A thread on fascists' fear of disabled people.
Fascists are afraid of disabled people. They want to eliminate disability. Why? 1/8 One reason is stereotypes about disability as “impairment” and “tragedy” and “social cost.” Fascist think that disabled people are lesser. But there’s another reason. Fascists are afraid of disability activism. 2/8

A new post by @virgil_30 on the "mystique of addiction." Why does our society treat addict artists as cool but bad?
'Berryman’s poem excerpted above—Dream Song 153—identifies the suffering artist as a peculiarly modern tragedy, indexed to “this generation.” 1/4 But the 27 Club gains a new member at least once a decade. Nor was Berryman’s generation the first afflicted: the phenomenon predates him by at least a hundred years. 2/4

Why #academia loves the #pedophilic #corporate #elite, by @HeerJeet in The Nation: 1/5 "It's easy enough to guess why Harvard bigwigs like
Summers hugged Epstein so tightly. The modern
neoliberal university is a shark that must constantly
consume donations in order to stay alive. 2/5

My take on the role of the #philosophy #books in #TheWhiteLotus, season 1.
The characters in White Lotus appear to be reading a number of philosophy books. 1/18 These include The Portable Nietzsche, The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud, The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon, Discourse on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire, and Gender Trouble by Judith Butler. 2/18

The Whale is an appalling example of ableist pity porn. Crip theorists have written extensively about a pervasive double-bind used to oppress disabled people: the victim-hero dualism. 1/8 Either you’re a tragic figure or a heroic overcomer. If the former, then nondisabled people can pity & paternalistically ‘help’ you, making themselves feel saintly & superior. 2/8

A thread on 'Brave New World' and the link between #hedonism & #eugenics:
Aldous Huxley was right: eugenics and hedonism are inextricably linked. 'Brave New World' is about a eugenic society that designs human beings for specific social stations and jobs. 1/10 Everyone has a genetic destiny and a pre-ordained role in the labor force. 'Brave New World' is also, in equal measure, about a hedonistic society in which people only care about pleasure, sex, material things, 'feelies,' doing drugs, and having orgies. 2/10

A thread on the hegemony of science and its impact on humanistic philosophy:
Psychology and psychiatry have appropriated concepts that used to belong to the purview of philosophy. 1/13 Love, alienation, anxiety, despair - all these and more have been transformed into psychological constructs, susceptible to pathologization and depoliticization. Here is an example from bell hooks' 'All About Love':...2/13

A thread on methods of teaching #bioethics:
Most bioethics textbooks use ideal theory. They start with ethical theories that can be applied to case studies... 1/6 Ideal theory, says Charles Mills, is “a distortional complex of ideas, values, norms, and beliefs that reflects the nonrepresentative interests and experiences of a small minority of the national population.”... 2/6

1. A tweet thread on over-medicalisation and over-medication under capitalism, based on my blog post on @biopoliticalph: 1. I’m surprised that there’s controversy over the claim that people are over-diagnosed and over-medicated in a laissez-faire capitalist society.

1. I assigned Gattaca in my bioethics class & I don't regret it. One of the premises of the film is that everyone is miserable. The "invalids" are unhappy because they're oppressed, but the "valids" are also unhappy because they can never live up to the culture's eugenics ideal.. 2. or even fulfil their supposed potential as "valids." Jude Law's character, a "valid," can't accept that he came in second in swimming competition in spite of his "superior genes." He becomes paralysed after trying to kill himself...

1. Is it wrong to let students use AI to generate essays instead of doing their own work? My colleague Gabriele Contessa wrote an excellent response to this question, which goes something like this: 2. (1) University students are adults and it's up to them whether to waste their time and money on a specious degree or actually learn something; (2) If AI can write better than most people, then maybe what students need to learn is how to use AI.

1. A thread on mainstream theories of incarceration - retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, restoration, incapacitation - which are gaslighting narratives that provide a smokescreen for racial capitalism: 2. Many critics say the American carceral system is based on retribution but I disagree. It's based on racial capitalism. All of the above principles - not just retribution - are in fact utilised to enforce a system of racial capitalism...

1. Thread on the ableist fetishization of so-called intelligence in academia. I just read yet another article that glorifies so-called intelligence, which is a social construct rooted in eugenics. 2. In an ableist culture (such as ours) in which so-called intelligence is so idolized that it’s a condition of citizenship & personhood, everyone will have anxieties about whether they’re ‘intelligent enough.’

Philosophy is a love of wisdom, which cannot be quantified by grading rubrics or systematized by learning outcomes. Why are philosophy professors addicted to academic metrics that commodify learning? (A thread on #ungrading). @Jessifer says that "grades (and institutional rankings) are currency for a capitalist system that reduces teaching and learning to a mere transaction. Grading is a massive co-ordinated effort to take humans out of the educational process"...

Are lesbians women?
Monique Wittig (1992) says no. Jaboc Hale (1996) says sometimes.
Let’s break it down. Wittig believes that lesbians are not women because to be a woman means to be in a binary relationship (paradigmatically, marriage) with a man: