Cartoon puppies and neurodivergent scapegoats

 Note: This post mentions childhood sexual abuse (in the context of inappropriate comparisons between innocuous things and CSA).

One irritatingly pernicious aspect of neurobigotry I’ve noted repeatedly is that there is no trait, preference, or activity a neurodivergent person can have that will not be pathologized. Neurotypical people can have preferences, interests, likes and dislikes, but neurodivergent people’s identical traits can only be called “symptoms,” “behaviors,” “coping mechanisms,” “obsessions,” “self-soothing,” or my personal least favorite, “maladaptive.” Everything we do is pathologized. Eating. Sleeping. Having friends. Not having enough friends. Exercising. Sitting still. Having sex. Not having sex. Collecting things. Dressing up. There is literally no activity so innocuous that it won’t be pathologized if a neurodivergent person does it. In fact, I might have said, next they’re going to pathologize us for drawing cartoon puppies.

And then the concern troll internet mob literally pathologized openly queer neurodivergent artist Sophie Labelle for drawing a cartoon puppy.

Y’all, I can’t make this up.

Sophie Labelle is an artist who’s written several webcomics and books about queer and trans issues. She’s also autistic, and identifies as a Little, which is a term for adults who sometimes enjoy or find comfort in activities that our society considers childlike, or who find comfort in being cared for like a child.

Now, as I’ve mentioned, being an adult interested in “childlike” activities is something that is perceived very differently when neurotypical people do it than when neurodivergent people do it. Neurotypical adults are accepted, even praised, for embracing childlike interests or “getting in touch with their inner children.” Articles have been written about the millennial generation redefining adult interests, making cartoons and games mainstream adult hobbies. Neurotypical adults are free to be as “childlike” as they want with little, if any, social stigma.

But for neurodivergent adults, having “childlike” interests, hobbies, or mannerisms is proof of defect. Proof that we need institutions or guardians because of our low “mental age” or “developmental level,” or a “symptom” of some “unhealthy coping mechanism,” or, at worst, proof that we must be depraved pedophiles using cartoon characters to seduce innocent children.

So, Sophie Labelle drew a cartoon of an anthropomorphized puppy. Cute little puppy, in the vein of popular anthropomorphic-animal cartoons like Paw Patrol. Any neurotypical artist could draw it without controversy. But, Labelle is openly neurodivergent. Therefore, she was attacked.

Ostensibly, the basis of the criticism is that she used a photo of a real child as reference for the cartoon puppy, but this is self-evidently a red herring. Artists use photo references all the time; the resemblance was a loose one, and nothing about the child in the photo would be remotely identifiable in the puppy cartoon. No one actually believes that it’s somehow inherently wrong to use a photo of a child as reference for an anthropomorphic puppy cartoon.

Instead, critics used the non-issue of the photo reference as a hook for their real allegation: that because of Labelle’s neurodivergent identity, the puppy cartoon must be in some way “sexual.” Therefore, she’s “sexualizing children.” Therefore, she’s a “pedophile” who’s “grooming” children to “think this is okay” and is “unsafe around minors.”

The critics could not be more transparent about their criticism being one of “who” rather than “what.” A perfectly innocuous, nonsexual puppy cartoon is presumed to have sexual intent, and presumed to involve some sort of sexual intent towards real human children, solely because the artist is neurodivergent/Little. Critics performed incredible reaches, claiming that the puppy is in a “pinup pose” and reading sexuality into her other cartoons that would absolutely be G-rated if released by a studio.

And of course, the other neurobigoted claims came alongside it. Being a Little is “sick,” “perverted,” and an “unhealthy coping mechanism” that society should not “normalize.” Others insist that being a Little is “age regression therapy” that should only be done by a licensed therapist, and that roleplaying with a partner is somehow irresponsibly practicing therapy without a license, or… something. Frankly, the argument rather falls apart, because there’s nothing there. Side note: Some Littles do use terms like “therapeutic” and “coping mechanism” to describe their Little identities, and they have every right to do so. However, I think this illustrates why that framing is not necessarily helpful for achieving acceptance. If you justify your identity on medicalized grounds, it can be challenged on medicalized grounds. And neurotypical adults do not give medical justifications for liking to color or play with dolls.

Bad faith accusations of pedophilia are de rigueur right now. They will continue to grow as long as they go unchallenged. People can be accused of “child abuse” against fictional children, theoretical children, “children” who are actually legal adults, and literal cartoon puppies. It should stand to reason that if no children are involved, no child abuse can be taking place, and yet. The intent of these bad-faith accusations is to define “deviancy” (in this case, the deviancy of being a Little-identified neurodivergent, queer, transgender woman) as inherently harmful to children -- existing while Like That is presumed to somehow harm any children who may be in proximity, especially any children who may be influenced to believe that it’s okay to be Like That. No one can make a serious claim that cartoonists will abuse children, but they might set an example that it’s okay for adults to Nonconform, and that is considered tantamount to abuse.

Intuitive eating and one-size-fits-all

Prescriptive diet culture, especially (but not exclusively) the sort aimed at losing weight, is ableist and sizeist, with frequent undertones of racism, classism, and sexism. It relies on the premise that all bodies can and should fit into a certain size and a certain range of “health” and ability, that fat and disabled bodies are inherently lesser, and frequently relies on patronizing or limiting the options of poor people for their alleged “own good,” stigmatizing or patronizing the food choices of non-European cultures, and judging women’s and perceived-women’s bodies more harshly than men’s bodies.

In response to this, various fat liberation, body positive, and health-at-every-size movements have arisen to challenge this narrative to varying degrees. One of the alternatives often promoted in these contexts is “intuitive eating,” in which people eat what their bodies crave, whenever they’re hungry, instead of following a prescriptive diet or schedule. This is framed as radical, liberatory rebellion and self-actualization against diet culture.

Intuitive eating is great for some people. However, there are some problems with promoting it as a universal solution.

First of all, “Everyone should eat intuitively” is just as prescriptive as any other prescriptive diet. It still frames food choices as something with a right and a wrong answer. What superficially sounds like “Eat whatever you want” actually becomes “You must eat whatever you want, and examine carefully whether you actually want it, and defend your choices accordingly.”

Secondly, intuitive eating is fundamentally inaccessible to the majority of the world’s population. Perhaps if we lived in a Star Trek universe where we could just command a replicator to create food and have it instantly ready for us, then most, if not all people, could eat intuitively. But in our own world, our food choices are constrained by time, money, and availability, as well as restrictions like allergies and sensitivities.

When I think about what food I want to eat, I have to think about what I already have. What I can afford to buy. What I have the time and energy to prepare. I might “intuit” that I crave a steak, but what I have readily on hand is a bowl of cereal. Intuition won’t help someone with chronic fatigue who can’t stand at a stove for long or chop vegetables, or someone on food stamps who has to stretch their budget, or someone who works long shifts and comes home exhausted, or a parent of three children with food allergies who only feeds themself leftover scraps from feeding them. Who has time and energy to cook a meal from scratch? Who has money to go out to a restaurant? Whose invisible and underpaid labor -- farm workers, grocery workers, restaurant cooks, homemakers -- does this system rely upon?

The third problem with promoting intuitive eating as a universal solution is that many foods are manufactured in such a way as to sensorily mislead the eater about their properties. The idea that “artificial” or “processed” foods are somehow “worse” than “natural” foods -- or that those are meaningful categories -- is ridiculous and baseless. However, it is a fact that many foods are made to mimic the look, taste, smell, and texture of foods they do not actually contain. This makes it harder for eaters to “intuit” a food’s properties by the usual means. Eaters may have to rely on ingredients lists and nutritional information rather than sensory input alone. This is especially true for people who have specific nutritional needs, like allergies or nutrient deficiencies, to either avoid or seek out specific food attributes.

Finally, even if all other obstacles were eliminated, some people are just not good at intuiting their own food needs. People with executive functioning disabilities may forget that they’re hungry, or not recognize their bodies’ hunger signals. Not everyone is naturally good at piloting a meat suit. Food is difficult, and it’s okay to need external reminders to refuel.

Intuitive eating rhetoric can sound suspiciously similar to the common rhetoric of the “natural” “wellness” movement, stemming from the premise that all bodies are born with a natural alignment to a certain standard of “health” and normative ability, and only external factors and individual choices can “corrupt” it. In reality, there are no normative bodies or abilities. Plenty of people are born with food-related disabilities, whether difficulty remembering to eat, anxiety, susceptibility to nutrient deficiency, allergies, diabetes, or all kinds of other conditions. Food is hard. Harder for some people than others. And that’s okay.

There’s nothing wrong with intuitive eating, but it’s not a universal solution to everyone’s food difficulties. We need affordable, accessible food for everyone. We need everyone to have the free time and support they need to perform all activities of daily living. We need living wages for everyone at every part of the food supply chain. We need clearly labeled food ingredients and nutritional values. We need a society where everyone has the resources, time, and support to eat whatever they want, and the information to know what they’re eating. And then, maybe, intuitive eating can be a more attainable goal for people who want it.

We also need a society in which bodily autonomy is respected, and people’s food choices and other health and bodily choices are rightly regarded as no one else’s business. We need widespread recognition that there’s no standard of health or ability that anyone “should” have and no way that anyone “should” eat, and that what matters is ensuring that everyone has equitable access to resources, which each individual can choose how to use, whether that’s eating frozen dinners every day, growing vegetables for fun, eating only purple things, or using a timer to remember when it’s time to eat. But until we achieve that society, “intuitive eating” might as well mean “let them eat cake.”

There is no such thing as "narcissistic abuse"

 “Narcissistic abuse” is not a real thing.

I have repeatedly written on this page that there is no such thing as a neurodivergence, disability, illness, or mental condition that “causes” someone to be abusive, violent, bigoted, or otherwise harmful to others.

First of all, a “personality disorder” cannot, by definition, be a cause of someone’s behavior. The diagnosis of a “personality disorder” is a description of (real or perceived) observed behavior, and an assumption (accurate or inaccurate) about the emotional motivation for that behavior. It is circular and nonsensical to say that someone behaves a certain way “because of'' their “personality disorder” -- it would only be accurate to say that because the person behaves in a certain way, someone has classified them with that diagnosis. (I could point out that this labeling and categorization process occurs in the context of an oppressive, kyriarchical system which interprets marginalized people’s responses to oppression through a pathologizing lens, but that would be too big a topic shift for one post, and wouldn’t be that relevant to debunking the concept of “narcissistic abuse,” which is mostly applied to privileged people, anyway.)

Some people are self-centered. Some people are abusive. Some people behave in an abusive, self-centered way. None of these facts are in dispute. When we say “Narcissistic abuse is not a real thing,” we are not saying “Self-centered, abusive people are not real.” We are saying that being self-centered and abusive is not an intrinsic condition of the brain, a “disorder,” a disability, or “caused by” anything other than one’s own choices.

Why do people cling so fervently to the concept of “narcissistic abuse”? Why are people so insistent that there’s such a thing as a “brain disease” that can “cause” someone to be self-centered and abusive?

One reason might be that pathologization is used to convey intensity or extremity. In the popular conception of psychopathology, pathologized conditions are “extreme” versions of “normal” traits. In this framework, one might insist on pathologizing someone’s abusive, self-centered behavior as a way of conveying that the behavior is really, really, extremely abusive and self-centered, and differentiating it from allegedly “normal” abusiveness or self-centeredness.

Another, perhaps more insidious reason, is that classifying someone’s abusiveness as a “disorder” frames it as an intrinsic aspect of the person, rather than a choice they make. It codifies “just intrinsically a Bad Person” as a (pseudo)-scientific reality. If someone’s abusive or self-centered behavior is “caused” by their “brain disorder,” then they are an inherently unforgivable and irredeemable person. Sometimes, pathologizing people’s behavior is used as a reason to excuse them from blame or responsibility -- “They couldn’t help it, The Disorder made them do it.” But in the case of so-called “personality disorders,” the reasoning seems to be the opposite -- “The Disorder made them do it, so they’re Just Inherently That Way.” The line is drawn neatly between The Narcissist and The Innocent Victim. No one needs to examine the dynamic further when one party is an inherently evil Narcissist.

Additionally, the framing of abuse as caused by a “brain disorder” obscures the real cause of abuse, which is power. As long as people have power over other people, at least some of them will use that power abusively. Blaming abuse on “brain disorders” shifts discourse away from the abuser’s choices, the moral code that allowed them to make those choices, and the structure of society that gave them power to abuse someone else.

“Narcissistic abuse” isn’t a real thing. “Personality disorders” can’t “cause” behavior, abusive or otherwise. And if we really want to stop abuse, we have to dismantle social power structures, including the power structures of ableism, neurobigotry, and pathologization that classify some brain-types as “disordered.”