I don't think I'm one of them either. I'm one of mine.

Month: September 2024

Dumb takes on intelligence

On the one hand, there’s the entirety of Paul Cooijmans’s oeuvre. On the other hand, there’s Kaninchen Zero’s “Ableist Word Profile: Intelligence.” Both are supremely stupid.

Cooijmans’s concept of intelligence can be reduced to testing. Not intelligent behaviour, not developmental history, just testing. But the tests are supposed to reflect the ways that people recognise patterns, process information, and generate new knowledge. He can’t see the forest for the trees. (He’s also the kind of scum who links to white-nationalist sites like American Renaissance.)

In some ways, Kaninchen Zero’s post is even worse, mostly because we’re supposed to be on the same side. At least you know what you’re getting with Cooijmans—racist, sexist, ableist bullshit. Kaninchen, on the other hand, cannot separate individual differences in cognitive ability (which obviously exist, or we wouldn’t have a diagnosis called “intellectual disability” that necessitated accommodations) from the misuses of intelligence testing. It is a poorly argued mess.

Go right ahead and criticise biased IQ tests. But to pretend that intelligence doesn’t exist is to pretend that humanity doesn’t exist.

Dear Dad…

(CW: rape, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, emotional abuse, misogyny, homophobia, religious fundamentalism)

I hate you. I do not regret my existence, but I hate you. I hate you with the fury of a thousand suns. I have never in my thirty-eight years met another human being as contemptible as you are.

Why, pray tell, do I hate you? Here are thirty-eight reasons why, one for each year of my life.

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Dear Mom…

(CW: rape, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, emotional abuse, misogyny, homophobia, religious fundamentalism)

I know you’ll never see this letter. But I’ve got to write it anyway.

I have been deeply concerned about you since I left home nearly twenty years ago.

It’s about Dad. He has been the worst thing to happen to you in your sixty-two years of existence. You have thrown away your ambitions, your intellectual curiosity, your wit and humour, your very soul. You told me that you wanted to study forensic science, that you wanted to go into a law-focused undergraduate programme. Instead, you threw all that aside for Dad. Dad has brought pain, suffering, and alienation to the women in his life—and one man. My sister and I have pulled away from him, but you are still trapped in his net.

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