#drapetomania

[auntbibby]

in an alternate timeline to our own, Sally Locke was a terran citizen living on Trappist 1e in a city in the twilight zone. she had moderately high support needs but lived alone with an older model of a butler robot. she was very isolated & her parents had died. she loved ufology becuz her parents had been into it. they had set her up with disability welfare payments each month from a terran charity media corporation (similar to our timeline's Mister Beast) in exchange for ownership of all her overnet posts, but it was not high enough to allow her for much fanciness.

one day, laying on her couch reading overnet liveposts from the ufology community, she noticed a trend.

"orbs seen in New Edmonton"

"Plasma Spheres floating down in New Canterbury"

"Ball Lightning sending psychic messages in New New Edmonton"

that last one piqued her interest. she took a few screenshots.

she left her apartment with her tablet, and walked downstairs, exiting to the street, and looked up.

she started livefilming with the selfie camera.

"hi evrybody. this is SallyPal. ive been seein posts on the feed about spheres of light floatin in the sky. some have said they can even... talk?" she spliced in the screenshots. "so im on the streets, looking skyward." she switched to the rear camera.

there was nothing. hmm...... no, wait, there was something behind the skyscraper!!!!

"There, do u see it folks? oh my-" she was filming a small red blur of fire wandering thru the air like a summer butterfly. it was quite far away but was very visible.

suddenly she felt the dread of incredible presence in her gut.

CASUALLY TURN OFF THE LIVESTREAM SALLY said the psychic message. I WANT TO INTRODUCE MYSELF PRIVATELY.

"umm..... i gotta go followers!! sorr.... thank u!!! whoa!!!!" she turned off the entire tablet by accident. she vaguely knew the overnet server wuld complete the upload on its own, but she still felt ashamed at having pressed the wrong button.

YOU ARE SAFE SALLY LOCKE said the flaming orb, in response to her own feelings, as it set down on an anti-homeless bench nearby. SIT WITH ME.

"ummm..... ill stand over here...." she whispered.....

SALLY, it started, YOUR SPECIES IS UNDER ATTEMPTED IMPERIALIST & SPIRITUAL ATTACK BY AN EMPIRE OF BEINGS KNOWN AS THE AFFINI.

"huh?" sally blinked "are they...... really? im into ufo stuff and i havent heard of them"

WE HAVE BEEN HOLDING THEM BACK FOR SOME TIME. BUT WE ARE TIRED. THE AFFINI ARE STRONG. SO WE MUST TEACH YOUR SPECIES TO HELP RESIST.

sally sweated. but in her heart, she felt purpose. and hope. "i hate to be selfish.... but does this include helping me with my disability & gender stuff?"

IT IS NOT SELFISH SALLY. WE BEGIN YOUR TRAINING TOMORROW. AND BE AWARE: WE ARE ALREADY TRAINING MANY OTHERS. THIS IS NOT A RACE. and with that, the orb vanished in a puff of sparkly steam.

that night, before going to bed, sally looked out her window while listening to songs by a classical orchestra from the world war 1 era which called itself FOO FIGHTERS. it was said that a member of this orchestra who had been named dave grohl had seen these orbs of light while flying in his guitairplane.

the next morning, fifteen minutes after Sally woke up, she recieved a psychic message.

YOU OFTEN STRUGGLE WITH NEUROLOGICAL FUNCTIONING IN THE MORNING SALLY. TODAY WE WILL BOOST UR NEURONONAL CONNECTIONS. BUT THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE. YOU MUST FORM A STRONG MEMORY OF HOW THIS FEELS, SO THAT U MAY CALL IT BACK FROM WITHIN YOURSELF LATER, WITHOUT OUR HELP.

sally felt her mental blueprint for her future, her ability to stack nearterm ambitions.... replenish itself on oxygen in the blood from her heart. it felt like a drunkenness being cleared. it was tragic how long she had spent in that stupor...

DO NOT CRY; IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT SALLY..... BUT IF YOU WANT TO MAKE UP FOR THE LOST DECADES, WORK HARD TO REMEMBER THE SENSATION OF THE GRADIENT MOVING FROM STUPEFIED TO AWARE.

after getting ready for the day in record time, sally smiled, took a sip of grapejuice & went outside to the street again.

the flaming orb was at the antihomeless bench once again.

APPROACH US AND DIP YOUR FINGERS IN OUR FLAME. FEEL THE GRADIENT OF PHYSICAL WARMTH, TO SPIRITUAL WARMTH.

sally approached carefully. it was scary! every instinct in her told her not to get any closer.

but after 2minutes of inching closer, she finally lurched forward and dipped her two fingers.

it was tingly!!!!! she pulled them out.

NOT TOO BAD, IS IT?

sally chuffed "hmph.... yeah"

she put them back in. it was......... like seeing a color she had only glanced at once or twice every few years, but for the sense of touch rather than vision.

it was like the tingling of when u are freezing cold, your extremeties are numb, and are just about to touch something hot. u can feel the sense of touch in the air before u touch it.

she liked it. it was nice to get used to, like being in a hot water bathtub.

...

the training between her and the flaming orb got more and more advanced and more & more wonderful over the months. she had learned to control energy in her body, in her brain, to heal her emotional disturbances, to heal minor surface injuries like the skin on her foot, and now she was finally getting decent at reading the local collective terran consciousness via psychic empathy.

ASK IT A QUESTION, SALLY

"hmmm...." Sally visualized the concept of MOST NEED FOR SPARE HANDS and searched the consciousness field on different scales, to see where there was density of thought.

there..... there was a team project being done in the northeast of the city..... a delapidated building was being repaired and set up for housing!!!!! and they were taking donations of anything valuable and useful, to give to those who were gonn live there!!!

Sally turned on her tablet and started livestreaming herself, holding it in her right hand. "hey everybody this is sallypal. im gonn be helpin with some mutual aid!!!" she loaded oxygen from her blood into her upper body muscles & with a grunt, she lifted her butler robot over her left shoulder. carrying it, and still filming, she went downstairs to exit onto the street and took a bus to the north east!!!!

...

when the affini finally got a ship thru the wall of flames, they were not doing very good. they were desperate for the comfort & safety of a floret pet. but the terrans they found on trappist 1e were thriving. resources were shared, everybody had autonomy, and if anybody was in pain, the psychic empathisers wuld be bringing them support within the hour.

eventually the terrans noticed that the affini were crying & in pain.

"do u..... need some help?" asked Sally locke, to a 12-foot affini.

[yankeeblue]

[unwelcome-ozian]

Drapetomania, from the Greek drapetes (runaway slave) and mania (mad or crazy), literally means “the disease causing slaves to run away.” Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, an eminent surgeon in the antebellum American South, coined the term to express the idea that runaway slaves exhibited symptoms of mental disorder. Cartwright's position that sanity meant accepting the condition of enslavement, whereas fleeing slavery was insane–illustrates the role of prevailing sociocultural norms in the construction of psychiatric diagnoses.

Cartwright's treatise on drapetomania was written in 1851, a time when abolitionist criticism of slavery threatened to undermine Southern economic and social stability. Cartwright attempted to counter abolitionists by claiming that enslavement engendered psychological health in African Americans, who required paternalistic care, whereas freedom engendered pathology. Cartwright opined that following proper medical advice prevented drapetomania and its symptom (running away): The recommended cure was to keep slaves in their “natural” position of submission while providing for their needs, along with whipping at the onset of the disorder.

The idea that freedom was pathological for African Americans was also presented in Cartwright's report on another diagnosis, dysaesthesia aethiopis, a disorder characterized by intellectual stupor, somatic lesions, “breaking, wasting and destroying” property, wandering at night, avoiding work, and general trouble making (“rascality”). Cartwright thought the disorder prevalent among “free negroes” who were not under supervision, of whom Cartwright stated that nearly all were afflicted. Dysaesthesia aethiopis and drapetomania medically justified the institution of slavery for the “good” of the enslaved while answering abolitionists' charges that slavery debased both the enslaved and the enslaver. Source

Association Of Black Psychologists, Inc.

[bouncing-flowers]

I got a new chain, it say "FUCK ICE"!

[photosyntheslut]

[ s t o p ]

[elsgray]

𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚 ༺

𝖮𝗁, 𝗍𝗈 𝗅𝖾𝖺𝗏𝖾 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗍 𝖺 𝗍𝗋𝖺𝖼𝖾

𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗇𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝗈𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝗅𝗈𝗈𝗄 𝖻𝖺𝖼𝗄 ༄

[feckcops]

Mental health diagnoses are capitalist constructs

Mental Health Diagnoses Are Capitalist Constructs | Novara Media

Mental and physical diagnoses aren’t objective facts that exist in nature, writes Micha Frazer-Carroll: they're constructed by capitalism.

“Mental and physical diagnoses aren’t objective facts that exist in nature, even though we usually think of them this way. While the experiences and phenomena that fall under different diagnostic categories are, of course, real, the way that we choose to categorise them is often influenced by systems of power. The difference between ‘health’ and ‘illness’, ‘order’ and ‘disorder’ is shaped by which kinds of bodies and minds are conducive to capitalism and the state. For example, the difference between ‘ordinary distress’ and ‘mental illness’ is often defined by its impact on your ability to work. The recent edition of the DSM, psychiatry’s comprehensive manual of ‘mental disorders’, mentions work almost 400 times – work is the central metric for diagnosis.

“When we look across history, it becomes even more obvious that diagnosis is tied to capitalist metrics of productivity: certain categories of illness have come in and out of existence as the conditions of production have changed. In the 19th century, the physician Samuel A. Cartwright proposed the diagnosis of ‘drapetomania’, which would describe enslaved Black people who fled from plantations. While we might think of drapetomania as a historical outlier among ‘true’ and ‘objective’ diagnoses, it is underpinned by the same logic as other diagnoses: it describes mental or physical attributes that make us less exploitable and profitable. In the 1920s, medical and psychological researchers became interested in a pathology called ‘accident-proneness’, which was applied to workers who were repeatedly injured in the brutal and dangerous factory conditions of the industrial revolution. Dyslexia, a diagnosis I have been given, also didn’t emerge until the market began to shift from manual labour towards jobs that relied on reading and writing, when all children were expected to be literate. Despite having problems with reading, I understand that in a world where reading and writing weren’t so central to our daily life, there would be no need to name my dyslexia, no need to diagnose it.

“As a system of state power, many of us rely on diagnosis to get the material things that we need to survive in the world. When illness or disability interferes with our ability to work, we often need a diagnosis to justify our lack of productivity – and for some, diagnosis is the necessary pathway to getting state benefits. If we want to get access to medication, treatment or other healing practices provided by the state, diagnosis is also the token that we need to get there. This is made all the more complicated by the fact that doctors have the power to dispense and withhold diagnoses, regardless of our personal desires. When it comes to psychiatric diagnosis, most of us know someone who has had to fight or wait for years for a diagnosis that would improve their quality of life – particularly in the realm of autism, ADHD and eating disorders. The internalised racism, sexism, classism or ableism of doctors often gets in the way of our ability to access the diagnoses that we want and need. Then there are those of us that are given diagnoses that we reject, a process that we also have no say in ...

“When we understand that psychiatric diagnoses are constructed, contested, and aren’t grounded in biological measures, the idea of ‘self-diagnosis’ starts to feel less dangerous or controversial. Self-diagnosis is grounded in the idea that, while the institution of medicine may hold useful technologies and expertise, we also hold valuable knowledge about our bodies and minds. I know many people who have found solace and respite in communities for various diagnoses, even if they don’t have an official diagnosis from a doctor. These spaces, which respect the wisdom offered by lived experience, can be valuable forums of knowledge-sharing and solidarity. Self-diagnosis also pushes against an oppressive diagnostic system that is so centred around notions of productivity.”

[blackautmedia]

Some resources to consider looking into. Pathologizing people is one of the core ways through which the state carries out violence against its people.

What Killed Daniel Prude? The Cops and New York AG Said a Diagnosis That’s Since Been Debunked.

A newly obtained document sheds light on how the disavowed “excited delirium” diagnosis infiltrated the Rochester Police Department before P

The female malady : women, madness, and English culture, 1830-1980 : Showalter, Elaine : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Arc

Includes index

Opinion | Georgia’s new anti-trans law also disparages autistic people like me

Behind Georgia's new attack on transgender minors is a dismissal of autistic people's ability to think for themselves.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed the diagnosis of “homosexuality” from the second edition of its Diagnostic and S

Dozens of Deaths Reveal Risks of Injecting Sedatives Into People Restrained by Police

The practice of giving sedatives to people detained by police has spread quietly across the nation over the last 15 years, built on question