je sais que tu n’aimes pas ta réalité @glovegreychevrolet - Tumblr Blog

nemfrog

Portrait photo from a pinhole camera. Images. 1978.

oldbutchdanielmolloy

it’s fuck all friday btw. you need to be doing fuck all

datelinepentagons

zmpl

a lot of the DSM’s very clearly prejudiced diagnoses (e.g. hypoactive sexual desire disorder, gender dysphoria, transvestic disorder, etc.) try to skirt around the prejudice by saying “the disorder lies in the patient’s distress over being this way, not the behavior itself :)” like hmmm do you think their distress has anything to do with societal expectations around “normal” sexuality and gender? or is distress just this magic thing that exists in a vacuum with no outside influence

like keep in mind that homosexuality was in the DSM until pressure was put on the APA by gay rights activists, and they “removed” it in 1973 and replaced it with many different diagnostic labels over the years to describe “this person is gay and distressed over it so we’re treating the distress with conversion therapy. blease don’t think we’re homophobic.” it wasn’t until 2013 that distress over one’s own sexual orientation was removed entirely from the DSM. do what you will with this information and begin to wonder what psychiatry’s actual motives are for continuing to pathologize queerness and gender nonconformity.

#rly appreciate the inclusion of disorders related to sexual desire in this because it’s so annoying that we still rush to pathologize these #like obviously libido is a delicate thing and many factors can influence one’s sex drive #but it seems like if a woman has a high sex drive or a man has a low sex drive they get the defect stamp immediately #like oh it has to be trauma or it has to be a hormonal imbalance or a mood disorder or whatever #it could never just be that she’s naturally horny or he’s naturally asexual #always gotta put the gender norms before living one’s life in the way that feels best for you. apparently

maxknightley

being a jack of all trades is dope as fuck honestly. it's like I'm doing crop rotation inside my own brain

northstareclipse

I understand why optimization culture has boomed so hard in the past several years.

Something big happened that most of us could do very little about. The world became openly unstable in ways people could no longer politely ignore. Institutions failed. Safety nets frayed. The future got harder to imagine. So a lot of people started reaching for control wherever they could find it: morning routines, dopamine detoxes, habit stacks, sleep scores, screen-time limits, supplement protocols, productivity systems, “nervous system regulation,” whatever the app-store priesthood was selling that week.

I get it. I really do.

But I’m going to pull a phrase people love to use when they want to sound emotionally mature: trauma explains behavior; it does not excuse it.

Because at some point, “I am trying to regain a sense of agency in a chaotic world” turned into “everyone who doesn’t live like me is undisciplined, addicted, immature, morally weak, spiritually degraded, or secretly begging to be rescued from themselves.”

And that’s where I get off the ride.

I’m not saying optimization is bad for everyone. Some people genuinely benefit from tweaking parts of their lives. Some people like routines. Some people feel better with stricter sleep schedules or less social media or more deliberate habits. Great. Wonderful. I’m sincerely glad when people find something that makes their life easier.

The problem is the culture around it.

The culture is ableist because it treats “functioning” as a moral achievement and assumes everyone has the same body, brain, energy, pain level, sensory needs, executive function, and recovery capacity.

It is classist because so much of it quietly depends on flexible schedules, disposable income, safe housing, nutritious food access, leisure time, privacy, and the ability to refuse exploitative work conditions without immediately risking survival.

And it is Puritanical because underneath all the soft wellness language is the same old suspicion of pleasure: too much comfort will rot you, too much rest will weaken you, too much fun will corrupt you, too much convenience will make you less human. You are always supposed to be renouncing something. You are always supposed to be proving that you can suffer correctly.

That’s the part that bothers me.

Not “I tried changing this habit and it helped me.”

Not “I personally feel better when I do less of that.”

But the constant creep from personal preference into moral hierarchy. The assumption that a “better” life is always a more controlled life. The belief that every impulse must be interrogated, every pleasure audited, every habit optimized, every moment made legible to some invisible performance review.

And honestly, I think a lot of people would rather accuse everyone else of being addicted, lazy, dysregulated, or broken than admit how scared they are of being alive in a world where control is often partial, fragile, and unevenly distributed.

By all means, arrange your life in ways that help you. But the second your coping mechanism turns into a cudgel against people with different needs, different limits, different joys, different bodies, different schedules, different resources, or different definitions of a life worth living, it stops being self-improvement and starts being social pressure.