• Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 hours ago

    I just want to take the moment to say, nice to have you all around, especially if you are different. Thanks for enjoying the shit that I don’t. And thanks for sharing my love for something for a different reason. Thanks for showing me a different world.

    Also If everyone was like me, my girlfriend wouldn’t be who she is, but ignoring that, I would have a lot of competition and it would be really boring for all of us. Wtf do you talk about if we all would be the same? I would hate you all, and consequently myself. Thanks for being different, seriously.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    I will argue that the mild part of the autism spectrum, what we call functional autism, is not a mental illness, not a disorder.

    It’s like being left handed, not the most common thing, it can cause troubles in a world made for right handed people, specially if being left handed is not accepted. But by itself is just another way of being just as “healthy” and “normal” as being right handed.

    I think this is an open debate. Some folks prefer it being considered an illness because they want diagnosis and treatment. Others, like me, just love to be this way, and there’s nothing I think is wrong with me. The only problem is that the world is not accommodated for people like me, just like it wasn’t accommodated for left-handed people not so long ago. But as soon as it’s 100% accepted as something normal I don’t see it causing any trouble, so if there’s no harm there’s no illness we can talk about.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      Wholeheartedly agree with this! IMO our societies have a big problem with people being different.

      That’s my opinion, but I attribute this liberalism: when the society’s philosophy is to attribute 5he responsibility of anyone’s success on each self person, it means the responsability to fit in is on the person itself and not on the society. This removes the burden of inclusion from the society, the group, and make it a burden of adaptation on the person. It is a toxic societal environment.

      As an argument to this point of view: making it an illness provide a justification for the person to be different, and a responsability for the society to accommodate disabled people. But the need to go to this extreme instead of simply being tolerant and accommodating any difference is both stupid (because it is a burden for both the victims and the society to hold discussions about basic needs) and a inhuman way of treating people.

      Another argument to my thesis is that the “epidemic” is coincidental with societal individualism (pushed by liberalism and that rose since the end of ww2) and the decline of social structures like church and government help (because liberalism was about fighting government involvement in people’s lives).

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      5 hours ago

      The tldr for this is Neurodiversity

      Almost all disabilities exist only within the context of a culture. They are a human applied label.

      I recon most disabled people can do more advanced complex tasks than any animal/pet. Yet we do don’t think of our pets as disabled.

      We are all born with a useless appendix, which can potentially burst and kill us. If someone was born without. Would we all have a disability compared to them.

      Someone with only one arm is considered disabled, extra fingers? If its not the default it’s considered disabled.

      Now imagine a humanoid alien race with only 1 arm and a hand with 6 fingers. And imagine what their keyboards may look like. A normal human in their society would be considered disabled. Not because you cant use the keyboard but because you would struggle using a tool not designed for you.

      Now the reason why you still want a diagnosis even when you agree with the above is simple. Society has not evolved this perspective. We can accommodate almost all disabilities but they key to getting that help is by first bureaucratically “registering” yourself as disabled by a medical professional.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        20 minutes ago

        100% the individual conditions make us different but the challenges and obstacles to everyday life that some different people may face originate on the social environment they exist in, not on the individual. If the society and environment change to accommodate for greater diversity then the person can more easily overcome the disability.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        I disagree on the last paragraph. Not so long ago helping disabled people was an obvious thing to do in our societies. I’m not saying it was easy for them or that it always worked. But in the last 70 years our societies changed to remove any help that wasn’t justified. The reason was simply to save money.

        Now you must justify that you are different and this difference warrant a different treatment. Because the society became intolerant to difference.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          1 hour ago

          Might be a different comment in the chain where i mentioned i don’t agree with this either but if i want the accommodation today then thats my reality.

          I am a firm supporter of moving to a needs first society, not because i have a plan to make things sustainable but because the current system where we sell human survival to corporate greed isn’t doing us many favors.

      • ZMoney@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Real quick the appendix might have an evolutionary function. When you have a gut infection and your intestine flushes out everything (good and bad bacteria), the appendix might be a cache for good bacteria that avoids both the infection and flushing. The good bacteria then repopulate your gut from your appendix.

      • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 hours ago

        We din’t need a register of left handed people to start making left handed scissors.

        I think society can accommodate without the need for medicalize it. That’s the difference I wanted to make, an illness need to be medicalized. A different way of being does not.

        For instance, my lighter skin complexion makes so I have to wear more sunscreen that people with darker complexions. But no one would think of it as something to be medicalized. It’s just “oh, I usually get burned by the sun, I better buy some sunscreen” or “oh, I’m left handed I better put my mouse in left handed mode”, or “oh, I’m gay, I’d better go find someone of my same gender to love”. Something like that. Simple, easy and widely accepted.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          4 hours ago

          Forgive me for asking but are you actually left handed though?

          Everywhere i go the default scissors are molded for right hand. On my job (which is very accommodating in a general sense) if you ask they have an additional shitty type which is still right handed in terms of the blades but at least the handle more symmetrical.

          For computer mice, those aren’t usually very symmetrical anymore either. Especially if those extra side buttons seem useful there is exactly one on the entire market that i know. This is why the vast majority of lefties use their mouse right handed.

          There have been very real situations at my job where could not accomplish a task alone because left handed tools where not available and i was just going to hurt myself. Same thing at home because left handed tools are rarely affordable but are just have to bite the bullet and hurt myself to get the job done.

          Don’t even get me started on walking in class room and seeing this:

          And then they complain about lefties handwritten being bad.

          We are tolerated and accommodation exists but these are still fairly new. My grandpa literally got beaten the left handness out of him. We still face daily disadvantages.

          About your sunscreen, i am pretty sure if you would ask a doctor they could point you to the most appropriate sunscreen. My point was not to medicalize everything but to break the illusion of the medical perspective. People have different needs and they need those needs accommodated without unnecessary hoops to jump trough.

          Of course neither left handed or fair skinned is of a similar complexity as neurodivergence or autism. Many accommodation i need for my autism are outside my price range, they will only give them to me if i first proof they are required. I disagree with the system but the system is all i got to work with.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            54 minutes ago

            Good scissors actually work either way. Blade-wise, that is, not when it comes to moulded handles: With proper blade geometry you do not need lateral pressure from the fingers for them to cut instead of passing each other, and even the exact “wrong” type of lateral pressure works fine. Scissor blades should only ever be loose when the scissors are opened impractically far to cut with. Don’t need to be expensive, only need to be not cheap.

            Those chairs should be outlawed for a whole lot of reasons, not just that they’re ignoring lefties.

            Note on handwriting, btw: Ball points are a bad habit if you want to develop proper technique, it’s very easy to use too much force, cramp up, etc, even without noticing. Over here kids write with pencils until they have the dexterity to move on to fountain pens: Breaking a pencil tip and having to resharpen is just the right amount of annoying to develop good habits.

            • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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              38 minutes ago

              The problem with “symmetrical” standard scissors is that you can’t see where you are making the cut properly.

              Many lefties who are like me and got used to symmetrical scissors may not even be aware properly pointing blades make it easier of an angle to see what you’re doing.

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 hours ago

    It’s the same about depression. I doubt people got “more depressed”, society have just ignored depression for almost the entirety of human history. My mother still tells me to “just be happy” like I can control brain chemicals. Literally nothing makes me happy. Petting my cat only slightly lessens my suffering. Ugh 😓

    • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      If depression wasn’t common someone needs to explain how we have seen so much more of it as fewer people are drinking as much as they had in the past.

    • Nelots@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      While I’m sure most of it has always been here, I would be surprised if modern technology hasn’t contributed to a spike in depression. I have more content and information than I could ever need in the palm of my hands, and yet everything I read seems to make me hate people.

        • Soulg@ani.social
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          2 hours ago

          Nor could you easily learn how people in other countries lived.

          It was way easier to have this garbage Healthcare system we have in the US back when nobody knew that other countries had it for free (potentially, I don’t know what year it was implemented in most countries but you get my point).

    • qarbone@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      I don’t think I agree with this one. There’s so much about lives lived in first world countries, with all the signals and information they are bombarded with, that is almost anti-thetical to our biology. I’m certain we are more mentally unwell than people living simply, especially in the past.

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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        4 hours ago

        I’d assume coal miners and starving peasants just had different psychological issues (mostly, I bet some got depressed anyway, especially as a secondary effect of the other issues). Like PTSD, anxiety and the like.

  • Anegro_Montoya@sh.itjust.works
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    9 hours ago

    Not about ADHD, nice. I probably have both. So many new MH illness to discover. We’re charting new territory…woooo…fuck me

  • solomon42069@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Just as easily applies to queerness and gender expression too. My favourite part on the these specific issues is the ignorance in the west, acting like being trans and queer is uniquely American and new.

    Meanwhile South East Asia is right there…

  • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
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    12 hours ago

    Historically, I think with queer/unusual behavior were simply exiled/forced into suicide if they couldn’t mask. I’m glad I live in a part of the US that isn’t a monoculture as political originalists would have it revert to. Witchburning and lynchings are for losers.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 hours ago

      well there were lots of places where these things were actively embraced, iirc there were some quite significant muslim places where they fully recognized a third gender and even considered people belonging to it somewhat holy.

    • Sonor@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      people in villages to a large extent just accepted queer people as their own category and moved on. They were tangentially aware of some people doing some unusual stuff on the sidelines, but unless it were shoved in their face they didn’t really care afaik

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    When left-handedness became acceptable the number of left handed people was far higher than experts had predicted.

    • RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️@feddit.dk
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      15 hours ago

      My grandmother told me stories about how she’d get whipped with a stick on the top of her hand if she tried using her left. Coercion never went away: conversion camps, behavioural therapy etc.

      • Daelsky@lemmy.ca
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        10 hours ago

        Before the 60s, in most Catholic societies, writing with your left hand was seen as a sign of the devil and unchristian. It was thus punished very often. I heard stories in Québec (Canada) where people would be beaten their left hand until there was blood with a wooden ruler. It’s frankly horrible and someone I know did show her scars from being beaten so often.

          • RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️@feddit.dk
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            6 hours ago

            I wasn’t even aware it came from latin, but that makes perfect sense. But it’s weird how it was considered bad up until this late in history, but it wasn’t until 1938 that someone patented the smudge-free ballpoint pen. I imagine that smudging with your left hand as you wrote must’ve been very irritating and wasteful for hundreds of years, and thus it became a sadistic ritual to “right wrongs”.
            Here in Denmark we called that type of schooling “sorte skole” (black school, an expression from the mid 1500s, where schools were run by religious institutions, so perhaps it’s a reference to their clothing?), and it didn’t matter if you understood the subject or not, you just had to memorize it and do things correctly, even writing with ones right hand.

            Dictionary lookup on google translate

            • Daelsky@lemmy.ca
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              1 hour ago

              I agree that it took so long to make it seem « not bad ». I wonder how it was perceived by societies where they write from the right to the left like Hebrew or Arabic. This would be crazy, but I even wonder if right handed people could have been the ones that were attacked by the religion or it was only a catholic phenomenon.

      • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        My mom told me similar stories. She adored Ned Flanders’s store and used to remind us constantly how easy right-handers have it (semi-jokingly). I think that was my first encounter with the concept of privilege.

        • 200ok@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          That’s actually a great example of privilege that isn’t controversial or politicized

          Edit: anymore anyway #goals

    • Match!!
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      15 hours ago

      just waiting for the us government to criminalize left-handedness

  • withabeard@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Something I noticed recently

    The same people who quickly bemoan “everyone wants a label now” seen to be the same people who say “all kids do this like that”.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    4 hours ago

    Is it psychiatrists who talk about an “autism epidemic”, or certain journalists and activists?

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      15 hours ago

      I would argue that psychiatry and psychology does not make this claim. if anything modern psychiatry and psychology along with autism foundations led the push to educate early childhood development associated caretakers, eg pediatricians, elementary and preschool teachers, etc for signs to look for and led to development and revision of specific screening tools throughout the 1990s that started to greatly increase the number of cases that diagnosed early on when they would’ve otherwise would’ve been considered “socially awkward” and ostracized for much of their lives without any support offered at all

      Granted there are certainly professionals that reject this now. The field is diverse and you certainly have varying opinions on things. And one weird phenomenon no one saw coming is that in this day and age staunchly conservative viewpoints would be disproportionately platformed. So sometimes those dumb shitheads get a huge platform because when they soapbox on social media saying “too many kids are getting diagnosed with autism” there are forces behind that realize they can be a useful idiot to legitimize awful views, like limiting health care spending (more people diagnosed with autism means insurance companies spend more) or anti vaccination nonsense (autism always attracts the loonies). And a bit of fame will often easily go to their heads, especially if it means they can now make a decent clip of money from speaking engagements and selling books.

      But remember those people don’t define the field. They are a sore on the field. The Jordan Petersons and Lisa Littmans are scum that are propped up by a propaganda network and powerful forces. They are outnumbered. That’s why their research keeps getting retracted (or in petersons case why he simply sticks to podcasts and hasn’t authored a paper since 2007), because there are more people with ethics and integrity that will call them out. At least for now, until our institutions surrounding social science are fully dismantled

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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        13 hours ago

        It’s important to note that neither Peterson or Littman are psychiatrists.

        Littman is a physician, but last I remember, she studied behavioral health and psychotherapy. Which is interesting because most doctors who have a significant interest in a field like she claims to have would have shut up a long time ago and pursued it through significant research after a couple of Ph D.s worth of work. But that doesn’t make you wealthy, it just means that the one tiny thing you researched is right. She clearly would rather have money.

        Peterson is just a grifting asshole with a psychology degree. Marketing is one of the most common employers of psychologists and he just does it for his own stuff.