Embalo

Embalo wrote

Thanks, good luck to you as well. I will only get my only vacation from school on August, about three weeks. Until then and from then until March next year, uninterrupted work. In any event, I'm considering going to university afterwards, so at least 4 more years all in all until I'm done done.

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Embalo OP wrote

Reply to comment by andro in Incel shaming is bad for feminism by Embalo

I agree in broad strokes. I guess what I am taking issue with are the little things that people hold as unimportant but which define the terms we talk about these things. It seems that sometimes it is portrayed as empowering when marginalized people use bigoted terms to shut down the oppressors. In that sense, I take issue not only with the usage of 'creep' but also of 'sociopath', this latter especially in the light of anti-psychiatry.

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Embalo OP wrote

Yeah, that is so, but I've sometimes seen it thrown as a bypass term for socially awkward men who aren't bigoted (or not as much as one would expect, given that most of us carry internalized and externalized bigotry with us). Who gets to define what is a 'creep', anyway? Genuine question. Are we under the impression that there is no such thing as taking risks and feeling uncomfortable even as we pursue relationships with the people we do want to relate to?

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Embalo OP wrote

Thank you for your thoughts.

I don't necessarily disagree on the count of rights, but usually when I use the word (ever more sparingly, as I've become more aware of its problematics and rhetorical implications), I ascribe it a similar meaning to the one Vaneigem does in his Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Human Being (wonderful book, by the way), which is where he makes an ambitious proposal for rights that should be inherent to all within society and rejecting previous declarations of rights that have appeared throughout history that seem tainted by their context (his also is, of course, and there is something to be said about a little utopianism here and there, but the point here is that there may be a way to use the word 'rights' outside of its institutional framing).

In that sense, instead of asking whether we have a 'right to sex', we could simply ask 'should we have for granted access to sex?'. As a question this should be framed less as indicating that we can bypass consent and more as striving for a world where affection is free from social constraints.

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Embalo wrote (edited )

I wish I shared the enthusiasm most people have for Ghibli. That being said, The Wind Rises has been the one I've enjoyed the most out of the relatively few I've watched. Also, I've got a friend who is quite high on Shinkai, but I haven't gotten around to those yet, so I couldn't say.

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Embalo wrote (edited )

Reply to Friday Free Talk by ziq

I've been going over some feminist points with a friend and I wanted to start a thread here on raddle about how incel shaming is bad for feminism and creepiness is actually perceived as a failure of masculinity rather than as its logical conclusion. But I am yet to arrive at a satisfactory way to frame it to outsiders to our conversations in a way that the point being made is made clear.

I've also been trying to rewatch Primer, after 10 years or so, to better understand it, but I've been too sleepy for it at night. Apart from that, all quiet on the western front, I suppose.

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Embalo OP wrote

I have now. For some reason I always thought I was missing something, that there might be a rationale behind it all, that it could change if I would just tactfully call their attention to it. It took me longer than I would like to admit to reach the opposite conclusion. Thing is, is walking away the best way to go? Or is there a way to fight this hivemind and claim anarchist spaces as our own? (not in an authoritarian property manner, but rather as belonging to all those who seek freedom). Isn't walking away without setting up an alternative admitting defeat to their methods of action? I still don't know. And then there is no other alternative, for this is the local anarchist landscape and one felt the need to do something, to engage with other people. Or the alternatives, if they existed, were worse: cancel culture liberal people also trying to pass as anarchists, cute leftists with staged protests who would try to vote their way out of a cave, communist party people with a quasi-fascist proletarian theatrical fetish, and so on and so forth. So that the specific group of people I associated with seemed after all the one I would be most in tune with. But I suppose there's a difference between what my doomed insurrectionalist romantism allows for and what theirs does.

And, without wanting to wave a scarecrow or hint at an appeal for unity or something of the sort, in the meantime, we got to a point where it seems likely fascists will take over soon. Incidentally, there is also a person that was widely condemned by their peers for having screamed anti-fascist chants at a protest. The police beat up said person and the organization made a statement afterwards thanking the police for their protection and for keeping the order. This organization wasn't made of anarchists, but comrades still bereft the person afterwards for 'calling too much to attention', 'provoking the police', 'risking security' and other such reactionary soundbites. Guess where they threw that person into a couple months afterwards? Yeah, you got it now.

I am not one to badjacket, but this just screams of widespread state interference with the movement, but I would get myself killed trying to find out about it, that is if I ever had the possibility and resources to.

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Embalo OP wrote

I was thinking about this. I guess the reason I kept at it for so long is because a part of me found it refreshing to meet people who shared a similar outlook on some aspects and, if I want to be fair, even had ideas of their own that I found worth exploring at some point. Plus, there was nobody else and, while I now go online on occasion, this is far from being my favourite way of interacting with people. It's nice having anarchist places where you can learn new things, watch movies you wouldn't watch otherwise, have discussions through the night, find out about the history and practice of anarchism (and, also, do other things that can't be done online that I'll leave to your imagination). Until one finds out about all the nastiness underlying this masquerade of social liveliness and upheaval. And yes, at some point one realizes that one must speak as if everybody was recording, and act accordingly too, and not necessarily because of legal complications, but because anything you say can and will be used against you at some point. All your life, past and present, must be exposed to ensure you are not a cop, with all the embarassments that that entails, suspicion is permanent and you are put through all these little and not so little tests, as if trust were a reward. It sure is emotionally draining. And then you gain affection for all these people and, even if you get past that and want to step out, you're so far in, that you can expect a death threat or two if you jump ship. Even if the captain is a grown man bully and said ship is heading towards an iceberg. Who gets to decide who is and who isn't on the brink anyway? That always baffled me, and nobody ever put it into question and that can't surely be due to fear only - I think people think these are justifiable tactics to protect themselves from 'external' interference. The thing of recklessly bragging about direct action (which they can do because, you know, if they deem you a risk, off you go to the psych ward) and labeling as 'chickens' the more subdued ones, as if people would always have to be proving themselves, is also something I took issue with, but I guess that will merit a separate post of its own, sometime in the future.

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Embalo OP wrote (edited )

Maybe you are well intentioned, but reading both of your posts, this the kind of dodgy stances I allude to, when I speak of those who pay lip service to it.

I already referenced my usual reaction to anarchists going with whatever neurodiverse labels they deem most fit at any given time, labels that they seek voluntarily and that they get 'professional' validation on for the sole reason that shrinks would be out of a job if they didn't give those to you. I disagree with the assessment that psychiatry (and most things, for that matter) are 'good if done in a good way'. No. Some things have inherent flaws, and psychiatry, born as a tool of population control, is one of them. There is no 'good way' of putting a straitjacket on anybody, and psychiatry wouldn't exist if it wasn't forced on people, so that seems to be an essential feature. If you don't like this example, given that some places (very few) don't use straitjackets anymore, I give you ECT, which destroys people's memory and numbs them and is done in the most 'advanced' places too, of which I have a fairly strong conviction that in the future will be regarded as lobotomy is now, with the inevitable liberal perspective that in the past people were simply stupid and didn't realize of the horror, when it happens that the horror is here for anybody caring to notice (alas, nobody gives a fuck about the wackos).

It's not just the 'history of the field' which is bad, it's the current practice as well, with laws so designed in its favor that the perpetrators of torture get away with it under no scrutiny at all, and under the guise of helping medicine to boot. It is now as it was in the past.

Not even the timid 'neurodiverse perspectives' or Mad Pride bear any consideration in the theorization of psychiatry and hold any sort of positive influence. And it would be useless if they ever did.

Now, looking at your second post and comparing it with the first one, I can't see how you can say that your position 'should fall under anti-psychiatry'. That reminds me of a guy I know who claimed to be anti-psych but the minute he had an argument with somebody else, he referred to the other person as a 'schizophrenic piece of shit'.

(I know, what a delightful group of people I used to hang around with)

As for your positive experiences, I am glad it has been so. I also once got back my wallet with all my documents at a police station. A.C.A.B. all the same.

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Embalo OP wrote

In a situation where there is a person that fears being snitched on and another that fears being involuntarily commited, who is the weakest link? The first one is presumably soft on the sane/insane hierarchy, and the second on the state hierarchy. You could say that in practical situations you would make a decision, but these aren't that far from this - in the meantime, some other person who was trusted enough that they could keep out of the asylum eventually snitched and the person involuntarily commited had their will broken by solitary confinement...

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Embalo OP wrote

First of all, I hope I come across those writings on sanism in some way. I sure would like to.

When I asked of a consistent consensual stance, I meant that psychiatrists could have the same treatment cops already do in anarchist circles, nominally at least (by this last bit I mean that anarchists, like everybody else, are not always coherent in words and practice, and fortunately so).

I don't fancy large groups neither, and my experiences have made me stray away from the organized movement, but I do contemplate that association with other people may sometimes be fruitful.

As for the rest, your sentiments are not too far from my own.

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Embalo OP wrote

Oh, but I replied to you, it was the latter motive, the conscious intention to remove a weak link. I, for one, have not much sympathy for good intentions behind awful actions, but should I have, I would also say that it isn't the case that they just 'haven't bothered to think of an alternative'. They have cruelly mocked those that ended up under the custody of the state, to one of them even sent a message right after a discharge after a very rough imprisionment, from which the person left with pneumonia and barely being able to move, after God knows how many meds were forced upon them. This person that was committed had a reputation for a difficult personality that didn't allow for much laughter so the message read something like: 'Maybe this will make you laugh: what happened to the people I told to go fuck themselves? Did they already get there?', amid other nasty nasty situations.

One other person was shut down from psychological support sessions that were being held in an anarchist place in a different part of the country on the pretext that they were a 'security risk', after they had been locked up - as if they were planning direct action there!

This to say that well intentioned brutality would be bad enough, but this is a concerted effort to have a cutting environment where nobody can breathe properly. And then, when people reestablish themselves and want to just do more mundane stuff, they can't even go peel the proverbial potato. And nobody can mess with the people calling the shots, because (hell, I'll say it, fuck them), apparently, profiting off of heroin is a perfectly valid way to fund anarchist activity that nobody will never put into question. No matter the numbers of direct or indirect victims, you know?

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Embalo OP wrote

I personally think that we should not contemplate such things as 'weak links', as that is an oppressive line of reasoning, and while I think people ought to associate with whomever they so wish, to ostracize 'disagreeable people' from common spaces is also something I'm not particularly keen on. And I've gone through this over and over in my mind, I don't see how harbouring resentment in our midst in the fashion of movie gangsters makes in any way for good security culture. I've heard comments to the effect of saying I've too uncynical a view, or want to reinvent the wheel, but I can't really grasp what I am missing.

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Embalo OP wrote

Let's just say that instead of 'snitches get stitches' it becomes 'person whom we subjectively, perhaps unreasonably, deem to be unable to handle the pressure, goes on the ambulance under a false pretext we made up, to have their life ruined in a psych ward, so that nothing they may say holds up before the police or the court and they can forever be discredited'.

I hope that cleared it up.

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Embalo OP wrote (edited )

Yeah, I do not share your perspective, I do indeed think there are inherent issues, theoretical and practical, with psychiatry, that warrant its abolition and I would never think to force 'treatment' on somebody who doesn't want it (and more often than not, doesn't even need it), it being a way to contain exterior even if sometimes misdirected, but always understandable, displays of revolt. Not to mention the so-called excesses of the past and of the present: lobotomy, physical constraints, forced medication, imprisionment, ECT, etc...

As for neurodiversion, I find it to be in fashion these days as a way to scapegoat mechanisms we are in no position of understanding yet with under-researched supposed neurochemical imbalances, which incidentally is one of the main premises psychiatry also relies on for its repression. So I always find it odd when people try to present it as some sort of progress on the social reception of difference, shall we put it that way, not to mention on the understanding of the mind. As for Mad Pride, can't say I follow the movement all over the world, but at least in London they seem to be abolitionists, fortunately, not wanting anything to do with neither making contributions towards the field, nor reforming psychiatry, which seems as wise an idea as reforming prisons.

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