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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32159 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Scott has posted a short article: You Don’t Want a Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy of Mental Disorders.

Takeaway:

if “political correctness” sounds too dismissive, we can rephrase it as: “they want something that doesn’t think about ethics and practicality at all, but which is simultaneously more ethically correct and pragmatically correct than other taxonomies”.

Some of Scott’s best work comes from the tension between categories-as-descriptive and categories-as-prescriptive, so I’m pleased to see him tackling this subject.

He has a couple potentially spicy sentences which have been interspersed with extra letters to ward off journalists. Legends say they aren’t able to remove text without an invitation, preventing context-removal. A handful of commenters immediately proceed to demonstrate why this will do nothing to keep some people from thinking Scott is literally Hitler, but perhaps it will keep them from publishing that? I’m not optimistic this will keep an opportunistic editor from stripping out letters with no direct relevance unless they’re legally required to put “…” in their place.

I’m having trouble understanding your point, with a lot of what seem to me like unsubstantiated yet controversial assertions.

I think Scott's title is actually wrong. People do want a purely biological apolitical taxonomy of mental disorders - they just also want the world to be just, so there wouldn't be any conflict. That what is true and what we want to be true do, in the end, coincide; that the truth would never be inconvenient to those with the correct values.

I read Scott as saying “No, you don’t want to eat that tub of ice cream, even though you are tempted. It comes with consequences, laid out here, that you are not actually willing to accept”. Is that your read in this paragraph? I don’t think so, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at either.

To take a very different example: Todd Akin's claim that "legitimate rape" could not cause pregnancy: often considered an example of rank misogyny, but even if so, I would say it's much more importantly clear just-world thinking.

I’m not familiar with this person or claim. I’m struggling to understand how pregnancy can be ruled out, given PIV intercourse, whether coerced or not.

EDIT: Akin said “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy, because because their bodies prevent them from doing so. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

I have no idea of the biology there. Maybe stress hormones in a traumatic situation somehow prevent conception? Does this still comport with your point?

I’m struggling with the rest, likely because of the above.

I’m not familiar with this person or claim.

Wikipedia has a quick rundown here. It was enormously controversial in 2012.

Thanks. I didn’t see any serious wrangling with the idea that the trauma and stress of a violent rape may induce physical changes that prevent conception. The wiki article showed many plausible statements from conservative doctors in support of the idea, and just bare rebuttals from the medical establishment, presumably along the lines of “there is no evidence…”, likely driven by mood affiliation. I dug into the most direct rebuttal but it 404d and I stopped there.

My understanding is that pregnancy from rape is no less common than pregnancy from consensual sex and that the contrary position is not taken seriously by many medical professionals.

That’s my prior, but I’d also be surprised if there were zero effect on conception from the stress and trauma of a violent rape. Direct evidence would be impossible to gather, but I can imagine studies based on other forms of stress and trauma.

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