#pseudoscience cw

[snarp]

Does the Epic medical records system ask a "learning styles" question by default now, or is this just this particular bad hospital system?

Next time they will ask for my MBTI, birth chart, love language, and dominant chakra.

[sxnshxnxxnddxxsxxs]

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

like it’s way more than just:

cho chang’s name

almost every black character being tall and sporty

kingley’s name

the goblins

the house elves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

but also the way peter pettigrew is described.

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

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

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

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

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

and then there’s greyback

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

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

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

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

[diosapate]

i personally will never ever forget two years ago when every misogynistic ghoul with a twitch channel live reacted to amber heard testify about being raped and then picked everything she recounted to shreds and made fun of her because it got them views & engagement. truly fucking dystopian

[e1dritchqueer]

hello???? I just had someone come up to me at my work and tried to convince me to hand out "UN Sustainability Fliers" which were actually just weird pseudoscience cult fliers????

[localfaecryptid]

Chronic illness rant time

I’m not really the kind of person to get upset at random ads or “alternate health” nonsense. I’m in chronic pain, I’m surrounded by this nonsense alllllll the time, I would burn all of my spoons if I did. However, I just got served an ad on YT that was talking about “all the things doctors aren’t telling you”. Simple things like “take D3 during the winter” and “diet can effect your health”. Your typical nonsense, some of which is helpful but all of are things that your PCP would probably tell you anyways.

And then the wammy, the one that I heard and knew I had to say something:

“If you have high blood pressure, eating grapefruit can help normalize your BP levels”.

If you aren’t aware, eating grapefruit while on certain medications will cause your body not to break down and flush out your medication once it has been absorbed. Which means that you can overtime build up higher and higher levels of the medication in your system until you overdose. Blood pressure medication is particularly notorious for this issue. If you are going on a new medication and you really like grapefruit, or you have been on a medication and want to add grapefruit to your diet, please make sure you chat with your doctor or check the very easily accessible lists of medications that would be effected.

Chronic illness rant time over… for now. Stay safe out there y’all.

[dracota]

so... that uhmmm... hot guy tossing out the ideas about that pseudoscience i mentioned idk in the last week or so? It led me down a short rabbit hole that was so, so much worse then that. And then it got even worse.

First, i thought i had finally found the ad again. i clicked the link thinking i would just send it from the IG app to my email. curiosity got me to click it for background noise and... it was so awful. I grew up watching infomercials and this wasn’t that. It was just mindless droning on with lots of “you think this” every change they could.

The danger flags went off before I really registered what it was he was saying that was causing it. Once I started paying attention was when I noticed how my of what he was saying reminded me of someone trying to gaslight me.

Then i noticed that the particular pseudoscience had not been mentioned once, so this was probably the wrong guy also.... but i decided to google the horrible ad for a review... and as soon as i had the name typed in

There was a video that caught my eye and it was a reaction video to another video. I watched both and I have the reaction one down under the cut. He goes into a few things from the other video but the most interesting is his dissection about the fake or bought subscribers. That part was super interesting. Especially since it is so obvious that google should be tanking the frauds exposure and not rewarding it.

And then i checked out his profile and it turns out he is a joe rogan fan. for fucks sake. and then it just got worse from there because then next video that caught my eye was anti-trans and I wish I could block youtube creators that I don’t ever want to see on my recommended feeds.

It no longer surprises me how fast people can be fed shit like this and yet, shit like this happens.

[carnivorousyandeere]

Alright more thoughts— specifically about Marcus with afab Darling and kegel balls. Please heed the warnings, this one’s fucked up

More Unethical Pelvic Floor Therapy with Marcus

( MDNI, No Age in Bio DNI )

CW: abuse of power, gaslighting, unethical medicine, intentional bad medical advice (leaving kegel balls in for extended periods can actually fatigue your muscles and damage them; any company suggesting you do this instead of actual exercises is working from pseudoscience. If it’s your kink to leave ‘em in a long time go ham or whatever… just know the risks), smut, dubcon, overstimulation, painful fingering, painful sex, mating press but no talk of actual breeding

Info: gn afab reader

Your physical therapists had recommended you start using kegel balls— “it’ll help with your mood and disgestion!” Said one. “It’s a great workout, helps keep you healthy,” nodded the second. The last insinuated it would improve your sex life— as if you’d had sex with anyone but the three of them since you started visiting their office.

None of them had really explained how you were supposed to use them, so you figured your best bet would be to ask Marcus. The other two would insist on “showing you how to use them,” and you’d just end up fucked out in one of their offices again. When you asked, he just laughed a little and pushed up his glasses, typing away at his computer and not sparing a glance, as if you should already know the answer.

“You lube it up, with as little lube as possible, and slide it into the vaginal canal. Then, it should rest rather comfortably near your cervix, much as a tampon might. After that, you just let it stay there for a few hours while you go about your day. Your pelvic floor muscles will contract as you go about your day.”

“Oh…” you feel your face burning. “Is that… it, then?”

“Mm?” Marcus finally glances up at you. “Yeah? You shouldn’t keep them in for longer than eight hours at a time. And if you think the ones we’ll be sending you home with are too big, or you experience any pain or unusual discharge, come back in right away.”

~~~

You made it a few days. The feeling was strange, though not unpleasant— at first. You could feel it inside you as you walked around, though if you ignored it the feeling began to fade. You did notice yourself squirming a bit more, finding it harder to get comfortable. You felt… full in a way you hadn’t before. Eating and drinking made the pressure in your gut all the more noticeable. You tried not to think about it too much, and took it out at the end of your day as instructed, even though the lack of a string to pull it by was a little difficult.

The second day, you had a little trouble inserting the ball, though not too much. You did notice a small ache as the day wore on, and that your underwear felt a little more… wet than usual. At the end of the day, though, you were able to take the ball out and relax.

You woke up hot and wet the third day. You felt a little tight, but the ball slipped in without much trouble. You couldn’t focus on anything, though. Your abdomen felt so tight and hot. You feared you might leak through your underwear, and had to come home early to try and compose yourself. But try as you might when you got home, you couldn’t get the kegel ball out. You’d gotten too tight, painfully so. Embarrassed and needier than you could remember being in a long while, you pulled your clothes back up and make your way to the clinic for Marcus’ help.

~~~

It doesn’t take him long to figure out what’s going on between your panicked expression and the sweat beading at your temples, even as you struggle to tell him what’s wrong. Marcus coaxes you to undress. You lay back on an exam table, and Marcus quickly dawns a sterile mask and a pair of gloves, spreading lube over his gloved fingers. You hiss and flinch away when his fingers ghost over your clit. You see Marcus’ glimmering eyes narrow over his mask.

“You kept that damn thing in for hours a day, didn’t you?”

“Y-yes, you… told me to…”

Marcus’ eyebrows shoot up. “There’s no way… that’s far too long… your poor muscles must be so fatigued.”

He slides a finger inside you, eyebrows raising even a bit further when the tip of his finger meets the kegel ball still lodged inside you. “You couldn’t even get it out again… poor baby.”

He ignores your pained whines as he slides his finger in and out, adding a bit more lube to ease you. He doesn’t want to permanently injure you, after all… You tense and tear up as a second finger begins to slide in. Marcus shushes you, holding your hip with his other hand and brushing his thumb over the skin.

“You’ll be alright, we’ve just gotta open you up enough to pull it out.” He scissors his fingers gently, working you open. His eyes rove hungrily over your form, following the tears that drip from your eyes and devouring your pained expression like it’s a fine dessert. His pants feel much too tight.

Eventually, Marcus is able to grab the small ball and gently wiggle it free. You let out a sigh of relief and slump against the table when his hands leave you, and the ball thumps onto the table then clatters away onto the floor, forgotten as Marcus’ hands come back to spread you open to get a good look. Your folds are wet and puffy, much more than from the lube. Marcus twitches in his pants, fighting back a groan.

You tense again, wet eyes darting to him in surprise when you feel his finger testing your entrance again. “M-Marcus, please, it’s too—“

“Sore?” He interrupts. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you don’t listen to me. And if I don’t massage out these muscles now, it’s only gonna feel worse on down the line.”

You whine, turning your face to the side as Marcus slides that finger deeper inside and slides his mask down with his other hand. He kisses your cheek, tasting the tear tracks there. You shut your eyes and nod. It’s all you can do.

Your muscles are just too tight, clenching painfully around around his thick fingers as he works them inside. He spreads you apart a little bit more, keeping up the pretense of helping to relieve the ache in your core, before his fingers find that sensitive spot inside you. You jolt at the feeling, a lightning bolt of strained pleasure that has you gritting your teeth through the stars in your vision.

Marcus shushes you as you pant and groan at the strange feeling building in your gut, his fingers working that spot ever more harshly. He reassures you that everything’s going to be okay. He kisses your cheek, your forehead, strokes your hip with his free hand. It’s the most painful orgasm you’ve ever felt, but the relief that follows as you gush around his fingers is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. You go boneless against the exam table, covering your face and willing your heart to calm down.

Marcus’ fingers still, but only for a moment. He curls them again right before you can catch your breath.

“M-Marcus, no, it hurts, I can’t-”

He curls his fingers harder, breathing in your pained whine as his lips ghost over yours.

“I’ll help you feel better, but you need to relax.”

“I can’t,” you sob.

“You can,” he insists. “Be good and let me help you.”

You sob harder, finding yourself nodding again, relinquishing control over yourself as you let him work you over on his fingers again and again. You feel so tired, so achy, the burning pleasure rubbing your nerves raw like sandpaper.

Marcus relishes in your cries, making you cum twice, then thrice, before losing patience and slipping his scrubs down to rub his cock against you. You jolt and cry out even louder as his tip brushes over your clit. Marcus bites his lip, fighting back a groan at the sight. You look so pretty, tear-stained and incoherent.

He can’t help running his hands up the backs of your thighs, slick with sweat, and pressing them firmly against your chest as he slides in. Marcus stays still for a moment, savoring how hot and wet you are. You’re so tight that every twitch of him inside you makes you gasp with the discomfort. He knows you’re only going to be more sore in the morning. The thought of taking care of you, so weak and helpless, only makes him twitch even harder, moaning against the shell of your ear.

[fuck-customers]

Cancer cw? Just in case

Had a regular customer come in, and it started as a pretty standard conversation. I was wearing a bucket hat because I'm ginger and it's sunny and my job has me mostly outside, so she started the conversation with "I didn't recognize you with the hat on!" I laugh and say yeah, can't be too careful--I explain that my grandfather died from a combo of copd and skin cancer complications.

Her: "Did he wear sunscreen?"

Me: "No."

Her: "Good for him!"

I was like...too stunned to even respond. My whole brain was just skipping like a scratched CD from that. Good for him?? For dying?? Partly from skin cancer??? Because he spent over 70 years outside all the time on the planet never once protecting his skin til it was too late and there were parts missing from him?

She goes on a rant about how rise in use of sunscreen is correlated with rise in skin cancer blahblahblah--because as we all know we have records dating back centuries that prove skin cancer didnt exist til those pesky companies started making sunscreen (heavy sarcasm)--vaccines cause autoimmune diseases blahblahblah..she went through a huuuge array of unfounded horseshit. I was so stunned at the pseudoscience/conspiracy theory word soup that started coming out of her crusty mouth, all I remember thinking was if I heard the words "vaccines cause autism" come out, I was going to jail.

Next time I see her (she's here every few days) I'm going to apply my SPF-fucking-100-noncancerous-goddamn-sunscreen while making direct eye contact with her the entire time.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[bat-luun]

(tags via @encryptidarchivist)

YESSSSS i love him very much hes my darling beloved!!! <33

(ramble below cut cuz this got so long oh my god lmao - cw: suicide mention)

The tma oc is actually an au version of 'Pai Rite' (he/she)! He's player character i made while co-DMing a Call of Cthulhu campaign. He's originally from 1982 Chicago and about 28 years old. Her og lore and backstory and what played out in the campaign is rather complicated so imma leave it out. (tho i'd happy to rant about it lol-)

For the tma version: She uses her full name more often than just her nickname/chosen name; Joshua 'Pyrite' Kerr (he/she). She was born in 1978 in LA, moved to England in 1997, and died 2010 at age 32.

She is marked by both The Vast and The Spiral! (in the same way Martin is a mix of The Eye and The Lonely)

Pyrite has a rocky relationship with his parents from the start, his father was killed/taken by The Vast when Pyrite was only 17. His mother was killed by The Spiral, which triggered Pyrites leave to England to study mathematics at the King's Collage in London.

(Idk if it would really work all that well in canon but I've taken The Vast in a less 'real' direction? Like making it less of a place of endless mist or whatever but making it more like a concept?) Pyrite's father was a mathematician and investigating/trying to figure out more of the pi number. The horror of the uncomprehendable powered my the Fear drove him to insanity and eventually suicide, leaving his family suddenly and without a word.

Her mother, turning even more hyper religious than before, turned to pseudoscience as a way to cope with the grief (buying crystals and crafted religious symbols/spells to protect her, and doing other low-key paranoid superstitious stuff).

She eventually got her hands on some colorful (sea)glass shards which she hung by the windows to catch the light and "ward off evil".

The glass is an artifact of The Spiral! It slowly multiplies in numbers in the given location, and starts changing colors/patterns of objects within it's line of sight (though the owner is the only one who can see it's effects).

The longer the artifact is a set location and affecting it's victim, the more intense the distortions get (pottery/dishes "melting" or changing shape, entire rooms becoming mirrored, objects switching places with each other, glass clinking sounds being heard from every room, ...). Eventually it moves from inanimate objects to people in the victims life.

Pyrite's hair got turned a purple/pink as a cause of the artifact. Panicked, Pyrite's mother took a hammer to the glass, breaking it untill there was nothing left but dust. Pyrite found her body later that day as it was being taken away by paramedics. He moved away after that, taking a single glass shard as a keepsake to remember her by, having no idea of it's effects.

He went on to study mathematics in London and found his fathers research notes, going down the same cursed rabbit hole he did.

She did become an avatar for The Spiral later on as the artifact went on to distort any research notes Pyrite made/found beyond recognition, essentially 'winning' and making her a Spiral avatar. Pyrite died in 2010 after Gertrude and Michael stopped the great twisting. Died mad and dazed and out of breath, trying to keep her grip on the only thing that was left of her mother, the destruction of the ritual making her take her own life.

me and my best friend(one of the other co-DMs) did art of Pai Rite and his gay boyfriend Revemine for valentines day!! :D

(also tagging @horrid-mothlegs for if you want more info for when our tma ocs can hang out >:])

[discworldwitches]

i know the theory of evolution has been used to justify eugenics but what do you mean it's tied to pseudoscience (besides pop science and racist understandings of it)? and like, what are the actual alternatives then?

evolution as in the actual phenomenon cannot & does not affirm the idea that certain ways of being, behaviours, bodies, etc. are “degenerate” or “primitive” but the theory can and was applied in this pseudoscientific way (ie social darwinism). so what i am referring to is pseudoscientific applications of evolution such as “race science” (which we referred to racial pseudoscience or race pseudoscience in some of my upper level classes in my degree).

i wrote a whole big reply but i went back to steven angelides and he explains it best.

note, bisexual was initially coined (krafft-ebing. 1886) to refer to intersex individuals and bisexuality was referred to as “psychic h*rmaphroditism” (cw for use of h slur)

The newly emerging registers of sex/gender and sexuality were inextricably entwined through the hegemonic discourse of evolutionary theory. Determined to reorder dominant social hierarchies, scientists explained deviations of normative being and behavior in terms of a hetero-teleological scale of evolutionary development. Blacks, homosexuals, children, and women were situated at lower points on this scale than white heterosexual men, not able (or not yet able) to reach the highest stage of (hu)man evolution. The category of bisexuality played a central role in this linear model, and thus in the epistemological configuration of the category of sexuality (Angelides, 2001). The human differences of race, age, gender and sexuality were thought to be the effect of a specific temporal and spatial relation to what evolutionists and sexologists referred to as primordial hermaphroditism or embryological bisexuality. Believed to be the earliest form of human ancestry, primordial hermaphroditism, or bisexuality, as Frank Sulloway (1979, p. 179) points out, became the evolutionists “missing bisexual link.” This was confirmed by recapitulation theory, which posited that the human embryo repeated “in its own life history the life history of the race, passing through the lower forms of its ancestors on its way to maturity” (Russett, 1989, p. 50). In other words, as Charles Darwin (1927 [1871], p. 525) posited, every individual “bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the reproductive system, which properly belong[s] to the opposite sex.” This meant that blacks, women, children and homosexuals were thought to be the effect of an unsuccessful evolution, closer to, or retaining many more elements of, the originary (pre-historic) bisexuality of the human race and individual embryo. Put differently, an individual’s distance from this state of primordial bisexuality dictated the degree of one’s evolutionary advancement. Within this framework, therefore, the axes of race, age, gender and sexuality were defined and aligned by their very relation to bisexuality.

However, bisexuality posed a problem for sexological discourse. In the attempt to catalogue human sexual behavior, sexologists were con- fronted with the dilemma of containing its variant forms within the nascent and rigid oppositional categories of hetero- and homosexuality. After all, even in his 1897 publication, Sexual Inversion, Havelock Ellis (1897, p. 133) acknowledged the “person who is organically twisted into a shape that is more fitted for the exercise of the inverted than of the normal sexual impulse, or else equally fitted for both” (emphasis added). Similarly, Krafft-Ebing (1965, pp. 373-385) had identified what he called “psychical hermaphroditism.” Yet, sexology was unable to account for bisexuality as a form of sexuality. For instance, on the one hand, Ellis (1928 [1901], p. 88) claimed that “[t]here would seem to be a broad and simple grouping of all sexually functioning persons into three comprehensive divisions: the heterosexual, the bisexual, and the homosexual.” Yet, on the other hand, he affirmed like Krafft-Ebing, that “[m]ost of the bisexual prefer their own sex . . . [and that this] would seem to indicate that the bisexuals may really be inverts.” “In any case,” stated Ellis (1928 [1901], p. 278), “bisexuality merges imperceptibly into simple inversion.”

The difficulty for sexologists constrained by a linear logic of temporal succession was how to reconcile bisexuality as at one and the same time a biological cause (embryological bisexuality) and a psychological effect (bisexual identity). Ultimately, bisexuality as a form of sexuality or identity had to be refused in the present tense.5 That is to say that bisexuality always had to be somewhere else–in the embryo, the sphere of human prehistory–or something else–either really heterosexual or homosexual. It could never be a stable sexual identity in the here and now otherwise the epistemological integrity of the very categories of man, woman, heterosexual and homosexual would be thrown into doubt (Angelides, 2001).

steve angelides, historicizing bisexuality p. 130-132

[pigeonflavouredcake]

Atlantis's connections to Antisemitism

CW: ww2 n4z1s, antisemitism.

I'm at the point where i'm writing up my grimore section on the dangers of conspiracy theories, I just finished my page on starseeds and now i'm on to Atlantis. I originally wrote this as just a point in a previous post but I wanted to share my findings here with y'all.

Atlantis's Origins

So in my previous post i labelled the topic as Atlantis origins in antisemitism, that was incorrect. Atlantis was first told as a story by philosopher Plato in 360 B.C as an analogy for hubris and served as a comparison to Athens. in the story, the city was founded by demigods and formed a utopia taking advantage of the abundant resources on the Atlantean islands and became a great naval power. The city eventually grew too powerful and it's people too arrogant; it fell out of favour with the gods and was then destroyed and sunk into the Atlantic Ocean.

A Dangerous Snowball

The popularisation of the Atlantis story in our current times came from the n4z1 group the Ahnenerbe during ww2 (who also popularised many other modern conspiracy theories like ancient aliens and the ice wall) but that's not where the snowball started.

In the 18th century, french astronomer Jean-Slyvain Bailey centralized the Atlantis myth to the, also, mythical continent of Hyperborea a reoccurring location in ancient Greek stories.

Helena Blavatski a Russian-German Aristocrat, theosopher and Neo-Platonist was inspired by this idea and reshaped it to fit into her book The Secret Doctrine (a pseudo-scientific book that was popular among occultist and esoterics, that also included N4z1s. This book provided the n4z1 party with mythical precedent for their ideology and became the foundation of the Ahnenerbe, founded by Heinrich Himler, the man directly responsible for orchestrating the death of 11 million people.

Also overseen by Richard Walter Dava the man who coined the whyte nationalist phrase "blut und bogen" (blood and soil) and Herman Wirth, author of another pseudoscience book: The Rise of Mankind: An investigation into the religion, symbolism and writing of the Atlantic nordic race. This book was about the pre-history of the fictional Atlantis but this time populated by a race of hyperborean nordic superhumans.

The Devastating Effects

This book formulated the idea between the Ahnenerbe group that when Atlantis was mysteriously destroyed the survivors went on to populate the continent of Europe and the Mediterranean. Those people then went on to develop the cities and architecture of Greece and Rome and Egypt etc.

The job of the Ahnenerbe then was to go around the world looking for evidence of this ancient "Aryan Master race" (aka begging the question) in order to justify the invasion of those countries.

Thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives during this time and hundreds of cultures lost parts of their history to the Ahnenerbe some of which were completely destroyed in raids.

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

I think this information is important because Atlantis is such a popular tool in media we need to know what affect it had on our history.

Nobody is immune to antisemitism.

[phoneybeatlemania]

I posted 960 times in 2022

That's 831 more posts than 2021!

363 posts created (38%)

597 posts reblogged (62%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@idontwanttospoiltheparty

@phoneybeatlemania

@charlesandkeef

@frodolives

@themagicalmysticalboy

I tagged 947 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#asks - 136 posts

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Longest Tag: 138 characters

#but maybe hes just being friendly because i dont actually know what good relationships between people are supposed to look like 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

You Just Scream: Janovs homophobia & John Lennon

“You've got to hide your love away…”

(Cw: Homophobic speech and slurs)

This post is part 1 in a series of essays I'm working on, entitled “You Just Scream: John & Janov", which aim to explore and investigate the effect Arthur Janov’s therapy sessions had on John Lennon. This essay will focus on the question: “did Janov give John gay conversion therapy?”.

Also, this post is extremely long–I’m aware lol–but 1. I promise a lot of it is just interviews and evidence, most of which you don’t have to read in full and 2. I have cut it into sections, so it should be fairly easy to skip to the parts you are really interested in reading! 

Abstract: 

So I said (ages ago, whoops) id post some quotes from Arthur Janov’s book The Primal Scream: the cure for neurosis for anyone interested getting a clearer insight into how Janov perceived of homosexuality—which is unequivocally negatively. I was initially interested in researching this, because I was somewhat confounded with the ‘Janov gave John Lennon conversion therapy’ argument, since I could see valid points on both sides. I knew it was true that Janov definitely held homophobic beliefs, but I was sceptical considering John still continued to joke around and hint at his sexuality, allegedly came out (to differing degrees based on who you ask) to those around him, and depending how much trust and reliance you place on certain sources, he might have "fooled around" with other men throughout the 70s. And I also wondered how deeply rooted Janov’s homophobia was, considering that when Janov published The Primal Scream in 1970, homosexuality was still deemed to be a mental illness (in the DSM-3), and would not be declassified as such until 1973—so essentially, it would not have been uncommon for psychologists to affiliate with homophobic theories and beliefs. What I wanted to discern was exactly how fundamental and present these beliefs were within Janov’s therapeutic practices.  

But it was when I came across evidences revealing that Brian and Spain were topics of discussion during therapy, that made me decide to finally run a thorough investigation into this topic.

Recognising Janov's misconceptions surrounding the psychology of sexuality, and additionally noting that he was, at least for some time, a massive influence on John—as well as combining this with the evidence that they did discuss Johns bisexuality, it’s more then likely that Janov would have negatively impacted Johns relationship with his own sexuality. John, having spent an extensive and intimate amount of time with someone who saw homosexuality as a product of emotional and mental turmoil, was negatively influenced by his presence and beliefs.

So in this essay, I will be trying to discern an answer to the question: did Janov give John Lennon ‘gay conversion therapy’? 

First off, what are Janov’s core beliefs, and how homophobic was he really?

Ive compiled various extracts from Janov’s book, The Primal Scream, which should provide you with an impression of his fundamental beliefs concerning homosexuality. I have also bolded sections of these extracts that I believe could have resonated with John, further alluring him towards Janov’s pseudoscience.

‘The homosexual act is not a sexual one.It is based on the denial of real sexuality…A truly sexual person is heterosexual. The homosexual has usually eroticised his need so that he appears to be highly sexed. Bereft of his sexual fix, his lover, he is like an addict without his connection; without his lover, he is in the pain that is always there but which is drained off sexually. But sex is not the ultimate goal — love is.’ (pg. 302)

‘If a man makes love to a woman but is totally involved during it with a fantasy about men, I would call the experience homosexual. The motions one goes through are less critical than the internal situation. When a person actually makes love to a member of his own sex, it means he is more totally involved in the symbolic behaviour…He has given up the battle and become more completely what he is not…There are men and women who have homosexual marriages but do not recognise the fact.’ (pg. 302-3)

‘It has been my experience that homosexuality may derive from any number of permutations of family interaction. A homosexual boy can have a weak father, tyrannical father, no father.What matters is that the boy has a need for a loving father…Many homosexuals do not seem to realise what appears so obvious — they are in pursuit of substitutes…What gives the sexual search of the homosexual such intensity is the need to feel loved at last and so to find an end to nagging tension.’ (pg. 303-4)

‘I do not think we are dealing with bisexual so much as with neurosis. So many of us have been deprived of love from both parents that there is often a lingering need for love from either sex.’ (pg. 308)

Additionally, there have been contemporaneous articles written by Janov and other primal therapy doctors, which offer further clarity concerning Janov’s stance on homosexuality. @eppysboys made a post (x) shedding more light on Janov’s beliefs concerning sexuality, so I would encourage you to read through that for further information on this topic. But for the purpose of this essay, I have collected extracts which especially focus on Primal Therapy being used as a means of ‘gay conversion therapy’. 

“[Janov] claims that primal therapy has cured alcoholism, homosexuality, smoking…” — Boca Raton News, (June 16. 1971)

“Critical of the decision of the American Psychological Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality as a neurosis in its Diagnostic Statistic Manual, Janov called the decision a “disservice to homosexuals. It tells them that they are well when they are wracked with Pain and tension.” [The Primal Institute Newsletter, October, 1979, pg. 4]” — The Origins of Homosexuality: Insights From The Deep Feeling Psychotherapies by John A. Speyrer

“On occasion homosexuality has been reversed after a person has re-experienced very early and deep pain. Often homosexuality is a symbolic act out of early unmet needs and for that reason there are different scenarios or sequences of events which lead up to the first homosexual act.” — The Origins of Homosexuality: Insights From The Deep Feeling Psychotherapies by John A. Speyrer (c. 2000s)

“So if homosexuality is normal it cannot ever be treated and changed? I have found that not to be true. A few of my homosexual patients do change after many many months of therapy and very deep probing into the brain and the unconscious… If patients could be helped back into their remote history we would see the pain involved into homosexuality…” — On Homosexuality as a Normal Variant of Human Sexuality by Arthur Janov (c. 2012)

“Is homosexuality genetic? We have successfully treated it, which makes the assumption that it is a disease.” — What Is More Important Genes or Epigenes? By Arthur Janov (c. 2015)

“A priest who seduced one of my patients over years left him homosexual. It was the only “love” he ever got and he was seduced by it. That is, all of us get seduced by our need.” — So Why Are We Gay by Arthur Janov (c. 2013)

“Janov declared in a 1971 interview, for instance, that he could fix everything from alcoholism and menstrual cramps to “homosexuality.” It’s a position he does not refute when I ask him about it in an email, claiming that “we have done it” in “restricted circumstances,” before writing, oddly, that “I assume you are gay but do not pay attention to the hyperbole.” — How Primal Scream Therapy Has Survived Five Decades of Strangeness and Controversy by Oliver Hotham (Feb. 22 2016)

Finally, there have been former primal therapy patients who have testified that PST was used as an approach to conversion therapy. These two extracts come from Janov’s writings in The Primal Scream:

‘“Each new sexual contact left me slightly dissatisfied, and I never knew why,” a former homosexual told me. “I thought it was a penis I wanted, the bigger, the better — until I got it. Then I needed more and more. After I felt how much I wanted my father, I knew that it wasn't a penis I wanted. I guess I became a screaming fag because I could never scream for that bastard.”’ (pg. 304)

‘Another patient, whose parents were “dead” inside and completely unfeeling, said, “I know now why I used to be so hung up on blowing guys. I think I was literally trying to suck some life from someone.” What homosexuals, both male and female, seem to agree upon after Primal treatment is that each of their previous homosexual contacts seem to mean “Mommy (or Daddy), love me!” If we can agree that homosexuality in most cases is this need for parental love, we can then say that the aim of homosexuality is heterosexuality.’ (pg. 304)

Sorry, but his reason for blowing guys is SO funny >:) 

Janov also details the experience of a lesbian named Elizabeth, and uses her testimony a case-study to present PST as a “cure” for homosexuality. The testimony is pretty long, so I won’t list it here — but if you do want to read it, here is a digital copy ofThe Primal Scream book found on the internet archives; her testimony begins on page 110 (x).

Intrigued by all of this, I reached out to academic and author of the book Debunking Primal Therapy, John Smith. I emailed him, enquiring into whether he knew anything about Janov’s homophobia, and how it was incorporated into his therapies. He told me that throughout the early 2000’s–which was when Smith underwent PST, and subsequently denounced it–no one within the primal community wasreally homophobic, including Janov, although some patients retained the belief that homosexuality could be caused by traumas. By ‘no one was really homophobic’, what Smith was getting at was that by the 2000s, Janov probably would not insist or pressure someone into undergoing conversion therapy—because despite clearly holding onto his homophobic stances from the seventies, his blogposts indicate that he had to accept social change, probably recognising that if he were to come out with blatantly homophobic speech in the 21st century, he would both lose part of his following, and his credibility within the scientific community. Janov’s views clearly are homophobic, but theres definitely an element of him trying to conceal this judgement, dressing it up as pure scientific speculation. 

See the full post

238 notes - Posted April 4, 2022

#4

can i personally ask that we talk about this more

264 notes - Posted May 10, 2022

#3

source: Up Front: His Strictly Confidential Autobiography by Victor Spinetti*

This blog supports homoerotically charged friendships 💪

(*Spinetti played the role of the TV director in the film A Hard Days Night)

275 notes - Posted April 8, 2022

#2

…when McCartney met Harrison in New York in January and said, ‘Look, George, I want to get off the Apple label’, Harrison came back with a line that perfectly encapsulates the sadness and venom that had brought the greatest group of all to an end: ‘You'll stay on the fucking label. Hare Krishna.’

— 1971: Never A Dull Moment by David Hepworth (pg. 23-4)

336 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

See the full post

1,279 notes - Posted January 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[aeide-thea]

[pedophilia mention cw]

probably not worth responding to the person directly but like. love 2 debunk sloppy pseudoscience and discover as a result that yr, what, three degrees of separation from someone who immediately jumps to 'this is pedophile rhetoric'

[aronarchy]

FYI this has been going on— (cw for screenshots from a racist rightwing blog)

[image IDs: several screenshots from a blog post by Noah Carl, a rightwing “researcher” of racial pseudoscience, regarding “Nick Bostrom’s pre-emptive apology”

2nd screenshot of Carl’s statement shown above:

Nick Bostrom is a philosopher at Oxford who works on topics like existential risk and human enhancement. I haven’t read much of his work, but people I respect rate it very highly. Anatoly Karlin (whom I had on the podcast recently) considers him “the greatest living philosopher”.

A few days ago, Bostrom posted a document titled ‘Apology for An Old Email’ on his website. The document was subsequently shared on Twitter by his colleague Anders Sandberg, apparently at Bostrom’s request. It begins:

> I have caught wind that somebody has been digging through the archives of the Extropians listserv with a view towards finding embarrassing materials to disseminate about people … I fear that selected pieces of the most offensive stuff will be extracted, maliciously framed and interpreted, and used in smear campaigns. To get ahead of this, I want to clean out my own closet, and get rid of the very worst of the worst in my contribution file.

The email in question, which was sent “in the mid 90s” as part of a discussion about “offensive communication styles”, is as follows:

> I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct. Take for example the following sentence:

> Blacks are more stupid than whites.

[I cut off the rest of Carl’s screenshot of Bostrom’s email, as it contained more unpleasant antiblack commentary]

3rd screenshot:

You don’t have to apologise for saying offensive things in a setting that people have selected into for the specific purposes of discussing offensive things. Stand-up comedians don’t need to apologise for telling jokes at their shows that it would inappropriate for them to tell in church. Moreover, Bostrom made the comments more than twenty years ago, and he “immediately apologised” at the time! End of story.

Yet as you well know, academia is crawling with offence archaeologists – low-lifes who spend their time combing through other people’s writing with the hope of finding something they can use to ruin their careers. They are not virtuous, and they do not care about the downtrodden. Their aim is simply to “take down” someone whose views they disapprove of – usually someone who contributes far more to society than they do.

In light of this, you can understand why Bostrom wanted to “get ahead” of the controversy by saying his piece pre-emptively. Unfortunately, what he said may have made things worse – not only for himself but for others who might find themselves in similar situations in the future.

4th:

Rather than making the points I made above (and perhaps apologising for needing to bring the admittedly provocative email to people’s attention), he issued an embarrassingly grovelling apology:

> I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago … The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time … and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.

As for his “actual views”, Bostrom thinks “it is deeply unfair that unequal access to education, nutrients, and basic healthcare leads to inequality in social outcomes, including sometimes disparities in skills and cognitive capacity”. And he wants you to know that he has given to charities “fighting exactly this problem”, including “the Black Health Alliance”.

The one saving grace of his apology – from the perspective of grown-up intellectual discourse – was that he didn’t denounce the hypothesis that genes contribute to group differences in cognitive ability. “It is not my area of expertise”, he wrote, “and I don’t have any particular interest in the question.” Note: the latter claim is likely to be false; how could you not be interested in it?

/end image ID]

https://twitter.com/rechelon/status/1615072322058076166

[image ID:

tweet by xriskology:

The real victimhood culture is on the political right:

[a screenshot from the same Noah Carl blog post shown above]

thread QRTing their tweet:

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”

My line is that your career can be destroyed by exposing the truth (that you’re still soft on vapid racial pseudoscience 25 years after endorsing it), then it deserves to be.

I find it deeply disgusting and infuriating the way that so many “rationalists” are framing everything in terms of “he said a bad word and immediately apologized 25 years ago” when that’s not even fucking remotely the issue and would amount to almost no blowback on its own.

I think almost no one gives a shit about Bostrom using the n-word 25 years ago, his apology for that isn’t the issue. The issue is that his recent apology is stunning in what it studiously doesn’t renounce and the way it leaves claims about genetic racial intelligence open.

I’m well aware that Bostrom makes the perfectly fine transhumanist move that “even if racial intelligence disparities were a thing, they’re irrelevant because everyone can individually tinker with themselves in whatever direction” but it’s not enough to merely bracket the claims.

Bostrom’s “apology” sounds perfectly fine to him and his circles because “I am not an expert on racial science” sounds like a renunciation of his claim “blacks are stupider than whites” to them. But it’s anything but! It doesn’t address at all what he still believes.

The fact is that the specific measures the rationalist community chooses to valorize, certain limited performances of rationality, do not exclude shitbags willing to make some contortions so those shitbags flock into their circles, expelling others, and shaping background norms.

I’d be willing to bet at sharp odds that >50% of the self-identified rationalist community believes “there are significant genetic racial disparities in intelligence between the races and unfairly we can’t talk about this.”

That is the problem Bostrom’s non-apology exemplifies

Now there are myriad good mechanisms and reasons to dismiss the object-level claim, but sure, ghosts could exist and it could be true, the biggest problem is the way this “likelihood” has been drastically inflated within the rationalist community by their social dynamics.

The rationalist community is running the proverbial bar where they let nazis in. And if you fail to draw the line with one nazi, you very rapidly just have a nazi bar. Because nazis are large in number, have few other options, and are willing to go through a lot of contortions.

Nazis will absolutely shit themselves silly writing endless papers throwing chaff everywhere like the “200 proofs the earth is not flat” and credulous “rationalist” bros whose whole self-image prioritizes feeling smarter than everyone and holders of esoteric truths love that.

And so we see vast asymmetries and distortions in the epistemic frames of most “rationalists” as a consequence of their sociological dynamics. They proactively read anti-woke folks on the right and then pretty much never delve deep into radical leftist arguments.

They’ll delve into the most esoteric neoreactionary screeds with giant bibliographies of catholic and postmodern writers to find the secret actual argument for an inane conservative position, but then assume every leftist argument is the first related tumblr post they found.

Scott Alexander Siskind BRAGGED that his readership was fair and balanced because he had some socialists and only like 22% identified openly as alt-right or neoreactionary. That is not balance. That is a nazi bar. And that social fabric warps one’s epistemology.

Bostrom honestly thought he was addressing the problem with his racist email in the 90s. And Sandberg (god damnit dude) read it and was like “this is a knockout response I want to be associated with” and hordes of fuckers saw the same.

reply to the thread by zorangecats:

One observation I’ve made is I’ve never seen the rationalist “steelman” for the feminist worldview. An interesting omission.

/end image ID]

https://twitter.com/rechelon/status/1614428504581607424

[image ID:

tweet by Aella_Girl:

Lost some respect for EA due to the response to the Bostrom thing. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised? CEA has always leaned a bit too far towards PR at the expense of integrity. I guess I’d hoped to see some more bravery. Feel like the correct response would have had more nuance.

thread QRTing her tweet:

The lost “integrity” she’s bemoaning is that the Centre for Effective Altruism released a very thin anodyne statement condemning Bostrom’s “words” (presumably just his original email and no detail on whether the racial pseudoscience in particular sucks)

Imagine being so fucking twisted that you see condemning racist shit to any minor degree as a lack of integrity.

These people’s entire morality is about fiercely condemning and ostracizing anyone who ever dabbles in condemning or ostracizing people over shit like racism, rape, and transphobia.

It’s pure Coalition Of The Bad shit.

/end image ID]

[no-wings-no-angel]

CW: Ventpost with mentions of self-destructive ideation such as self harm in a PMDD context, some bad experiences with alternative medicine and spiritual cures.

I have a suspect I might suffer from PMDD or something adjacent, so I told my doctor about symptoms such as hopelessness, feeling like harming myself, feeling like everyone hates me, the list goes on, only to then have my period and just going “ah. so that was it.” And how despite me knowing I feel like that because of my cycle doen’t make it less uncomfortable and painful to feel like this once a fucking month.

She just. Just fucking showed me a silly PMS meme said it was very normal to feel like that and prescribed that Rescue Remedy that is basically watered down brandy.

I have no idea what the profile of the rest of her patients is but I feel like someone going in and saying they feel like dying by their own hand is not like, you know, normal and average and absolutely brush-off-able.

Also she prescribed that seed on the outer part of the ear treatment but I’m not doing that. No shame on acunpucture but. No. Just no. It just looks a lot like pseudoscience stuff I’ve been through. Alternative medicine overall makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I have a history of having my mental health concerns treated like something that can be solved by alternative medicine or religious practices such as magnets, fitotherapy, teas, herbal baths, blessings and religious iniciations. I also have been called an indigo child several times. It feels just like a way to explain away my pain like “is not that you are suffering, you are just built different and that is actually really good for the Earth and Space and you should become a medium or something! Feeling suicidal is actually a symptoms that your soul is not from this planet and you want to go home! You are an empath and special!”

Needless to say I don’t believe any of that shit and actually got an autism diagnosis recently.

This experience just catapulted me way back to my 14 y.o. stage of neglected concerns. I’m just so tired of this shit.

Still I’ll take the brandy drops because why the fuck not. Also the internet said it is supposed to be taken as a crisis med but the bottle literally says to take 4 drops 3 times a day, I’m confused.

[bookshelfdreams]

Ok, let's try this: Middle-European skull, 58 cm circumference, high forehead, not very promiment temple indentations, rather flat cheekbones, brow curves drooping outward. Go!

ok first of all, I appreciate the detail, but I would much rather see for myself. The energy you're sending is blasting through my walls I have no problem envisioning your skull exactly as it is. The facial bones aren't all that important. I'll have to do a little bit of psychokinesis, but I assume you're okay with being touched. My hands can be a little cold, please try not to flinch. Concentrate and hold very still as you're reading this.

Your temples are indeed a bit dented, the left one a tad more than the right and a little oval, but right off the bat I'm noticing a certain bumpiness to your sutura sagitalis. You sometimes find it difficult to speak to strangers, don't you? Especially in professional settings, or situations where you feel like you might get judged. Your occipital bone is very well-rounded, one of the nicest I have ever felt, it lays in the hand beautifully. This means you're really in touch with your subconscious mind. It's the mark of artists. Your temple dents also speak to this; your thinking is more creative than mathematical, you can get lost in the details easily, but here, this ridge right above your ear: for someone with such dents you're actually quite organized.

Oh and here, a bump on your parietal: there's a health issue you should deal with.

If you want to learn more I can make you a special offer to one of my online seminars. They're normally 3000€ per person but if you book today, it'll only cost you 1499,99€!