#institionalism

[poetryforventing]

The Language

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. It’s a front well practiced, one hammered and honed in the flames of a mind that has burned up and on and on and out so many times that it has forged an entire armory of defences.

But you ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine and you think me plain, dull, awkward, unkind. Alright. But I don’t know that I have a better answer. The world is dying, and I have no hope left. I don’t believe that there is good in all of us. As we speak we’re spilling blood: foreign blood, poor blood, queer blood, girl blood, black blood, native blood in a genocidal fervour that has persisted millenia. And our violence leaves a gouging slash across our collective chest, staining the human consciousness with ever more eternal, immovable shame. I don’t believe everything will work out just fine in the end. I don’t believe we will all be okay.

I’m uncommunicative. It’s true, I’m sorry. But I don’t care about your sex life. I don’t care about your opinions on influencers. I don’t care about your shitty inherited politics. I don’t care what they said on Insta, or Reddit, or X, or Facebook, or TikTok. I don’t care what the hot topic is. Fuck your hot takes. There is blood flowing in the streets, native bones buried beneath the buildings of white settlers, there are generational stains on our souls and yet we work only to sear more grief into the essence of our very beings. Good god, colonialism really taught us nothing. We are killing every last ‘other’ until we are all that’s left, just so that when we kill our world too and go down with it we can claim that it was ours. In the ash of all that is left, perhaps, finally, earth will be as white as we wanted it to be.

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. You think me cold but I am an inferno inside. I have carved my life into a shell to surround these lashing flames of thought. I don't act how I feel–my whole existence is an energy shield–but, god, I feel hate like you won’t believe. I dream of ripping out throats with my teeth. Capital rules the world and has us kiss its feet, but even that is a lie. The mechanics of power subjugate us in entirety. Capital is just the tool of choice, the selected construct. It is nothing more than a rotten, violent euphemism that cradles us in its maw, waiting for the order to bite.

You wish I would speak more but I have so little to say if we’re not planning the deaths of the bourgeoisie, the policy-makers, the bigots and the land-lords the world over. Every throat I want to taste. Every drop of blood I want to spill in the sort of ritualistic vengeance we absolutely don’t need. Just, please, let me at them. When I'm done I will jump into the sea and it will all be over. Finally.

I can barely even bring myself to get worked up over our changing climate–though I know it’s another active tragedy and, in the moments I stop to think, it makes me sick–when apocalyptic radioactive annihilation is one bad day away, when women’s rights are those of livestock and POC are institutionalised into modern slaves, when we’re living in a world where autonomy and identity are dangerous things. It’s too much grief to contain in one life. It’s too much pain to even attempt to bear. I hope you are starting to see: it’s not any one of these things, it’s everything.

There’s nowhere even to run away. I flew to North America where Pride is sponsored by Target and they build Wendy’s on sacred native land. I returned to England where we practice monarchy and xenophobia as a matter of course, pine for the British empire and laugh openly at the murder of trans girls. Next I go East, where I am ignorant, but things are every bit as twisted, I just won’t put their particularities in my white words, I refuse to appropriate any more into my British Museum of atrocity. In the end I go to bed, where sadness makes sense.

If you’re not angry, you should be. If you’re like me, I’m sorry.

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. But really I don’t have the words. Even all of this despair and rage is nothing but the bubbling skin of the witch’s brew. The essence of the thing is a wicked magic, not communicable in words, it is violent and immediate and spanning and intrinsic and awful and consuming.

You ask me how I am and I tell you I’m fine. But the truth is I don’t have the language.

[bioethicists]

when i moved to new england i had multiple providers try to convince me that my psych abuse experiences were a byproduct of the south having shitty services but that inpatient/institionalized care in new england is ~so much better~ + now that i'm witnessing secondhand how fucked they are in new england, as well, i almost feel vindicated but mostly feel pissed off.

new englanders love to pretend that the south is more 'backwards' than them in every respect rather than examine their own systems or consider that a more progressive ideology does not inherently produce more just or less abusive outcomes

[hiiragi7]

Over the years, I have noticed a troubling conflict in the way people speak about disorders and disabilities which are different from their own.

"You don't have tics, you have Munchausen's"

"You don't have DID, you have schizophrenia"

"You're not chronically ill, you're just a narcissist"

This sentiment that you cannot have xyz disorder, are lying or "insane", and must truly have this other disorder instead.

It is as if there are the Good Disorders; those which are Morally Correct to have; those which you are subjected to; those which make your life harder, and the Bad Disorders; those which are Morally Wrong to have; those which you deserve to have; those which make other peoples' lives harder. And so, there is this idea that those with the Bad Disorders attempt to trick others into believing they actually have the Good Disorders, and that this must be called out and these people shamed and exorcised so as to not taint the purity of those with the Good Disorders.

It is what is behind this common demand of "You must acknowledge you have The Bad Disorder and seperate yourself from those of us with The Good Disorder, or else you will further our oppression, harm us, steal our resources, and spread lies about our disorder."

And then I realized, it is that a lot of people believe that Good People have Good Disorders and Bad People have Bad Disorders.

Good People have disorders such as PTSD, anxiety, depression; Bad People have disorders such as personality disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia.

And so, Bad People cannot have Good Disorders. I feel that this also ties into ideas of what "victims of disability/abuse" look like, and the idea of the Good Victim; this idea that in order to be truly victimized, you must be entirely and wholly pure behaviorally, emotionally, physically, racially, and sexually, or else you are considered to be deceitful and deserving of abuse and disability. Those who are "truly" victims are those who are deemed to fully reject their abuse and disability, and who are also deemed to be wholly pure and good.

For those who are held up as Good Victims [of disability/abuse], it is said that they deserve support, justice, and healing. For those who are decided to be Bad Victims [of disability/abuse], it is said they deserve isolation, institionalization, violence, and perhaps even death.

Even within communities for specific disorders, there are the Good Symptoms and the Bad Symptoms, and it is a common sentiment that those with the Bad Symptoms must not truly have the disorder; to imply otherwise would risk the purity of the disorder (or, if it is a "Bad Disorder", it damages the possibility of the disorder someday moving into a Good Disorder status).

This entire structure relies on deeply ingrained ableist ideals and concepts of morality, purity, and dis/ability. It keeps us divided from each other and damages attempts at community.

Dismantling ableism requires supporting each other; when we perpetuate the idea that other disabled people are lying about their disability, that they are not who or what they claim to be, and that they require immediate curative interventions in order to not harm others, we reinforce ableist ideas and stereotypes about disabled people within our communities.

[postsforposting]

weird that people can be hardcore prison abolitionists and so against things like racism/bigotry,

and then you bring up institionalization, and leftism leaves their bodies because "some people are just born trash and if we don't put them in concentration camps and abuse them to maintain our superiority, they'll kill us all"

[eatmangoesnekkid]

Most traditional western allopathic doctors just do not know what they are doing. It's not intentional or their fault but it is how they have been trained and groomed in a corrupted institionalized medical system that runs off capitalism. I have been really polite around this issue and not being true to my channeling because I didn't want anyone who may be in the care of the western medicine to be afraid or worried. That is not why I share the following. What I heard from spirit is that most western doctors' solutions and answers for any ailment will usually be in the frequency of x-raying and testing, more x-raying and testing, then drugs (poisoning and numbing the body) and some kind of surgery. They will never tell us that our bodies are naturally regenerative and the solutions to most dis-eases and illnesses are rest/sleep, de-stressing the body and life, fasting (detoxifying the body and managing addictions-social media (dopamine), blue light (electromagnetic, computer, and phone use) food, and other addictions, sunlight, building harmonious relationships and intimacies (platonic, familial, and romantic), exercise (which basically means simple movements that warm up the tissues in the body to support healthy circulation), and devotion to some kind of creative/spiritual/energy practice. Basically when we recalibrate ourselves (our actual cells), live a simple regenerative life that takes care of our mental, emotional, spiritual, sensuous, and physical needs, and rework our psyche (repressed shadows and unconscious energy), our biology naturally shifts into greater harmony. The solutions and answers from Western allopathic medicine generally manipulate, weaken, and ultimately drain the divine-given magical (regenerative powers) of human beings and cause us to overconsume on materialism in order to cope with living so distant from the truth of ourselves (our cells) is what I also heard. We have to learn to be more responsible for ourselves (our cells) and come back into union without mind, body, and spirit. One of the greatest core collective woundings is that most people do not want to be responsible for themselves, but every experience that shows up in our reality is an opportunity for us to get to know our real true selves (cells). -India Ame'ye, Author #themelodyoflove

[respocked]

The worst TOS episode - a trans perspective

I'm making my own post because I don't want to litter the polls with my ventpost/discourse.

There is a TOS best episode bracket poll going on and currently Turnabout Intruder is winning to Paradise Syndrome. Seeing which, has put me in a not very good mental space last night.

I have loved Star Trek for a few years now and engaged with the fandom, I feel very passionate about it - but the absolutely rabid misogyny in the source material makes it sometimes very, very difficult to be in fandom spaces. Seeing episodes with such rotten, dehumanizing view of people born as women being discussed in positive light is very difficult to me.

To make it clear - I'm not calling out anyone for voting for it, or saying it is inherently misogynistic to do so! (it's possible that people just hate The Paradise Syndrome more lmao). It is also possible to enjoy the works of fiction that are flawed, I mean, I AM a fan of Star Trek. In this post I will simply explain why I don't like this episode and why I don't like seeing it praised.

I wish that I could enjoy a sci-fi "utopia" in peace, without being reminded of heterosexism and violence. It upsets me to see misogyny not because I want things I am a fan of to be perfect, but because heterosexism and cis supremacy already affects my everyday life greatly and hurts me deeply. And seeing it in fiction rubs the salt in the wound.

I wanted to channel the way I feel into productivity and make a post abt Turnabout Intruder with some feminist analysis, but I genuinely don't think I can watch it again, and I would need to do so - so this is going to be a quick one.

If you haven't seen it/have seen it a log time ago: the plot of the episode is that Kirk's body is stolen by his ex, a woman. She is jealous of the oppurtunities he got as a man, so she impersonates him, wants to become him. However, the crew of the Enterprise realizes something is wrong, based of the woman's behaviour in Kirk's body - it is not like Jim Kirk to act the way she does.

The way she does, of course, is overemotional and illogical. The idea of a woman succesfully doing a man's job, assuming his place in society, is discounted immediately. The episode doesn't sympathize with her desires and wants. She is villainized and called insane. Gender cannot be transcanded, and not only that, but people who attempt are to be punished. A woman should know her place, and accept it. Submission is a woman's natural state - you are not supposed to want more out of your life.

The label of "insane", that features even (if I recall correctly) in the episode's synopsis is one that is to me especially violent. Psychiatry was (and still is!) weaponized against the gender-nonconforming. In my country people born as women who didn't agree with roles prescribed to them were for years forcibly institionalized, drugged, raped. "Conversion therapy" is still not banned in my country. Hate groups are trying to pass a bill which would ban autistic and mentally ill people from transitioning - weaponizing mental health care to beat people into conformity, into submission.

I read Turnabout Intruder as a transgender metaphor. The way the woman desiring to have a man's body is portrayed reflects the strategies of real life violence against people who do not conform to gender roles.

When I first watched this episode, I was in high school. I knew TOS was sexist, because I watched all the other episodes before. But it still deeply hurt me.

[welcome-to-oslov]

Alright, sorry to be your ask box penpal this week, but I'm just such an Oslov superfan & binge reading so I have too many thoughts to share 😂.

Last ones: I'm Brazilian but have lived in America half my life (15 years). Just got home to visit São Paulo and it's helping me understand Gersha and the other not-evil-but-complicit characters better. As you may know, we have extreme inequality in Brazilian society. São Paulo's an amazing city with tons of upper social class & rich powerful people. However our lifestyle as upper class people is dependent on there being a huge class of poor people locked out of opportunity with no choice but to learn deference and work as low-paid servants. For example, a live-in nanny who cares for children of well-off families like a second mother, while her own children go without mothering far away. Young people from the impoverished northeast brought to the big cities for "opportunity" that are really just exploitative domestic labor.

Many of us know this feels wrong... yet so many of my class hate politicians whose policies haved lifted many out of poverty - and suddenly the price of maids double and poor kids can get into the excellent universities only WE'd been able to attend. This felt like a threat to our very existence. Many of us performatively talk about social justice & how it's wrong that only WE have power & opportunity, but the few of our peers who actually do something about it do feel threatening.

Of course thankfully we don't have this institionalized crazy kettle boy system, and mistreated maids drivers etc can easily quit & find another shitty job no problem. But, those who are really trapped are a mistreated son or daughter children of an upper class family. Every well-off family has someone who holds all the money & power: a father, uncle, or grandfather. As upper class kids we are supported by our families till ~25 because even it's not possible to launch your young adult life without family money; due to social divisions, you can't go out & get a teen/college kid job like in America, your friends all live at home too you can't really go move with them, the best university is going to be in your home city, and even good entry-level grad jobs at corporations don't really start paying enough till you're older since they figure you're paying your dues while your family patriarch supports you. If that patriarch is or was abusing you, you wouldn't have many clear ways out.

So how does a guy or girl in a bad situation get out? You get married young (20, 21, 22, etc.). Once you're married you're considered an adult: your wealthy family buys you two a starter condo, jobs might give you a raise, etc. You can divorce later, but getting that spouse gives you protection & distance & resources. Ofc easier for a girl to take this route, but a guy too could get a rich daddy's girl he knows at their nice school to marry him & insist her father set them up with young married life if his family drags their feet (though generally even an abusive patriarch would play ball here & realize he's been beat, otherwise he looks bad socially). I've seen this scenario play out with a couple of friends.

Which... basically is Tilrey's escape. He realizes he has an opportunity in Gersha & he goes for it, out of desperation to escape, genuine relief at finding someone nice he can live with & be his ally as he breaks free, etc 😢🙏

(Speaking of Tilrey & Brazil, what do you think of my casting suggestion post?! Hahahaha :) I have such a crush, but c'mon, he's gorgeous!)

I'm here for your thoughts any time! And I know very little about Brazil, so that's a fascinating comparison! Especially the parts about family structure and how young upper-class people might need to marry to establish their independence. That reminds me of 18th- and 19th-century Europe, which was a big influence on Oslov because I've read a ton of novels from that period. Extreme inequality was a factor there, too, and patronage was the main way of advancing in society, which increases both corruption and the power of family elders. There are a lot of stories about people (always women) being trafficked and forced into sex work, but then turning that into a source of power because of their sheer beauty. Of course we have widening inequality in the U.S. too, and connections seem more and more important, and many people are resistant to any form of redistribution. So I wonder if we're headed in the same direction, which scares me. Especially since there are tech billionaires who would definitely justify that as "meritocracy."

He is totally gorgeous! :)

[manallandall]

Does god hurt her antidote ones ON PURPOSE;

if so i could hurt myself ahead of time, or does she/he have to actually do it to know the exact timing. so eventually i think god realizes that light and dark both exist (which is to be self aware) and if dark exists light must collide with it, so she sends every living thing to death. is that satan or god? it sounds like satan but that's what happend to jesus? so, idk at a certain point, i am not trying to "calculate the perfect martyr" and if it's just getting killed for existing the fucking do it shoooot me. and if life is allowed to have a heart beat, my nature says - none of this is real, dark giving into dark? it can't so there is no dark only chaos and obedience to god is real. her love is to punish you until you "sacrifice yourself" which seems crazy meaning threat level but you don't die becuase being nice to somebody is survivable YOUR SYSTEM IS INSTITIONALIZED INSANITY. no human approves. our category is destroyed before we can "get harmed" or "be your marter" or love. we are the USSR math colony in heaven.

[iatrophilosophos]

Mmm yeah this makes sense + checks out as one of the many ways that once you get marked as "crazy" every little thing is a case for incompetence. If homeless ppl saving up to get a place can get institionalized for panhandling while having a couple grand in cash (real story from Judi Chamberlin's On Our Own circa the 1970s, v fucked up, they took all his savings to pay for hospitalization and dumped him back out once they spent all his money...) it's not a stretch to believe that the image of "incompetent old person/~over trusting~ intellectually disabled person giving their ssn to sketchy websites" results in ppl getting locked away.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of punishment as a solution to social problems. Punishment is often overly harsh, ineffective as a deterrent, and doesn't solve the actual problem. The punitive mentality is more focused on making sure the "bad guys" "don't get away with it" than on actually solving the problem.

But I get a lot more worried when people talk about "alternatives to punishment", or when they support their proposed solutions because "it's not punishment."

Because what that means, in practice, is "I'm conceptualizing this form of coercive control as 'not punishment,' and therefore not subjecting it to the rigor, due process, or evidentiary standards of punishment."

The U.S. loves punishment. It's one of our favorite national pastimes. But we do have, both legally and culturally, some limitations on punishment, at least in theory. Punishment isn't supposed to be "cruel and unusual." It's not supposed to be inflicted without "due process of law." You're supposed to be convicted by a jury of your peers.

But if you call it "not punishment," none of that matters!

You can force people to register under a law that didn't exist when they committed their crimes, because it's "administrative," not punitive.

You can subject disabled people to shocks similar to a cattle prod -- which would surely be cruel and unusual punishment -- but it's okay, because it's not "punishment," it's a "treatment" called an "aversive" (that's therapist for "punishment").

You can have people locked up and forcibly drugged solely because they can't afford housing, but it's okay, because it's "help," not "punishment."

Police can kill people in cold blood -- judge, jury, and executioner -- and it's fine, because it's "self-defense," not "punishment," even if they argue after the fact that the victim "deserved it."

It's also a matter of cultural attitudes. If you said "The punishment for trespassing should be life in prison," or "The punishment for loitering should be permanent loss of the right to control one's body, money, or living space," or "The punishment for turnstile-jumping should be lifelong forced ingestion of drugs that numb basic cognitive functions," most people would think this was horrific, much too harsh a punishment for a relatively minor crime.

But if you change it to "Instead of jailing and punishing unhoused people with mental health issues, we should respond to their minor crimes by Getting Them Help, like institutionalization, conservatorship, or outpatient commitment," people now think this is completely reasonable.

Even being the victim of a crime can get someone not-punished far more severely than the perpetrators are "punished." People might serve jail time for financial fraud, but not usually a life sentence. Being the victim of financial fraud, however, can lead to a life sentence of institutionalization -- which fraud investigators have cited as a barrier to getting victims to report fraud. I personally know of multiple disabled young adults who were afraid to report being the victim of sexual assault or other kinds of assault because they knew that if they reported it, the perpetrator might or might not face some kind of punishment, but they would definitely face some type of "not-punishment" coercive control, like forced therapy, forced drugging, supervision, or having to leave school.

You want a society with less punishment? Me too. But only if you acknowledge that "punishment" includes all forms of coercive control. If you do something to someone against their will, if you restrict someone from their right to live as they choose, that's a punishment, regardless of whether you call it that.

[drdamiang]

MONSTERS

MONSTERS

we expect

better of

our monsters

more

from them

we demand that

they be

fully

institionalized

but there again,

demand is perhaps

too strong

a word

we wake

but we

do not see

unfortunately

and thus cannot

but fail to notice

that we

fail

to notice

that in the mirror

everything is

reversed

not upside down, as

radical theory Zizeks

would have

us overthink it

just simply reversed

take a quick squizz

on your way

into the world

and you could be forgiven

for not thinking

the monster is there

[anxsity]

writing a poem to prevent asking a reddit forum and getting institionalized

[dmnsqrl]

the morbid hilarity of realizing that were I actually in a "institutionalized by disability/age AND disability" situation

that "de-gendered by abelism/ageism AND abelism"

is actually closer to what my gender IS

than the box society wants to file a non-institionalized me

[creekfiend]

oh I just realized that one of the major stumbling blocks for many people being introduced to antipsych is that people are unclear about what we mean by "psych"

antipsych is about Psychiatry As An Institution. it is not about the concept generally of therapy or counseling (although it is often *critical* of those things as being adjacent to Psychiatry As An Institution as things are currently.)

when we talk about antipsych we mean that medicalization of brain differences *right now* results in people having their human rights violated. forcibly medicating and institionalizing people is legal and acceptable due to the existence of Psychiatry. that's bad.

Hey pip, I apologize deeply if this is a question you get often. But can you explain the "Antipsych" tag? This is not meant as a gotcha or trying to invite discourse and I understand if you're not comfortable explaining to a stranger (or in this case, millions of strangers) your personal views on your belief or lack thereof in therapy, im just genuninly interested as i've never seen someone hold a genuine "intelectual" aversion to the practice. Thank you, have a good day and kiss Glimmer on her dumb little head.

if you read the contents of the posts in the antipsych tag it should be pretty obvious

scroll back far enough and there's plenty of manifestos

tl;dr is that psychiatry is an arm of the carceral state.

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Didn't think I could hate lovaas anymore than I already did but neurotribes has proven me wrong many times over and I JUST started reading the chapter that focuses on him

This man's fuckin EGO

I want to strangle him and he's been dead for 10 years

Also

AHHHHHHHHHHH

Physical contact doesn't specifically cause me pain but it does cause me a great deal of discomfort. However I know it does cause other autistics pain. So. Suuuuuure let's just train kids to ignore their own pain because some people don't like that they won't hug them. Great plan /s

Anyways I had to stop reading for tonight cuz 1, this chapter is VERY long and I wanna go to bed

And 2,

Theres only so much egotistical bullshit I can handle

Oh, and

Imma just go scream into a pillow until I pass out

[hicholasnemmick]

i like oikawa because i too feel like i won’t be anything useful until i leave my country

[dougiedisarray]

Sometimes I just want to throw my textbooks into my professors stupid head. One day I’m going to have the time and resources to expose the bogus corruption that runs this entire industry.

Why does your textbook cost $100+? Oh and coincidentally it’s written by your close personal friend? And we’re all required to buy the newest version?

Bullshit.