UPDATE: The transphobe Ada has been defending says they misgender all trans women/NBs on Blahaj who are strangers - Blåhaj Lemmy
lemmy.blahaj.zone
Further information on the situation with the transphobia: Abigail has repeatedly misgendered me and defended her choice by saying she chooses to refer to all people of unknown gender as male. > Hey, Abigail here. I just want people to know the reason this person got banned is likely because of a deleted comment not included in that thread. OP called me ~~autistic ~~ mentally unwell for not liking politics. THAT kind of behavior is not acceptable on lemmy.blahaj.zone, so I reported the comment and let Ada handle it. Ada tried in good faith to reason with OP but it was clear they just wanted to fight. So yeah, they got banned. Ada’s a fantastic lady who’s been great at keeping the trolls at bay. > Edit: and the bit about me misgendering them is also wrong. Gender didn’t come into play until after I had left the conversation. English default on the internet is male for strangers. Source: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669 [https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669] WRT the statement that I accused them of autism for not liking politics, further info is available here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669 [https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669] https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2320815 [https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2320815] https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2321026 [https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2321026]
  • LinkedinLenin [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Like, I know how certain institutions want to categorize and pathologize and medicalize things, I’ve spent years reading about it. But there’s a lot of good criticism of these institutions too, particularly against the DSM (is homosexuality a disorder?)

    The whole idea that our behaviors exist as a specific disorder, like there’s an NPD gene or a BPD gene and we just “have” it, to me is much more harmful/offensive/stigmatizing than anything. Human consciousness and behavior is infinitely more complex and dynamic than that.

    Part of the problem is the restrictive (and usually false) assumption that emotional/cognitive/behavioral pathology can be categorized and treated like medical disorders. Like, “I have appendicitis so I need an appendectomy” is supposedly equivalent to “I’m experiencing depression so I need an SSRI.”

    But appendicitis or a missing limb or whatever is itself observable-- we can actually measure the cause. Mental, emotional, behavioral, personality disorders-- by and large, we can only observe the symptoms, then try to make educated guesses as to the categories and causes. Pharmaceutical/insurance based psychology seems unable to understand or explain many of these categories that they’ve constructed and thus write them off as incurable.

    But even within the four sites you linked:

    symptoms can be…entirely eliminated

    Which then would no longer be categorized as BPD

    no definitive cure

    They haven’t discovered a wonder drug that passes double blind tests to 100% of the time “cure” BPD, which, of course not. It’s a behavioral disorder, not a bacterial infection. It has to be treated at the source.

    …remain for longer periods… may not be fully addressed by current treatments.

    Again a limitation of the empiricist fixation in US psychology. The replicability crisis is happening because a lot of things are hard to definitively prove using the methods commonly accepted for simpler medicine. Cognition and behaviors are too complex to easily model in a test with a control group.

    can’t be cured and won’t go away, Gatlin says

    Yeah this is a great example of the medicalization and stigma coming from overconfident generalists happy to make broad sweeping statements that are impossible to actually prove (and which anecdotal evidence suggests aren’t universally true).

    • DroneRights [it/its]@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Now that we’ve exhausted the subject of “Is NPD curable”, let’s focus on your original claims You said you didn’t buy that personality disorders are neurodivergence, because they’re curable. The two most commonly discussed neurodivergences are ADHD and ASD. Can ADHD and ASD people learn coping mechanisms the same as personality disorders that reduce the symptoms and make them harder to diagnose? Yes, 100%. I have seen testimony after testimony from autistic adults whose psychiatrists said it was hard to diagnose them because they learned masking. Narcissists and borderlines learn masking too, and that’s how we’re “cured”. So what’s the difference making NPD not neurodiverse to you?

      • LinkedinLenin [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        In the process of dealing with my own problems and identity, I’ve spent a lot of time reading various theories, talking with other PD sufferers, and trying different treatments around PDs, which is why I feel confident speaking on them. I can’t say the same for ADHD (have it but haven’t extensively researched it) or ASD.

        The way I see it, our disagreement comes down to this:

        Are personality disorders immutable characteristics or patterns of behavior, and then following that should they be tolerated and accepted or treated and relearned? Or more in line with the original topic, should words that are commonly used to describe either the behaviors or the categories be avoided?

        My own experience of my PD is that it was comprised of learned behaviors, maladaptive coping mechanisms, and cognitive distortions, all of which were relearned or are in the process of being relearned, to the degree that I no longer identify with the label “borderline”. This experience, coupled with multiple examples of people with similar experiences, as well as a wide array of criticism of static models of psychology and institutional pathologization, makes me lean in the direction of PDs being a social construction that describe a variety of behaviors, which can be relearned.

        Onto the next question, I don’t see the symptoms as a different way of thinking– a matter of diversity-- but as patterns that are generally harmful to both the disordered person and the people around them. This isn’t to say that the disordered person is harmful-- that we’re essentializing toxicity to someone’s fundamental identity because they’ve been assigned a label-- but that the behaviors used to characterize the label are harmful, by definition (otherwise it wouldn’t be viewed as a disorder). As such, I don’t advocate tolerance of toxic behaviors, whether they’ve been categorized or not. What I actually hope for is that people around me draw attention to these patterns and behaviors so that I can work on them.

        And finally, should words used to name these categories be avoided in common usage to describe behaviors? To be honest I have a much bigger problem with the institutional categorization than anything. Especially with how controversial and inconsistent the diagnostic criteria and definitions are. The idea that because someone exhibits disordered behaviors means that they are a disordered person (and always will be) is the source of the stigma and the source of the institutional otherizing, not the other way around. I only have a problem with common usage of the terms inasmuch as they essentialize behaviors as inherent characteristics to a supposed “type” of person, a type that is institutionally defined and may or may not actually exist.

        • DroneRights [it/its]@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Well, since you don’t know much about autism, I’ll tell you about mine:

          • I struggled with social skills when I was younger, but once I had a diagnosis I spent a lot of time learning them and now I have the moves to execute them, so long as I conform to neurotypical ideology.
          • Processing sensory stimuli takes effort for me. If there’s more going on than I can safely process, my ability to perceive, think, and function will degrade. This includes noises, lights, textures, conversations, and noticing things around me.
          • I can protect myself by erecting sensory barriers that exclude certain stimuli from my perception, but they take work to maintain and they aren’t perfect, and they can lead to not seeing important things (which is dangerous when driving a car).
          • I can create a fascilime of a neurotypical person for people to empathise with, connect to, and socialise with. But when it comes to sensing my genuine feelings, neurotypicals are simply less able.
          • I cannot understand certain patterns of neurotypical thought. I can mimic them perfectly, but I can’t think them. Whether to blindly copy others is a choice.
          • Neurotypicals struggle greatly to understand my patterns of thought, unless they have a great deal of patience.

          As an autistic person with NPD, I can tell you from direct experience they’re very similar in terms of how they influence my relationship with society. Autistic people struggle to understand my narcissism, narcissistic people struggle to understand my autism, neurotypical people struggle to understand everything about me, and I get along great with other autistic narcissists, of which there are not many.