why hello, sophie! cool post of mine you've got there!
you know, it's cosmically amusing to me that you're not responding by reblogging to my original post so that i'd see it, not tagging me, or even mentioning me by name so that we have the ability to engage in, y'know, an actual discussion. as far as i'm aware, i don't have you blocked, you don't have me blocked, and i'm personally pretty open about mentioning your name on my blog, so i would've expected you to do the same for me.
for reference, here is the full post that sophie refuses to link. i feel like being able to read the full post would be useful.
i have a lot of things to say about this response, but more than anything else, i want this response to display to people how racist sophie and the pro-tulpa side is by exposing the deeper thought processes behind a lot of the things she says.
let's start by talking about how the ADL tulpa came from a book written by a white, western woman in the 1930s. getting help from someone who is a part of the culture means very little when you are not a part of it, and don't speak the language. the potential for parts of the culture to be mistranslated, misrepresented or misunderstood by ADN, by accident or on purpose, is simply far too great to take a book this old, almost 100 years old actually, seriously. not when we have much more recent books and websites we can go through to use as more accurate, modern sources on the subject.
she only uses the book and props it up as something worth listening to in the modern day for purposes outside of historical educational reading simply because it agrees with her and is thought to be the origin of the western tulpa. she does not care about how old or outdated it may be, or how any of the political climate surrounding the thought processes of the author affect her ability to accurately report the traditions and experiences of the tibetan people.
i'm reminded of a discussion in a book about how people in africa would refer to themselves with words like "tribe" in english, because that's the word that the white westerners gave them, even if they would not necessarily describe themselves with words that have the same connotations as "tribe" does in their own language.
things like this happen in modern day research of non-western cultures by western researchers. if you think that this wouldn't have happened in the 1930's, even with the purest of intentions, you're just plain ignorant.
the next part of the post is... a contradiction.
The first argument is that the modern tulpa is appropriation because it's based on a Tibetan Buddhist practice. To this, I point out that basically nothing of Tulpamancy, including the name, is actually based in Tibetan Buddhism.
Tulpamancy is not based directly on Tibetan Buddhism, but a new concept that was created by the sharing of different cultures.
so, does tulpamancy have a connection to and base in buddhism or not?
these statements seem pretty contradictory to me, as if she's changing the argument of how connected to tibetan buddhism tulpamancy is depending on the argument she's trying to make. she mentions a cultural exchange to show that it is not appropriative, because the cultures used to created it were healthily exchanged rather than appropriated. that would mean that a not insignificant portion of tibetan buddhist practice likely would've had to go into this new creation.
but you then try to say that none of tulpamancy is based in tibetan buddhism, or "basically nothing" of tulpamancy, to downplay its connections to one of the cultures it originated from to support your other argument that the two are too unrelated to criticize their connections.
you can't have your cake and eat it too, sophie. this argument doesn't make sense.
oh, and for the record, you are moving goal posts. you just did, right here:
So far, there aren't any ethnic Tibetans from what I've seen who have commented on the tulpa.
nobody anywhere has mentioned ethnic tibetan buddhists and who may or may not be one until right now, in this post, where you said it.
you go on to mention that there's not enough clarification between buddhists who are tibetan (i.e. ethnic tibetans) and tibetan buddhism, as in, the specifically tibetan practices of buddhism. this might be a useful distinction in certain arguments and discussions, but here, it isn't. this is a terrible argument because it directly implies that tibetan buddhist converts are somehow not affected by the appropriation of their culture, or should not have a voice in how they personally are affected by the appropriation of their culture, simpy because they're converts.
she's moving the goalposts of who is "allowed" to be listened to because too many people from a particular side of the discussion are not tibetan buddhist enough for her to listen to. but don't get me wrong here: she would not listen to ethnic tibetan people if they said anything either, simply because they disagree with her and she cannot use them to support her argument.
she also seems to think that ethnic tibetan buddhists haven't mentioned anything on this particular subject in either direction. sophie, how are you deciding this exactly? because it sounds to me like because someone hasn't specifically outlined that they are ethnically tibetan, and have rather stated simply that they are tibetan buddhists, that you are simply assuming.
this one sentence right here just displays that sophie does not and will not ever care about the voices of (tibetan) buddhists if they disagree with her, and when you criticize her for disagreeing with a buddhist on a subject she is in no position to be asserting herself as an authority over, she will ignore you or continue moving the goal post of who she believes should be "allowed" to have an opinion she respects. the catch, of course, being that she will never respect the opinion of a person who disagrees with her. she will only ever find reasons to argue with it or reasons that their points are invalid.
I did write that I'm skeptical of information coming out of the region, but the context was about any surveys or statistics about opinions of the Dalai Lama and how he's regarded there. It wasn't about the tulpa itself, but about the claim that the Dalai Lama isn't an authoritative source on Tibetan Buddhism.
What I mean is that if I were living in Tibet, and somebody came up to me conducting a survey about whether I supported the Dalai Lama, and I knew other people who had been arrested or disappeared for displaying pictures of His Holiness... I might not answer that survey honestly out of fear that it might be some sort of trick to round up dissenters or at least to put them on watch.
i see where she's coming from here, which is why it's important to speak to actual tibetan people, diaspora or actively in tibet, on the subject rather than looking at statistics, because there are a lot of different ways that "supporting" the dalai lama can manifest, and it is a crime to openly support the dalai lama in tibet.
(i also want to note that while i searched, i couldn't find a specific statistic that talked about how tibetan buddhists felt about the dalai lama (diaspora otherwise), just that the country is vast majority buddhist, so i can't say for sure how accurate it is that tibetan buddhists do or don't support the dalai lama. the intial anon said tenzin gyatso, the current dalai lama, should not be trusted because he was a slave owner pre-exile, which is a fair point, however, not how religion tends to work in reality.)
however, as someone who is not living in that political climate and has no personal connections to the subject, it's presumptuous for sophie to continue bringing up the CCP, CCP propaganda and the authority of the dalai lama, especially when the quote in question that she is using from him is incredibly vague and broad, and does not get into this particular subject of cultural appropriation. especially especially when she only ever seems to care about the CCP and its propaganda when she can use it to discredit tibetan buddhists who disagree with her as a gotcha (be it ethnically tibetan or living in tibet, diaspora or converts).
Of the voices who have weighed in, there are Tibetan Buddhist on both sides, some claiming it's appropriative and other claiming it's not.
But of all of these Tibetan Buddhists, I don't think any have stated that they're ethnically Tibetan. They're usually people of other ethnicities who adopted and practice Tibetan Buddhism.
there's a lot here that bugs me in these two paragraphs.
basically, what she's saying here is that the tibetan buddhists who have come to talk about the discussion surrounding tulpamancy aren't tibetan buddhist enough for you to listen to them because they're converts and not directly raised into the culture, yes? that is what you're telling me? you're telling me that it is somehow impossible for a tibetan buddhist convert to have a nuanced and informed opinion of the subject because they're a convert? that it's impossible for a tibetan buddhist convert to be affected by cultural appropriation?
do you know how you sound right now? because you sound like exactly half of an eleven pound black forest ham.
the implications of the argument you're making are not things i think you want to be arguing.
please note that she has carefully not explained why she doesn't respect the opinions of tibetan buddhist converts, and what measurable harm would be done by allowing tibetan buddhist converts to speak on the subject of the appropriation of their religion and culture, so allow me to speculate: it's because they disagree with her and are anti-endo and she doesn't like it, so she's going to keep moving the goalposts until she gets something she does like, at which point she will respect the argument because it's in her favor, and only because it is in her favor.
(I think a huge part of the confusion in this conversation stems from people thinking "Tibetan Buddhist" is a Buddhist who is Tibetan, rather than a specific school of Buddhism, or several schools of Buddhism, that originated in Tibet.)
so which kind of tibetan buddhist do you, white western woman and local non-buddhist, consider to have a more valid opinion on the subject?
she will not outline the harm it allegedly does to ethnic tibetan buddhists to have converts speak on the appropriation of their culture because this is a discriminatory talking point she pulled out of thin air and does not justify.
tibetan buddhist converts who are not from tibet have more of an authority on the subject of the appropriation of tibetan buddhism than sophie does, as someone who is not currently a tibetan buddhist. she doesn't even understand all the reasons that a person would convert, even those who are ethnically tibetan themselves.
in short, in this entire section, sophie is touting how we need to listen to tibetan buddhists on this subject and how people are continuously stepping on tibetan buddhists to speak over them, while ignoring how she as well has and is ignoring tibetan buddhist opinions on this subject simply because she does not agree with them, and is excusing it under the guise of what boils down to "they're not tibetan buddhist enough for me to listen to".
as i said in the original post she's responding to, at this point i care less about the word or practice of tulpamancy itself than i do about the arguments that she uses to justify her use of the word and the thought processes behind them, and the thought processes that sophie has going down are racist.
and as for the next section... this is much more my personal wheelhouse.
sophie, honey, i'm not talking about the fucking brain scans. why do you assume that i somehow believe the only way to prove the existence of endogenic systems is to do brain scans? you are fighting against a talking point that YOU made up here.
this is a blatant example of sophie being eager to make assumptions about the opposition and generalize their beliefs based on how she wants to interpret their arguments and not what they're actually saying. in other words, she just brought up a strawman argument instead of discussing the actual argument i was putting forward, which was that research into endogenic systems at all 1) does not prove that they exist, 2) does not mean it is good research, and 3) does not mean that endogenic systems are actually a rich field of study with decades of research behind them to comb through.
another one of her implications here is that i do not believe in endogenic systems, which she implies in her wording simply because i disagree with her and nothing else, so obviously i must be an anti-endo.
brain scans by themselves aren't going to prove endogenic systems exist, and depending on how they're done, they don't prove much other than something is happening that is distinguishable from "typical" brains/brains that do not experience this phenomenon. that is all they do. they're not magic, and it takes time, effort and research into brain scans to interpret what this or that marker on the scans actually mean, and whether or not they support the arguments.
just because we have brain scans of people with DID does not inherently mean that every brain scan of people with DID proves the existence of DID. what they can instead point to is that we can see the psychological scars left on people after they endured chronic and severe childhood trauma. it's not until we get to the studies researching the physical effects of switching between alters that things start to become more substantial in regards to proving the existence of DID.
brain scans are not the only way to prove the existence of a mental illness. far from it, in fact, and the fact that you seem to think that brain scans are the end-all be-all of research into DID, the one thing that proves the existence of DID beyond a shadow of a doubt when we've had the disorder's existence proven for several decades without them, shows that once again, sophie is trying to act as an authority on something that she knows very little to nothing about.
she has not looked into DID research in the slightest, much less older DID research, but she's trying to act like she knows anything about it. this is not new behavior from you, sophie, and you need to knock it the fuck off.
researchers go through the effort to study, define and differentiate the disorder in various ways. they are not simply listening to their patients with no critical thought.
similar to how we would know if the megalodon still existed or not because we would be able to observe its impacts (or lackthereof) on the ocean's ecosystems and theorize from there, we can observe the impacts the disorder has on a patient and determine from there, without brainscans, what the patient is experiencing.
furthermore, you don't need brain scan research to prove the existence of endogenic systems, you need more research in general to prove their existence, as well as being able to distinguish their existence from that of DID so that the two experiences are less easily confused between each other.
we need a hell of a lot more than psychs just listening with all of their hearts and believing what their patient is experiencing is true to prove the existence of endogenic systems.
sophie has constructed an argument i did not make and refuses to engage with my actual point, which is actually that the evidence you have doesn't prove their existence, it largely just proves that people believe in it and that it should be researched more.
Except where DID was controversial in the psychiatric field, endogenic plurality is considered a real thing by nearly every psychologist and psychiatrist who has researched it aside from the ones who deny all multiplicity.
a) you're acting like DID isn't still controversial in many ways. it's largely believed to be a real disorder in the field, yes, but that doesn't mean everyone agrees on its course, phenomenology, symptomology and treatment, and that we are believed and taken seriously at every turn when we aren't.
b) you're also acting like endogenic research is a richly developed field that has worked for a long time to prove its worth and to prove the existence of endogenic systems when it hasn't. the people researching endogenic systems believing in them doesn't prove anything, it just proves that they believe in it.
The mounting academic support from educated professionals IS the evidence.
a) what support exactly? because like i just said, professionals simply believing in the existence of endogenic plurality does not mean anything if they don't make an effort to prove its existence. that is the hard part and the work that actually needs to be done, that endogenic plurals are so hesitant to actually acknowledge when it comes to research into endogenic plurals.
b) for the last time, YOU made up the brain scans point. YOU made the assumption that the only evidence i'll take is brain scans when that makes absolutely no logical sense.
I sincerely hope that's not true.
unfortunately, it is. i know this from personal experience with posting the sources and links to the sources of certain papers while citing certain sections or screenshotting them, that people less experienced with reading academic literature often will not read your sources if they are confident you know what you are talking about.
this is why you have to be clear beyond a shadow of a doubt on what the paper is saying, why you feel it's relevant to this subject, and most importantly, what it's actually proving (or trying to prove, and how well it does these things), and you have to be able to elaborate on these aspects of your source if the parts you're citing are complicated, if you just need to break down the paper into something easier to read if you want to summarize it, or why you consider it to be good or bad research.
i'll admit that i haven't seen you post a paper in a while because i don't follow you and i don't particularly care to start now. but from what i remember about you, you are very quick to jump into everything being about endogenic systems when it may not be.
that paper about what you're claiming are "hallucinogenic systems", for example. maybe this is a nitpick, but from what i know, "plural" is an opt-in identity based on a lot of different things, and with something as subjective as hallucinations, whether or not someone with hallucinations identifies as a hallucinogenic system is largely going to be up to how they personally perceive their hallucinations, not you.
this paper says a lot about a potential treatment option for hallucinations, and that's great that it seems to be working for the patient(s) in question, but:
a) i would hardly call this "DID treatment", and the fact that you are once again goes to show that you don't know that much about DID and its treatment, and
b) you are shoving the label of plural onto these people who may not want to identify that way for various reasons. you're jumping the gun. not saying that people can't identify as a hallucinogenic system, but let's not push the label onto people who are currently unaware of the label or undecided on whether they identify with it. like i said earlier, plural identities are opt-in, not opt-out, and you're projecting your own beliefs onto a stranger.
But if I'm looking for academic support of endogenic plurality, my go-to is Variety of Tulpa Experiences. The author is a psychiatry professor at McGill University, and the book was peer reviewed and published by Oxford University Press.
this means very little in the grand scheme of the research, particularly in this case if it's not serving to prove the existence of tulpas/endogenic systems. this doesn't prove much, except for the fact that this phenomenon needs to be more well studied.
I even try to mention Sci-Hub for viewing papers that are behind paywalls, but I'm nervous about linking directly to Sci-hub since anti-endos have tried to get me banned before and would definitely jump on me linking to what's essentially pirated material as a way to get rid of me.
honey, you're not going to get banned for that, and i'm being genuine there. link sci-hub. link the firefox sci-hub extension. give the safe link that shows you how to access z-library properly. introduce your followers to the internet archive library and worldcat. it's going to be fine.
I have no idea what this is talking about and don't think I ever had a paper like that on my Studies and Research page.
oh, yes you did. i'm sure you don't remember because at this point it might've been a year or two ago, but i very specifically remember an argument between you and JAS, and even more specifically, JAS emailing the author of said paper to show that she openly disapproved of her paper being used that way and posting screenshots. but maybe that paper isn't on your list anymore, which is good. it's almost 5 in the morning and i don't particularly feel inclined to go digging for the discussion through the tumblr archives.
sophie is continuing a pattern that she has displayed for years by talking big without saying anything substantial, using arguments that don't make sense, contradicting herself, pulling out strawmen, and making assumptions about her opposition, all while being extremely indirect with the people that criticize her, if she responds at all.
her arguments justifying use of the word "tulpa" are arguably even more racist than using the term itself.
last but not least, your opinion will always be invalid to sophie unless you agree with her, and if you disagree with her in nearly any capacity, she will call you an anti-endo whether you believe in/support endos or not.
in short, sophie is not a good-faith discourser, she only cares about appearing right and educated to the people that follow her.
overall, 2/10. i'm going to go eat some spaghettios now.
