hyperlexichypatia

[hyperlexichypatia]

This is clearly for a polygamous person to give to their two husbands, what's the problem?

Honestly when i saw this my mind went straight to "ooh i could have TWO husbands", rather than considering its actual use, as that for a LGBTQ couple 🤦‍♀️

I've got to stop reading so much smut.

[hyperlexichypatia]

here's to the imperfect crazy person. the crazy person who trashes their room in the psych ward. the crazy person who yells and talks to themself on the street. the "terrible patient" who is noncompliant with medication. the mad people who use drugs, criminalized or otherwise. the crazy people who don't want to get better, who don't want to stop doing high risk behaviors, who don't want their voices to go away, who reject diagnoses, who refuse treatment, who dare to define our lives in a way that's different than a medicalized institution wants us to pathologize ourselves. here's to the imperfect mad people surviving psychiatric abuse and incarceration every single day. nothing that we do--no matter how odd or unsafe--ever justifies the mistreatment that we face when we get locked up. resisting treatment, daring to defy dehumanization, and all the other million ways we hold onto survival, are never actions that can excuse psych wards from trying to take all of our autonomy and personhood away.

here's to all of us imperfect crazy people. i love us so much and we deserve so much better and we are allowed to demand it without being forced to prove that we were one of the "good" patients first.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Adding on to my previous objection to the framing of adults and kids socializing as "parenting other people's children" -- so often, youthlib discussions are framed as though in the absence of some external limit, the minimum age at which people do things would be zero, and that facilitates the way pro-age-segregation people group all "minors" as if they were essentially infants. You are not going to run into a toddler in your all-ages social space, unless they're being brought there and attended by their designated Older Person. The absolute minimum age you're likely to encounter someone on their own in a social space is like... 8. And you should be able to interact with an 8 year old without trying to "parent" them. And most of this discourse is explicitly about teenagers, and you should absolutely be able to interact with a 13+ year old without trying to "parent" them. Just have a conversation. A conversation where you don't give them any unsolicited advice, even!

Ppl talk a lot about how conservative massive parts of online teenagers are, be that anti vs proship, queer discourse, or what have you, but so few actually ask why those teens are so alienated from spaces and adults who could teach them better that they end up being scouted by adult reactionaries and assimilationists and recruited into conservative ideology.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This and superspy were my top two dream jobs, but alas, I have -4 to charisma.

I need to be a well off couple's third and I do not want to be on equal footing with them relationship-wise. I do want to be the secondary partner here, the kind who does weird sex things they don't normally do with each other and gets flaunted like a party trick over martinis to show how worldly they are. I want to sit on one of their Eames chairs and gaze into the eyes of their useless designer dog and realize that me and it are one and the same, that I am just another set piece, and plan my escape not before exploiting their networks in the arts and local politics and penning a novella that leaves readers to wonder where the fact ends and the fiction begins.

[hyperlexichypatia]

"without parental consent" yeah uhhh if the human being can understand and consent to it then the parents can go pound sand.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Let this be your sign to watch older movies right now please

[hyperlexichypatia]

People take shelter from a russian attack in the Kyiv metro early on November 17th.

Russia launched 120 missiles and 90 drones across Ukraine, targeting energy infrastructure & civilian structures. Ukrainian defenses intercepted over 140 threats.

Source: Yan Dobronosov

[hyperlexichypatia]

I think a lot of people are scared of having full personal autonomy and agency over their lives. That’s why they are ok with socialist states like “I’m cool with these repressive structures as long as my needs are met.”

[hyperlexichypatia]

I just want to point out that this is 10 years old and even more true today than it was when it was written.

Also, many landlords simply will not rent to 18 year olds, even if they have the money for it. Their only options are to move in with an older roommate/partner (which gives the older roommate/partner power over the younger one, and is the direct cause of the "power imbalance" in young adult/older adult relationships this website is so obsessed with), or get cosigned by their parents, which... parents who kick out/estrange themselves from their young adult children are also not going to cosign rental agreements for them.

Also. Just. Like.

You're supposed to love your kids.

I know "love" can't be mandated or regulated, but. Like. Why do you have kids. If you're not going to love them. And actively want to be around them. And care about their general well-being.

Now, obviously, an 18 year old is a moral agent, so is perfectly capable of being The Asshole. Perhaps they really did do something so bad that your anger at them is justified. (Although the vast majority of cases I'm familiar with, the young person did not do something "bad," they did something like "exist as the kind of person their parents don't like," "be queer," "make their own medical decisions," "choose their own partner," etc.) But still. Are you not supposed to love your kids?

Like, so much of "But how much am I required to tolerate my kids? How little of myself can I invest in their well-being and still be considered an Acceptably Good Person?" discourse just leaves me like... aren't you supposed to actively love your kids?

what do you make of parents who kick their children out of the house before they have the means to support themselves?

Ooh, that’s an interesting question. I assume you mean kids who are 18 or over, so their parents are no longer legally obligated to care for them? Generally speaking, I think it is A) a shitty thing to do and B) a moral grey area, but not the obviously immoral thing it would be with, say, a sixteen-year-old.

A sixteen-year-old is unable to support themselves because they do not have the legal, social, political, and economic standing to do so. They cannot sign contracts, cannot work full-time, have to attend school, have restrictions on their driving in many regions, and so on. Parents like to hold the “it’s my house” thing over teenagers but the fact is, it’s totally immoral to make that argument when the person you’re talking to is unable, through no fault of their own, to live anywhere else or provide for themselves, and could literally be dragged back home by the cops if they tried to leave and live independently. It’s the same as a slaveholder saying to a slave “you have to do what I say since I provide for you”; it wasn’t their choice to be in that situation, and they have no legal means of leaving that situation, so you can’t pretend they have moral obligations to you because they’re in that situation. Parents do, however, have an obligation to their children because it was their choice for them to be born into that situation - and they don’t get to use their obligation of care and provision as a bargaining chip, or withdraw it whenever they want to.

An eighteen-year-old, on the other hand, theoretically has the requisite standing in society to support themselves. They’re either finished or nearly finished high school, and after that, the theory goes, they can get a job, get a place to live, and they’re off living an independent life. So a parent saying “it’s my house, I don’t have to let you live here if I don’t want to” is theoretically doing nothing immoral, because the kid has other viable options and isn’t committing various illegal acts by attempting to live independently. Why did I keep saying “theoretically”? Because in reality we have to understand that young adults are at a huge economic disadvantage in our society. The average net worth of a 65-year-old in the United States is over $300,000; the average net worth of a 20-year-old is $1,500. Put another way, in most cities, without a job, the average 65-year-old could buy a house with cash, while the average 20-year-old could pay rent for about two months.

Young adults are not (with a few exceptions like drinking and running for president) a legally or politically oppressed group, but they face extreme economic oppression, especially when you consider the fact that being competitive in today’s job market means having an expensive post-secondary education. Also, social discrimination against young adults does exist, and often an 18-year-old will be passed over for a job in favor of a 30-year-old because the employer believes older people are smarter, more attentive, more responsible, etcetera. So really, the idea that parents are absolved of their obligations to their children as soon as those children hit 18 is nice in theory, but it’s ridiculous in practice. When you are responsible for someone coming into the world in a state of complete reliance, you are responsible for them until they can exit that state, and expecting someone to be completely non-reliant on parental support at eighteen is unreasonable in the 21st-century West.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I understand the impulse behind that post about legalizing polyamorous marriage everywhere but the fact that marriage is so economically important and the fact that it determines which forms of long-term relationships are considered acceptable within society should make you question the institution of marriage and understand it as a tool of class society. We don't need to expand the institution of marriage so it includes gay people, polyamorous people, etc, we need to abolish marriage entirely and make it so that people don't need to be married to be economically or personally secure

[hyperlexichypatia]

I’ve been seeing a few viral posts like “You don’t have to move out of your parents’ house when you turn 18; multi-generational homes are good.” And I agree – multi-generational homes ARE good, and cultural stigma on living with one’s parents as an adult IS wrong! Personally, I’ve lived with my parents for most of my adult life, first by financial necessity, and later by choice. If you’re fortunate enough to have a good relationship with your parents, spending time with them can be great.  BUT.  While you don’t necessarily need to move out of your parents’ home when you’re 18, you DO need to start thinking of yourself as an adult and making your own choices, and your parents will need to respect that. If you and your parents can seamlessly make the transition to viewing you as an adult housemate rather than a child under their care, that’s great. Sometimes, though, even the most respectful parents will have a tendency to Meddle, and even the most self-assured young people will have a tendency to Revert to old roles and habits. If this is a problem, you may in fact need to get some physical distance to reinforce the psychological distance. And even more importantly, every young adult deserves the living wage and affordable housing to live on their own, whether or not they ever choose to use it. I’ve been shouting into the wind for years that the “young adults are still children” narrative is an excuse to normalize the low wages and high costs of living faced by Millennials and Gen Z, and “Multi-generational homes are good” seems hardly better in this respect. At best, it’s tonally mismatched to the cultural and economic moment. At worst, it’s normalizing the conditions of abusive control of young people. Somewhere in between, it’s propaganda reframing being unable to afford housing as a wholesome family lifestyle. In fact, I think the demographic this demographic is nominally targeted to – 18 year olds who are freely choosing between two options, having both the financial resources to live on their own, and supportive parents who would willingly share a safe and respectful multi-generational home – are a relatively small segment of the population.  “Multi-generational homes are good” does nothing for the 18 year old living with their controlling parents because they can’t afford to move out, let alone the 18 year old moving in with an abusive partner because it’s the only way xe can escape xyr even more abusive parents, or the 18 year old living on the streets because her parents kicked her out and she’s ineligible for any benefits because she’s assumed to be supported by her parents (who have no legal obligation towards her). And as always, young people most likely to be controlled, abused, rejected, or involuntarily “helped” (which is also abuse) by parents and family – queer young people, disabled young people, young people who’ve made different reproductive or philosophical or religious or life-path choices than their family approves of – are most harmed by having no economic options to live on their own. So can we get universal housing, universal living wages, and universal healthcare and student aid for young people which doesn’t require the involvement of their families FIRST, and THEN, once everyone has the option of living on their own, remind them that multi-generational homes are also good as one option among many?

[hyperlexichypatia]

Look. Look. At least they HAD a bathroom. I have a coworker who used to work at Dollar General, and who has told stories that make my hair curl. Such as the local Dollar General whose bathroom was out of order, so the employee had to wait for everyone to leave the store and then go out back and pee in the bushes. Yes, this also implies the absence of handwashing.

I know most Dollars General only sell packaged, sealed food, but, still, keep these things in mind when you buy food there. The corporate offices do not care about things like hygiene, and **looks around at national trends of food/worker safety regs** I wouldn't feel too optimistic about the government either.

Dollar General keeps their bathrooms locked up like the Hope Diamond AND they’re nasty. It’s crazy. You’ve been driving for hours. You’re in the middle of mulefucking central Virginia. You come to a crossroads and there’s a Dollar General. You park. You go in. Nobody in the fucking parking lot. Somebody’s baby standing in the middle of gum aisle staring at you first thing. You’re there about to piss yourself, politely and quietly asking the cashier “May I please have the bathroom key?” while she fights with her baby daddy’s new girlfriend and then when she finally gives you the bathroom key and you go in there, it’s dark, it’s mysteriously wet, there is blood on the toilet seat, no hand soap, no paper towels, 3 sheets of 1 ply toilet paper on the roll, broken mirror, broken sink. You have the most unsatisfying piss of all time. You leave the bathroom and genuinely contemplate cracking open a bottle of hand sanitizer on the shelf. You’re trying to decide if you should buy something out of sheer politeness. While you’re standing there in the lip balm section, that baby from earlier runs full force at you, smacks into your leg and ricochets off, starts sobbing and his mom comes down the aisle glaring like YOU did it. You go to checkout with your stupid $4 hat and your chapstick and there’s a guy at the only till paying for 27 frozen dinners using only dimes.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Psych Abolition Chat Sessions- Fall 2024

As many of you know, I have been hosting Zoom meetings for psych abolitionists or interested parties to come together, chat, collaborate, etc since the beginning of this summer. Over the last several weeks, those chats have taken the form of informational sessions regarding harm reduction on various topics. I have been so delighted to be able to share my thoughts about these issues with you all, but I'm equally excited to transition back into a more collaborative format for the next set of sessions.

Given my capacity for the semester, my goal is to hold chats similar to the first set of sessions: open spaces to discuss psych abolition + provide community for abolitionists, as well as inspiring collaborative work amongst us all. While people are encouraged to come + contribute, 'lurking' (aka camera off, no speaking) is also encouraged! Any way that you want to show up is okay- we regularly have people attend who do not engage at all, or only engage in the chat. Chat messages are read aloud by me to ensure that chat participants feel equally included in the group.

A reminder to anyone who wants to attend that under no circumstances may anyone contact the authorities as a result of anything spoken about during the Zoom. Free discussion of self-injury + suicidality + substance use are expected without fear of being “crisis” intervened upon. That being said, the goal of these chats is not necessarily to be a support group but more to talk about psychiatric abolition, build community, + increase knowledge.

The sessions will take place as follows

SUNDAY OCTOBER 27TH CANCELLED

Monday, November 4th at 9pm EST | 1am UTC

Sunday, November 10th at 12pm EST | 1am UTC

Monday, November 18th at 9pm EST | 1am UTC

Sunday, November 24th at 12pm EST | 4pm UTC

Also, if you would like to join the Madness + Liberation forum where we discuss psychiatric abolition at greater length, please feel free to fill out my Google Form here.

Those of you who need a dial-in number, please message me on Tumblr or send an anon + I will provide it.

For those of you interested in reading about some of our past chats, check out the links below!

Pilot Cycle [July 1 2024-July 29 2024] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Harm Reduction Cycle [Aug 19 2024-Sep 28 2024]

(img src)

[hyperlexichypatia]

So, as a person who desperately, desperately wants to have children and is struggling with infertility, I absolutely hate it when people try to either discourage me from reproducing or make me feel better about my failure at it by saying things like "Sweatie 🙂you know 🙂 there are lots of ways 🙂 to be ~in a child's life~ 🙂 other than being a parent 🙂 did you know that 🙂 you could be a mentor 🙂 or an auntie 🙂."

And that. That is not a helpful thing to say. Being a mentor or auntie or teacher is not at all similar to being a full-time parent.

However, it can be similar to being a grandparent. If you desperately want to be a grandparent, but your offspring don't want to be parents, the Grandparenthood Experience is more easily replicable with a non-biological-family alternative. I know several people who are "Grandma and Grandpa" to their friends' kids.

It's not the same, I know it's not the same, but it's closer than parenthood.

ETA I did not realize the smilies would get italicized. That's unnerving.

stop telling your teenage daughters who say they don't want kids that they'll change their mind

[hyperlexichypatia]

The amount of straight-up Soviet-era propaganda is getting brushed off and repackaged as "progressive" is disturbing. It's antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, and many other kinds of bigoted (I acknowledge & respect that OP is about antisemitism specifically, so I hope this is interpreted as a "yes, and" rather than a derail).

If your "progressive ideals" lead you to discriminate against people for their religion or culture you're fucking doing it wrong.

I need to talk about this because it's making me feel insane.

Last week, my white leftist goyisch friends sat me, a wholeass antizionist Jew, down for a "talk" because they "needed to check in about Palestine" and make sure "our values aligned before we hung out again". They apparently needed to "suss out" where I stood on Palestinian rights, despite having had several conversations about Palestine and them being some of my closest friends. They needed to check, to search for and uncover my true values, because I had said some "disturbing things" that had made them "suspicious".

Disturbing things included:

Supporting IfNotNow which is a "liberal zionist organization" because it normalizes Jewish heritage in the Levant

Not bringing Palestine up enough, despite them also not bringing it up (this was apparently a test)

Mentioning that the Houthi's flag talks about cursing all Jews

Saying Stalin was antisemitic because of the "all the paw-grihms"

...and apparently other things they wouldn't specify, but had been tracking for months.

To clarify, I am an antizionist Jew from three generations of antizionist Jews. I have been vocal in my support of Palestinian liberation and in my condemnation both of Israel's actions and its violent founding as a state, and of zionism in many of its forms. I am a regular donor to Palestinian and Jewish NGOs and advocate for Jewish antizionism in person, at temple, and online. I have been talking about Palestinian liberation before they could point to Gaza on a map. But they needed to make sure, they needed to "suss out", they needed to check. And it's notable that the majority of moments that made them suspicious of me were times where I talked about antisemitism: not about Palestinian liberation, not about Israeli decolonization, not about anything actually relevant to Palestine. It was talking about antisemitism that made them check to see if I was a cryptozionist.

One of the most pervasive and insidious forms of antisemitism is the idea that Jews are inherently untrustworthy and suspicious. You have to constantly be on guard, track what they say and do, "suss out" the real truth. You have to keep them in line and and watch them carefully because they're liars and sneaks, and if you're not looking closely they'll return to their real values (and drag you down with them). This is where the idea of "cryptozionist" comes from and what it's directly building off of: the inherent untrustworthiness of Jews and the need to check. Because no matter how close you become you can't actually trust them, and any upstanding gentile should make sure to avoid associating with Jews before "sussing out" their real allegiances and intentions. You have to make them turn out their pockets, just in case.

I'm the first and only Jew they actually were friends with; I know because they've told me (strangely proud of it in the way white Americans are proud of that kind of thing). They've asked me questions about Judaism and fawned over how beautiful and unique it was for me to be connected to my community and culture. Pre-October 7th, one of them had even mentioned being interested in coming to services at my temple. She still has my copy of our siddur. But now she needed to "check" before she could be seen with me in public. Which is what it was: it wasn't a "you're my friend and I need to give you some feedback because you're fucking up" kind of intervention (which is normal and important to have), it was a trial. It was a last chance for me to prove to them that I'm clean-enough that they could afford to risk being seen with me in public, just in case someone noticed them fraternizing with a hypothetical Enemy and their leftism was compromised. It was a test to make sure that I behave properly when required to, that I'd play along and do what I'm told and turn out my pockets if asked (because any refusal would validate the notion of having something to hide). And above all it was an opportunity for them to reaffirm their own cleanliness by putting my imagined immorality in its place.

I did what I needed to do: I smiled. I apologized. I "didn't know that". I "appreciated the feedback". I turned out my pockets because what else could I do? They'd decided who I was and what I believed, regardless of what I said or did, so there was no point in explaining that they were wrong about me. If I had told them they were being antisemitic, it would just have been proof that they were right. Caring about antisemitism is a dogwhistle in the spaces they've chosen: it's not a real form of oppression, it's a tactic for sneaky, lying Jews to weasel out of admitting their true alliances. There was nothing I could say.

Nothing's really changed for me. I'm going to continue my activism for Palestinian liberation rooted in my culture and my faith. Antizionism is still not antisemitism. But I got a reminder that many white goyisch leftists fundamentally just don't trust Jews, and that the activist spaces they're in not only exacerbate their antisemitism in an increasingly insular echo chamber, but also allow them to finally vent their internalized bigotry in a socially-acceptable way. In my former friends' eyes, what they did was activism—disavowing a Jew (and making me feel humiliated, scared, and unclean in the process) as a cathartic stand-in for doing fucking anything for actual Palestinian liberation—but for me it was a grief that I'll be feeling for a long time: not only over losing friends I loved and trusted, but also over my sense of belonging and security in leftist spaces.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I. Like. I mean. As a diehard liberal individualist, bodily autonomy, cognitive liberty extremist, sure, I believe mutual combat between consenting adults should be legal.

But as a frequenter of parking lots, OP, may I suggest perhaps any other conflict resolution skills, such as time-honored methods of passive-aggressive gossip, declaring that you will pray for someone, inhaling and saying "yikes" after someone speaks, pointedly talking to the person next to your enemy and ignoring them, etc?

We need to let adults fight without catching an assault charge...like I'm talking about consensual fighting. Not jumping folks, hiding no weapons none of that. Just going at it in the parking lot

[hyperlexichypatia]

There is never a good reason to tell a young person (or anyone) "You'll change your mind."

Either they will or they won't. Your saying it won't make it so.

There are cases where someone says "I don't want to have kids" and then, at some later point in their life, decides, "Actually, you know what? Changed my mind. Having a kid around would be nice."

There are cases where someone says "I don't want to have kids" and they go to their grave never wavering in that decision.

There are cases where someone says "I do want to have kids," and then later decides "Actually? No thanks."

And what all these cases have in common is that they're that person's decision, not yours, and your input is not needed.

stop telling your teenage daughters who say they don't want kids that they'll change their mind