Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Scott Alexander is totally neurotypical (2015):
So he can't be autistic, because then he would have something in common with people who can't have a respectable upper-middle-class life. And it gets darker:
As a good eugenicist, he knows there are simple ways to stop people from passing on their genes. And Scott Alexander wants children, so Scott Alexander is totally neurotypical. QED losers.
This feels like yet another case of "what no postmodernism does to a mf". Because I can kind of agree they ASD is a bit of a weird diagnosis in some respects, but that's entirely because of an ongoing discussion between different social models of mental diversity. On one hand, much of the autistic community has embraced a model rooted in neurodiversity. The associated behaviors aren't "abnormal" and happen to nearly everyone to some degree, but some people experience them in different ways that impact how they interact with other people and the world. In this model, we need to emphasize empathy and support to help everyone find a place in the world where they can be happy and fulfilled.
But Scott as a practicing psychiatrist is strongly invested in the older model of mental illness or mental disability, where some people have mental and behavioral problems that make life more difficult and dangerous for them and those around them, and those people need help to mitigate those problems so they can exist in society. This is obviously a less kind and more authoritarian model than neurodiversity, but it's easy enough to understand the appeal in circumstances where the challenge of "how do I help people be happy and successful" necessitates asking "how do I reduce or eliminate the risk of physical violence from this person." Hell, compared to the other model that gets invoked to deal with that question, criminality, it still at least acknowledges that people with high support needs are people whose well-being deserves consideration. A patient is a human being at least to the same degree that a child is, effectively.
But Scott, being afraid of postmodernism, can't really allow himself to recognize these as separate models that are valuable in different circumstances, not the least of which is because he's a fashy little bastard who would have to give up the authority of being a capital-D Doctor in favor of just being an expert on certain elements of the human mind and body. So instead he and his friends are totally neurotypical, yes. Don't listen to them describe their own experiences, listen to the Doctor Man.
A real pre-WWII understanding of autism on display. It's also honestly profoundly upsetting to me to see people who have had the experience, at least as a child, of having sensory issues and poor communication skills, not be able to relate at least a little to the notion of someone having a violent meltdown over something they can't coherently explain. Somehow even more pick-me behavior than Hans Aspberger.
and now realise that this motherfucker is a practising psychiatrist
Its like he wrote "many of my friends identify as heterosexual, and they say I might be heterosexual too, but in my work as a forensic psychiatrist my heterosexual patients are accused rapists and sex pests and people who got arrested with a suitcase full of cocaine and a phone full of texts from a 'Brazilian model." and never tried to reconcile the two or thought through the Bayesian logic.
You’re telling me that the Autism Spectrum is a spectrum and not just the quirky thing people have?
You see this particular kind of bigotry quite a bit in relation to neurodivervence and disability. It's an attempt to beat people advocating for equality and justice by claiming a moral high ground. Oh, you think disabled people can have meaningful and worthwhile lives and that differences should be celebrated?? You must be too ignorant to know just how awful life is for people who really have that disability!
(sarcasm) I'm saying that just because I get sucked off by guys does not mean I'm one of those queers! I don't go to pride parades or leather bars or have fashion sense and everyone knows that is what 'gay' means. I'm as heterosexual as Ted Haggard. (end sarcasm)
well great now I’m thinking about this
Gay people I respect:
Gay people I don't: