#mad theory

[richardburbagehateblog]

The new Centre for Mad Culture UK is running a short survey on people's connection to madness and the mad movement (if any) and what folk want to see from the org. Only takes 5 minutes! Please consider filling it out if you're in the country and have any interest in Mad culture, history, theory or organising

[chronic-cane]

It's so odd that ADHD is so commercialized, medicalized, and stigmatized.

I got an ADDitude magazine from the library to look through for anything that could help my current research project. A little over a third of the pages have ads. A lot of them specifically marketing towards helping ADHD. About 25 out of 70 pages. Compared to National Review's 3 out of 60 pages or The Progressives 5 out of 70. There is literally a dedicated section for advertisements in ADDitude.

In the past this group has been helpful for me a few times, but its also heavy in pseudoscience. Plenty of the ads were for "ADHD supplements" and shit. But it's the thing you first come across when looking for resources.

I'm fully aware that ADHD is seen as basically the anti capitalist machine disorder. The main focus behind treatment is to increase productivity most of the time. Which has lead to people rightfully pointing that out before then unrightfully stating that it isn't a real mental disorder or disability. So then those of us with ADHD see the ones that are dismissing us and even go so far to over medicalize ourselves in the process. Or at least the second part is my experience and what I theorize.

And that really sucks. I look to the autistic community more than the ADHD community at this point for support with my developmental disability.

We could have, and still can, incorporate ADHD not only as an example of some mental illnesses are socially constructed based off of societal norms, and instead a more extreme example of most if not all mental illnesses constructed off of societal norms.

We could recognize that even though medication helps focus and some behavioral aspects, we still appear odd, neurodivergent, to people. That we learn how to go through the world differently and face plenty of stigma and discrimination. Not because it's a medicalization of "bad character" but instead of form of madness impacted by sanism.

[myceliumdistro]

You can subscribe to Think Like a Mushroom for free over on substack if you want to keep up with my work. You can download free zine versions on itch.

Essays currently in the works include:

The next couple of instalments in the emergent complexity gender theory series,

A piece about the political contradictions that shape the "middle class" and how to organise effectively from this positionality,

An attempt to develop a framework of epistemic in/justice that can effectively hold Madness and other types of knowledge that differ from rational consensus knowledge in form as well as content.

I'm also working on plain language versions of these for people less comfortable with abstract explanations or dense reading, and on hard-copy and print-at-home Braille versions of the zines.

[letslipthehounds]

Darth Bane

I have no idea how likely this is, nor if it would actually matter.  However, I had a wild thought and now I’m going to share it with you all.

So, despite the fact that I’m unconvinced about the last arc of season six of The Clone Wars (it’s very weird, worse than Star Wars normal), here’s a theory I had, based on the fact that Mark Hamill is the voice actor for Darth Bane.

What if Darth Bane is actually a Skywalker ancestor?  I mean, yeah, a thousand years is a long time, but still.   Is it possible that Bane had a child/children?  Perhaps even unknowingly?  And that child had children, and down through to Shmi, Anakin, and Luke and Leia.

It seems only right that the man who created the Rule of Two Sith would see them rise higher than ever before, and then destroyed because of his own descendants.

So.  What do you think?  Plausible or not?  Personally, I like the idea, especially if we take the idea that Luke succeeds in restoring the Jedi, and Leia helps bring a better Republic into existence, putting right what their ancestor (And not just their father!) tried to destroy.

[ejectionfraction]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH YES

i got 87 on a 40% paper that i did in 10 hours and while i liked topic (the history of homosexuality as a diagnosis in the psychiatric paradigm through a psychiatric-critical Mad-positive lens) when i re-read the paper my thoughts ranged from “this literally makes no sense wtf was i saying” and “this is awful.” so i was just hoping to get over 50 aaaaaaaah. 

here’s the only paragraph i really like out of the whole thing

“It is not that the narrative of homosexuality as a normative sexual expression never existed, it is that it was overshadowed by the master narrative. This ability of the master narrative allows the psy disciplines to avoid a certain amount of culpability as they continue to form their new master narrative. This narrative posits that as the psychological discipline became more consistent in applying the medical model, the triumph of science allowed them to see past the social prejudices of time and correct a mistake. This narrative has the advantages of ignoring the fact that there was always a dissenting voice in psychology urging an alternative explanation, reinforcing the medical model and diminishing the role of the gay liberation movement. Most importantly, it positions the inclusion of homosexuality as an illness an isolated "mistake" not a symptom of a larger problematic paradigm.”

[ejectionfraction]

GUESS WHICH MOTHERFUCKER FINALLY GOT A THESIS STATEMENT GOING.

pro-tip: do not write your papers the day they’re due.

i’m semi proud of this one, though.

“Homosexuality was first coined a term for the purposes of criminalization in 1869, and it was first pathologized in the 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis by psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing as a "degenerative" disorder. In 1952 it was added to the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and in 1973 after much debate the APA removed the diagnosis to mixed reactions. It was not until June 2015 that reparative therapy that aims to change the behaviour of gay-identified queer people to model heterosexuality was banned in Ontario. (This law does not apply to reparative therapy for trans-indentified individuals). The queer experience has a long history of interacting with the psy based disciplines.  Queerness, like madness, has a history being defined by the medical model and attempted to be controlled through this paradigm; in the places where Madness and queerness intersect it is often the same oppressor, the same dominant narrative. The purpose of this paper is to intersectionally explore the pathologizing and diagnosis of homosexuality through a Mad lens within a historical and current context. This paper will consider three theories of homosexuality as produced by psy based disciplines and and position them within the queer Mad experience, both on a societal and individual level.” 

[demons]

Fear of new American military capabilities is spurring nuclear powers like Russia and China to modernize their atomic arsenals and evade disarmament, according to a new report from a US-British think tank.

Even though Barack Obama has pledged to work for global disarmament and the United States negotiated a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia, the world's nine global states still possess 22,400 warheads and are moving swiftly to "modernize" their stockpiles, according to the study "Beyond the United Kingdom: Trends in Other Nuclear States".