#Tw eugenics

[cripplecharacters]

hi, i'm AUDHD myself and i've been trying to figure out if "high functioning" and "low functioning" are appropriate terms to use about autistic people?

i've heard that they're ableist because, well, to be honest it sounds ableist and very inappropriate. i might be wrong, but weren't the terms made by Hans Aspergers?

but then again i've heard/hear autistic people using there terms for *themselves* claiming they are correct terms and help them with their identity but it feels so wrong. maybe i'm misunderstanding? how could someone call another person "low functioning"?

Hello,

They're outdated. For a lot of people in the community, these terms are the ones they were diagnosed with and the ones they self-described with, so they keep using the terms even though new terms have emerged. Some people like these terms, some are neutral to them, some are only okay with them if autistic people are the ones using them like me, and some do not like these terms at all and may even consider them akin to slurs. Functioning labels are seen by many as ableist and dehumanizing, I would air on the side of caution and only use them if you're autistic to self-identify or to describe someone who uses those labels (I do know several people who use functioning labels because they're easier or familiar.)

As for Asperger's, you're right, it was named after a Nazi (Hans Asperger) who created the category for eugenics purposes. It used to be a diagnosis, though, and many people were diagnosed with it and might even still be diagnosed as that in their medical records. Some people are attached to this label because it's how they self-describe and are reclaiming it, but it understandably makes a lot of people very uncomfortable due to it being a label created explicitly for eugenics and due to it being a term coined by a Nazi. It's also named after Hans Asperger who created the divide between "useful" autistics, who could be in the Nazi forces, and "useless" autistics (as the Nazis called them, a "life unworthy of life,") who would be killed. This term is also based on an extremely outdated understanding of autism, which was the belief that autism is a disorder similar to schizophrenia and "psychopathy," which is no longer a valid diagnosis (never really should have been a valid diagnosis to begin with) and largely falls under the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, when autism is very much its own diagnosis and not part of or defined by schizophrenia or a personality construct. This idea is extremely outdated and has been scientifically proven to be incorrect, similar to female hysteria. This term is really not one someone should be using unless they are autistic and using it to describe themselves, and even then it's still a very loaded term.

(Asperger's is also still a valid diagnosis people are being diagnosed with to this day in other countries that use the ICD-10 rather than the DSMV-5 of the ICD-11. The DSM isn't the main diagnostic criteria in many countries and some countries haven't yet updated to the ICD-11, so make sure to research which text is used in the country your setting is in.)

The modern terms are autism spectrum disorder and support needs labels, which are generally no support needs, light support needs, medium support needs, high support needs, and very substantial support needs. There are also autism levels (levels one, two, and three, one being light or no support needs and three being high or very substantial support needs,) though not everyone likes those.

If someone uses terms that are, medically speaking, outdated when describing themselves, it's fine to use those words in reference to them. But don't force them on people who don't like them. And when writing an autistic character, it is best to use the most up-to-date knowledge possible unless the time of the setting prevents that, because the most up-to-date terms are the ones considered most medically accurate.

(And if your setting is before autism was created as a diagnosis in 1910 by Eugen Bleuler, here is a Wikipedia page that includes other terms used up until the World Health Organization in 1978. It might be best to avoid using the r-slur if at all possible. Lois Lowry in her book "The Silent Boy" did this rather elegantly in her description of an autistic character who lived long before the autism diagnosis was a thing, in which he was referred to as "touched," meaning "touched in the head," or "touched by God," rather than as the r slur. Try to avoid using the r slur, I cannot stress this enough.)

Mod Aaron

[bodhrancomedy]

This is happening way more than is comfortable in my comments right now and I kinda need neurodivergent people (and obviously other disabled communities including my own) to be aware of lateral ableism.

[spoonietimelordy]

More details about my tags in the previous rb:

I sincerely believe that, in the context of our heavily ableist society, laws allowing euthanasia are ableist, full stop. Allowing disabled people to be legally killed by doctors, in a world where we are seen as better dead than alive is not giving us rights, it's making it legal to murder us.

I agree that people should have the right to decide how to die. But right now, it's not something that can be done, because we don't have the right to decide how to live.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

‘In my day, we didn’t have all this Autism stuff’ ‘The last Asylum for Disabled people only closed in 2001’

Neurodivergent_lou

[thethirdromana]

I think last year I wrote something about how meaningful it is, and what a leap of faith it represents, that Mina chooses to marry Jonathan even when she has no idea when or even if he'll be able to work again. Only unmarried women could be teachers, so her ability to earn money is curtailed by the marriage; she may struggle to support them. It's both a statement of trust that Mr Hawkins will keep to his word and take care of them, and a declaration that - in a very immediate and practical sense - Mina chooses her love for Jonathan over financial security.

What I was less aware of last year is the extent of eugenicist thinking in the 1890s around the marriage of people who were mentally ill. Mina makes it very clear just how unwell Jonathan is:

He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past.

And Jonathan is open about it too:

"I feel my head spin round, and I do not know if it was all real or the dreaming of a madman. You know I have had brain fever, and that is to be mad."

We know that Jonathan's experiences are real, but he doesn't and Mina doesn't. And neither of them knows if he will make a full recovery.

This was at a time when the British Medical Journal published articles claiming that "marriage was often contracted in a blind and reckless way by those who had a strong predisposition to insanity". In a wider discussion, the article suggests that doctors might advise against marriage not just for those known to be mentally ill, but even people "who come of a nervous stock".

I don't want to go into all the horrible things that the medical establishment of the 1890s believed. But I do want to emphasise the extent of Mina's devotion. She travels day and night to get to Jonathan, she spends a small fortune to do so, she sacrifices her career, she marries someone against the advice of a lot of the contemporary medical establishment, and she does it without hesitation.

Mina and Jonathan are both young. It would be entirely respectable and normal for them to stay engaged but wait to marry, to see if Jonathan recovers, to build up savings, to get home. But Mina says a massive fuck you to that and fuck you to contemporary ableism as well, and marries Jonathan precisely as he is.

[lesbidog]

i was talking about my disability to a classmate and she started talking about eugenics and how the gov should kill disabled people who are "too disabled" because she "feels bad for them"

i'm so tired

[sxnshxnxxnddxxsxxs]

i really feel like we don’t discuss enough just how deep jkr’s white supremacy goes

like it’s way more than just:

cho chang’s name

almost every black character being tall and sporty

kingley’s name

the goblins

the house elves

the only south asian thing about the patil twins being their names

there’s way more but those are the talking points that are usually discussed in the white supremacy context of jkr’s bigotry.

but there’s something else that i find to be particularly insidious which i don’t see that many conversations about.

so for context when i did my a level i had had to research late 19th century pseudoscience because i was studying gothic literature. and i came across things like phrenology and the criminal mind and honestly it feels like jkr discovered these theories and just ran with them.

as a quick explanation phrenology is the theory that by studying the shape of someone’s skull you can see if they’re predisposed to criminality and lombroso’s criminal mind is the theory that criminality is hereditary and you can tell by observing someone’s physical features. it’s also the general consensus in both these theories that someone with physical ‘defects’ or deformities’ will be predisposed to criminality which also makes them incredibly ableist.

both are incredibly eugenicist and white supremacist theories because they’re essentially saying that you can tell if someone is inherently good or bad and thereby whether they deserve to be alive/within society/treated as equals by looking at their physical features.

they are both complete bullshit pseudoscience with no real basis in fact.

now where this comes into hp and jkr is that the antagonists and the villains of the series are disproportionately described as having these very negative physical characteristics.

like the very obvious one is voldemort with no nose and being snakelike.

but also the way peter pettigrew is described.

“His thin, colourless hair was unkempt and there was a large bald patch on top. He had the shrunken appearance of a plump man who had lost a lot of weight in a short time. His skin looked grubby, almost like Scabbers’s fur, and something of the rat lingered around his pointed nose, his very small, watery eyes.” (poa ch 19)

like the man is literally being compared to an animal (yes i know it’s implied in the lore that the longer one stays in their animagus form the more traits they take on but the point still stands).

then there’s marcus flint who as far as i remember is literally just a minor antagonist.

“Marcus Flint was even larger than Wood. He had a look of trollish cunning on his face as he replied” (cos ch 7)

like she really has a thing for comparing people to animals which is a very common tool in white supremacy for dehumanising people.

and then there’s greyback

“a big, rangy man with matted grey hair and whiskers, whose black Death Eater’s robes looked uncomfortably tight. He had a voice like none that Harry had ever heard: a rasping bark of a voice. Harry could smell a powerful mixture of dirt, sweat and, unmistakeably, of blood coming from him. His filthy hands had long yellowish nails.” (hbp ch 27)

now admittedly it’s slightly different with greyback since jkr is very openly saying in the narrative that he’s less than human and too dangerous for society because jkr only believes in equality for muggleborns and no one else.

but as is stands there are so many examples some big some small of the physical descriptions of villains and antagonists having negative connotations. the reason that it’s so insidious is because this is a children’s book series. and children soak up information like sponges including the implication that the further you are from the beauty standards the worse of a person you are (something that is reinforced by society). then when you place that in the context of the west where hp is most popular then it becomes the further away you are from whiteness (the western beauty standard) the worse of a person you are.

it seems like a really small thing which is why i don’t think it gets discussed nearly as much as the more overt things but even the small pebbles can have large ripple effects. besides i think think it’s incredibly important to discuss every aspect of jkr’s bigotry.

[psychabolition]

Revisionist historians of medicine are keen to interpret psychiatry’s enthusiastic involvement in the sterilisation and mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people labelled as “mentally ill” during the Third Reich (1933–1945) as an aberration, a perversion of correct medical practice.[...]

There was little opposition from inside the profession for the atrocities that were to follow. This is because the psychiatric profession saw these pursuits as furthering their branch of medicine, progressing biomedical ideas on the mind and the “treatment” of mental disordered patients, and—in the language of medicine under the rationale of biomedicine—in the best interests of their patients. [...]

Nearly, 40 years before the Nazis came to power, in 1895, the psychologist Adolf Jost published his book The Right to Die. In it, he argued that [i]n cases of incurable suffering the State can say its interest and the interest of the person concerned demand equally a quick and painless death, but it must be left to the patient to decide between life and death. In the case of mental patients this right reverts to the State, and the diagnosis of incurability is sufficient in itself to justify killing.[...]

By the time that the Nazis were voted into office in 1933 and Hitler became German Chancellor, the German eugenics movement had been surpassed by “advances” in sterilisation policies in US America. So often at the forefront of psychiatric scholarship and “treatments” for the mentally ill, German psychiatry felt it was falling behind the “progress” made in the United States. Towards the end of the 1933, after careful examination of the US American legislation, Germany introduced the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases. Authored by Ernst Rudin, an internationally renowned Swiss psychiatrist and researcher on the genetics of schizophrenia, the Nazi’s notorious sterilisation law was hailed at the time by American psychiatry as “an ‘optimal example’ of modern medicine”.

Psychiatric Hegemony: A marxist theory on mental illness, Bruce M.Z. Cohen

[rei-ismyname]

X-Men/Mutant Dynasties

Something I've always felt uneasy about is when offspring of Marvel mutants basically inherit their mutant gift 1:1. The X Gene (though I don't love that either) is supposed to be a naturally but randomly occurring thing in humans that causes them to develop a strong mutation. In many cases, a superpower as opposed to six toes. I'm sure people experience such minor mutations as well but it's not due to the X Gene.

A character that exemplifies the my dislike of this is Raze, the alternate reality/'future' child of Wolverine and Mystique. Them existing in a pretty ridiculous era with a constant nostalgia recycling is a factor too.

This idiot. He literally just has both parents gifts - shapeshifting, claws, and a healing factor. Keep in mind those are metal claws too - something Logan doesn't have biologically. Maybe it's a Mystique thing and she's like a ditto in Pokémon breeding because her kid with Xavier is this chump.

It's just Charles Xavier again! I'll admit part of the dislike is them featuring in such mediocre, unimaginative stories, and they're pretty transparent Nostalgia bait. Has it lead to good stories? I don't think so, not as a critical element. Could you honestly tell me what either of these idiots' motivation is without looking it up?

Also, I think taking the randomness out of it just leads to eugenics and bioessentialism - a place the x books should not go, or at least not have nominal heroes doing it. Leave it to Mr Sinister.

Mutant trait inheritance has been around since almost the beginning. Polaris has Magneto's powers but weaker, Siryn has *similar* powers to Banshee, Nightcrawler looks like Mystique (though that makes sense through retcon. Shit, maybe she IS a Ditto.) On the flip side, there's even more Mutants that inherited none of their parents' mutation.

IRL Mutation is supposed to be, well not random per se, but the result of damage to genes. In our universe it's neither a good thing nor bad thing. In 616 it's pretty muddled tbh. I'm not a scientist - I'm a writer, so I'm not going deep on something that doesn't have internal consistency. I'm always going to dislike thin characters trying to evoke familiarity through mashing two iconic ones together, but it's more than that. What's the source of my discomfort then?

Yeah, it's the eugenics. HoxPoX actually took it further, revealing that Moira and Charles intentionally sought to breed reality warpers, to the point of researching partners that would give the desired result. They were successful too, resulting in Proteus and Legion, two of the most powerful mutants alive. The ethics of these actions aren't editorialised but I think they're meant to be read as horrifying - especially when you consider the context of the 'pairings' and the lives these poor kids have had. Maybe it's not so surprising Xavier views David as a weapon and Moira seems to hate Kevin. It makes Chuck and Moira look terrible.

Pic unrelated, I just wanted to break up the text and what better than Beatnik Namor?

The superbaby schemes never come to light and they're not really punished for being shit parents. Certainly not socially. I'd love a book where they were, but the time has kinda passed. Maybe the fairy tale morality of big two comics doesn't have the framework or the desire to explore it, though I think that if you're going to put eugenics in your fiction you probably should.

I've been sitting on this draft for months because I feel like I don't have the knowledge or vocabulary to explore it properly. I'm probably missing something. I've decided it's been edited and rewritten enough and I'm posting it as is, so if you have any thoughts on this I'd love to hear them. Join the conversation!

[starlightshadowsworld]

Happy Disability Pride month and a big ol fuck you to Alexander Graham Bell.

Who despite having a deaf mother who he communicated with via tapping certain things to.

And thus having an understanding that she needed something other than verbal communication to understand things.

.... Saw deaf people as "a defective race".

He wanted deaf people eradicated and at his school for the deaf, he banned the use of sign language.

Yeah he saw sign language as a foreign language.

And as he was also a racist and very against immigration, he went all "we're in America and in America we speak English and only English."

So glad thats not a thing anymore...

His answer to this was that deaf people should be unable to marry other deaf people.

Lest they produce more deaf children a which he saw as a "great calamity that could ruin humanity."

Well jokes on him because 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents.

And if you think he kept those opinions to himself... Nope.

Encouraged by him, in 1880, the Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf was held.

164 delagates were in attendence, only one of which was deaf.

And they voted to banned sign language in schools.

As an "effort to encourage spoken language skills, and thus restore the Deaf-mute to society."

... By actively taking away what for many was the only way they could communicate in society.

People who had their own community that he wanted destroyed.

But the deaf community is still thriving.

Decades of campaigning resulted in British Sign Language bring recognised by the UK Parliament and passing the BSL Act.

... In 2022.

Yes it was technically recognised in 2003, and was legally recognised in 2015 in Scotland.

But not over all of the UK and did not have the same protections and recognition as it does now.

As of the passing of that bill, there were around 90,000 deaf people in the UK that have BSL as their first or preferred language.

Which I'm sure Alexander Graham Bell was rolling in his grave at hearing.

Also, he is credited as the inventor of the telephone but he may not actually have invented it.

So yeah Happy Disability Pride month and maybe learn some sign language.

[cripplecharacters]

Context:

I know the first question on your QNA says your general answer is “if you are talking about your own disability, you can talk about it however you please”, so for clarity: I am mentally disabled. I am not physically disabled. My story features characters with a range of different disabilities, many of which I do not have.

The story in question is a satire on the mental health industry and my personal experiences with ableism (especially about ableist societal pressures about needing to be “fixed”).

It follows the daily life of many characters who underwent a fictitious sci-fi “cure-all” treatment which was pushed onto mentally ill people who were considered “lost causes”. The “cure” is inherently flawed on a conceptual level, but also just doesn't work.

Here's what I'm worried about:

A lot of the featured characters wind up with disabling side effects from the “cure” (for example, two characters end up with acquired neurological disorders), or exacerbations of symptoms they had previously (some through adverse reactions physiologically to the "cure", some through the emotional trauma of the experience, etc).

I don’t want it to seem like the takeaway should be “eugenics is only bad because it makes people more disabled”, and I'm worried that might be an accidental implication here.

Do you have any advice on preventing that implication?

This isn't the whole plot, but I don't know how relevant the rest is the mention.

Hello,

Okay, so this is a matter of consent and the violation of it. Focus on that. That's an absolutely massive violation of bodily autonomy with no concern for the patient. In fact, this violates the Hippocratic Oath, which is the number one rule of science and medicine, to do no harm, but it's okay to just disregard that when the patient is disabled. That's what's messed up about this. Their bodily autonomy was violated and their bodies and minds were permanently modified without their consent in a way that caused major undue harm, and the government and doctors associations (or whoever can take away a license to practice) are okay with this because the victims of this crime are disabled people.

Focus on it that way. It's not about the resulting disability, it's about the fact that these people had their right to their bodies taken away from them because they're disabled, and they were denied basic human rights and humane medical treatment on the same basis. The resulting disability isn't really the problem, it's the fact that undue harm was done to them by medical professionals that's the problem.

You have a basic human rights issue, something that is violating the international agreement on basic human rights. That's the huge deal.

Mod Aaron

[lelet-draws]

All generations of Monster High didn’t explore the topic of eugenics, which honestly is such a wasted opportunity, especially when it comes to G3 Lagoona.

Lagoona is latina and in most of Latin America, people of color weren’t legally forbidden to marry white people like in the US, in fact the governments wanted them to do so. It was an eugenist tactic to make the population whiter, slowly reducing the black population through miscegenation.

It’s super common for a white family in Latin America to have black or indigenous relatives. I’m mixed and my two great grandmas fell into that trap. They were both black and stayed in marriages with shitty white men (this isn’t an attack on white people, my great grandpas really weren’t the best people).

It’s kinda implied that fresh water monsters are kinda like colonizers, so it would be cool to have this kind of situation included to open the doors for discussion.

[rainworldconfessions]

i dunno if this obeys all the rules but there's something very darkly ironic about a eugenicist being in the rw fandom

.

[ntls-24722]

An ancestor to the Zebrapeople!

Partial stripes, mostly brown, and kind of sapient! I don't know how to explain their level of intelligence, but like... they have stone tools, but they currently can't create language, so imagine the setbacks from there. They're also mostly octopodal, and are only hexapodal for short bursts.

Zebrapeople actually have the facial problem that we have with the rest of their genus, where smiling is actually seen as a threat for everyone else. Or at least, the way they smile. The teeth being out bothers them, but not compared to how much the gums being exposed do.

Zebraelves evolved slightly tighter lips to have their teeth slightly out gives them a background sense of order since the baring of teeth, like in our primates, is a threat, and it also made the baring of gums a lot more dramatic. But as the species began to coagulate into one giant supercolony, the baring gums was recontextualized into the basis for most of their facial expressions.

Also; the origin of their spinnerets.

Hagfish method, baby! It's gross and works! Quagga-elves originate from a much wetter environment, so they could afford the water loss when making gross protein threads inundated with the stuff. But as they moved to more arid environments, the slime got drier and eventually was repurposed as silk... in the females.

Originally, male zebraelves were supposed to have venomous spurs, but I thought it'd be better for them to still have this basal trait. Partially because they need it more!

Fraternities are a treacherous journey and male zebraelves aren't maintaining nor with their subcolony for most of the time, so it's more useful to have a gross-out factor that keeps from from being food to literally everything than to have a durable building tool/textile.

And speaking of how treacherous the journeys of fraternities are;

This queen's boytoy is no longer a boy, she's become a worker after losing her hearing due to getting an ear infection because disabilty accommodations in fraternities are, no hyperbole, nonexistant, for a combination of the unfriendly job environment and fucked up eugenics reasons! I really did try to avoid the kind of real life problems they have, partially because I didn't want to give fictional little guys the same societal burdens we go through, but also because if I talk about shit like music man eugenics i sound 10x more insane than I already do. unfortunately it becomes a reoccurring thing when making fictional societies.

Her relationship with the queen is looked rather down upon - neither of them care very much, especially the queen, who finally has someone she can talk to who gets it, to put it plainly. The two reproductive sexes in zebraelves are very policed, which is a rather large problem in zebraelf society.

Also; Bipedal bugs! The best predator against Debu.

Their method is to use those two arms to latch on and just rake their sickle toe-claws against the skin as hard and fast as they can which is very effective against Debu, who, despite their brute strength, have very sensitive, weak skin! They're small, but fast, and they do a lot of damage really quickly, which is the problem, since they'll tear through already open wounds and deepen them, even leading to infection.

Sindeer often has to deal with them, since she's a large target as a lone huntress.

i forgot her back fur. dont look

Also: today was my last day of class! Which, paradoxically, means my account is actually going to slow down? All of the almost daily music man posts are actually class doodles, and now there's going to be no more class for me to get bored in and make music man. But that means more digital artwork, which is generally higher quality, soooo???? double edged sword

[psychabolition]

The official line is forwarded that German psychiatry was progressive, humane, and on the cutting edge of mental health care and treatment until the Nazis came to power in 1933. Hitler’s National Socialism then manipulated the institution for its own—ultimately genocidal—ends. Certainly, this version of events is reassuring for workers in the current mental health system, yet it is far from the truth.[...]

Indeed, mass sterilisations in Germany could not subsequently be classified as a war crime because “they were international in scope, representative of psychiatric activities throughout the western world.” The use of biological theory by the profession to label social deviants as inherently “abnormal,” “defective,” or “mental ill” has been conducive to both authoritarian and liberal democratic societies alike. While the rise of National Socialism was useful to the profession in allowing them to “advance” their areas of “expertise” and sites of jurisdictional power, it was psychiatry itself that advanced the argument that minority groups posed a threat to the future of society and promoted the racist ideology of eugenics.[...]

What may seem peculiar—not to mention unethical, inhumane, and immoral—from the outside is business as usual for institutions of social control such as psychiatry. The murderous practices of German psychiatry in the Third Reich were soon written off by official historians of medicine as a “political abuse of psychiatry”, and the institution resumed its practices of physical and ideological oppression of state opposition.[...]

Psychiatric Hegemony: A marxist theory on mental illness, Bruce M.Z. Cohen

[minecraftorangesheepjpg]

like there's nothing wrong with "successful" people having more children, but. they are not genetically superior. i know some people believe that billionaires or famous actors have "special good genes" and maybe they have. maybe they have a gene combo for a 0.01% more efficient Cori cycle. or their c-myc gene is more stable and has a 5% lower chances of becoming cancerous. or whatever else.

or maybe they even have a genetic combo that makes them 0.5% more likely to be cooperative and friendly! who knows! but that

ethically, doesn't make them a more valuable person. and you don't fucking breed people like cattle, oh my god

genetically, is a result of a complicated system of hundreds of genes

mathematically, those hundreds of genes are very unlikely to go to their child in one chunk

and also, they, as every other human being, carry other genes, broken ones, inefficient ones, lethal ones. and their children will inherit those as well. and those variants might behave very differentely in combination with other parent's genes.

so, no, nothing wrong with "successful" people having 6 kids, but if you think it's gonna enrich the population with "good" genes, no it won't.