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The flag situation

It's been brought to our attention that the original versions of the quidditism flags hel a lot of resemblance to the flag from a queer facsist group rising to "fame" lately.

At first, we elected to ignore it, but alas, nobody wants to be conflated with these people.

The flag has therefore been changed.

The old designs will stay up on this post and can of course still be used, but the main flag is now the one on the pinned/coining post.

Old flag designs:

New flag design:

I can just imagine saying “lobotomies are bad” in like 1949 and having someone say “you’re wrong, the science is settled, lobotomies are the best way to treat mental illness” and guess what? In 1949 I might be the unpopular and socially wrong one. The person with the backwards, conservative thinking. That is the year that António Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for lobotomies.

Lobotomies are still bad, but a lot of people have now understood that it’s a deeply harmful and anti-human practice. It was often performed on women (60% of cases were women in the US, a study in Ontario put women patients at 72%) and on gay men. Societal mores have changed on what is psychiatrically appropriate—many of these women were depressed and repressed housewives, or were not naturally submissive to their husbands and considered “combative”.

Many lobotomies were called “ice pick lobotomies” because they involved inserting an ice pick through the eye to sever the part of your brain that feels emotions. There were different techniques, largely dependent on which surgeon you saw. Norbert Wiener said in 1948, "Prefrontal lobotomy... has recently been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier."

In 1944, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease ran an article saying, “The history of prefrontal lobotomy has been brief and stormy. Its course has been dotted with both violent opposition and with slavish, unquestioning acceptance."

Walter Freeman called the practice “surgically induced childhood”—he specialized in lobotomies and performed them until 1967, so he found this to be a good outcome. In fact, he worked on an “assembly line” process where he could lobotomies 20 people a day, and even did a surgical procedure face-off with another doctor in 1948 to compete in an operating theatre to show an audience of doctors that his technique was superior. The other professor was a professor at Yale, William Beecher Scoville, another famous lobotomist known for proliferating the procedure. They called it a miracle cure, and the gold standard for psychiatric treatment.

Scoville’s most famous patient, Henry Molaison, was a 7-year old boy with epilepsy after a fall from his bike. Scoville couldn’t find the problem, so he just destroyed all three regions of Henry’s temporal lobes. Afterwards, the surgeon noted memory loss “so severe as to prevent the patient from remembering the location of the rooms in which he lives, the names of his close associates, or even the way to the toilet or the urinal.”

Scoville’s wife sought psychiatric care after her husband cheated on her and she had a breakdown. Her husband lobotomized her himself.

In the 1960s, when schizophrenia became a radicalized charged diagnosis that was often used against Black people, especially those involved in the civil rights struggle. Walter Freeman did several pushes to lobotomize Black people, including as young as five, for “hyperactive and aggressive behavior”.

The practice continued in some places until the 1980s. It was used to treat schizophrenia, affective disturbance (mood disorders and people reacting in non-mainstream ways like being an opinionated woman or gay), and OCD, chronic neurosis (anxiety), psychopathic disorders, and depression, among other things. You may notice the old names for these things—things that we might not consider the same way now. Being gay was a mental disorder. Women who wanted independence or respect were often diagnosed. Not fulfilling your traditional societal role was a good way to end up institutionalized.

It was considered, at time of invention, to be an humane alternative to insulin comas and shock therapy (ECT). Many people considered it lifesaving and gold standard treatment for mental illness. Some reports believe that about a third of patients found the procedure beneficial. Others faced dementia, death, incontinence, inability to speak, paralysis, and other effects. Many people were unable to ever leave care again afterwards, though they were more complacent.

I don’t think any scientist who tells you that science is settled is a good scientist. I think that treatments that target people who don’t fit the mold of society, people who are countercultural, and people from marginalized groups should be especially criticized. Psychiatry is a very new field. Part of the phasing out of lobotomies had to do with the development of the first medications for psychiatric use—which in turn have had their own social, political, and ethical conundrums and misuse. Many could consider Valium (“mother’s little helper”) the spiritual successor to the lobotomy.

But in 1949, if I said lobotomies are bad—I might have been met with “Do you hate mentally ill people?” “It works great for most people!” “Without it, she will just be depressed and kill herself” or “My friend did it and all her problems seem better now”.

Lobotomies were bad the whole time.

i think that the limited contact stance of “to consent to sex you must understand sex” is like. a little bit ableist? there are a lot of people like me, who are disabled, and want, like, or consent to sex, for whatever reason. but some of us dont have the mental capability TO understand sex, even when we are adults. that doesnt mean we arent able to not understand the possible effects of sex, it doesnt mean we cant say no or yes, it just means we dont understand it to the same level an able bodied person would.

As you said, understanding sex doesn't mean the same for everyone. Disabled people can understand sex, even if it is slightly different to the understanding of an abled bodied person.

Ice cold takes from a Transgender Woman:

Men are not inherently Evil

Everyone has the capacity for evil

Transgender Men are men

Transgender Women are women

Excluding Cisgender Men from your spaces requires Transgender Men to out themselves if they want to engage (Same for Women)

Anyone can be Non-Binary, there is no "look" or requirement

Non-binary masculine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces, many are just treated as men and predators

Non-binary feminine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces without being seen as "Woman-Lite"

Edited the wording on the first point because too many terfs keep thinking I'm their friend.

transage questionnaire

hello all transage peeps, beings, and creatures! I have created a little google form to collect more information about transage people and the transage experience! I would greatly appreciate if you filled it out! I hope it’s not too long! :D

Google Docs

Transage questionnaire

Fully anonymous 👍 to help gain more info on transage people and experiences ^_^

I am transage myself! anyone who is transage can do this survey because it is literally specifically for the purpose of collecting info.

just found this while scrolling and it seems remarkably similar to consistent progressivism but with contrasting values; wanted to ask what are the core fundamentals of quidditism and how does it compare to consistent progressivism; what would be some key differences between the two stances /neu

We could be considered similar for 2 aspects.

First one is, we're radqueer adjacent, and so are they. That means being pro-para, pro-bodily autonomy, pro-transid, and profiction for example.

The second similarity is that contrary to the radqueer community, that is closer to the MOGAI community on this point, we are not just a community for people to be themselves. We would like to do some activism as well, a trait we share with consistent progressivism.

However, the similarities stop there, and thank goodness.

I am working on an article about this, but they are basically fascists that covered themselves in rainbows. For a quick explanation, I reblogged this post (link) that explains the basics pretty well.

But let me give you the three main differences.

First: science denial. They redefine words and consider using Google and dictionaries as being conservative. Here is a screenshot of their Discord server.

In the thread linked to this, they list words that are conservative to use in their opinions. These words include parent, family, adult, anarchy, biology and age, amongst others.

Second: they believe everyone can consent to everything. Here is their resources about this. We quidditists have much needed nuance on this subject.

Third: to preface this, I'll start by sharing a screenshot of their definition of conservatism.

In short, they define anyone who holds discriminatory views as a conservative.

In practise, anyone that does not fully agrees with them is labelled a conservative. I won't get into it here, but it is one of the few cult tactics they use: the "Us vs Them" mentality.

Now, the bigger problem with this, is that they wish to violently genocide and torture everyone they see as conservative. They talk about this quite often in their Discord server, and even asks new members to describe how they would torture and violate a conservative in order to get verified.

Here is proof of them wanting to unforce this violence on everyone they label a conservative.

(other than their graphic & Discord sticker, the black & white images are quote pics made with a bot from messages on their servers, that they keep in a special channel)

Quidditism advocates for violence to only be used if you need to, as a last resort, and strictly as much as necessary and humane. Aka no torture, rape, slavery,...

I hope this clears things up! And thank you for your good faith question! /g

If anyone has any more questions, please send them my way! I'd be happy to answer them! /g

Despite popular belief, smelling bad is not actually a crime and should not be used to judge someone's morality or character. Lots of good people smell stank as hell. Real bad. You can acknowledge that bad smells are unpleasant, and how you might not want to be around someone who stinks (I choose to suck it up personally, just acknowledging it as an option!) without perpetuating a sentiment that causes disadvantaged people to face more harm and scrutiny. Stand up for stinky people I'm being so genuine rn.

Quidditism discord emoji combo + flag colored version.

Did u get my vibes man?