this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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(page 2) 47 comments
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[–] [email protected] 40 points 14 hours ago

isn't this also, like, a tweet about queer people?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

Uranus is still there even if no one can see it.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

... so what you're saying is that exoplanets cause autism!

[–] cogman 20 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

No. It's obviously the space telescopes.

[–] obinice 11 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Opisek 4 points 11 hours ago

You already asked that last year!

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

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 😓

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 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.

[–] qarbone 10 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I wonder what the coal mines were like

[–] [email protected] 13 points 12 hours ago

Alcoholics, probably

[–] solomon42069 83 points 19 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...

[–] yesman 213 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 93 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

There's a reason that the word "sinister" has negative connotations these days, despite it originating from the latin word for "left".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

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

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[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds 40 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] blazeknave 6 points 16 hours ago

My grandfather too

[–] [email protected] 39 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

just waiting for the us government to criminalize left-handedness

[–] [email protected] 14 points 14 hours ago

They're busy on darkskinedness and transgenderedness atm.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Noodle07 7 points 13 hours ago

Sailling the ND seas...

[–] But_my_mom_says_im_cool -4 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

Unlike planets, people with autism have indeed been born in the last few decades and were not always in existence like some shadow beings

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 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 4 points 12 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

[–] withabeard 57 points 22 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".

[–] [email protected] 12 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It's them upgrading the graphics card to our simulation.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 28 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 18 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.

[–] PunnyName 11 points 21 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago

I love this post.

[–] saltesc 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Got to say, I don't really understand. But words ending with the -demic morpheme aren't used lightly where I'm from and still mean what they do. I assume that's what's going on in this comment.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds 23 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

There are bad-faith actors trying to convince people that autism is "caused" by vaccines and similar garbage. They see the growing autistic population as a "woke epidemic"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

Not even that necessarily, they just like to act as if a lot of autism diagnoses are made up or at least severely exaggerated.

shit like "bah you're not autistic, you're just an introvert, you just need to try harder!"
I've faced this myself from my mom's SO, he was just fucking incapable of entertaining the idea that i'm autistic before i got my diagnosis, despite working with other neurodivergent people and accepting them! It's maddening.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 19 hours ago

So you are trying to say there is a bad-failth-actor-idemic. Got it.

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