Liesl (she/they) 1990. pisces. queer. white. ∞ i love fruit, tea, science, and hockey. my gay wife and i live with our cattes. b.sc psych (bio) mcl » m.ed ed/psych ( 802 » 518 » 717 » 423 » 802/518 ) literally 100% mobile and virtually no tags. hockey sideblog: @tres-bien-desbiens bear sideblog: @bearyparfait (katmai season!)
shout out to everyone here for the cogsci/neuropsych takes. please know that sometimes i only post horse memes instead of smart takes.
one thing about scientists is that we only have two modes: 5-10 paragraph analysis, and smooth brain laughing at the worst memes on earth
i'm liesl. queer white usamerican-canadian. i grew up in new england (quebec border), and currently live in appalachia (tennessee). i'm in neuropsych and cognitive (neuro)science research, with specific interest in: epigenetics in heritable neuropsych conditions (especially psychotic disorders); addiction research, biopsychosocial models of stress and wellness in individuals, communities, and populations; secular addiction and post-carceral rehabilitation. my current research is on social media, generative AI, behavioural addiction, and models of social and self connectedness in determining outcomes (specifically aiming to describe why some AI chatbot users experience psychosis or are driven to suicide, among other detrimental outcomes).
i am always always always willing to talk about these topics and will in fact invite myself onto posts to host a mini-TEDx on these topics and others in my field. please let me know if you are in my field or an adjacent field, i would love to talk to you about research!
my hockey sideblog: @tres-bien-desbiens (pwhl, nhl, iihf, olympic/worlds, some wnba, some ncaa, ice dance and figure skating)
my bear sideblog: @bearyparfait (currently in katmai bear cam mode, but i also post a lot of bear art and other bears on there.)
i am an adult and i post about "adult topics" on this blog. i trust each and every one of my followers to decide if they are ready, able, and willing to see these topics. if that is not you, i encourage you to unfollow or block me.
(blog and cut content note: abuse, CSA, mental illness)
i am disabled. specifically, i am epileptic, and the type of epilepsy i have often impacts my mood, personality, and memory. my mind is organized into a system, which has been present to my knowledge since at least age 6. i do not really engage with plural discourse, mostly because my experience is intimately informed by my autism and the specifics of my CSA experience.
i do talk about my experience as a CSA survivor, typically not graphically, but i do acknowledge the levels of abuse, coercion, manipulation, and my own experiences with my father having severe cptsd and schizophrenia (which would likely now be diagnosed as schizoaffective). i also have cptsd and have awareness of generational trauma and the legacy of cyclic abuse, and i talk about that, too.
i am a prison abolitionist and support reforming our criminal justice system from retribution-based to rehabilitation-based. i believe most people can be rehabilitated, and acknowledge the criminal justice system as legalized slavery which disproportionately impacts black and brown people in poverty.
a few more rent-lowering gunshots:
trans siblings are always welcome here 🏳️⚧️
all members of the 2slgbtq+ are supported and welcome here, including nb, gnc, and aspec. exclusionists need not apply. none of us are free until all of us are free.
bodily autonomy is a non-negotiable human right for all people, which includes children, disabled adults, those who have uteruses, trans people, and racialized people. the usamerican medical system is distinctly unjust to these groups.
abortion should be legal, accessible, and free. the only requirement is you are pregnant and want to not be pregnant. i support catholics4choice.
i'm culturally catholic, a long-standing critic of the church (and officially an apostate). i will voice both support for positive actions by the church and strong criticism for past and continued wrongs. the latter will be much more frequent than the former.
nuanced AI views, but generally against LLMs as a consumer product, supportive of gen AI in biology and diagnostic research settings, critical of water and other ecological concerns wrt data centres. gen AI chatbots are a plague. gen AI cannot make art or be creative; these are human endeavours.
my stepdad was an evangelical and i have a lot of opinions about evangelical usamerican christianity, mostly critical. i talk about the role of churches in southeastern us communities, especially in terms of disaster response, as well as the role of churches in addiction treatment and charity work.
southern folks deserve respect for their cultures, histories, and humanity. i will talk at length about systemic inequality, literacy issues and the death of free public education, and rural society.
gender is a social construct and there is no inherent difference between men and women that is not socially mediated. raise all children the same.
okay don't bother sending hate i will just block u lol
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suburban women on september 15 1967 tuning in to star trek and seeing fuck-or-die mode spock getting in a sweaty man fight with captain kirk in amok time
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Pro tip. If you pay some guys to move your enormous bed and pull up the old carpet in your bedroom, make sure that you first remember to put away all the shibari rope hidden in secret anchors behind said bed.
not to make posts that are going to get me anon hate, but I am fucking begging people to stop calling fictional characters "minors." can we please go back to talking about fictional characters as children or teenagers. please.
first of all, "minor" is a word that has a meaning and that meaning isn't necessarily "children in the general sense." it is in fact a really specific legal term. it is a status that grants a group of vulnerable people protection by the law. so, as fake people who don't exist and therefore have zero protections by law, a fictional character cannot be a minor. a fictional character is fictional.
Also, in the sense of those real-world protection laws, sure, it makes sense to group together newborns through 18-year-olds. but doing so is genuinely completely fucking useless when talking about a narrative. "This is a story where the main character is a minor!!!!" you could be talking about Bluey you could be talking about The Catcher In The Rye you could be talking about Yellow Jackets. I don't know how else to express that story about a 7-year-old, a story about a 12-year-old, and a story about a 17-year-old are are, structurally, completely different things despite all being about "minors," and how grouping them together makes no sense. it's reductive at best and destructive at worse. Imagining sitting down and being like "oh yeah, let's look for a story about minors to recommend to minors" and you hand children's picture book No, David! to a high school senior.
what bullshit scare tactic language. "yikes, you're shipping minors" and the ship is two 17-year-olds who the narrative treats as active parts of the story who make their own decisions and have their own desires. when did we all agree to start talking like this and can we stop. just fucking tell me if a character is a child or a teenager.
Using the word “minor” to refer to a fictional character CAN be useful, actually, but ONLY in the sense of where that legal status actually matters within the narrative—which it may. Like, if someone’s trying to convince me that the twenty-five year old should date the sixteen year old, I am absolutely going to point out that the sixteen year old is a minor. Occasionally that status is in fact a useful descriptor.
But it is problematic how much it is used to lump children and teens into a need package of Itty Bitty Babies. I wouldn’t necessarily say no one should ever call a character a minor again, but I would say to be mindful of where it’s appropriate to point out specifically that qualification of rights and protections rather than the actual age group that person comes from.
Hi there. OP of this post, which I don't usually respond to anything on because I like having a life outside of the internet. But I do want to ask you specifically a genuine question here:
In the situation you outline, where a story is trying to convince you that a 25 year old should date a 16 year old, why is the 16-year-old's legal status the thing you want to talk about?
Why do you think it's useful to talk about that 16-year-old as a legal minor rather than a teenager? Because there are many places and times in history where 16 is absolutely, in the social and legal sense, not a minor, and I think a 25 year old dating a 16 year old would still be morally objectionable in that situation. Why are we framing this as "16 is a minor and that's illegal" not "that's a teenager dating an adult, which is bad and wrong"?
And, look, I was absolutely being overly general in that original post—obviously, there are stories in which a character being specifically a legal minor is important and should be talked about. There are crime dramas about this. There are legal narratives where it's relevant. If the above situation is from the 16-year-olds POV and being framed as some fucked up """"forbidden love"""" situation, the characters are likely written to be talking about themselves in that way.
But go back to my original question: why are you talking about legal status when you can just say "this character is a teenager/this character is 16 and shouldn't be dating an adult" and you not only get the same point across, you also actually specify the character's actual age range? Because saying "this is a story where a 25 year old romances a minor" could mean anything from "this is about a middle schooler being sexually abused" to "this is about a 17 year old getting involved with a dangerous person." And I really don't see how that's a useful way to talk about fiction and narratives.
Actually I disagree that the 16-25 relationship has at all times in history been inherently predatory. While I’m not saying that past instances of normalization of older men marrying younger women is a great thing because that normalization existed because of misogyny baked into culture among other things, it’s also the case that within that existing system, the individual relationship isn’t necessarily wrong in the same way. For example, when I read Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, at no point does the thought “wait, but she’s 17 and he’s 26!!!” cross my mind, because within the system they existed in, this was not an age gap that would register to any of them as weird and had no more problems in terms of power imbalance than were going to be present in literally any relationship between a man and a woman in that time period. That’s a teenager and a guy in his twenties, but the concept of it being an adult/minor relationship is entirely inapplicable.
However, if a story set in the modern day US had a 17 year old date a 26 year old, suddenly the fact that that 17 year old is a minor and lacks a certain legal status puts them in an imbalanced position. And, yes, while I don’t necessarily recommend an 18 year old dating a 26 year old, that would be different, and it’s not because there’s a huge maturity difference between 17 and 18 (or even because there’s zero power gap—there totally is and so I’m not like, cheering this on) but becoming a legal adult does in fact have impacts on things like consent and power dynamics, and therefore is fundamentally less problematic. So yes I actually do think the legal status matters sometimes.
Notice how you said to say “a teenager shouldn’t be dating an adult” using the word adult (which applies to everyone over 18 which is a much more massive descriptor than minor) instead of “young adult” or “guy in his mid twenties” because the fact that one of them is over a certain legal age is in fact extremely important in such matters. And yes, if that arbitrary line existed elsewhere, a few years older or younger, that would in fact change things, because that shift in legal status objectively marks a power balance shift.
I appreciate you explaining your thinking! That’s a lot clearer, I understand what you’re saying now.
Reading this did also help me articulate to myself another problem that crops up in how the word “minor” is currently used in every day vernacular vs. what it actually means. because people absolutely do use it as interchangeable with “child” or “teenager” or “young person,” which leads to situations where, as you say, an “adult/minor relationship” is dangerous because “minor” (particularly in the USA) is a designated, constructed social class that disempowers youth and means someone has very few autonomous rights. But people talk about it like it’s dangerous because all minors are bitty children who don’t know anything and cant have desires or choices because they can’t handle that. Which of course isn’t true, and is also the rhetoric that has tech companies asking for your ID to use social media.
So the sentence “a minor cannot consent to an adult” is true because someone who is un-personed by law cannot meaningfully consent to someone who is personed by it. But people read it and understand it as true because it’s reinforcing their belief in the purity and/or stupidity of youth, who need to be guarded from all the things that will hurt them including themselves, they can’t know what’s best for themselves. Which is certainly interesting to think about and I’m not sure how to fix it.
But now I’m rambling and I shouldn’t be, lol. Anywho! I really do appreciate you taking the time to write out an answer :)
This does make sense, and in the spirit of your original post, I do agree with your criticism of the unfortunate trend of minors being “baby-ified,” for lack of a better term. Like you said, the reason a minor can’t consent to an adult isn’t because they have no maturity or desires or understandings of their feelings but because we have laws and constructs surrounding a status that fundamentally changes at a specific age. And I do think it is important to recognize that, and important that you’ve pointed it out! Since my initial response apparently didn’t quite articulate my thoughts (oops) I’ll additionally clarify I always intended my reply to be mostly in agreement with the original post (in the sense that I agree with the sentiment but couldn’t quite get on board with the abolition of the word “minor” in reference to fiction as a solution to that issue, since that classification can be important) and more of an addition than a critique. But just because the classification can be used appropriately in conversations about fictional characters doesn’t mean it usually is and I do think you’re right to call that out.
Always fun to have an insightful dialogue on the internet! I appreciate your reply to my reply to your reply (lol) <3
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I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀
Honestly, good luck seeing drastic change without putting in substantial effort. I should go more often than I do, but I have friends who do it as a hobby, with like home lifting.. apparatus? what is that called it doesn't matter the point is that their results are largely in their functional strength, not appearance. neither of them are "shredded" my dude has a beer belly but he's strong af
Anyway lift weights, it's fun and also you can listen to music. i like metal for lifting and electropop for cardio because of the different energy, but you do you. i find that something with higher bpm is good for cardio but something with good bass or like.. idk, rich texture? a drop is great for powering through when you're near the end of your reps, lol.
funniest version of polytrix being exposed to the fans is always going to be through out-of-context photos of two of them being gay in public, but only two of them. a photo of rumi and mira kissing hits social media and rumira is all anyone can talk about for weeks, only for another photo to drop of zoey and rumi holding hands and staring homosexually into each other’s eyes and suddenly all anyone can talk about is how rumi from huntr/x is cheating on both of her bandmates with each other
When I was a teenager in the 90s, my mom, who's Christian, suspected that I might be gay, so she sat me down and told me that there's no feeling or thought I could have in my head that God would consider Bad.
I wasn't ready to admit to myself that I was queer yet, but I really appreciated it.
If you like my comics, please support me at: patreon.com/daisyfm
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