are, obviously, not closed systems. Among the many things in the environment of a brain, there are other people, doing things which of course may be harmful or beneficial to the person’s experiences, thus they may be in some way or another responsible for the experiences in question. This is what is meant by a “social” or “political” cause. This sort of cause is just as legitimate to talk about scientifically, and it has no relation to invalidating or falsifying what you experience as an experience. It is all about understanding the causes of your experiences, and all about how little that is actually being done in the current environment.
You could of course treat it as a health issue, but some things just don’t work like that. I’ll put this in some pretty abstract terms, because I think it gives a better feeling for what the issue is about, as I see it. Many different kinds of bad things can happen. How we talk about them matters. Suppose there’s some bad thing. Let’s describe it a few different ways:
1) There’s a plague!
2) There’s a tornado!
3) There’s a rampaging elephant headed this way!
4) There’s a genetic abnormality in your DNA!
5) There’s a hole in your head from an explosion!
6) There’s a history of suffering abuse in your past!
7) There’s a history of eating lots of corn syrup in your past!
8) There’s a misogynistic, violent culture, now and in the past, which encourages misogyny and violence!
Of course, we’re going to have experiences about all of these (“real” experiences!). The ones I’ve picked here are going to be “bad” experiences, generally (maybe not so much in the case of the corn syrup). And one thing to notice right away is that we’re not going to understand the causes of all of these things the same way. Presupposing that it all only happens in your head (because it’s an experience), and that it’s because of something wrong in your head, as opposed to something wrong somewhere else, is just a presupposition. And now that I think about it, it’s pretty fucking naive, when I put it in these terms. It might well be the case, but we need to define what that means first, in terms of a physical description of what we’re looking for and what we aren’t looking for. Maybe it’s in your DNA, your neuron structure, your biochemistry — or maybe the “problem” to be fixed is not to be found anywhere in your body at all. The point is that if you’re going to explain it, predict it, and use drugs/technology/treatment/collective-action/etc. to do something about it, you’d better have some idea of what the problem is and how it works.
Look at what you posted immediately before me. Someone reacted negatively to you and what do you post in response? You impugn their reading comprehension and tell them to go read a stack of books. So yes, I think I will go with that.
SC, yeah, it is your communication failures. Consciousness razor has explained it well enough that I actually get it. Instead of linking me a list of a ton of books, that I have already said I dont have the time or resources to go read, they gave a good explanation of what is meant by your words. I actually get it now. They broke it down into simpler concepts that my addled brain could understand, like all good communicators and teachers do.
Now comes the tough one, how do I treat what Im going through? How do I explain it without a simple label?
Do that. But don’t you dare claim that you care about people’s suffering. What you’re doing is very similar to “tone” arguments, “you’re alienating potential allies” arguments, and “they’re much more approachable” arguments used against feminists, antiracists, and LGBT activists. It’s garbage, and if you actually gave a shit you’d read and engage with the evidence and stop attacking someone trying to stand up for the truth and for human lives.
But I’m sure my anger will become the central issue here, and that is fucking shameful. Think about how your comments will look in ten years.
Seven of Mine:
This doesn’t look like a communication failure on SC’s part:
SC (Salty Current), OM, #424
Anne D, #427, responding to “SC @ 424”, evidently after paying no attention to what I just quoted from it:
Maybe the “problem” is that bold all-caps just isn’t enough. Underline it and italicize next time, SC. Also, just repeat that one part over and over, without saying anything else. That might do it. ;)
So sorry for my uppitiness and aggression and anger and all.
Several years’ experience, your comments, and your lack of engagement have taught me that this is a trick question.
Oh fuck off, SC. I’m not talking about your fucking tone. I’m talking about whether your words have actually conveyed your meaning.
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
:)
If only I had the touch.
Okay. I tried.
SC, I have neither the time nor the energy to read your vast library of references, even assuming my local library system has them. I apologize for misinterpreting you.
Thanks.
You put it so pithily, which is ever so much more effective than my angry rants.
:)
No.
SC, yes, I did try. And I apologized.
I give up. Goodnight, and thanks for all the fish.
Those arent trick questions. What do I now do to treat what Im going through? What do I use in place of the false labels to accurately and simply explain what my mind is going through? I didnt say you were uppity or angry. My brain really is addled, since Im coming out of a down cycle and my brain is readjusting to numbness. Your post was confusing. You were saying my illnesses or whatever they are were false, but saying that they were real experiences. This is nonsensical and doesnt make sense without a frame of reference outside of the current psychiatric thinking. However, breaking down what that actually meant in ways that allow me to build that frame of reference allows me to attach meaningful concepts to it. I partially get it now.
I can’t stand it.
But I love it when basically the only thing I remember from a drug commercial is the list of side effects. It’s suprising how they just keep coming, out of nowhere, like it’s a clown car.
No, you didn’t. You said: “I have neither the time nor the energy to read your vast library of references, even assuming my local library system has them.” No one asked you to read every one of them. Several of the articles are, as I noted in bold, free online, and take minutes to read. So do many of my posts. You could of course check with your library, and several of these books are quick reads. You don’t seem willing to try at all.
SC:
I’ve read a few of the links you’ve provided in the last week and I think I have a grasp (not the greatest understanding mind you) on what you’re trying to get across.
I suspected that you weren’t trying to dismiss the suffering of others, nor what they experience. You made that clear when you said:
But I am curious to know what people who are suffering should do.
I’m genuinely curious as to what the answers for Arawhon’s questions might be.
You think Arawhon is asking trick questions. Ok. Fine.
But I’m curious too.
You and I don’t have years of interaction. I’m not asking any of the questions to trick you into anything. I’m genuinely curious to know what, if any, answers you have.
If someone is experiencing symptoms of what is referred to as bi-polar disorder or depression or anything else currently classified as a mental illness, what treatment should they seek? Should they seek treatment? How are they supposed to explain what they’re experiencing? How are they supposed to cope with what they’re experiencing?
SC, please. Every time you bring this up you worry it to death. On this topic you’ve got SG-like levels of persistence.
That didn’t link to Sabotage. *headshake*
—
Let the record state that that was one of the things I liked about SG.
carlie:
Based on what she says here:
I think SC’s persistence may be warranted. In some cases, she’s responded to specific questions, in other cases, she’s commented in threads focused on mental illnesses.
OK, I’m sorry for imputing false motives to you. I really recommend that you read Anatomy of an Epidemic (if you can’t find it through the library system or used I’ll try to find a way to get it to you) and check out the Mad in America site (which is by no means immune from the worst woo and silliness, but it’s a caring community and there are a number of reasonable voices). They have advice (including for how to come off drugs), and if you don’t find what you’re looking for, I’m sure you can ask and get helpful suggestions. I would recommend my humanistic psychology references, but I understand that not everyone is as…bookish as I. If you do try to reach out through the book, organizations, and site and don’t find help, please let me know and I’ll try as best I can. In any event, please check in here.
cm:
I never understood the reasons behind SG’s persistence. I would read comments by him and think to myself “let it go”. But then I had to remind myself that he had his reasons. I may not know what they were, but my ignorance was no reason to expect him to stop being persistent.
I gotta say, cm’s link @438 makes me glad I self-medicate with alcohol.
Thank you, Tony.
This is being too general. You’re assuming the labels are all referring to one and the same thing in every person thus diagnosed, that the classifications themselves can somehow be treated as valid ways of carving up reality, despite their bogus foundations. There might not be any one thing that such a person ought to do about it. I would say that if they’re having such experiences, they do need some kind of help from others (which is not to say the burden is on them for obtaining this). That very much depends on their specific situation. Without more information, what more is there to say?
Besides that, the claim isn’t that there’s some ready-made alternative that already does everything that psychiatry (or some other form of remedy, like social or political change) would ideally being doing right now. It would be nice if there weren’t any such problems, but there are. Even if you think there’s some merit to these useful fictions, that kind of pragmatism or instrumentalism just amounts to denying that the current solutions aren’t in fact useful (in addition to being fictions, which ought to be bad enough). They’re often harmful. Not doing harm is a good first step.
So I know you don’t mean it to be a “trick” question (or series of questions), but I don’t think there are very many definite answers.
I haven’t had any trouble grasping SC’s critique, nor SC’s deep, abiding concern for those being hurt by chemical treatments.
However, I have fundamental disagreements with SC about the implications of the critique of the unidentified etiology.
The critique of unidentified etiology notes that without knowing exactly what is going wrong, we can’t be sure
a) there is anything “going wrong” other than someone making choices we don’t like
b) whether we are lumping more than one very different biochemical disorder into a single diagnostic category, since diagnosis prioritizes (in fact, typically exclusively relies upon) cognitive and behavioral symptoms. We may even be lumping multiple disorders *and* healthy but disfavored choice-making into a single diagnostic category.
c) what treatments might be most promising
d) why treatments that work have that positive effect
e) whether or not we might be giving a treatment that [while good for some persons with a particular diagnosis because the symptoms that resulted in that diagnosis derived from a pathway positively impacted by a common treatment] might be indicated for that diagnosis but is actually harmful given the actual disfunction (if any).
Without understanding the nature of the disease, in other words, we run horrible risks with our treatments.
However, it does not follow that biopsychiatry – to use SC’s term – is inherently wrong to take the current approach. It is the same approach that non-psych medicine has taken. People classified malaria as a specific disease, likewise bubonic plague, long before specific pathogens were identified or any metabolic pathways identified as a mechanism for a specific symptom.
This is, in fact, how science works. We hypothesize that symptom cluster X, given additional conditions Y, constitute a disease. Then we test *lots* of things related to that hypothesis and see what pans out. Later the disease may be subdivided into related but distinct manifestations (one common disfunction causes one set of symptoms in combination with one unrelated disfunction, another in combo with a different unrelated disfunction, and no morbidity when both of those unrelated pathways are functioning optimally).
Breast cancer is called a disease, and we test whether surgery works or doesn’t, whether tamoxifen works or doesn’t. As time goes on, we learn that there are actually different cellular disfunctions going on. Are they different diseases? Is the fact that uncontrolled growth of breast tissue results enough to call several different etiologies a single disease?
This is highly controversial, and more and more with cancer trials are being run for drugs or surgeries or other interventions with test groups either subdivided into groups based on specific cellular disfunctions present or simply restricted to a single group, a subset of persons with cancer X, all of whom have the same specific cellular disfunction.
We know we can do that because we tried it other ways and found that despite having the same diagnosis, people responded wildly differently to treatment.
And as a result, people fucking died. It’s horrible that they died, but they did. In droves. Because we classified things as one disease when multiple etiologies existed.
But people have also been saved, and as research goes on we get better and better.
Psych research that doesn’t address etiological concerns or the methodological risks in diagnosis by cognitive/behavioral symptoms is unethical research and will be unproductive for us.
However, having a diagnostic category before we have a specific etiology is standard practice for **all** medicine. It’s how you actually know to go looking for a specific etiology!
The DSM is not inherently unethical. Chemical treatment of mental illness after truly informed consent is not inherently unethical. The practice of cobbling together a diagnosis **and then doing research to understand what the hell is going on** is not unethical.
I believe SC has taken a valid concern, that without etiology we run serious risks in psychiatric practice, and come to the conclusion that what SC calls “biopsychiatry” is inherently unethical [please, SC, correct me if I’m wrong about that].
I have grave concerns that the industry’s standards for “informed consent” are grossly inadequate and thus the medication process, in practice, is routinely unethical.
But the argument from unknown etiology ==> unethical discipline just doesn’t logically follow.
Again, SC, if I’ve grossly misunderstood you, I apologize and am happy to hear a correction.
@consciousness razor:
The foundations aren’t bogus. They aren’t based [yet] on the identification of specific dysfunctional pathways either at the cellular or histological level, but that doesn’t mean that no research has been done to see if groupings are justified.
That research has been done. Repeatedly. For every diagnostic category in the DSM.
Your argument isn’t aided by lying.
I’m out of booze so I’m going to bed.
I really miss ॐ.
chigau:
Me too.
Infuriating? Yes. Challenging? Fuck yes, in every sense of the word.
But I never came out of a discussion that involved ॐ without bigger knowledge.
I’m not fucking lying when I say that, years ago, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety (and given the inevitable sequence of drugs, none of which helped), yet there was no examination whatsoever at the cellular level. No physiological tests, no identifying any specific (or unspecific) dysfunctional pathways, none of it. Yet this is the justification for it somehow? (Or it would be, but it wasn’t then and isn’t yet? How the fuck do I parse that?)
How the fuck could they have ruled out every other conceivable thing that might have been wrong, especially those things which aren’t anywhere in my body, especially when they didn’t even look at my own body to begin with? They just asked me questions, revealing that there were indeed lots of problems in my life, and moved straight to dispensing a bunch of drugs. Without telling me anything about why they would supposedly work or what they would supposedly do, except that I would be “better” somehow. It is as if I’m not allowed to be “healthy” because all sorts of other shit happened to me, because any state my body might have been in would’ve been “unhealthy” no matter what my body actually looked like as a result of this other shit. That’s no fucking lie, and if you take your head out of the fucking DSM, you’ll notice that is just one example how diagnosis is actually done in the real world.
Yeah, the forums on that Mad in America site are a wonder of woo and pseudoscience, especially the schizophrenia postings. Apparently the current psychiatric labels are still useful but inaccurate since they are everywhere there. Not a lot of info on seeking treatment, except that I shouldnt take drugs. The only reason Im not on drugs or going to therapy right now is that I can’t afford it. Yay being practically homeless!
In the best possible reading, this happened in psychiatry 30 years ago. It was tested. Decades and hundreds of millions of dollars. No dice. Moreover, if something is a (to use the term generously) hypothesis, the honest approach is to be clear about that – not to claim or even suggest or imply that that hypothesis had been verified. They have lied for several decades. Seriously: if people here treated psychiatry like they do any other form of quackery this wouldn’t even come up.
The hell it isn’t.
It’s not treatment and these aren’t illnesses.
Ha.
There are no biomarkers. None. They admit this. It’s a scam.
!
Of course, they’re not all that grave, since you’ve said fuck-all about it aside from responding to me.
I have nothing to hide here. Read the works I’ve recommended. Read the admissions of the leaders of psychiatry I’ve quoted. Determine for yourselves who’s lying and unethical.
Goddamnit. People are being harmed and killed by this. Defend less and read more.
Oh FFS.
Im just reporting on what I found, Im still looking, and reading. Its just a part of the forums that is kind of disappointing. Posts that start with “Lets talk about schizophrenia” and have members talking about how they have ESP or are in contact with higher dimensional beings or are blessed by God to communicate special messages. Or others talking about how to treat the “illnesses” (as I lack a better word, any recommendations?) and recommending acupuncture, or homeopathy, or herbal remedies. Im still going through the other parts. And honestly, the labels are still there and are everywhere. I need a way of labeling it, of placing a name for the concept of what I am experiencing. Its why we invented language, to give form and shape to concepts and ideas.
This is really assholish. You’re actively hostile to reading books and articles but after the most cursory glimpse at a site (provided to try to help after you insisted that you honestly wanted it) you’re ready to dismiss it – not read it critically, but just mock it. Which you don’t do to psychiatry’s blatant lies. If you’re trying to figure things out, that’s great. Do it critically and honestly. You don’t appear to be engaged in a search for knowledge.
Mira, if you’re incapable of separating out dumb wooish comments from insightful evidence-based ones, then stop reading the site. Read the fucking books and articles I’ve recomended. You obviously have time on your hands, so shut the fuck up and read some books and articles.
This is so fucking tiresome.
http://www.madinamerica.com/forums/topic/esp-and-schizophrenia/
Really. Most arent as bad as this but there is a lot of stuff to read. This is from the forums. The archive is full of stuff Im reviewing. Im still looking for a way to talk about this that doesnt involve reference to the psychiatric labels, but I cant find anything. Lacking a means to label what Im experiencing shuts down any ability to affect change to these experiences. Help me. Im floundering around trying to figure out what to do or what to read and Ive got nothing. Ive got you saying the labels are wrong and useless, but the site you recommended is still using those labels. Im looking for treatment information and every article talks about how to fight back against taking drugs or larger societal impacts. Im LOST. You’ve dumped a ton of info on me and I dont know where to start unpacking it all.
And it’s turned up nothing, as my links in #426 show.
Or any level [Yet!]. That’s totally how science works. You keep claiming that things will be identified, and it doesn’t hurt in the meantime to tell people they have been identified.
Dammit. Refresh before commenting. Refresh before commenting. Maybe If I repeat enough my brain will absorb it.
Maybe my brain is too addled right now to think clearly. The past week hasnt been nice or kind to it. Ill just drop this.
@consciousness razor, #460:
I noticed that you failed to quote:
The idea that etiology has to be traced to identify an illness is arbitrarily applied.
I note that neither of you responded to the fact that nearly all cancers are currently diagnosed from a cluster of symptoms. We literally don’t know what causes it, and we knew dramatically less 15 years ago.
Where is the outrage that cancer is a bullshit diagnosis (or even, say, liver cancer or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or multiple myeloma – all of which are diagnosed by symptoms, not etiology)?
I am not at all defending the practices of your psych provider, cr. You said the diagnosis was “bogus”.
Something can fail to have a histological test, or a test for a known physiological marker, or what have you, and still be a diagnosis that isn’t “bogus”.
I have defended the practice of clustering patients before a common etiology is known. If we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t know any etiology for absolutely anything whatsofuckingever. I have defended the practice of establishing criteria for those clusters – diagnostic criteria, essentially – because without these, you can’t figure out who you want in or out of your research protocols. I haven’t specifically defended it, but I have implicitly embraced calling these symptomological groupings “diseases”.
Finally, I have said that clustering patients before common etiology is known doesn’t make something inherently unethical, it makes it science.
There’s lots of unethical shit in psychiatry. The existence of diagnoses distinguished by symptomology rather than etiology is not part of that pile.
@SC, #462
No biomarkers yet identified ≠ it’s a scam.
Fuck you, SC. You have no idea what I’ve said about it and haven’t. You don’t have my off-line name. You know shit.
@SC
Quote me saying that.
Once.
Anywhere.
I’ve said that common etiology **cannot** be discovered without clustering patients based on symptoms. I never said that once patients are clustered based on symptoms, a common etiology will inevitably be found.
Don’t fucking lie about what I’ve said.
Nonsense.
That’s not true. I pointed you to specific sources, which you’re unwilling to read. Stop typing and read them – the articles that are free online. When you’ve read those, proceed to one or two books. Then, try the site. Come back after you’ve read the free articles I mentioned @ #428. They’re free. They’re short. Read them critically, but read them. You don’t even have to read any books. Just those.
IF you don’t find them helpful, THEN post at MIA – however wooish many of the posts and comments are – and ask for help. You’re obviously capable of reading critically, so do that.
Step back from this for a moment and recognize that you want to do well and I want you to do well. Make your future actions about that goal and not about going after me.
Do they hand patients a questionnaire asking them where it hurts, talk to them a few minutes about it, perform no physical examination whatsoever, then give them cancer medications, the effect of which they have no clue how to predict? Then when those don’t work, they give them different cancer medications, again with no physical examination? And when you ask them how they justified this cancer diagnosis in the first place, they sputter on about other (questionable) research that looks nothing like the process they just went through?
Is it really that similar? Because I don’t think it works like that. They actually have determined some way of, you know, examining the patients for some actual physical sign of cancer, before they proceed to do something about it. Of course they may not know what “caused” this particular form of cancer as opposed to that one, but they can certainly fucking see that it’s right fucking there in front them, when they do an actual fucking examination of the actual fucking patient in front of them that they’re actually fucking diagnosing with some form of cancer.
So what the fuck are you defending, and what fucking thing do you think I lied about?
It’s a scam if you claim they have been when they haven’t. If psychiatry said “Our diagnoses are social constructions based on consensus and we have no biological markers,” we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I’m talking about here and in any links you’ve given here.
Um, it was a rhetorical comment: “That’s totally how science works. You keep claiming…” “You” wasn’t you. It was on/se/the rhetorical (pseudo)scientist. Still tiresome. Still amazing that no one here seems to give a flying fuck about the people harmed or killed by biopsychiatry. Moral appeals are as useless as scientific ones, apparently.
Good night.
Oh – before I go… of interest to rorschach:
“Karen Horney and Jean-Paul Sartre on the psychology of vindictiveness and violence”
No. They perform a physical exam, but they are still looking merely for symptoms in a very large number of cancers.
“psychiatric diseases” are diagnosed from the psychology of a person, because the symptoms are psychological. The fact that the exam is psychological not physical isn’t inherently problematic. Why aren’t you upset that oncologists don’t perform a psych exam? They’re looking for symptoms, why not look for psychological symptoms?
Fucking YES. And it’s even worse with cancer drugs, because many of these are **known cytotoxins**.
FUCKING YES. They don’t do a new physical exam if they note the tumor isn’t shrinking. They change drugs or send you to sit under some cobalt-60 for a good, deep tan. And they don’t know whether the cancer will respond to the new drugs, or how the cancer might respond to the new drugs or WHY. They just know that they’re giving you poisons that, on average, kill fast-growing cells faster than they kill slow-growing cells, and on average kill X tissue type (say, liver) faster than other tissue types. We are beginning to understand *why* some of these drugs kill faster-growing cells first. We’ve known for a while why different tissues will have greater uptake of a given poison. But yes, we don’t know – for the vast majority of cancers – which poison will work in which person and/or why. But we give people poisons, and when that doesn’t work, we give them **new** poisons.
Yes. It actually works like that. Knowledge is getting better – and the amount of knowledge we’re gaining has accelerated a lot in the last 15 years – but runaway growth of a given tissue type is a **symptom**, not a disease, and for the most part, we don’t know the disease, we just feed people shit that will generate unpredictable effects for unknowable reasons because statistically more people in that symptom cluster benefit (according to the physician’s definition of “benefit”) than suffer.
They have a symptom list, and they go down the symptom list to see if it fits the definition of cancer. If you have a competent psych provider, they can competently identify whether your symptoms cluster with depression. If you have a competent oncologist, they can competently identify whether your symptoms cluster with multiple myeloma. But no one knows why multiple myeloma originates, or whether the kidney problems in some MM patients indicate a different disease generated by a different etiology that nonetheless shares the features considered diagnostic of MM. There is no cure, because we have no idea what the fuck is going on. It’s all symptom-clusters. That’s it.
And how is that different from not knowing what “caused” a mental illness, but clearly being able to see a pattern of compulsions acted out repeatedly, right fucking there in front of them when they do an actual psychiatric examination of the actual fucking patient that they’re actually fucking diagnosing with some form of OCD?
You said the diagnostic categories were “bogus.”
The diagnostic categories are not etiological. That doesn’t mean that they are entirely bogus.
For the reading impaired, from my #470:
@SC, 474
We are in complete agreement on this point. Complete.
Fair enough. But I think it’s a shit thing to do to assume that because you haven’t seen me making specific criticism X you feel justified in saying I don’t care about people being harmed by psychopharmacology (or even benefited, if it comes without informed consent – which doesn’t exist except by accident when treating someone who got the info from someone other than the provider).
Fair enough then.
And this shit is so fucking out of bounds. Leaping from “Crip Dyke disagrees with one (1) of my criticisms” to “Crip Dyke doesn’t ‘give a flying fuck about the people harmed or killed by biopsychiatry'” is manipulative bullshit, and entirely unjustified.
Are you high?
Done.
I should think.
You’re OK though, right, CD? We’ll argue again another day?
The “exam” is verbal, not “psychological.” When words come out, people don’t just intuitively know how to represent a psychological state, nor do they ever actually do that, since it doesn’t even makes sense that that could be done. They do not have access to “psychological data” by simply talking or introspecting.
It isn’t just about language as a form of representation either (as opposed to math or images or something). These sorts of first-person accounts, in whatever form they might come, are just not reliable or useful or informative, not least because the people we’re supposedly getting this “data” from generally have no valid theoretical framework for their own psychology. Instead, they have their own naive folk-psychological and -sociological views, which don’t typically (much less automatically or non-problematically) translate into something real with which people can actually do something productive. Even in the best cases, they are inherently ignorant of many of the factors (inside and outside of their brains) that could be playing a role in their experiences and their interpretations of them. They also tend to be biased in all sorts of ways I couldn’t even begin to list, and their self-reporting will of course reflect that.
This is simply not any kind of objective data, nor is it anything like the data you get when you physically examine someone with cancer. Maybe you’ve somehow cornered yourself into thinking those need to be analogous somehow, but I really hope you can understand how fucking bizarre that sounds to me. So let me just say that I don’t give a shit whether this analogy is appropriate on some sufficiently abstract level — it apparently has very little to do with what I was talking about, so I think we can drop it.
Leaving all of that aside, we know very well that psychological stuff is physical, so your “psychological not physical” distinction seems pretty fucking meaningless to begin with, and it certainly is inherently problematic if you believe otherwise. I don’t think you really do believe otherwise, so it looks like you’re just fumbling words around. I don’t know what to make of that.
If it’s brain cancer, that is what I would expect. But maybe they aren’t very thorough. I don’t know.
Aside from that, I’m not getting bogged down in a discussion about cancer, since I know very little about it. Are you still confused about my position (or your own)? If I’m mistaken somehow, fine, let me know, but I definitely haven’t lied.
@SC, #481:
Oh, yeah. I’m ok.
Being honest, this statement:
is the kind of thing that makes me not want to argue again another day, especially since I called it out and got nothing from you.
But everyone is entitled to a bad day. Sure, we’ll argue again another day. If that, “since you disagree with me you must not give a shit about suffering,” crap gets repeated, though, I won’t want to engage with you, period.
Right. It’s not like “You don’t care about our suffering” has been the refrain shouted at me for the past five years, including on this thread.
Glad you’re OK.
Fair point.
I don’t do that to you, and others shouldn’t either. I think you have a number of great and very important critiques. I’m glad you do the writing you do. And I’ll try to have your back when people say those critiques indicate lack of empathy/sympathy/care on your part. I admit I haven’t really had your back on that in the past. I still don’t think those words were any more fair to me than they are fair when directed at you, but thinking about it after your statement, I can totally see how one might write that.
Hope you’re ok too.
CD
Thanks, CD. I appreciate that.
(Now good night for real. I swear.)
plus ça change…
Point of fact, there are several physical (as opposed to psychological) diseases that don’t have diagnostic tests, but are instead diagnosed by a process of elimination. Basically, patient’s lab values of X, Y, and Z are [numbers] and they have symptoms A, B, and C, therefore it’s probably Condition #1. When they’re put on a therapy for Condition #1 and they respond, this is considered to have been “proof” that they had Condition #1. Failure to respond can be considered evidence that they have Condition #2 or #3.
Autoimmune diseases are the classic examples of these, most notably lupus. Granted, research is starting to find biomarkers of some of them, but many autoimmune diseases are effectively black boxes.
Similar things can be said of many chronic pain conditions, as well as some developmental disorders.
Esteleth:
Yeah, I’ve recently been dx’d with central pain syndrome.
I hope this diagnosis means you’re getting relief, Inaji.
Oh, another condition often diagnosed by process of elimination: ectopic pregnancy. A female-bodied person comes in, reports that they are sexually active and complains of stabbing pain on one side of their abdomen, along with bloating and bloody discharge that is confirmed on analysis to not be menses. A blood test reveals elevated HCG, but an ultrasound reveals an empty uterus.
Ectopic pregnancies are by definition medical emergencies. You don’t play wait-and-see for the true diagnosis, because the true diagnosis would be rupture of the Fallopian, which is usually followed swiftly by the patient hemorrhaging.
Pain + high HCG + empty uterus is enough evidence for a scrip of methotrexate. It should be noted that methotrexate is highly cytotoxic.
I should clarify that I don’t disagree with SC’s stance re: psychiatry and psychiatric medications. I don’t necessarily agree either (I think there’s some truth to what SC is saying, but I don’t go as far as SC does). I just wanted to address the specific argument that psychiatric conditions are unique in being diagnosed in the absence of biomarkers.
Esteleth:
My neurologist at the pain clinic is a workin’ on it. We’ll get there.
I’d like a simple, straightforward, not-too-jargon-fueled explanation of what you think “the absence of biomarkers” actually means.
When I see something like these:
I am saying to myself “biomarkers are not absent.” Maybe I just don’t get it. They aren’t conclusive, sure. There might be a number of different things going on. Since I’m not any kind of an expert on this medical condition you evidently do know something about, let’s qualify that as many ways and with as much arcane technical detail and rigor as you think it deserves.
But these do constitute actual physical evidence of some measurable thing happening in the body. Somebody actually bothers to measure some part of the body or another, then they do something about it. Some kind of “biomarker” is actually measured according to some physical procedure. Measurement of such is not absent from the process. Am I wrong about that? What am I missing here?
Again, when I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety (somehow both at the same time, but I won’t go into that), there was no measurement whatsoever. My self-reports guided the process, not a physical measurement of anything about my biological condition. This was many years ago, but I don’t believe it has changed, at least for the vast majority of people who get such diagnoses now.
Maybe I’m just not getting what this is supposed to be about. If so, help me figure that out. Please try not to confuse me with all of the details in any particular procedure, unless they’re actually necessary for understanding what you’re saying. But if they are, don’t hold back either, of course — I’ll do my best to understand it.
What has happened to misunderstandings? Did they all die out in some mass extinction event, and lies spread and diversified into the empty ecological niche? Or why are there so many accusations of lying, from several sides, in this thread?
Similarly, how aspirin works was discovered a whole century after it was discovered that salicylic acid lessens pain.
And to first discover a mutation in DNA and then figure out what phenotype it causes is still called reverse genetics, because traditionally you first discover a heritable phenotype (which you can publish) and then, maybe, find out what causes it on the DNA level.
Unfortunately not, no. “Tumor” is a lot easier to define than “mental illness”, but that’s pretty much where the differences end.
Case in point: it was recently claimed that fibromyalgia is a garbage bag of unrelated psychosomatic symptoms. Obviously I’m not qualified to form an opinion about this; but the fact that the claim exists shows there can’t be a lot of currently known evidence either way. Oh, and the current treatment for fibro? Painkillers, lots of painkillers.
Of course: the purpose of giving it to the patient is to kill the embryo before its growth makes things even worse.
Wikipedia: “[…] methotrexate […] inhibits dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), an enzyme that participates in the tetrahydrofolate synthesis.[17][18] […] DHFR catalyses the conversion of dihydrofolate to the active tetrahydrofolate.[17] Folic acid is needed for the de novo synthesis of the nucleoside thymidine, required for DNA synthesis.[17] Also, folate is essential for purine and pyrimidine base biosynthesis, so synthesis [of all four/five bases] will be inhibited. Methotrexate, therefore, inhibits the synthesis of DNA, RNA, thymidylates, and proteins.[17]
I wish you all the best.
David:
That’s not new. From the start, fibro was considered by most doctors to be a “eh, it’s all in your head” dx. The standard treatment in the beginning were anti-depressants like amitriptyline. It wasn’t until people started actively fighting that conclusion that it became more common to prescribe pain meds.
I think I get what your objection is, CR. Let me do my best.
There are 3 things that can cause a spike in the blood and urine levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG):
(1) the presence of a fertilized egg somewhere in the body
(2) the presence of a germ cell tumor somewhere in the body
(3) the presence of gestational trophoblastic disease.
Of these, (1) is (statistically speaking) the most probable.
It is important to note, however, that high HCG is not considered diagnostic of any of these conditions, as either of them could lead to it.
So, the patient comes in. You know several facts:
(1) the patient has a uterus
(2) the patient is older than about 12 and younger than about 55 (i.e. you can – minus information to the contrary – safely assume that the patient is post-menarche and pre-menopause and thus in theory capable of ovulating)
(3) the patient reports sexual activity with someone who can produce sperm
(4) the patient is complaining of stabbing pain in the abdomen
(5) a test reveals the presence of elevated HCG.
Your next step, as the provider, is to perform the only truly diagnostic and failsafe test for pregnancy: you must examine the contents of the uterus. Is there anything in there? If so, what?
The uterine-content test (an ultrasound) can reveal 3 things:
(1) there’s something in the uterus, and upon closer inspection it is revealed to be an embryo or fetus. Conclusion: your patient is pregnant.
(2) there’s something in the uterus, and upon closer inspection it is revealed to not be an embryo or fetus. Conclusion: your patient is not pregnant and more tests are needed. Possibly gestational trophoblastic disease or a uterine germ cell tumor.
(3) the uterus is empty. In this case, this is what you find. Conclusion: either an ectopic pregnancy or a germ cell tumor that’s not in the uterus.
The patient’s symptoms and the tests you’ve run thus indicate two things, both important:
(1) the patient has biomarkers that usually indicate pregnancy.
(2) the patient is, however, not pregnant.
Ectopic pregnancies sometimes can be seen on the ultrasound. They sometimes cannot, however, so “nothing seen in the Fallopian or nearby abdominal tissue” is proof of jack shit.
Ectopic pregnancies are more common than germ cell tumors, so rather than go tumor-hunting or administering chemo, you assume that the diagnosis is ectopic pregnancy.
So, the next step is to administer therapy for an ectopic pregnancy. Methotrextate is the standard.
It is important to note that (unless the ectopic pregnancy was seen on the ultrasound) the patient has not been proven to have an ectopic pregnancy. It’s just that there’s a very good chance of it. If that was what it was, the patient will have (in addition to the side effects of methotrexate, which are not nothing) symptoms similar to a heavy period, and then tests will indicate a fall in HCG. Tests will also reveal a spike in progesterone. Basically, the tests will no longer reveal biomarkers indicative (these biomarkers are INDICATIVE, they are not PROOF) of pregnancy. The patient’s abdominal pain will subside. If, however, the patient does not have these symptoms especially if the HCG stays up, then it may be something other than an ectopic pregnancy, so the team then tries to figure out what.
To sum up:
Pain + high HCG usually = pregnancy. However, “pregnancy” is defined as “there’s an embryo/fetus in the uterus.”
Ectopic pregnancies will respond to methotrexate. Germ cell tumors may, but any response will be transient.
Meaning:
pain + high HCG + empty uterus + response to methotrexate = ectopic pregnancy
pain + high HCG + empty uterus + no response to methotrexate = probably cancer, go find it (it could literally be anywhere, germ cell tumors are sneaky)
I just found out you can wash an SD card, and not lose the data. *phew*
I don’t think you do. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a probability of 1, or it’s less than that at some “indicative” or “high” probability or whatever. I don’t care about the concept of “proof” or what is “failsafe” or even whether there is some ambiguity in how we should interpret the data. There is, throughout this kind of process you described, a reliance on physical measurements of the body, coupled with a variety of probabilistic interpretations of what those measurements indicate. There are different possibilities, but each of those is defined in terms of some measurable thing, and that is how someone gets some idea of which of those possibilities is likely to be the case. These probabilities and interpretations of course bring with them some problems that someone with an extremely naive picture of science might not be able to accept, but they are entirely acceptable to me. They aren’t “really” problems as far as I’m concerned, and in any case, that’s the only option we have.
If psychiatric diagnoses were like that, they would have respectable problems like you described, unlike the problem of not being based on any measurement whatsoever. But they are not like that. Go through a psychiatric diagnosis, at any level of detail, just as you did in #497. There is no measurement of anything. And that is not the only option we have: it is not the only way people could do anything like psychiatry. They could actually try measuring things when making diagnoses. That isn’t an unreasonable or incoherent or unscientific request. I don’t know how I could put it any more clearly than that.
\o/