#clinical research associate book

[nanamiscocksleeve]

Natural Breeding Clinic - Prologue

warnings: MDNI, breeding kinks, general sex, mention of infertility and insemination methods

a/n: It's here. Finally.

Teaser - Prologue - Patient 1

You take a deep breath and sit down in front of the laptop, waiting for the other person to join the call. Never in your life had you heard about such a unique reproductive center but lately, you’d been feeling the pull to start your own family. You’d discussed this with relevant people in your life. Everyone had said if you really wanted a child, then you should go with the options you thought were right for you.

You’d done the research, looking into different doctors and fertility clinics, but this one just stood out. There were testimonials from several happy families, saying their methods, though unconventional, were effective, and the doctors showcased on the website were all incredibly striking, each one handsome in their own way. But it was the success rate that caught your eye. A 98% guaranteed rate that you would be pregnant, and that pregnancy would be healthy. The site didn’t go into too much detail on their method, but the wording caught your eye.

“A natural breeding clinic” they’d called themselves. You’d finally bitten the bullet and called, requesting an information session. The screen suddenly lightens and you focus your attention as an attractive woman with shoulder-length brown hair comes into view. She smiles in a welcoming way before speaking.

“Hello. Am I speaking with Mrs. L/n?” You nod and smile back, trying not to look awkward or uncomfortable. 

“Perfect! My name is Shoko Ieiri, I’m the main coordinating nurse here at Jujutsu Fertility. Thank you for scheduling an information session with us.”

“Yes, of course. I just needed more details before I booked an appointment.”

“Indeed.” Shoko claps her hands together before continuing. “Let me start by telling you a little bit about ourselves. We’ve been around for almost 6 years now. What sets us apart is that we focus more on women’s comfort than most other clinics. And we are sought out by people who are willing to use a sperm donor. We do not perform insemination services with sperm that are not from our own stock.”

“Your own stock? Are you associated with a sperm bank? And screen all the donors yourself?”

“Not a sperm bank in the conventional sense. We have 5 doctors who keep excellent health and their sperm is regularly screened to ensure quality. They are the only stock we allow for insemination.”

You blink to make sure you haven’t misheard. “The…doctors? Are you saying the fertility doctor I’d be meeting with will also be my sperm donor?”

“That is correct.” Shoko nods her head to confirm. “You will be meeting with the doctor of your choosing for at least 5 sessions. They will need to be at least once a week. Some women take the week off and come in 5 days straight.”

“5…sessions?” you ask, confused by the wording.

“Yes. It’s to ensure the insemination process has occurred an optimal number of times.”

“Wait…so…I’m going to be inseminated multiple times? How much downtime do I need in between each insemination?”

“Hardly any. Our method isn’t like a typical clinic. Most women leave feeling very normal and a lot more satisfied than when they came in.”

“Not like a typical clinic? So…you don’t use the catheter method?”

“We use minimal medical equipment in our inseminations.”

“Minimal…so what does the procedure entail?”

Shoko clears her throat and continues. “So it begins with you choosing one of our doctors. We highly recommend spending some time on this part. It’s essential that you feel attraction towards your doctor. Once you make a choice, they will reach out to discuss how your insemination experience can be optimized for you. You will receive a biodata on their sexual profile, their preferred methods of arousal, and other relevant details.”

“I’m sorry, but what?” You are at the edge of your seat wondering if you’ve entered an alternate dimension. Surely, this was all being made up? “Arousal, sexual profile- why would I need all these details? I thought sperm donors only gave information like height, weight, medical history and stuff like that.”

“Why wouldn’t they? You’re choosing to be bred by them. They would have to make sure their patient is satisfied with the experience.”

“Bred?” You bleat the word stupidly.

“Yes. We are a natural breeding clinic. We use the method nature has provided to us to ensure a pregnancy.”

The gears in your brain start turning and something finally clicks.

“Are-are you saying…I would be having sex with my doctor?”

“That is correct.” Shoko smiles gently at you, pleased that you have finally caught on.

“The human body doesn’t necessarily enjoy having medical equipment inserted into it. All that cold plastic, and the mechanical methods of insertion. It puts the body in a state of stress. Not good for implantation. So our doctors will inseminate you through the process of intercourse.”

 Her words fall like a fog around you. You can feel your heart racing, a flush creeping into your cheeks. It was…insane. The doctor of your choosing was essentially going to fuck a baby into you. As your mind starts pulling up the images of their doctors, each one impossibly handsome and striking, you feel a familiar throb starting between your legs. Wetting your lips, you try to talk to continue with the information session.

“I see. And…there are benefits to this?”

“Yes. Intercourse allows the body to relax, releasing happy hormones. In this stress-free state, in addition to the knowledge that your doctor is someone you’re attracted to and trust, the chance of an implantation doubles.”

You gape at Shoko, your mind reeling from all the information.

“And…when you say the insemination process will be optimized for my best experience…?”

“The doctor you choose will ask you extensive questions about your preferences. What turns you on, positions, dislikes, toys. It’s to determine if they will satisfy your breeding experience. If they feel they might not be a good fit, they’ll recommend another one of our doctors.”

You swallow, your mouth going dry. “I see. And…what else do I need to know?”

“We will start by collecting your medical history and run some blood work to make sure your body is ready for an insemination process. Women who have a domestic partner will need to get both a waiver and a consent form signed by their partner that they have been informed what happens for the insemination.”

“Of course. Makes sense.”

“You will be assigned an emotional support companion during this process. It will either be myself or Mr. Ijichi Kiyotaka. We are there to help ease your nerves and ensure you enjoy the process. And all patients must think of a unique safeword to use during the insemination process.”

“Safeword?” you parrot back, still processing.

“Yes. At any point during the process, should you feel uncomfortable, your safeword ensures all actions cease and your doctor will give you some space to breathe and reassess the situation.”

All you can do is nod along. Shoko gives you a look of reassurance. “I can guarantee that most women are pleased with the results. And our doctors are quite skilled in what they do. It’s natural to feel a little shy and embarrassed but at the end of the day, we all share a common goal- a healthy baby.”

Despite your initial shock, you feel some of your trepidation fade away. Shoko continues.

“If you are ok with all of this, I can send you the forms to get the process started. Once those are filled, you can take some time to decide on your doctor. Then we’ll set up a call with them.”

“Thank you.” You make a split-second decision. “Please go ahead and send the forms.”

“Excellent. I’ll send them to the email you put in your inquiry. Was there anything else?”

You shake your head no. “I think I have all I need.”

“Great! I look forward to assisting you again.” Shoko ends the call and you immediately go the the website again to look at the doctors, one of which will end up fathering your child. Such a hard decision. How will you ever make the choice?

@thesunxwentblack @kentocalls @actuallysaiyan

@belle-oftheball34 @jesssicapaniagua

@figmentforms

© nanamiscocksleeve original work | no copying, plagiarizing or translating

[whysperingwoods]

Fear-mongering and herbalism

Herbalism is a crucial element for many practitioners of witchcraft, and lately I've seen a lot of fear-mongering in the #baby-witch and #witchblr tags that it's raising some serious red flags. Caution is necessary, yes, but over-simplified warnings against herbs that have a very long history and tradition of safe and effective use can rob people of accessible, beneficial ways to take an active role in their own health and wellbeing.

True: People absolutely need to be cautious about what they are putting in their bodies. True: "Natural" does not equate to "good" or "healthy". True: You need to speak to a medical professional regarding medical issues.

All these things being true do not mean that you cannot find plants that are safe to ingest, and that can benefit your health and support you. You can use herbs safely and you do have the power and ability to find information about them.

I've literally seen posts that say not to ingest any kind of herb because "you don't know what's in them" and "you don't know dosage, so it might harm you".

This lack of nuance is precisely the type of thinking that breeds misinformation and unnecessary fear, as if there is not enough of that to go around! It seems like because MAGA and anti-vaxx folks have been using the line "do your own research!!" so much, people are associating research with... right wing conspiracy theory? Somehow? Don't forget that being capable of doing good research also means being capable of evaluating your sources, and thinking critically about what you're reading.

Here are some of the misconceptions I've come across in the last couple days:

Laypeople can't safely use herbs

Fear of toxicity in herbs is common and rational, but herbs that you can find in your kitchen are food-grade and widely available. You don't need to eat them in enormous quantities to experience their benefits.

For example, thyme can help support the lungs during cold and flu season. Ginger tea is great for minor digestive upsets. These are things you have access to and can provide a safe means of relief.

Local apothecaries are very knowledgeable about where they source their herbs and what dosages are safe. They are also able to tell you if their herbs are pesticide-free, organic, etc.

Where you want to be cautious is ordering herbs online, especially places like Amazon or Etsy where there is no control whatsoever. Even supplements have been found to frequently not contain what they are said to contain, and you really have to do research about the company you're buying from beforehand.

If you don't have a local apothecary, you can still buy herbs online! Just make sure you are using a reputable website such as Mountain Rose Herbs where you can get bulk herbs.

Lesser known herbs require more caution, but there are fantastic books about herbalism and they provide information on dosage and various ways the herbs can be used responsibly. Your local library is almost guaranteed to have several books about herbalism, and if you aren't sure about a particular herb, look it up in multiple other resources to see if their information matches up. You can even find information about many commonly used herbs on WebMD.

Also, don't forage herbs that you plan to ingest if you are not experienced. This is a recipe for disaster, and incredibly dangerous. I'm not going to go into super huge detail about this, because it would merit its own post, but seriously, just don't do it until you have experience. Plant identification apps are not sufficient to identify herbs you plan to ingest.

Herbal remedies cure major illnesses

Herbs can play a supportive role, but it's crucial to recognise their limits. Herbal medicine should complement, not replace, medical treatment for severe chronic conditions. Clinical herbalists are trained to assess what's appropriate for herb-based support and when a situation requires immediate medical attention.

Herbs are not a panacea that will cure every ailment. Every person is unique and any single herb can have wildly different effects on the body. Some people might find incredible relief, while another person may find no effect at all, or may even find an herb doesn't agree with them.

Herbalists think they are medical practitioners

Because there is no federally regulated body for herbalists, people sometimes think it's the wild west out there and anyone can do anything, but that's not the case. Herbalists are not exempt from the law, and no one is legally allowed to practice medicine if they are not licensed to do so. Period. No amount of traditional knowledge changes that.

While the herbalist profession is not regulated federally, there are regulating bodies that are run by herbalists and that set standards for what is expected and permitted. If you search for "herbalism guild Canada" you will find the Canadian Council of Herbalist Associations which has tons of information, and some provinces also have their own guilds. Most guilds will have a list of reputable herbalists that you can access and they have strict requirements for being added to those lists. You can find these requirements on their websites and gauge them for yourself.

Part of training to become a clinical herbalist is knowing you are not a medical practitioner. You are taught not to diagnose people, and how to recognise when something is outside of your scope of practice.

From the CCHA:

9. A registered herbal practitioner will  offer interdisciplinary collaboration with other health professionals

Herbalists focus on holistic, complementary care, rather than taking on the role of medical practitioners. A qualified herbalist works alongside them to support the body's systems, rather than attempting to independently treat or diagnose medical systems. For example, they might work with clients to ease side-effects from medication, but they won't independently treat serious conditions like infections.

Herbalists are anti-vaxx and anti-science

The vast majority of clinical herbalists are not anti-vaxx or anti-modern medicine at all, and focus on combining traditional knowledge about plants with modern science. Are there herbalists out there who are anti-vaxx? Absolutely, just like any demographic you can find people who are spouting nonsense, but that is not the norm.

Thankfully, herbalism schools and herbalists are pretty up front with their beliefs. The CCHA has these requirements for herbalists in the guild:

3. Herbalists have an extensive knowledge base combining traditional wisdom and modern scientific perspective       [...] 7. A registered herbal practitioner is trained in herbal safety, drug interactions, and possible contraindications [...] 10. A registered herbal practitioner is accountable  to a professional organization, must maintain annual continuing education and must abide by professional standards 

When I was looking for a clinical herbalist myself, I always checked their website information and whether they were registered with a guild, and what the requirements for that guild were. The herbalist I chose also had a clear section on her website where she stated that she had experience working with people on psychiatric medications.

You can also often find their stance on other things such as LGBTQIA+ issues (such as statements on their website regarding their approach to HRT).

The school I ultimately selected for my education was one that had explicit information about how they integrated new science into their curriculum, and how frequently it was updated.

If you are not finding the information you're looking for, just ask! It's completely acceptable and not rude to contact an herbalist and ask them what their approach is on the things you are concerned about. They will be happy to answer these questions and give you any information they can to help you decide if they are a good fit for you.

Conclusion

Herbalism is not about replacing medical care or promising miracle cures. It's about tapping into centuries-old knowledge and combining it with modern insights. Embrace herbs with curiosity, responsibility, and respect, and you can have an incredible and beneficial relationship with them.

I'm sure there are plenty of points here that I have omitted or not sufficiently covered. I hope readers will take this as an indictment of the author, me, rather than one against herbalism as a whole.

[poisonpercy]

Ok, I’ve been thinking about how pjo is a disability story and how wottg did such a horrible job handling it. There’s been plenty said about how wottg equates Percy’s poor grades, due to school struggles thanks to his ADHD and dyslexia, with his intelligence. I don’t feel like I need to elaborate more on that because plenty already have. Instead, I want to talk about Annabeth.

So in wottg (and cotg), we are constantly told that Annabeth excels in school. But when it comes to how her academic success correlates with her having ADHD and dyslexia, they're basically nonexistent. At most, they are brought up to show disbelief, as in "despite having both ADHD and dyslexia, Annabeth gets good grades, unlike Percy." Obviously, I'm summarizing, but that sentiment is expressed more than once. There's no talks on how Annabeth's disabilities effect her, but the original pjo books do make mentions of how she struggles. I feel like it's still important to actually show how having ADHD and dyslexia interacts in Annabeth's life. And this can be done in regards to Annabeth getting good grades!!

Just to expand more on ADHD before I get into everything. There are 3 subtypes of ADHD. When someone's diagnosed, it's not just ADHD, but also the subtype. These subtypes are as followed (also here's the DSM-5 criteria for ADHD if you're interested):

Predominately inattentive type -> when enough symptoms (6 or more) of inattention, but not hyperactivity-impulsivity, were present for the past 6 months

Predominately hyperactive/impulsive type -> enough symptoms (6 or more) of hyperactivity-impulsivity but not inattention were present for the past 6 months

Combined type -> when enough symptoms of both criteria inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity were present for the past 6 months

With those in mind, it's important to note that research has found that girls are more likely to have the inattentive type of ADHD. Additionally, ADHD tends to be underdiagnosed in girls, and a potential explanation for this is differences in core symptomatic presentation between males and females. Research suggests that females are more disposed to internalized symptoms, such as inattentiveness and disorganization, and present with fewer symptoms of hyperactivity and other disruptive external behaviors. Males with ADHD are prone to more externalized hyperactive-impulsive symptoms, such as motor hyperactivity, rule-breaking and overt aggression, which results in greater likelihood of being identified and referred for clinical assessment (Morley & Tyrrell, 2023).

When it comes to academic performance, ADHD is significantly associated with poor academic functioning across the lifespan, from school readiness to going to university. However, there is evidence to suggest that females with ADHD do not present with academic difficulties until they reach higher education. Girls with ADHD may work harder at school to mask their symptoms and meet parent/teacher expectations. But, in higher educational settings, such as university, it becomes increasingly difficult to cope with the struggles of ADHD amongst other lifestyle changes, such as moving away from home and taking on greater personal responsibilities (Morley & Tyrrell, 2023).

The authors I’ve been referencing (Morley & Tyrrell) did research and they found that many of the symptoms which affected participants academic functioning correspond with the literature review of ADHD in university students presented by Sedgwick (2018), including inability to focus, easily distracted, boredom, and lack of motivation. However, despite struggling with these symptoms and despite the wealth of literature which suggests that ADHD is associated with poor educational outcomes, most participants in the study concluded by Morley & Tyrrell stated that they did not perform badly when they were at school (ages 5–16).

I would like to briefly stop the academic talk and say that this is Annabeth. As far as we’ve seen, she does good in school. Do I necessarily agree that Annabeth should get good grades? The answer is complicated. On one hand, I don’t care. On the other, Annabeth didn’t attend school from the age of 7 (when she ran away) to 12 (she went back, presumably, at 13 when she reunited with her dad). I would imagine CHB didn’t focus too much on keeping up with each camper’s grade level, so Annabeth, by all accounts, would be missing fundamental years of schooling and it would be hard to catch up. All of that is beside the point. The point being, Annabeth’s ADHD doesn’t lead to poor academic performance which reflects the experience many girls with ADHD have.

Intense feelings of low self-esteem resonated throughout participants’ experiences. Poor self-esteem is very common amongst females with ADHD (Holthe & Langvik, 2017; Quinn, 2005), triggered by feelings of failure and “not being good enough.” Low self-esteem has a knock-on effect on an individual’s social, academic, and psychological functioning. Participants explained that having low self-esteem negatively impacted many different aspects of their life, including body image, eating habits, confidence at school, romantic relationships, and close friendships (Morley & Tyrrell, 2023).

With all that being said, I do think there are ways to show how Annabeth's ADHD effects her, besides making a passing comment that she was it. In terms of school, it would be interesting to explore how entering higher difficulty course might make it harder for Annabeth to cope with the struggles of ADHD. Maybe have her struggle with time management and disorganization because of the increased work load. In classes that she isn't interested in, maybe she can be inattentive and miss out what the teacher is going over or what work is being assigned. If you don't want to go the academic route, Annabeth's ADHD can very easily impact her social and psychological functioning. While Annabeth is prideful (it's her fatal flaw after all), she could struggle with self-esteem, and it can correspond with her trying to measure up to what it means to be a child of Athena. As in, no matter how hard she tries, she feels like she is failing with her godly gifts. Socially, Annabeth might struggle to maintain relations with classmates and teachers, or she might have difficulties with group work. Even more so, to get back on the academic track, maybe Annabeth is good at masking her ADHD which makes it hard for her to get the help she needs from teachers because they underestimate the problem(s) she is having.

Anyways, this is all just suggestions on how Annabeth's ADHD might present, especially since Rick seems to dismiss her diagnosis. I would also like to see more of Annabeth struggling with her dyslexia because we do know that she has trouble reading thanks to The Lightning Thief. Attending a mortal school, like she is now, probably presents a lot more challenges for her when it comes to reading and writing since it's unlikely that SODNYC is handing out books and assignments in Ancient Greek.

Idk, I hope this gives something for people to think about in regards to Annabeth and ADHD. Granted, I am not a professional (hence all the sources) nor do I have ADHD, but ADHD presentation is males and females is just so interesting. I learned about the differences for the first time when I was a senior in high school when a classmate of mine did a presentation on the topic during my college writing class. Then when I was a sophomore in college, I took abnormal child psychology which went more in depth on ADHD. That's where I learned about the 3 subtypes and how girls more commonly have inattentive type. Also, in case you were wondering, combined is the most common type of ADHD. Anyways, that's it. That's my post.

[genderkoolaid]

His work through EEF was crucial to improving the lives of countless trans people. In addition to funding many of the earliest research projects, his two main contributions were the financial support he gave to the Harry Benjamin Foundation and the first North American gender clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Erickson funded international conferences on trans topics in 1969 (cosponsored by the Albany Trust of London), 1971, and 1973. Later conferences were organized by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) founded in 1979. It changed its name to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in 2007. EEF made major contributions to growing public awareness, too, through funding lectures, educational films, newspaper articles, radio, and television programs, and books including Money and Green’s Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, 1969, and Money and Ehrhardt’s Man, Woman, Boy, Girl, 1972. [...] After learning about Los Angeles-based gay and lesbian rights group ONE, Inc., which published the highly influential ONE magazine, in 1964, Erickson began giving them money after convincing them to form the nonprofit, tax-exempt Institute for the Study of Human Resources. With the huge amounts of money he gave them over the years that other gay groups at the time could barely dream of (some $1.5 million in today’s dollars), they published a two-volume Annotated Bibliography of Homosexuality and created a variety of unprecedented gay equality focused research and education programs including lectures, and, ultimately, accreditation in 1981 by the state of California as a graduate degree-granting institution.

[iliiuan]

Robert Jordan's letter to Locus detailing his illness, treatment, and expected outcomes. He wanted 30 more years. He got what, 1? 2? His stubborn refusal to accept his prognosis fascinates me. It is so utterly raw, so completely human, and so thoroughly irrational.

Dear Locus,

I have been diagnosed with amyloidosis. That is a rare blood disease which affects only 8 people out of a million each year, and those 8 per million are divided among 22 distinct forms of amyloidosis. They are distinct enough that while some have no treatment at all, for the others, the treatment that works on one will have no effect whatsoever on any of the rest. An amyloid is a misshapen or misfolded protein that can be produced by various parts of the body and which may deposit in other parts of the body (nerves or organs) with varying effects. (As a small oddity, amyloids are associated with a wide list of diseases ranging from carpal tunnel syndrome to Alzheimer's. There's no current evidence of cause and effect, and none of these is considered any form of amyloidosis, but the amyloids are always there. So it is entirely possible that research on amyloids may one day lead to cures for Alzheimer's and the Lord knows what else. I've offered to be a literary poster boy for the Mayo Amyloidosis Program, and the May PR Department, at least, seems very interested. Plus, I've discovered a number of fans in various positions at the clinic, so maybe they'll help out.)

Now in my case, what I have is primary amyloidosis with cardiomyapathy. That means that some (only about 5% at present) of my bone marrow is producing amyloids which are depositing in the wall of my heart, causing it to thicken and stiffen. Untreated, it would eventually make my heart unable to function any longer and I would have a median life expectancy of one year from diagnosis. Fortunately, I am set up for treatment, which expands my median life expectancy to four years. This does NOT mean I have four years to live. For those who've forgotten their freshman or pre-freshman (high school or junior high) math, a median means half the numbers fall above that value and half fall below. It is NOT an average.

In any case, I intend to live considerably longer than that. Everybody knows or has heard of someone who was told they had five years to live, only that was twenty years ago and here they guy is, still around and kicking. I mean to beat him. I sat down and figured out how long it would take me to write all of the books I currently have in mind, without adding anything new and without trying rush anything. The figure I came up with was thirty years. Now, I'm fifty-seven, so anyone my age hoping for another thirty years is asking for a fair bit, but I don't care. That is my minimum goal. I am going to finish those books, all of them, and that is that.

My treatment starts in about 2 weeks at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where they have seen and treated more cases like mine than anywhere else in the US. Basically, it boils down to this. They will harvest a good quantity of my bone marrow stem cells from my blood. These aren't the stem cells that have Bush and Cheney in a swivet; they can only grow into bone marrow, and only into my bone marrow at that. Then will follow two days of intense chemotherapy to kill off all of my bone marrow, since there is no way at present to target just the misbehaving 5%. Once this is done, they will re-implant my bmsc to begin rebuilding my bone marrow and immune system, which will of course go south with the bone marrow. Depending on how long it takes me to recuperate sufficiently, 6 to 8 weeks after checking in, I can come home. I will have a fifty-fifty chance of some good result (25% chance of remission; 25% chance of some reduction in amyloid production), a 35-40% chance of no result, and a 10-15% chance of fatality. Believe me, that's a Hell of a lot better than staring down the barrel of a one-year median. If I get less than full remission, my doctor already, she says, has several therapies in mind, though I suspect we will heading into experimental territory. If that is where this takes me, however, so be it. I have thirty more years worth of books to write even if I can keep from thinking of any more, and I don't intend to let this thing get in my way.

Jim Rigney/Robert Jordan

Copied from https://www.locusmag.com/2006/Features/03JordanLetter.html#:~:text=Dear%20Locus%2C,22%20distinct%20forms%20of%20amyloidosis.

[sophieinwonderland]

Endogenic Syscourse Primer

There is a whole lot of misinformation out there about endogenic systems and the history of the plural community, so I wanted to write-up this primer for people who are new to syscourse or otherwise uninformed.

What is Plurality?

This is a complicated place to start since different people have different definitions.

Pluralpedia describes plurality as such:

Plurality is the state of having multiple headmates collectively sharing a single body. A group of headmates is called a system. Plural experiences are extremely diverse. Systems may be spiritual in nature or secular, median or partitionary, small systems or ones with thousands of headmates. Headmates are generally assumed to have their own unique personality. They often have their own names, pronouns, goals, and preferences. Referring to the system they belong to is often done using plural pronouns like we, us, them, and they, although it is best to ask. They may want to be seen as an individual, a part of a whole, an accompaniment to the core or host, or any other state of selfhood. Plurality comes in many forms.

Headmates isn't a universally agreed-upon term but is a catch-all. My own simplified definition would be that someone is plural when they have multiple autonomous self-conscious agents occupying a single body. These agents may identify as headmates, parts, or something else entirely.

Plurality is usually categorized as traumagenic and endogenic. Traumagenic plurality is caused by trauma and most commonly associated with dissociative disorders. Endogenic plurality is caused by anything else. There are also Mixed Origin Systems which may be a result of different causes, Quoigenic Systems with an unknown cause or who refuse to share their origin, and many other less common origins.

Does Plurality Exist Outside of Dissociative Disorders?

The answer to this is spelled out in the World Health Organization's 11th revision of the International Classifications of Diseases, or the ICD-11. This is the diagnostic manual compiled by the World Health Organization used in most of the world.

As you can see, the ICD-11 uses the term "distinct personality states" synonymously with "dissociative identities." The example of mediumship is also important, as a common counterargument is that the second entry is referring to more general self-states, like how a person can have a work self and home self with different behavior patterns. This is very different from what's experienced by mediums, where spirits and deities communed with have their own distinct names, personalities, genders, etc.

The existence of non-DID plurality has also been affirmed by psychiatrist Eric Yarbrough in his book, Transgender Mental Health which was published by APA Publishing, the publishing arm of the American Psychiatric Association.

Other forms of plurality are actively being researched, such as in this article on tulpamancy by psychiatry professor Samuel Veissiere which was in a book published by Oxford University Press. (Tulpamancy is a process of intentionally creating headmates. It's usually psychological but a small percentage of tulpamancers take a metaphysical view.)

Consistently, non-disordered and non-traumagenic plurality is affirmed again and again by psychiatrists and psychologists. And these are not some fringe minority going against the grain. There are no counter examples. There are zero psychiatrists saying plurality without dissociative disorders can't exist or isn't real.

Who Can Call Themselves Plural?

We've now established endogenic and non-disordered plurality as a real phenomenon with support from psychiatrists across the board. Another common argument you'll hear is that the term plural can only be used by systems with dissociative disorders.

This one is actually very easy to debunk.

The first use of plural in this way was by non-disordered systems to separate themselves from clinical language. At the time, "multiple" was used much more frequently in the community.

We don't claim that every multiple system/household is a happy loving cooperative one. What we do question is the *identification* of "real multiples" with the characteristics or symptoms of a psychological disorder. We go further: we question by what right or authority doctors and therapists are given sole jurisdiction over the definition of "an individual".

This is one reason our clan encourages use of the word "plural" rather than "multiple". "Multiple", even standing by itself, brings to mind MPD/DID, "multiple personality disorder", "dissociative identity disorder", which are specific diagnoses created by the medical/therapeutic community. "Plural" is a much more neutral word, more commonly heard in the context of grammar than psychiatry. (The other reason, of course, is that plural can be construed to have a broader meaning, applying to anyone(s) anywhere on the continuum who experience themselves as plural in some way. )

Non-Disordered Systems Were Separatists, Not Invaders.

Going on from the last point, this is something that is often obscured when discussing the history of plurality and why so many words are shared.

There's a narrative that non-disordered and endogenic systems were invading the spaces of disordered and traumagenic systems. But as we can see in the above post, this is actually the opposite of the truth.

The articles I've posted showing research into endogenic plurality, as well as the ICD-11 entry, are all from within the last decade.

In the 90s, multiplicity was considered inherently disordered by the public. There were theories that there could be endogenous and non-pathological forms of plurality at the time, such as was referenced in this paper by Kluft from 2001.

But there weren't many people to study extensively because people without mental disorders don't usually seek out psychiatrists.

During this period, if you had multiple self-conscious agents sharing the same body, you were assumed to have MPD/DID. Actual research into non-disordered systems is a relatively recent phenomenon.

And even as these theories of other forms of plurality may have been discussed in academic circles, they didn't make it into the public consciousness.

So people who experienced plurality for other reasons, or their plurality wasn't a disorder, assumed they had MPD/DID and joined up with those communities. There just wasn't an alternative at the time. (Plurality is incredibly isolating, making it hard for plurals to find other plurals and meet up before the internet.) Then, as more people began sharing their experiences, some realized their experiences weren't a disorder and began to break away.

Terminology being shared is a natural extension of this process.

Many of the Terms Used by DID/OSDD systems were made by the endogenic and pro-endo community

Aside from the word plural, headmate was another word coined to differentiate them from the more clinical "alter." Fictive and factive originated with the endogenic soulbonders. If you've seen people policing system language from endogenic systems, like with the word plural, there is a good chance that the language being policed came from the endogenic and non-disordered community to begin with.

There is also a common myth you may have seen around suggesting the term system hopping originated with RAMCOA survivors in reference to travel between sidesystems. This claim only dates back as far as 2021, while system hopping has been traced back as far as 2005 by spiritual systems describing movement between different-bodied systems.

Resources like Simply Plural and Pluralkit are also pro-endo, with creators stating they can be used by anyone, and Simply Plural having links to endogenic resources.

Who Can Call Themselves A System?

System is a term that actually does have a long history of use within the DID community, originating from the psychiatric field.

But system has still been used by non-disordered systems for decades. Most of the people arguing over the terminology haven't been alive as long as endogenic and non-disordered systems have existed and been identifying as systems.

Transgender Mental Health uses the term plural system for both disordered and non-disordered systems alike, as have other recent academic papers that talk about endogenic/non-disordered systems.

Additionally, system has been used in similar ways to its use in discussions of plurality at least as far back as the 80s under the Internal Family Systems model.

Dissociative specialists Dolores Mosquera and Colin Ross have also referred to certain autonomous voices in psychotic disorders as dissociated parts of a person's system.

More recently, Dr. Michael Lifshitz, in an AMA discussing his fMRI study into tulpamancers at Stanford University, also refers to the subjects as "tulpa systems."

The word system was never treated as a highly specific term in psychiatry that could only be applied to DID and OSDD systems.

And as more research is conducted on endogenic systems, this research is continuing to refer to endogenic systems as being systems.

Conclusion

Endogenic and non-disordered plurality is a real psychological phenomenon supported by multiple psychiatrists, psychologists and the World Health Organization in books that and articles that have passed peer review through the most reputable and prestigious academic publishers, such as Oxford University Press and The American Psychiatric Association.

Non-disordered and endogenic systems have identified as systems and been part of the plural community since the 90s. Many modern terms in the plural community originated with endogenic and pro-endogenic systems.

And the term system has never been a DID/OSDD term, and is not treated as such in psychiatric circles.

If there's one takeaway for anyone who is reading this that's new to syscourse, it should be that bigotry against endogenic systems isn't based in science or reality. Like most bigotry, it's based on hatred for hatred's sake, and fueled by misinformation.

I hope this was able to clear up some misconceptions.

Thank you for your time and patience.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

"Last month, the UK’s four-year-long review of medical interventions for transgender youth was published. The Cass Review, named after Hilary Cass, a retired pediatrician appointed by the National Health Service to lead the effort, found that “there is not a reliable evidence base” for gender-affirming medicine. As a result, the report concludes, trans minors should generally not be able to access hormone blockers or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and instead should seek psychotherapy. While the review does not ban trans medical care, it comes concurrently with the NHS heavily restricting puberty blockers for trans youth.

The conclusions of the Cass Review differ from mainstream standards of care in the United States, which recommend medical interventions like blockers and HRT under certain circumstances and are informed by dozens of studies and backed by leading medical associations. The Cass Review won’t have an immediate impact on how gender medicine is practiced in the United States, but both Europe’s “gender critical” movement and the anti-trans movement here in the US cited the report as a win, claiming it is the proof they need to limit medical care for trans youth globally. Notable anti-trans group the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine called the report “a historic document the significance of which cannot be overstated,” and argued that “it now appears indisputable that the arc of history has bent in the direction of reversal of gender-affirming care worldwide.”

Most media coverage of the report has been positive. But by and large that coverage has failed to examine extensive critiques from experts in the US and elsewhere. Research and clinical experts I interviewed explained that the Cass Review has several shortcomings that call into question many of its findings, especially around the quality of research on gender medicine. They also question the credibility and bias underpinning the review. I spoke with four clinical and research experts in pediatric medicine for gender-diverse youth to dive into the criticisms.

“I urge readers of the Cass Review to exercise caution,” said Dr. Jack Turban, director of the gender psychiatry program at the University of California, San Francisco and author of the forthcoming book Free to Be: Understanding Kids & Gender Identity."

[briwates]

Zero context WIP game ! Thank you @clawbehavior for the tag, excited to do this because I've got like 10 different wips and kept resisting the temptation to post snippets. These fics don't have definitive titles yet so the ones here are approximative descriptions

1. Ms Ji & the Kangs

“Yohan-ah, I love you, don’t cry” Isaac says, patting his baby brother’s stomach when he fusses. They’re both laying on Isaac’s bed after lunch, a bit drowsy in the early hours of the afternoon. Young-Ok watches the two as she folds laundry.

“Nanny, why does Yohan have no eyebrows ?” Isaac asks curiously.

She chuckles at the question, taking a tiny pair of socks out of the basket and folding them together. “Most babies are born without much hair, he’ll grow them later on.”

2. Conversations

Gaon swipes ‘accept call’ and props his phone against a utensil holder as Elijah’s lovely face comes into view. She has cut her hair into a bob, even bangs forming a curtain on her forehead.

“Gaon, it's an emergency ! You need to come to Geneva and do something !” Elijah’s voice immediately comes through the phone speaker, loud enough to be heard over the sound of meat sizzling on the stove. “Yohan is serious about growing that ugly mustache and the clinic receptionist keep trying to hit on him !”

3. Yohan through Isaac's photography

October 1991, Yohan showing me his teeth 

Gaon chuckles at the photo. It’s blurry like the objective had gone out of focus at the last minute. Yohan is giving the camera a smile and scrunching his nose, eyes closed under his fringe like he’s shielding them from the flash. Some milk teeth are missing from his gums, two permanent ones just peeking above the surface. He must have been no more than six or seven here.  

4. Gaon scrolls online forums

"Judge Oh, I have this file I wanted discuss with you"

Jinjoo comes up behind him to see just as he is about to unlock his computer. What greets Gaon after entering his password is the previous night's research topic brightly displayed on the screen. Shit. Carelessly, he had simply shut the laptop before going to bed, instead of closing the tabs and erasing his search history.

Panic and embarrassment seize Gaon on the spot. He's about two hundred-percent certain that Jinjoo got a glimpse of what was written on the screen. Omegaverse fanfiction of him and their boss. Gaon wants to explode.

"You have…a lot of open tabs, Judge Kim."

5. Another snippet from Conversations

“You have something under your eye”

“Hmm ?” Yohan hums, closing said eye when Gaon’s thumb gently swipes across his skin.

“Eyelash.” Gaon flicks it away “crap I should’ve told you to make a wish”

They’re laying on the couch in a tangle of limbs, Gaon on top of Yohan like a weighted blanket, chest to chest, book long abandoned on the coffee table. Kkomi is on the armrest behind Yohan’s head, sniffing at his hair. Gaon yawns into Yohan’s collar.

“We should go to bed.” Yohan says, voice hoarse.  

6. Sunah lives

It is routine until her ears catch familiar voices, ones she thought she would never hear again, along with the cries of a fussy child.

“Gaon-ah, give her to me”

Sunah turns around to see, to her surprise, peering over the café’s balcony, Kang Yohan, his niece, his former associate, passing over an agitated toddler.

“I told you we should have brought her stroller,” Kim Gaon’s reprimands are a refreshing thing to hear “She gets tired.”

“It would have been inconvenient though, with all the stairs and narrow streets.” Kang Elijah chimes in. She is on crutches now, standing just a few centimeters shy of her uncle’s height.

“That’s fine” Kang Yohan hauls up the little girl against his chest so that her head rests on his shoulder, pats her back. “Appa will be the stroller today."

Tagging @thedeviljudges if you feel like doing it !

[mariacallous]

In 2020, while the Covid-19 pandemic raged, a steadily growing epidemic continued to burn its path across the United States. Gun violence stole the lives of 45,222 Americans that fateful year, the worst year on record for gun deaths to that point.

The path leading to each one of these deaths is layered and complex. Each American killed by a bullet, each family grieving their loved one, deserves their own book. I never once thought that I would be one to write such a story.

I’m a gun-owning emergency physician, a father, and the cousin of a man who was shot to death. If it wasn’t for the National Rifle Association declaring in 2018 that physicians, like me, should “stay in their lane” and keep quiet about the toll of this plague, I wouldn’t have written about this subject. Yet gun violence consumes my life. I see victims of gun violence from family tragedies—children, adolescents, and adults—almost every day.

Addressing violence and death is the duty of anyone who has ever had to mend the wounds of a gunshot victim, to attempt heroic measures in the trauma bay, to meticulously care for the injured in the intensive care unit, or admit defeat in front of their loved ones. I have found no worse feeling than having to tell a mother or a father that their child has been killed by a bullet. We have practiced and perfected evidence-based medicine for decades. We should similarly practice evidence-based health policy. As it pertains to guns, some of that evidence already exists.

As a physician, I understand the limitations of science. The best research, at least in the biomedical sphere, usually requires the findings of randomized clinical trials, but running those for policymaking often isn’t feasible. In public health, the next best option is a natural experiment, in which one jurisdiction implements a policy and a similar, nearby jurisdiction does not, and policy makers can observe the difference.

The RAND Corporation’s The Science of Gun Policy—a synthesis of research into US gun policy—typically relies on these types of studies to inform its analysis. It is sometimes inconclusive, sometimes weak, sometimes strong in its assertions about the impacts of various policies that might impact lives in this epidemic of gun violence, but overall its analysis describes myriad policy levers that our current lawmakers could, and in my opinion should, swiftly implement at the federal, state, and local levels. The evidence states that we can save lives through the following:

Background checks through federal firearms licensed dealers for every firearms purchase

Licenses and permits for individuals who want to buy guns

Raising the minimum age for all firearm purchases to 21

Strong child access prevention laws

Brief waiting periods

Domestic violence restraining orders that require the relinquishing of existing firearms.

But I also believe there are two additional laws that should be repealed. Their presence in society should alarm physicians, advocates, and the people who write the laws.

Policy Prescription #1: Reverse Stand-Your-Ground Laws

On February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, a Black kid my height and with a similar build, was walking through a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida, after purchasing a bag of Skittles and a drink. He was essentially stalked by the captain of a local neighborhood watch patrol. Following an altercation—one that a 911 dispatcher urged the overly zealous neighborhood watchman to avoid—Martin lay on the ground, shot dead by a single bullet that traversed his heart and lung.

All of that young man’s hopes and dreams of one day becoming an aviator were struck down by a man who would eventually be acquitted of murder because of Florida’s stand-your-ground statute that created a culture of approach, provoke, and kill. Stand your ground certainly contributed to the young boy’s death.

Every state has some form of this doctrine embedded in common law, something that recognizes that an American man or woman inside their home has the right to defend themselves. But how far does that right travel outside the home? Obviously, if someone approached you attempting to harm you, no one would blame you for defending yourself. But what happens when you initiate the incident and instead of retreating, escalate a situation that never needed to exist in the first place?

The castle doctrine permits a person who is in his or her home to defend it and themselves from harm without any duty to retreat to safety. But a duty to retreat when in public exists in many states. Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, however, extend the castle doctrine to one’s personal vehicle. In some locations, largely in the South, this doctrine extends to anyplace a person has a legal right to be. Vermont and Washington, DC, remain the only two jurisdictions where a duty to retreat remains supreme.

Stand-your-ground laws clearly increase the risk of homicides, specifically firearm homicides, and have no beneficial impacts on other forms of violent crime, suggesting that these laws have not lived up to their purported deterrent effect. Lawmakers should repeal them and revert to a more limited use of the castle doctrine to prevent the deaths of their constituents.

Policy Prescription #2: Concealed Carry Laws Should Adhere to the ‘May-Issue’ Standard

Concealed carry rights are nearly universal, although 23 states and the District of Columbia require a permit to do so as of 2023. The other 27 states do not require a permit, and individuals there can concealed-carry without any form of vetting.

Concealed carry laws differ in several distinct ways, ranging in order of least to most restrictive, from permitless carry to shall-issue to may-issue laws. Among the states that require a permit for someone to carry a concealed weapon, the permitting entity, often law enforcement, must issue it to anyone who meets minimum standards in shall-issue states. In may-issue states, there is some additional leeway for law enforcement to prevent issuing a permit to people who might be a threat to themselves or others, even if they otherwise would be eligible.

Shouldn’t a small-town sheriff who knows his community well have some discretion when reviewing applications? What if there was a violent man in that community who has been drinking when he walks through the door and who, in anger, strikes his wife repeatedly, but each time the cops come out for a domestic disturbance they are told that she simply fell down the stairs? If that man applied for a concealed carry license in a shall-issue state, he would easily receive it. In a may-issue state, the sheriff might wisely reject the application and potentially save the life of that man’s wife.

Lonny Pulkrabek, a Jefferson County sheriff who laments that his state legislature voted to make Iowa a shall-issue state in 2011, no longer has any discretion when issuing a concealed carry permit. He reported that in 2018, “I’ve already got 140 people through May that have criminal records that have permits, that were issued permits to carry. We’ve seen a lot more people with lengthy criminal histories who in fact are willing to go through and jump through the hoops and get the permit to carry it legally.”

Sheriff Pulkrabek maintains a “wall of shame” of the several hundred concealed carry permits he has been forced to issue to Iowans with criminal records because the state elected to follow an inferior law over a decade ago. Researchers, utilizing the natural experiment set by the various policies in force in different states, have detected differences between states with divergent legal frameworks as they pertain to concealed carry. The Science of Gun Policy indicates that shall-issue laws, such as Iowa’s, may increase overall violent crime compared to may-issue laws. Based on the underlying research, scientists estimate that in 10 years following a transition to the more permissive type of concealed carry law, violent crime increases by up to 15 percent.

Since concealed carry laws have been shown to increase violent crime, shouldn’t we have some say about who walks around town with a hidden firearm? Unfortunately, many state legislatures haven’t been following the science. Iowa recently went even farther afield, along with Tennessee and Texas, by weakening their laws to allow for permitless carry beginning in the summer of 2021. I worry that it will lead to more crime and more bloodshed.

In the Covid pandemic, the average American learned what public health can and cannot do. We’ve witnessed the scientific method unfold before our eyes as we waited for vaccines and treatments to be created in record time. Just as public health measures—such as staying at home in the early phases of the Covid crisis, wearing masks once society began to open, and vaccination—tamed this most recent pandemic, I have faith that science can do the same thing for endemic gun violence in America.

The science compiled by the RAND Corporation suggests a series of potential legislative approaches that will save the lives of some of the over 45,000 Americans who die by firearms each year. We cannot eliminate every injury, every death, or every shooting, but we must recognize that we can positively impact our fellow Americans, save lives, and relieve suffering by implementing some very simple laws that I describe.

Adapted from Under the Gun: An ER Doctor's Cure for America's Gun Epidemic, by Cedric Dark, MD, MPH, with Seema Yasmin. Copyright 2024. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

[oracle-cassandra]

What are Radblr's thoughts about this? I'm on my way to take a test when this article popped up on my screen, and I wanted to post this before I leave, especially given that this is published by Scientific America. However, Im personally skeptically that "social contagion" doesn't play a factor at all; I wouldn't doubt it plays into this even a little bit. I'm sure everyone knows about articles posted in favor of this fad from, like, two years ago from even big names like Mermaids, who have either been proved wrong or backtracked.

I have pasted the article below. There are links in the original article.

----------------

Health Care

Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims

Fears of “social contagion,” used to support anti-transgender legislation, are not supported by science

By Timmy Broderick on August 24, 2023

A recent study claiming to describe more than 1,600 possible cases of a “socially contagious syndrome” was retracted in June for failing to obtain ethics approval from an institutional review board. The survey examined “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” a proposed condition that attributes adolescent gender distress to exposure to transgender people through friends or social media. The existence of such a syndrome has been the subject of intense debate for the past several years and has fueled arguments against transgender rights reforms, despite being widely criticized by medical experts.

The American Psychological Association and 61 other health care providers’ organizations signed a letter in 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis. And a steadily growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that it does not reflect transgender adolescents’ experiences and that “social contagion” is not causing more young people to seek gender-affirming care. Still, the concept continues to be used to justify anti-trans legislation across the U.S.

“To even say it’s a hypothesis at this point, based on the paucity of research on this, I think is a real stretch,” says Eli Coleman, former president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Coleman helped create the organization’s most recent standards of care for trans people, which endorse and explain the evidence for forms of gender-affirming care.

Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, meaning that the gender that was assigned to them at birth and their gender identity don’t align, causing distress. ROGD was proposed as a gender dysphoria subtype in a 2018 paper by physician and researcher Lisa Littman, then at Brown University.* Littman’s survey asked parents of transgender adolescents—recruited predominantly from anti-transgender websites and forums—to describe their child’s “sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria” and to state if it coincided with increased social media usage or the child’s friends coming out as transgender.

Littman later issued a correction that updated the methodology, including a brief description of the websites and forums, and noted that ROGD is not a formal diagnosis. But the concept had already been taken upin books and podcasts—and by politicians—to promulgate the idea that peer pressure and social media are making kids transgender or that being transgender is a form of mental illness. As legislation targeting trans people has reached an all-time high in the U.S., ROGD’s alleged social contagion has been invoked by lawmakers in states such as Missouri, Utah and Arkansas to justify banning or restricting gender-affirming care for young people.

“This is just a fear-based concept that is not supported by studies,” says Marci Bowers, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The term ROGD is being used to “scare people or to scare legislators into voting for some of these restrictive policies that take away options for young people. It’s cruel, cruel legislation.”

Like the 2018 study that coined the term rapid-onset gender dysphoria, the recently retracted paper, which was published this March in Archives of Sexual Behavior, surveyed parents of transgender children about their children’s experiences. The study was co-authored by Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, and Suzanna Diaz, a pseudonym used by a mother of a child with gender dysphoria. Diaz is not affiliated with an institution and had already collected the survey data before collaborating with Bailey on the paper. The study was retracted because Diaz and Bailey did not get consent from the survey’s respondents to have their responses published, although Bailey disputes this. (Bailey declined to answer questions about the retraction from Scientific American.)

The participants in both the 2018 and the retracted 2023 studies were recruited from online communities that were explicitly critical about many aspects of gender-affirming care for transgender kids. Littman’s research was inspired in part by parents’ posts on these skeptical websites.

In response to criticisms that recruiting parents from anti-transgender websites may have biased the results, Littman says, “I reject the premise that parents who believe transition will harm their children are more likely to discredit their kids’ experiences than parents who believe that transition will help their children.”

Most experts cite the survey of parents rather than transgender children themselves as another major flaw in the methodology of both studies.

Diane Ehrensaft, director of mental health at the University of California, San Francisco, Child and Adolescent Gender Center, concurs. “To talk about what children are thinking, feeling and doing, particularly as they get old enough to have their own minds and narratives, you need to interview them,” she says.

Parents can often be the last to know about their child’s gender identity, Ehrensaft says. Coming out can be terrifying for many transgender kids. Family members often respond with violence or distrust or may even kick the child out of the house. Almost 40 percent of transgender youth experience homelessness or housing instability, according to a 2022 report from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides crisis support for young LGBTQ+ people. Many kids who wait to discuss their gender identity with their parents before appearing to “suddenly” come out are simply keeping themselves safe, Ehrensaft says.

“It is not rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” she says. “It’s rapid-onset parental discovery.”

Many experts have also questioned what length of time qualifies as a “sudden” experience of gender dysphoria. Both the 2018 and 2023 studies left the definition up for parental interpretation. Complicating this, there isn’t one pathway or time line for being transgender, says Tey Meadow, a Columbia University sociologist who studies sexuality and gender. “For some people, it can evolve slowly. For others, it can evolve quickly,” she says.

For most transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care, considerable time elapses between when they realize they may be transgender and when they receive such care. A recent analysis of 10 Canadian medical centers in the Journal of Pediatrics found that 98.3 percent of young people seeking gender-affirming care had realized more than a year prior that they may have been transgender. “If ROGD were a real thing, we would expect to see two discernible streams of patients coming in [to receive care],” says Greta Bauer, a co-author of the study and director of the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. There would be a distinct group of adolescents with more recent knowledge about their gender identity going to clinics and another group that had had such knowledge for years. “But we didn’t see that,” she says.

Thomas Steensma, a psychologist at Amsterdam University Medical Centers who provides gender-affirming therapy, says he has not seen evidence of the “social contagion” component of ROGD, and he cautions against even using these terms. “Rapid means out of control, and contagion signals a warning, and that warning induces fear,” he says. “There’s no evidence that certain developmental pathways are more problematic or less beneficial or helpful than others” for a child’s gender identity.

Steensma reports that he sees two “peaks” of referrals in his clinic: young adolescents and 15-year-olds. In a 2020 study Steensma and his colleagues looked at adolescent referrals from 2000 to 2016 and found no measurable difference in the psychological functioning or the intensity of the gender dysphoria between more recent referrals and those who came to the clinic starting in 2000. If adolescents are presenting with a different form of gender dysphoria, Steensma has not seen it.

The researchers did observe a change in their referral population in recent years, however. More kids assigned female at birth have been transitioning in recent years than those assigned male at birth. Many studies have captured this difference—including the 2018 survey proposing ROGD—but experts are unsure of its cause. Littman suggests that female-assigned kids are more susceptible to the “social contagion” of gender dysphoria because they feel social pressure more acutely than male-assigned kids. But Ehrensaft says nothing in the clinical literature corroborates this assertion. Instead she attributes this discrepancy to shifting cultural factors that influence how children express themselves and explore their identity. In our culture, Ehrensaft says, “there’s a lot more gender stress for the boy in the tutu than the girl in the football uniform.”

Other forms of gender incongruence, such as identifying as nonbinary or gender nonconforming, further challenge the idea that children should be forced to abide by traditional gender categories. And the best way to understand what kids are experiencing is to ask them questions and listen to their answers, Ehrensaft says.

“In some ways, [kids] are far more advanced than I am, as somebody in my 70s, about how they live and understand gender,” Ehrensaft adds. “So if we want to really understand gender, turn to the experts—and that would be the youth themselves.”

*Editor’s Note (8/24/23): This sentence was edited after posting to correct Lisa Littman’s occupation and her affiliation at the time of her 2018 paper.

[darkmaga-returns]

Facing the Dangers of the COVID “Vaccines”

NE - Naked Emperor Newsletter

Nov 28, 2024

Remember to add your book recommendations in the comments below.

Today’s book is:

Toxic Shot: Facing the Dangers of the COVID “Vaccines” by Byram Bridle & Harvey Risch

This scientific bombshell shatters official propaganda about the COVID-19 “vaccines,” highlighting their risks for healthy people as well as their failure to stop the pandemic. America’s health is under threat, but not from COVID-19 or any other “novel” disease. In a tragic irony, it’s the experimental mRNA “vaccines” themselves that are the real menace to our country’s long-term wellbeing.

The COVID-19 “vaccines” were hailed as a “scientific miracle,” but in reality, they are nothing short of a global biomedical catastrophe. Rushed to market after clinical trials with no oversight, our government can no longer hide the terrifying fact that these unsafe injections, which fail to qualify as real vaccines by any measure, have sown death and disability around the world.

From 2021–2023, the United States alone suffered 600,000 unexplained excess deaths not associated with COVID-19, while official data reveals over two million Americans became newly disabled over the same period. These shocking figures are mirrored by similar trends from abroad, reflecting the global scale of the mRNA “vaccine” catastrophe.

Government officials and academic “experts” claim to be stumped by the these “mysterious” trends, but the cause is plain to see, as shown in this book. In chapter after chapter, brave scientific dissidents present damning proof of the myriad risks posed by the “vaccines,” drawing on abundant scientific research as they explain why the experimental shots are so dangerous. This evidence includes research showing the mechanisms behind potentially fatal side effects such as myocarditis, blood clots, and paralysis, as well as critical harms to fertility and pregnancy, among other dangers. A call to battle, this book leaves no doubt that the COVID-19 “vaccines” must be withdrawn from the market immediately. It also equips readers with critical scientific information to enable them to confront public officials, and finally force them to admit the devastating truth.

You can buy the book here (Amazon link).

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

What's your opinion on the term asperger's? Because of its history I know some people don't use it and I wondered what you think

Hi there,

My mom still uses the term. I don’t like it because the man who was behind the disorder used eugenics on autistic children and was involved with the Nazi regime. According to an article from Autism Research News:

Asperger was among the first researchers to describe autism, and his decades of work with children later informed the concept of an autism ‘spectrum.’

Scholars have raised questions about his associations with the Nazi Party and his involvement in Nazi efforts to euthanize children with certain health conditions or disabilities.

The new book and paper suggest that Asperger referred dozens of children to a clinic called Am Spiegelgrund in Vienna, where doctors experimented on children or killed them1. Nearly 800 children, many of whom were disabled or sick, were killed there. The clinic’s staff gave the children barbiturates, which often led to their death by pneumonia.

Reacting to this news, some experts say the eponymous medical term ‘Asperger syndrome’ should be discarded.

The link to this will be below in case you’d like to read through it.

I hope this answers your question. Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ❤️

[maaarine]

Getting past ‘it’s IBS’ (Xi Chen, Aeon, June 04 2024)

"In the late 1980s, aged 12, Taryn was taken to her doctor’s office with cramping, bloating, and constipation after eating, and was told that she had ‘a nervous stomach’.

As a white girl growing up in New Jersey, she met a stereotype, and when initial bloodwork and imaging was negative for evidence of a ‘real’, or organic disease in her gut, one of Taryn’s doctors began writing in her charts that she had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a misdiagnosis that would follow Taryn for life.

At the time, IBS was considered by many to be a medically unexplained and therefore controversial illness, keeping company with conditions such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

As a result, it carried the stigma of being a psychosomatic illness, caused primarily by stress and anxiety, and Taryn was sent home with prescriptions for diet and exercise. (…)

Today, unlike in the 1990s, it is well established that conditions like IBS, collectively known as disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBIs), are real diseases that disrupt the communication between the nervous system of the brain and spine, and the nervous system of the intestines.

First mentioned in the book The Irritable Gut (1979) by the gastroenterologist W Grant Thompson, the conditions were labelled ‘functional’ disorders – characterised not by structural damage to the hardware of the gut, but by a glitch in its ‘software’, in other words, its nervous system, charged with processing, receiving or relaying information coming in or going out.

Software is not as easily observed as hardware, however, and much of academic medicine views the mind and the body as two separate and distinct entities, a viewpoint called mind-body dualism.

Over time, and despite the more nuanced meaning intended by Thompson, the term ‘functional’ became associated exclusively with disorders of the mind.

This is part of the reason why there is still stigma against conditions like IBS, and why attempts to establish diagnostic criteria for IBS in particular suffered from vagueness. (…)

When academics read that IBS patients have higher rates of anxiety and depression, or that antidepressants are a treatment for IBS, many assume that this is because psychiatric symptoms cause symptoms of IBS without considering the inverse, that chronic undiagnosed abdominal pain predisposes patients to having mood disorders.

The real reason these drugs are effective, however, is that, in utero, the precursor cells for our gut and our brain actually share the same nervous system, and only later separate in embryonic development.

As a result, the two nervous systems utilise the same neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, to send messages between neurons.

This is why we sometimes feel butterflies in our stomach when we’re nervous, and why stress and anxiety often worsen symptoms of IBS, but do not necessarily cause it.

As Brown’s quote above implies, the stereotype of the anxious patient in pain applies not only to IBS but all patients who present to clinics with vague abdominal distress (including those with non-gastrointestinal conditions like endometriosis, who experience delayed diagnosis because providers take women’s pain less seriously than men’s).

A classic example is peptic ulcer disease, a cause of severe abdominal pain that for decades was denounced as a psychosomatic illness until Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered in 1983 that it was caused by a species of bacteria.

Before their findings, peptic ulcers were managed with diet and, frequently, surgery, when what patients needed were antibiotics. (…)

In my opinion, the root of the problem is medical education itself.

Unless a medical trainee becomes a gastroenterologist, it is unlikely that they will receive any specialised education in IBS, let alone the history of IBS research proving it to be an organic condition, despite 40 per cent of the general population having functional gastrointestinal disorders.

Partly, this is because a majority of medical education in countries including the US, the UK and Canada takes place in academic centres associated with hospitals, where medical students will probably never encounter a patient for whom their IBS symptoms are the primary reason for them appearing in the emergency room, and especially not for their admission to the hospital itself.

As a consequence, medical students also don’t get their knowledge of IBS tested by board examinations.

This speaks to the fact that, echoing Osler, IBS generally doesn’t kill patients, and our current healthcare system values measures of mortality and cure in response to acute complaints more than quality of life and the management of suffering from chronic issues such as IBS.

The same could be said about long COVID (which, to this day, is sometimes challenged as illegitimate) and chronic fatigue syndrome, where sufferers are often sent off to a psychiatrist for care.

The thinking is that these ongoing problems, where there is no mainstream route for testing and treatment, are not as important for medical students to know about compared with, say, a patient crashing after a cardiac arrest, even though most of the global disease burden across the developed and the developing world is caused by chronic, not acute, illness. (…)

These demographic patterns don’t explain who really has the disease – they just reveal medical and social bias and entrenched stereotypes: women are perceived as hysterical and diagnosis-seeking, while men are stoic and avoidant, for instance; or white women are thought to tolerate less pain than people of colour.

None of this, in reality, is true – but it is part of the reason why so many patients assume that what they suffer from won’t be justified by the presence of organic disease and therefore doesn’t warrant a doctor’s visit in the first place.

Such patients, treated so poorly within the medical mainstream, now have a community and identity of their own in the Wild West of alternative medicine that flourishes online.

Such groups, seeking to empower themselves and especially hoping to get well, today stand at loggerheads with the practices and physicians they have left behind.

Some accuse their former doctors of gaslighting them, and they deserve to be heard.

Much of what I have discussed regarding misdiagnoses of IBS assumes that healthcare providers, even when in error, always have good intentions and are sincere about using the diagnosis to clarify the patient’s medical case.

There were several elements of Taryn’s story, however, and in my own experiences of how DGBIs are taught in medical school, that make it difficult for me to believe that this assumption holds in most doctor visits.

Although one could argue that the blasé diagnoses of IBS and disordered eating for Taryn could be down to simple carelessness and negligence, honest errors, or someone being ‘just a bad doctor’, it’s obvious to me that a pattern was developing with Taryn’s interactions with different providers who weren’t taking her lived experience itself seriously, just as I had stopped taking my own experiences seriously.

What holds our stories together, I believe, is this phenomenon where both of our perceptions of our own ability to know what’s true or not were put into question."

[decaydanceredacted]

all of you who want to be raped need serious mental help. And all of you want to rape people need to be put in a cellar 6 feet under. "Oh its just fantasy 🥺🥺🥺" whether you like it or not, "fantasy" leads to action. Fantasizing about rape isn't fucking normal and wanting to rape someone could lead to actually trying to rape someone. Personally if i ever had a fantasy about raping someone and it aroused me at all (which it wouldnt because im not R Kelly) id fucking kill myself. You guys creating an echo-chamber or this is awful. How hard is it to keep you fantasies consensual? Why must you guys support rape? Rape hurts people it isn't "sexy" lack of consent isn't hot. I know that you guys only live on the internet so I don't expect you guys to understand the fact that rape is actually harmful and traumatized people, but it does. It isn't cute or funny and I highly doubt any of your favorite band members would like to hear about you people thinking about raping them or being raped by them. "But they wouldn't like sexual fantasies anyway!!!" Most of them laugh it off but talking about wanting to rape them is actually a threat whether you mean it or not. And calling them rapists negatively frames their characters. None of the people you guys fantasize about would take advantage of people. Why do you want to flanderize them so badly? If people said that they fantasized about being raped by me I'd scrub my body till my skin started bleeding and falling off. If these people have found this blog before, they can find it again.

Heres an article about how fiction affects reality although I highly doubt you guys will read it: https://www.nydailynews.com/2015/02/23/university-of-illinois-student-said-fifty-shades-of-grey-inspired-sexual-assault-prosecutor/

Ps. @fobdeaddove or whatever your name is I hope every cramp I've ever gotten during my period is passed onto you every second of everyday so that the rest or your life you're hunched over in severe stomach pain. You're the worst

This is bullshit, here's (a shortened version) why

whether you like it or not, "fantasy" leads to action

i fantasize about killing my boss but that doesnt mean im actually gonna do it dumbass

And calling them rapists negatively frames their characters. None of the people you guys fantasize about would take advantage of people.

so you agree? even though someone may eroticize rape/kidnapping/etc in the stuff they write, that doesn't mean they would actually take advantage of people irl?

I read your article. That's wilddd, you mean a very very poorly written book that displays awful bdsm etiquette, is universally HATED by the kink community, and encourages *actual* irl rape, not irl cnc, contributed to a rape?

Here's another article for you, and a couple quotes from it (emphasis mine):

According to one study, 62 percent of women report rape fantasies. But researchers suspect that number is actually much higher, with many people too ashamed to admit they are aroused by such scenarios; in particular, women who have been assaulted and raped in the 'real' world.

Clinical sexologist Dr. Claudia Six says first and foremost it's important for rape survivors to know there is nothing shameful about having rape fantasies.

Six and Castellanos say enacting rape fantasies in search of liberation is not uncommon among rape survivors, who try to master their trauma by turning it into something positive. And it can yield positive results: “If they play out a rape fantasy and don’t get hurt or scared, [and] they only get aroused, it creates a positive interpretation of the action,” Castellanos says. "The fear and uncertainty gets replaced with an erotic association.”

[...] having these fantasies as a rape survivor is normal. It doesn’t mean you’re “sick,” or a “bad feminist,” she says. Most importantly, "There's no shame.”

I mean ultimately it's like. You know what you sound like, right? You're telling people to kill themselves because of things they thought about. Please get a fucking grip. I'm going to block you now ✌️

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Do you have any suggestions on anti-psych books to read? I've read a little about it before, but mostly on the science/medicine side of things (like how some pharmaceutical companies pay psychiatrists to produce studies promoting their medicine, how diagnostic criteria can create problems in other cultures, stuff like that).

It sorta depends on what you mean by books? Literature, for sure, absolutely. But like. Mostly journals, zines, self-published narratives from those detained in various psychiatric institutions over the years, or even the odd clinical paper.

Personally, a lot of what I read that brought me to anti-psych had nothing (or very little) to do with psychiatric medicine in the first place. It was more about the role of autonomy and embodied trauma in self-concept and communal identity over time, the relationships between incarceration and institutionalization, prison abolition literature at large (which is often much more explicitly anti-psych than people realize when they choose not to read actual prison abolition literature and theory, especially Angela Davis' work), and anthropological research on personal and communal identity, as well as resource collection and distribution across different cultures and associated markers of quality of life. I realize that looking at all those different systems and smashing them together in your brain like rocks in a polishing tumbler isn't the most sexy method of radical learning available, but it has wprked pretty well for me in generating complex understandings of the systems at work in anti-psych conversations nonetheless.

Anyway, if you want some of the go-tos I often refer people towards, I'll send you to authors rather than specific works.

Angela Davis has phenomenal insight into the experiences of intersecting incarceration amd pathologization, allowing for some truly nuanced discussion of how mental health care is wielded as a weapon instead of a resource.

The Jane Addams Collective is a group of anarchist social workers and mental health practitioners who work to share their knowledge of praxis, trauma, recovery, and mutual aid to establish community care models that can be utilized even without professional supervision.

Michel Foucault's writing on identity, community, and surveillance are honestly essential to anyone who wants to internalize a comprehensive understanding of how these things impact each other through various systems and dynamics

Judith Butler is a bit of a classic and frankly I hate how she writes stylistically, but she does great work on embodiment and identity, both personal and societal/communal.

I also really like Julia Oparah's (formerly Sudbury) work on abolitionism and experiences of incarceration

The Mad Liberation Front is pretty well known within antipsych circles I think for putting out literature on various topics within the framework

You can also search the anarchist library for their dissertations, books, and other texts on anti-psych here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/search?bare=1&bare=1&page=1&query=anti+psych

Anyway, I realize it's maybe not the kind of reading list you were expecting when you reached out but I hope it helps anyway!

[granulesofsand]

Satanic Panic

I saw a post about Satanic Panic, so I felt the need to write an overview of what actually happened for those who don’t know.

What is Satanic Panic?

Satanic Panic can be viewed as either part of the Memory Wars or as an entirely separate entity. If viewed as aligned with the False Memory movement, it might be seen as proof of False Memories and a near complete lack of the existence of ritual abuse. The other takes Satanic Panic as still harmful, but removes the blame from those claiming to have experienced it.

I believe that a crucial part of enabling healing is giving survivors the benefit of the doubt. People who are speaking out about abuse might be doing so for the first time, and are particularly vulnerable to disbelief even if they have told their story before. Talking about maltreatment takes a lot of courage, especially when a stigma already exists around the topic.

Fundie Satanism

That said, the Satanic Panic was weaponized by Christian groups expecting to gain power from it. Some genuinely believed Satanic Ritual Abuse was a primary concern, others knew it was only a face for the politics.

Fundamentalist groups wanted to have the kind of attention they were no longer getting, and the instatement of mandated reporter laws and influx of unsupervised children gave them a fighting cause. They saw that child abuse was becoming popular in media, and they used it as leverage to frighten well-meaning folks into their way of thinking.

Satanic was the word for non-Christian, and Christians were quick to disown anything that hinted at rot within their own organization. Christianity was still popular, and nobody wanted to believe they could be involved with a group that caused harm. So they took any religious abuse, and some non-religious abuses, and slapped Satanic on it.

Satanic Ritual Abuse

Ritual abuse refers to maltreatment that is both standardized and associated with symbols or ideologies. At the time, many kinds of organized (involving multiple perpetrators and victims) and/or coercive (intentionally manipulative) abuse were grouped under that name. Extreme abuse was also called ritual abuse, and we still don’t have a solid definition for that one.

Given that all ritual abuse would have been considered Satanic, fundies basically screwed over anyone who was abused in this specific way. Ritual abuse as we know it now did and does happen. An abuser doesn’t have to believe in their symbolism or ideology to misuse it, and many forms of religion and other structured beliefs can be applied to hurt and intimidate people.

RAMCOA

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse are grouped together under a metric ton of buzz words. The survivors of this collection of abuses are left with research that is out of date, chock full of misinformation, and unable to communicate with people outside of the community.

I know the words are conspiratorial. I get that the books have fear-mongering content. I need people to understand that there is no better option, and pretending bad things don’t happen doesn’t make them go away.

Government Mind Control

Mind control is manipulation with intent. Coercion. Using psychology to get your way. Implanting false memories would be mind control. Again, it doesn’t sound good because cultural contexts have evolved over time and clinical language for this kind of abuse has not. Not all mind control is abusive at all. McDonald’s using targeted ads is mind control. But also training children like dogs is mind control.

There have been government-sponsored projects on mind control. There probably still are. Governments do sketchy things like that for military advancement and because they don’t face consequences, and there was a time where government employees admitted to it. Similar to McDonald’s and their hot coffee campaign, there were some strategic moves to look better to newcomers.

The government has sponsored lots of things they don’t want to acknowledge, and people are still suffering the effects. People in poverty, black and brown communities, and so on can probably agree that government is not synonymous with benevolent.

One of the things the government did was talk to criminal organizations. I don’t know if this is news to anyone, but it was a good way to get information and resources. There were wartime experiments on drugs and interrogation, and those were mind control.

Enough survivors agree about their experiences that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to dismiss them, so until there’s better information we would do well to try to understand them. You don’t have to agree full heartedly to sit with people in their own stories.

Cult Mind Control

I would describe a cult as any group that uses unhealthy practices as a defining feature of their cultural norms. Not everyone agrees on what is or isn’t a cult, and that mostly fine. This is the definition I’m using because it makes the most sense to me in context.

Cults members are not the only ones to use or receive mind control tactics, but the post I saw mentions cults this way. The specific technique is called Trauma Based Mind Control, which is the application of psychological responses to danger and overwhelm for the purposes of an abuser.

TBMC is the primary method for what the RAMCOA survivor community calls programming. Programming is the use of cues associated with PTSD triggers to achieve a desired response in a subject. When programming is done to a small child (under age 6-12, depending on the source), a common response is Dissociative Identity Disorder.

HC-DID

Abusers create alternate self-states within one body to react to the cues given. Depending on how knowledgeable the perpetrator(s) is/are, a child might have a very structured system of alters with little control allocated to them. These systems are designed by and for abusers to create long term obedient subjects.

Not every DID system is formed this way. Most are naturally developed with the induction of trauma in a child’s life. Some organic systems have complex structures anyway, but not for anyone but themselves. These systems are polyfragmented, or C-DID systems.

The level of control and organization found within a programmed system is almost always more than those found in organic systems. In the RAMCOA community, this is called HC-DID. The key difference isn’t true complexity, but the type of prerequisites to qualify.

Highly Complex DID isn’t particularly difficult to groom in a child, but it does require intent. Cult groups, as well as other high control groups, are quite capable of figuring it out by sheer cruelty and observation.

Why Does It Matter?

Making blanket statements about what abuse is and isn’t real doesn’t actually help anyone. While people prone to worry who didn’t experience RAMCOA might feel temporarily safer, it’s likely they’ll figure out they were lied to.

People who did experience it struggle with doubt and disbelief from others, and may have been told that nobody would care. This field is still considered taboo, and there are victims of torture and adjacent who are ashamed or afraid because of the state of the larger population.

I survived RAMCOA. My family and friends survived RAMCOA. Not all of my friends survived RAMCOA. Watch yourself.