#neurobigotry

[hyperlexichypatia]

Neuroscience is real and important (while still beset by the same implicit and explicit bias problems as all human science and medicine), but pop culture understanding of neuroscience has absolutely made society worse, and I hate it. Every popular invocation of "dopamine," "serotonin" "trauma," "the prefrontal cortex," and "epigenetics" is used to justify some logically and/or ethically terrible conclusion. Recently I saw someone say that she lift weights to boost dopamine "Because my body doesn't make its own." My sibling in neurochemistry, that is your body making its own! A chemical your body produces when you exercise is still being produced by your body! Furthermore, why are we repeatedly told that exercise is good because it boosts dopamine, but video games and social media are bad, because they boost dopamine? Are dopamine-boosting recreational activities good or bad? The obvious answer, of course, is that it's just moralistic judgment -- exercise is Virtuous, games are not -- dressed up in neurochemical justifications. People even talk about being "addicted to dopamine" as if being "addicted" to a substance produced by one's own body can even be a meaningful or coherent concept. I'm not saying there aren't evidence-based things people can do to protect their neurological health (one that I strongly recommend is wearing a helmet). I'm saying that pop neuroscience is not a sound basis for logic, philosophy, ethics, morality, law, or public policy. If you're going to make an ethical or public policy argument using "the brain" or "brain chemistry" as a justification, consider, instead, not doing that. Instead, consider that other people know what's best for their own brains without your expounding on "dopamine" and "trauma."

[hyperlexichypatia]

An autistic trans woman who posts completely SFW, innocuous, G-rated furry art is at huge risk! Never let them forget that Sophie Labelle was called a predator pedophile for drawing a completely nonsexual cartoon puppy that could have appeared in a Disney movie.

I think the "furry hate is just lgbtphobia" argument is incomplete because ableism is like. Super super key. Like with most "cringe" content, most furry hate revolves around catching people breaking social norms and mocking them as subhuman for it. Even heterosexual furries are mocked ruthlessly if they present their sexuality in an "autistic" way, which they very often do. Developmentally disabled furries are most often mocked and most at risk of being exploited by outsiders who pretend to be acting in good faith. That said, the reason furries are such a beloved target of mockery is definitely the intersection of ableism, queerphobia, and anti-kink ideology. An autistic trans woman who posts nsfw furry art is at huge risk, and we can see examples of that in practice across the internet.

[hyperlexichypatia]

At some point I have to unpack and describe the specific intersection of factors that led to my specific experiences with food shaming (and all related topics like sizeism, ableism, neurobigotry, healthism, ageism, etc).

As a a fat, autistic, ARFID-ite who's consistently been treated as younger than I am, and with scandalously non-abusive parents (how dare they vaguely accept me as I am without beating me into submission!), a lot of the food shaming I've experienced in my life was based on treating me more as a "spoiled child" than as a "fat woman," even after I was clearly the latter.

Food with my extended family or parents' friends or anyone older than myself was always a site of shaming how spoiled I was, how overly permissive my parents were, how rude I was for not eating what I was served (specifically for that -- I wasn't actually doing any "rude things" like commenting negatively on the food, demanding alternate food, or anything like that! But simply not eating what I was served, as a Young Person, was "rude".)

I was also heavily desexualized and somewhat degendered, so it wasn't "You're an unsexy woman because you're fat and ugly, not thin and sexy like a woman should be," it was "You're a spoiled brat picky eater who needs a spanking." Up through age. Like. 24.

And I realize, please believe me, I am very well aware of what an incredibly privileged problem this is. I was stigmatized because my parents weren't abusive? What kind of problem is that? Everyone else was dealing with actual problems, like actual abusive parents!

So my point isn't to complain about my problems, it's to say that food-shaming takes many forms. I was reminded of that when I saw an otherwise good, innocuous post about getting along with family at Thanksgiving, that included something about "Don't ask teens if they have a boyfriend/girlfriend, ask them about their hobbies, or what they're most looking forward to on their plate!" and I was suddenly filled with anxiety, because, no, don't do that. If you had asked Teenage Me what I was most looking forward to on my plate, I would have assumed that you were admonishing me for only having two foods on it, lecture me about how I can't have dessert if I don't eat my vegetables, nagging me to "Just try it," and possibly throwing in some remark about "Back in my day, if we didn't eat what we were told, we got a whipping!" Questions about my nonexistent love life would have been comparatively less fraught.

Don't comment on people's food choices. Don't comment on kids' food choices. Don't comment on teens' food choices. Don't comment on adults' food choices. Don't comment on people's food choices.

Don't ask teens if they have a boyfriend/girlfriend either, although, if that tradition must continue, I'd at least like to add age balance to it. If you ask a 15 year old if she has a boyfriend, she should legally be allowed to ask you how your divorce is coming.

[hyperlexichypatia]

While I’m saying things: I got into disability liberation through neurodiversity. I identify with the neurodiversity paradigm. I identify as neurodivergent. I believe that the core concept of the neurodiversity paradigm -- that all brains are different, and all brains should be accepted -- is integral to our liberation. But I’m really getting the sense that “neurodiversity” is becoming to “mad liberation” as “body positivity” is to “fat liberation.” “Neurodiversity” is being used by behaviorists, therapists, and teachers who are still practicing behaviorism and hierarchy. It’s being differentiated from “mental illness” that needs “treatment.” It’s being applied to plucky, cheerful people who can still contribute to capitalism in their own way, but not to people with extreme emotional states, people who experience voices and visions unknown to others, or people who score very poorly on IQ tests. It’s not being used to critically interrogate, let alone dismantle, oppressive concepts like “normalcy,” “sanity/insanity,” “competence,” or “general intelligence.” It’s not being used to challenge eugenics, or question whether “mental health” can have a useful meaning outside the pathology paradigm. It’s not being used to imagine what concepts like “happiness” or “good parenting” or “a fair distribution of resources” would even mean in the absence of pathologization, oppression, and hierarchy. We have to start using “neurodiversity” better if we want it to still have meaning.

[chokit-pyrus]

Can I please take a moment to rant about Alice Madness Return’s portrayal of mental illness!???!

Alice Madness Returns by American Mcgee is a horror story about mental illness. And it never ONCE demonizes the mentally ill. Alice is a deeply traumatized individual. She has intense PTSD after the death of her family that left her in a comatose state for years. She then wakes up and leaves the asylum she was kept at and goes to see a therapist. Alice is struggling with PTSD, depression, and possibly more things that she’d likely never be diagnosed with in her current setting: 1870s England.

That is what the game is about, a psychological gory horror game about a mentally ill young woman. Yet the fear and horror doesn’t come from her. It comes from the abuse she has suffered. The images she faces in her wonderland are monsters trying to keep her in her suffering, representations of her trauma and survivor’s guilt. It’s people she faced in real life, doctors who performed terrible experiments and “treatments” on her, like leeches and electro shock.

The main villain in Madness Returns is her current therapist who has been hurting and abusing her. He’s the one that made her wonderland worse, he’s the one that forced her back to her coping mechanism. The ENTIRE concept of wonderland in the games is a mentally ill person’s fight against their illness and their struggles to recovery when faced with no support system, and being treated by a society who sees her as a freak or monster, that fails to understand her, and only damages her mental health.

She’s forced back to her wonderland after the first game because of her therapist, because of his abuse. But she’s able to move past it when she rejects the way she’s been treated. When she confronts him on the evil things he’s been doing to his patients. (and quiet satisfyingly, pushing him in front of a train)

It could have been so easy to make it into another story that uses mentally ill people as a way to scare neurotypicals. But instead it’s a power fantasy for people isolated and struggling with their mental health. At least, that’s how I view it as a neurodivergent person. I always thought that Alice was so inspiring. She even has a great moment with her previous nanny, basically saying that society is going to chew you up and spit you out, and it’s up to you to protect yourself. It’s up to you to fight for the way you need to be treated.

Even in the scariest, goriest, grossest part of the game, during the Asylum level, the fear is watching poor hurt Alice being tortured by the monstrous doctors and caretakers. A tragic truth about what real people when through back then in those kinds of facilities.

The real horror isn’t the mental illness. It’s the abuse mentally ill people go through from society.

And I am just SO THANKFUL we have these games. These crazy, gory, action, horror games that gives us an AWESOME mentally ill protagonist!

TL:DR The games could have just used mental illness to exploit harmful stereotypes but instead used it as an inspiring story about overcoming trauma and an abusive system that rejects mentally ill people.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I thought about including "Stockholm syndrome" in my list of materialistic critiques that have been appropriated into pathologization, but it didn't really fit, because it was a pathologizing framework from the beginning.

It's so wild -- and by "wild" I mean neurobigoted, neuromisogynistic, and victim-blaming -- that society collectively accepted that a kidnapping victim objecting to police actions is evidence of "I guess some people like being kidnapped?"

Broke:

Belle has Stockholm syndrome because she falls in love with the Beast, her kidnapper.

Woke:

Stockholm syndrome was coined to slander a woman who had been in a hostage situation but openly criticized the poor police response which recklessly put her in more danger and escalated the violence. She was then belittled and discredited publically by the police for this.

So. Yeah. Maybe Belle does have Stockholm syndrome actually.

[handoferis]

not my white ass just reading the word "neurobigotry" with my own two eyes

[graydalestairs]

So I know many of us are dealing with one or more real problems like biphobia, racism, religious persecution, homophobia, neurobigotry, ableism, narrow-minded families, crippling anxiety, erasure, meaningless acts of violence, horrifying political leaders 

but y'all i am trying to put my leftovers away and fighting with my tupperware WhY dO ThE LiDS noT MaTCh the cOntAinERs??? This is my real struggle right now against Food Storage Supremacy

[hyperlexichypatia]

I'm never tired of replies! I touched on it a little bit here, but here are some things I've noticed as red flags of library gentrification:

Similar to other public spaces, hostile architecture to discourage unhoused people hanging out. Eliminating chairs, or replacing comfortable couches with hardback chairs.

Policies that target, disproportionately affect, or are unequally enforced against, unhoused and disabled people, like "no sleeping" or "no bags" or "no adults in the children's area."

Policies like requiring a library card to use the computer or attend programs (and you need ID or an address to get a library card).

Restrictions on bathroom use, like time limits, or making people ask for a key.

Any time you hear a library worker use the phrases "mission creep" or "We're not social workers," there's a very high likelihood that they're about to advocate some library gentrification.**

Anything that frames poor and disabled people's right to use the library as part of a "both sides" issue balanced against classist/ableist people who "aren't comfortable with" poor and disabled people using the library.

**Now, sometimes "We're not social workers" can be a valid point. Library workers are often asked to help with complex tasks that we have neither the time nor the professional credentials to do, and we end up having to say things like "Sorry, I'm not a lawyer/accountant/realtor/doctor/teacher/etc, I can't help you with that." In that context, "We're not social workers" is a valid point. But one of the insidious ways Benevolent Liberal Ableism asserts itself is by Professionalizing disabled people's everyday lives and asserting that only Trained Professionals can (or should be expected to) interact with disabled people. There's a difference between "I'm not a social worker, I can't be expected to have a comprehensive knowledge of every state program" and "I'm not a social worker, I shouldn't be expected to tolerate unhoused disabled people and treat them like any other members of the public."

Gaiman: " If you really can't figure out which political party or which politician to vote for, just ask if they're on the side of libraries. Are they voting to fund their libraries? Are they voting to keep them free? Then vote for those guys. They're probably the good guys. And by the same token, the book burners, the book banners, they're probably the bad guys."

[hyperlexichypatia]

This survey of why parents are estranged from their adult children is such an interesting illustration of how neurobigotry functions in society and interpersonal relationships. People accuse their estranged family members of being Mad/neurodivergent, because Madness is synonymous with being at fault in a relationship. It's considered inherently Reasonable and Justified to cut ties with a Mad/neurodivergent person -- especially an untreated-by-choice Mad/neurodivergent person -- because to be Mad/neurodivergent is to be inherently wrong, inherently unreasonable, inherently burdensome, inherently the one who is not abiding by the social compact.

Or as one of my friends put it, "Mental illness exists as a sociopolitical concept of ontological wrongness."

One of the pervasively enduring aspects of neurobigotry is that people who have been abused by neurobigotry will, instead of rejecting neurobigotry, simply accept it and turn it around on their abusers. People think they're really onto something with "No, it is my abusive parents who are mentally ill and need therapy" or "No, it is the people in power who are mentally defective" or "Racism/capitalism/bigotry are the real mental illness!"

But you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. Pathologizing your parents doesn't correct the power imbalance of being pathologized by them, and using pathologization as a way to convey wrongness is still reifying pathologization and neurobigotry.

The context of family estrangement reminds me of this thought process I started about the construction of "cults." When the anti-cult movement began, it was centered on family members of people who'd joined new religious movements. The premise that people who joined religious groups their families didn't approve of were victims of "cult brainwashing" who needed to be "rescued" and "deprogrammed" (against their will, of course) was a tool of controlling families trying to deny their (usually) adult children's right to freedom of religion and general life choices. The idea that "cults" caused family estrangement was an integral aspect of the moral panic around them.

But over the decades, the stigma on "cults" has shifted. The contemporary anti-cult movement is fueled by people who grew up in abusive religious communities and chose to leave. It's applied as often to older, larger, established religious groups as it is to newer, smaller ones. While the original anti-cult movement largely centered on parents trying to control their adult children, the newer anti-cult movement largely centers on adults who've broken away from their parents' control.

Except. Except. It still uses the pathologization framework established in the 1970s. It's still a reversal -- No, it is you, the parents, the church, the authority, who are the Mentally Ill, the cult, the deviant, the ones in need of being fixed -- rather than a rejection or reframing: Actually, young people should be free to choose their own path in life.

It's not only applied in relationships between parents and children -- it's even more commonly invoked in breakups between former friends or partners. People feel the need to establish which party was Mentally Ill and Needed Therapy as a proxy for which party was At Fault in the breakup. In reality, breaking up doesn't necessarily mean either party was At Fault, but it's more socially acceptable to say "We had to break up because he's Mentally Ill and Refused To Get Help" rather than "We just didn't get along." Discussions of bad and badly-ended relationships are just constant rounds of uno reverse allegations of Madness/neurodivergence.

One of my least favorite examples is trying to "rebut" the neuromisogynistic trope of "Women are crazy" with "Men cause women to become crazy." Why are you validating "Women are crazy" by trying to "explain" it? Why are you accepting the premise that "crazy" is a bad thing? Why are you reifying the idea that being "crazy" has to be "caused" by something "bad"? If a man says "I broke up with my ex-girlfriend because she's crazy!" why validate the neuromisogyny with "No, you're crazy!" or "You must have made her crazy!" instead of challenging it with "What's wrong with being 'crazy'? What does that have to do with anything?"

If someone says "I stopped speaking to my child because they refused to seek therapy," why validate the neurobigotry with "You're the one who needs therapy!" instead of challenging it with "Why is their choice whether or not to seek therapy any of your business?"

[hyperlexichypatia]

“Narcissistic abuse” is not a real thing.

I have repeatedly written on this page that there is no such thing as a neurodivergence, disability, illness, or mental condition that “causes” someone to be abusive, violent, bigoted, or otherwise harmful to others.

First of all, a “personality disorder” cannot, by definition, be a cause of someone’s behavior. The diagnosis of a “personality disorder” is a description of (real or perceived) observed behavior, and an assumption (accurate or inaccurate) about the emotional motivation for that behavior. It is circular and nonsensical to say that someone behaves a certain way “because of'' their “personality disorder” -- it would only be accurate to say that because the person behaves in a certain way, someone has classified them with that diagnosis. (I could point out that this labeling and categorization process occurs in the context of an oppressive, kyriarchical system which interprets marginalized people’s responses to oppression through a pathologizing lens, but that would be too big a topic shift for one post, and wouldn’t be that relevant to debunking the concept of “narcissistic abuse,” which is mostly applied to privileged people, anyway.)

Some people are self-centered. Some people are abusive. Some people behave in an abusive, self-centered way. None of these facts are in dispute. When we say “Narcissistic abuse is not a real thing,” we are not saying “Self-centered, abusive people are not real.” We are saying that being self-centered and abusive is not an intrinsic condition of the brain, a “disorder,” a disability, or “caused by” anything other than one’s own choices.

Why do people cling so fervently to the concept of “narcissistic abuse”? Why are people so insistent that there’s such a thing as a “brain disease” that can “cause” someone to be self-centered and abusive?

One reason might be that pathologization is used to convey intensity or extremity. In the popular conception of psychopathology, pathologized conditions are “extreme” versions of “normal” traits. In this framework, one might insist on pathologizing someone’s abusive, self-centered behavior as a way of conveying that the behavior is really, really, extremely abusive and self-centered, and differentiating it from allegedly “normal” abusiveness or self-centeredness.

Another, perhaps more insidious reason, is that classifying someone’s abusiveness as a “disorder” frames it as an intrinsic aspect of the person, rather than a choice they make. It codifies “just intrinsically a Bad Person” as a (pseudo)-scientific reality. If someone’s abusive or self-centered behavior is “caused” by their “brain disorder,” then they are an inherently unforgivable and irredeemable person. Sometimes, pathologizing people’s behavior is used as a reason to excuse them from blame or responsibility -- “They couldn’t help it, The Disorder made them do it.” But in the case of so-called “personality disorders,” the reasoning seems to be the opposite -- “The Disorder made them do it, so they’re Just Inherently That Way.” The line is drawn neatly between The Narcissist and The Innocent Victim. No one needs to examine the dynamic further when one party is an inherently evil Narcissist.

Additionally, the framing of abuse as caused by a “brain disorder” obscures the real cause of abuse, which is power. As long as people have power over other people, at least some of them will use that power abusively. Blaming abuse on “brain disorders” shifts discourse away from the abuser’s choices, the moral code that allowed them to make those choices, and the structure of society that gave them power to abuse someone else.

“Narcissistic abuse” isn’t a real thing. “Personality disorders” can’t “cause” behavior, abusive or otherwise. And if we really want to stop abuse, we have to dismantle social power structures, including the power structures of ableism, neurobigotry, and pathologization that classify some brain-types as “disordered.”

[hyperlexichypatia]

One time, when I was younger, I had an unpleasant encounter with an (apparently neurotypical) older man who wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

Now, I was fine. But I was scared.

Not so much because I was afraid the man would come after me -- although given the statistics around violence against women who refuse men's advances, that would be an entirely reasonable fear -- but because I was afraid that someone would find out what had happened.

Because, you see, if someone found out that I had been assaulted, I would be a Vulnerable Young Girl.

And the thing about being a Vulnerable Young Girl is that it doesn't matter if you said "yes" or "no."

It's not necessarily that people would have sided with my assailant -- this is a different flavor of rape culture. Most people would have agreed that what my assailant did was wrong. But they would have considered it equally wrong -- maybe more wrong -- if he were my chosen, consensual boyfriend I actively wanted to be with.

Because his crime was not disregarding my "no" and violating my bodily autonomy. His crime was Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Young Girl. Preying on a Vulnerable Young Girl. Corrupting a Vulnerable Young Girl.

If you're a Vulnerable Young Girl, you don't have the right to say "yes," which means you don't really meaningfully have the right to say "no" either. You need to be Protected, and, of course, you don't have the right to say "no" to that, either.

And, look, once again, I was fine. I'm making the specific assault sound worse than it was. That's not the point. I wouldn't mention it at all, except that The Discourse is such that if you don't disclose a relevant personal experience, you're assumed to Not Care About Real People. But I am not alone in this.

I've heard multiple instances of the specific scenario "I was assaulted in college but I didn't report it because my parents would have made me leave school." Or "I was date raped and didn't report it because then my family would have never let me go out again." Or "I'm a psychiatric survivor and if I reported being assaulted I'd be put back into treatment."

These are real things I've heard or read assault victims say.

Framing assault victims as Vulnerable Young Girls actively discourages victims from reporting assaults.

Yet the people who use this framing seem to think it's somehow necessary to get assaults taken seriously, even though it does the opposite.

Feminists largely understand this when it's in the context of purity culture. When people say, "In purity culture, it doesn't matter if you say 'yes' or 'no,' sexual assault and consensual sex are considered equally bad, and that underlying premise minimizes the actual wrongdoing of sexual assault, discourages assault victims from reporting their assaults, and allows assailants to get away with their crimes," this is understood as a problem.

But the Vulnerable Young Girls framing comes from self-identified feminists. Who think they're helping. In the name of feminism and justice. They don't understand why being framed as a Vulnerable Young Girl would make a woman reluctant to come forward, because the coercive control she would be subjected to "isn't punishment". They're seemingly baffled by why young and/or disabled women don't want to be framed as Vulnerable Young Girls, even if they've been assaulted. Especially if they've been assaulted. Why are you so offended when we say that your wishes for your own body don't matter?

And... why? Why is this framing necessary? What is the purpose? What is the benefit?

If you hear about someone committing sexual assault against a young and/or disabled woman -- without her consent, against her will, disregarding her "no" -- what, exactly, are you trying to accomplish by jumping in and saying "Even if she said yes, that's still predatory! He's still Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Young Girl!"?

What is the purpose of saying that?

If a young and/or disabled woman chooses a sexual and/or romantic relationship that you think is "bad for her," and you proclaim "Just because she agreed to it doesn't make it okay! It's still wrong!" -- well, I vehemently disagree with you, but at least you're responding to the actual situation that exists.

But if you hear about an assault, against the victim's will, without her consent, and feel the need to denounce the counterfactual scenario in which it was a consensual encounter... what are you even trying to accomplish? Is the sole purpose just to convey to the victims (and any other assault survivors and/or young and/or disabled women in the vicinity) "I need to make it unambiguously clear that my objection to this assault has nothing to do with the violation of your bodily autonomy. I actively do not care about that."?

[hyperlexichypatia]

I always need to remind everyone that hormone blockers are also used as chemical restraint for autistic people (kids and sometimes adults), and the same people who oppose consensual transition for kids because trans people are disproportionately autistic and obviously autistic people don't deserve bodily autonomy are perfectly fine with this use of hormone blockers.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I tried to talk about this before, but I must have done it so badly that people thought I was actually making a factual claim about dopamine, or "pop science," or something.

So let me try again: Neuroscience cannot be used to answer ethical, moral, philosophical, or political questions.

I'm not saying neuroscience shouldn't be used to answer those questions. I'm saying it can't.

The problem isn't "bad science" or "pop science" or "laypeople misunderstanding science." Those things are problems, yes, and there is a lot of neuroscience misinformation going around, but those are not the problems I am talking about. The problem is that these questions are not answerable by this form of human knowledge.

Neuroscience cannot answer the question of whether someone should be punished for violating a law. That is a legal, ethical, political, and philosophical question. (What is law? What is punishment? What is justice? By what authority does government enact laws or punish people who violate them? Divine right? Consent of the governed? Who constitutes "the governed" and how is their consent ensured?)

Neuroscience cannot answer the question of whether someone is "mentally ill" or what condition constitutes a "mental illness." Neuroscience can, in some cases, determine that someone's brain deviates from a statistical average in some way. But the pathologization of that difference -- the classification of difference as "illness" -- is a social, cultural, economic, ethical, philosophical, and political question.

Neurscience cannot tell you how to live your life, how to relate to others, or how best to structure a society. You have to decide that yourself.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I am NOT saying "Neurodivergent women are never abusive."

I AM saying "Are you describing a neurodivergent woman's behavior with the word 'abusive,' when you would describe the same behavior by someone other than a neurodivergent woman with words like 'annoying' or 'rude' or 'mildly irritating'?"

[hyperlexichypatia]

Written July of 2022, as part of my "How to Be Pro-Choice Without Being Pro-Eugenics" series. In the the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health U.S. Supreme Court case, which ruled that, contrary to decades of precedent, states do not have to respect a person's right to terminate a pregnancy, a lot of public arguments have sprung up about the right to access abortion. To be clear, this is an unambiguously pro-choice space. Bodily autonomy is a human right. No exceptions. I do not ever host discourses in support of government infringements on the bodily autonomy of any people, ever, including pregnant people. However, many arguments in favor of abortion rights are actually covertly (or overtly) eugenicist. So, presented here, the Hypatia Guide to Problematic Abortion Rights Arguments, Why They're Harmful, and What To Say Instead. CLAIM: Without abortion, poor people will have children they can't afford. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: The eugenicist message is obvious here. Everyone who wants to have children should be able to. In a just society, there would be no such thing as poverty or inability to afford children, because everyone would have the resources they need to survive and thrive. The solution to "poor people having children they can't afford" isn't abortion; it's universal living wages, universal housing and healthcare, universal access to resources. I wrote about this also in this post. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Everyone deserves equal access to the resources they need for themselves and their families. Everyone deserves equal access to the resources to make the family planning choices that are right for them. CLAIM: People need abortion for fetal anomalies, because it would be horrible to give birth to a child with no quality of life. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Being born disabled or having a disabled child is not a bad thing. There's no such thing as "no quality of life." Disabled children should be welcomed and celebrated. The pervasive cultural narrative that a pregnant person who is expecting a disabled child "has to" have an abortion is extremely harmful to disabled people and their parents. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: All disabled people deserve acceptance, support, and equality. Everyone has quality of life. Since anyone could become disabled at any time, anyone who chooses to have a child should know that their child may be disabled, either from birth or later in life. CLAIM: People need abortion to prevent the births of children who will have expensive medical needs, because the children will only live until the parents' money runs out, and then the parents will be bankrupt when the children die. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Where to start... this is an argument for universal healthcare, not an argument for abortion. The fact that lifesaving medical care would be withheld from a child because their parents run out of money to pay for it is horrifying. The fact that parents can go bankrupt because of their children's medical bills is horrifying. The fact that anyone would feel the need to choose abortion because they can't afford lifesaving medical care is horrifying -- this is not a "choice", this is being held hostage by a cruel system built on profiting from human suffering. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Every child born should be entitled to necessary lifesaving healthcare over their entire lifespan regardless of their or their parents' financial situation. CLAIM: Young people need abortions, because they're not mature enough to be mothers. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Plenty of young people choose to have children. Young parents deserve the same rights, acceptance, and resources that older parents do. There is nothing wrong with being a younger-than-average parent or with being an older-than-average parent. The assumption that young parents are bad parents is based on the overlap of ageism, neurobigotry, and classism that I wrote about in this previous post. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Young people deserve access to the full spectrum of reproductive choices, from birth control and abortion to the resources they need to raise children if they choose to. CLAIM: Students need abortions, because if they have children, they'll have to leave school and never get to graduate. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Stigma and lack of support for student parents is pervasive, but solvable. It's entirely possible for someone to raise a child while going to school, if they choose to, so long as they have access to resources like housing, childcare, and student aid. Furthermore, the idea that parents can't go to school relies on a very narrow, elitist understanding of what "school" means. 22% of college students in the U.S. have children, and a majority of college students are over age 25. The assumption that only single, childless people below age 23 can pursue education is not only rooted in oppression, it's also not rooted in reality. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: We need more resources and support for student parents. We also need more family planning resources for students. People need the resources and freedoms to make the educational and family planning choices that are right for them. CLAIM: If your daughter got pregnant, you'd want her to have an abortion. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: This may very well be true -- but it should not be up to you. Parents and other family members do often pressure or coerce their relatives into abortions. They also coerce their relatives into giving birth. This is absolutely a human rights violation. We should oppose it. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: If your daughter got pregnant, she should have the choice whether or not to have an abortion. You shouldn't get a say, and neither should anyone else. CLAIM: If men could get pregnant, no one would object to abortion. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Some men can get pregnant. Some women can't. Some people who are neither men nor women can get pregnant, and some can't. Furthermore, it's no coincidence that there's such overlap between the anti-reproductive-rights movement and the anti-transgender-rights movement. Both are rooted in the same oppressive worldview that biology should be destiny, that people should be forced to live within the social roles of their birth-assigned genders, including reproducing and having families in socially-prescribed ways. The agenda is centered on forcing anyone with a uterus or potential uterus to be a woman, to heterosexually marry a man, and to bear children for her heterosexual husband. The agenda also involves forcing anyone with capacity or presumed capacity to impregnate someone else to be a man, heterosexually marry a woman, and bear children with his heterosexual wife. Cis-hetero-normativity and reproductive control are a package deal, and we need to put the entire package in the trash. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: No one's rights or freedoms should be abridged based on their reproductive anatomy. CLAIM: Men will change their minds about abortion when they have to pay child support/ if they have to take care of the children. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: As I touched on in the previous post about adoption, the entire premise that people "should have to" take care of their children is fundamentally dehumanizing to the children involved. Children deserve to be loved and wanted. Forcing children to be cared for by someone who has to be forced to care for them is cruel to the children. A common anti-choice argument is that pregnant people should be forced to give birth and raise the resulting child because the pregnancy is "their fault" for which they should be "held accountable" and "learn a lesson." This argument accepts that same harmful premise, but applies it to the biological father instead. This is not progressive; it still views children as property and forced parenthood as punishment. This is something that I used to believe until fairly recently, despite being nominally a youth rights advocate. I would openly say that if men were required to perform half the child-care tasks, they would take their role in family planning more seriously by, e.g., using condoms. Why did I think that? Well, because I was an adult, thinking from an adult's perspective. I wasn't thinking from the perspective of a child being resented, getting bare minimal care from a parent being "forced" to provide it. Like most adults in our society, I wasn't thinking of children as whole people. All adults, even those of us who profess to be pro-youth, have unexamined ageism to unpack. I know I have a lot more to go. Furthermore, as I also touched on in the previous post, the cultural assumption that women raise children while men pay child support is limiting, sexist, reductive, and inaccurate. There are plenty of custodial fathers and fathers who are their children's primary caregivers. There are plenty of loving families in which children are primarily cared for by grandparents, other relatives, foster or adoptive parents, or some family structure other than a present biological mother and an absent biological father. State-mandated child support, however, is primarily focused on penalizing or discouraging custodial parents from seeking social services to which they should be entitled. There are much better ways out there to structure family support policy. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Children deserve to be cared for by families who love and want them. Forcing someone to care for a child against their will is cruel to the child who will grow up unloved and resented. Children are people, not burdens or punishments. CLAIM: What if we mandated vasectomies, and men could only have them reversed when they were financially and emotionally ready to be fathers. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: First, see this previous post about the construction of "financially and emotionally." Poor people are just as good at parenting as rich people. Neurodivergent people are just as good at parenting as neurotypical people. Younger people are just as good at parenting as older people. But also, this hypothetical situation is the reality for many disabled people. Forced sterilization of disabled people is legal and common. Buck v Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling which affirmed forced sterilization of disabled people, is still in effect. Disabled people under adult guardianship can be forcibly sterilized under the orders of their guardians. While the original goals of forced sterilization of disabled people were to prevent the births of disabled children, today it is more often justified using the logic of this claim, that certain disabled people cannot be good parents. Having a neurodivergent parent is classified as an "Adverse Childhood Experience" alongside traumas like poverty and abuse. I wrote in this post about this idea as applied to neurodivergent mothers. Applying it to neurodivergent or disabled fathers is less common, but not unheard of. The bestselling 2016 book "To Siri With Love" features the author's described plan to force her autistic son into adult guardianship and a forced vasectomy using this rationale.  This article gives a brief overview of how disability rights and reproductive rights are inextricably linked. CLAIM: In other first world countries... / The U.S. is becoming like a third world country. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Some background -- during the Cold War (the time between the end of World War II and the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were involved in various proxy wars with each other), analysts divided the world into the U.S-aligned countries called the "First World," Soviet-aligned countries called the "Second World," and unaligned countries called the "Third World." Unaligned countries generally had lower gross domestic products than countries aligned with a world power, which is why Americans started using "Third World country" to mean "poor or under-served country." The U.S. and American-aligned countries, meanwhile, tried to prevent their own workers from demanding socialist governments. One way they did this was by implementing social welfare policies, such as the New Deal and Great Society programs in the U.S. and similar programs in much of Europe. Meanwhile, moves toward austerity led to reductions in these programs, and the U.S.S.R. dissolved rendering the entire "three worlds" classification meaningless. And that is the shortest, most oversimplified summary of the Cold War you will ever read. But that's just background. Right now we're talking about the argument that the U.S. should allow its citizens to have rights and resources because it is a "First World country," and that denying its citizens rights and resources is the behavior of a "Third World country." That's not what those terms have ever meant, but, more fundamentally, human rights should be for all humans. No country on earth has a perfect human rights record, but we cannot advocate human rights for all by starting from the premise that there are inherently good countries and inherently bad countries, and our own citizens inherently deserve better than the rest of the world. Rights are not pie. Advocating for pregnant Americans' rights does not mean opposing the rights of people of other nationalities. No matter how nominally progressive this argument is spun as, it still comes down to "Those other people deserve to be oppressed, but we don't." The specific fetishism the U.S. has with "Europe" as a concept, as either a pinnacle to emulate or a scare story of "falling civilization," is rooted purely in racism. Europe is not the world. Various articles have been written both asserting, and debunking, the claim that "Europe" has stricter abortion laws than the U.S. This is flawed framing both because Europe is not a monolith, and because we are not required to emulate Europe. We can advocate reproductive rights in the U.S. and also be allies to people advocating reproductive rights in the rest of the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and everywhere else in the world, because human rights are for all humans. (Next time, we'll talk about how continental divisions are also more socially constructed than you think!) CLAIM: There are too many children in foster care waiting to be adopted -- adopt those before requiring more children to be born. WHY IT'S HARMFUL: This is simply a gross oversimplification. As I mentioned in my previous post, U.S. family law, is fundamentally broken and harmful at every level, especially within the foster care system. Most foster children are not available for adoption. Many have been removed from their families of origin only because their families of origin were poor, disabled, or non-citizens. They may desperately want to return to their families of origin, who desperately want them back. Others may have families of origin who abused them, abandoned them, or simply died. Meanwhile, there are many roadblocks in place for people wanting to become foster parents. There are many children who need families, and many people who would love to provide families for children, but do not meet the qualifications to become foster or adoptive parents. It is not nearly as simple as "There are too many children who need homes, so more shouldn't be born." WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: We need to dismantle and radically restructure family law throughout the U.S., and rebuild a family law system to ensure that all families, biological and nonbiological, have the spaces and resources they need to survive and support their children, and to ensure that all children have loving, supportive, safe families. CLAIM: Bodily autonomy/ "my body, my choice" (if you don't mean it). WHY IT'S HARMFUL: Because most of y'all don't mean it. Anyone who follows this page knows that I am all about bodily autonomy and medical freedom in all contexts. But most people who profess to believe in bodily autonomy... don't. Until fairly recently, I avoided most organized abortion rights activism, despite deeply supporting the cause, because I was sickened by hearing people go on and on about bodily autonomy as pertaining to this one issue, while being silent on all other bodily autonomy issues.  I wrote about this a bit in this post. The right to choose abortion IS a bodily autonomy issue, a human rights issue. Absolutely it is! But it is not the only one. It's not even the only one currently under threat in the U.S. If you feel so strongly that the government shouldn't tell people what to do with their bodies (A sentiment I could not possibly agree with more strongly! Bodily autonomy is the most fundamental of human rights!), then why aren't you standing with us on transgender rights? On abolishing involuntary commitment and forced drugging? On abolishing conservatorship/ adult guardianship? On drug legalization? On systemic racism? On opposition to forced medical treatment in all forms? On youth rights? On medical experimentation on people of color? Even if you are narrowly focused on the issue of reproductive rights specifically, where are you on forced sterilization and forced abortions for disabled people? On medical violations of pregnant people, like forced caesarian sections? On youth rights to reproductive bodily autonomy? If you're for bodily autonomy only for abled, cisgender women seeking abortions, you're not really for bodily autonomy. If you're for reproductive rights, but only the right not to have children, you're not for reproductive rights. You're just a eugenicist who has co-opted "choice" and "bodily autonomy" as slogans. WHAT TO SAY INSTEAD: Bodily autonomy is a human right for all humans (and actually mean it). We have to stand up against any infringement by governments or other authorities against the bodily autonomy of any human, from abortion bans to involuntary commitment to guardianship to the war on drugs. Tear down the system and rebuild a free, egalitarian society with bodily autonomy, cognitive liberty, and equal resources for all. *BONUS ROUND: "Okay, maybe in a perfect world, you would have a point, but as it is, shouldn't we prevent children from being born into poverty/ disability/ young parents with no support?" *ANSWER: NO! We do not combat oppression by reifying it. And if you truly believed that oppression of poor people, disabled people, young parents, etc. was unjust, you wouldn't advocate eugenics as a solution to it. People who truly believe that sexism is wrong don't advocate sex selection. People who truly believe that racism is wrong don't advocate eugenics against people of color. People who truly believe that queerphobia is wrong don't advocate eugenics against queer people. If you truly believe that classism, ableism, and ageism are wrong, you won't advocate eugenics against poor, disabled, and youth populations. We do not combat oppression by demanding that fewer members of the oppressed classes be born.