Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most …
Polytunity - The Ideas Letter
“Polycrisis” has become a ubiquitous descriptor for the multisector, intersecting problems afflicting the world—but the term masks the systemic nature of these crises and overwhelmingly reflects Eurocentric voices, priorities, and…
How AI Hacks Your Brain's Attachment System (with Zak Stein)
Not everything is ‘trauma’. Language needs to mean something | Aeon Essays
From a broken life to a broken nail, ‘trauma’ has been bleached by overuse. But it names something real – and must be reclaimed
To build gentler technology, practice trauma-informed design
Understanding trauma helps craft gentler user experiences.
Communities of Not
On the strange hostility that grows in communities built around abstinence.
The Highly Sensitive Person
The Highly Sensitive Person: Books, Information, Self-tests, Events and Research
A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent
Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more.
A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent
Our autonomy can be compromised by limitations in our capacities, or by the power relationships within which we are embedded. If we insist that real consent requires full autonomy, then virtually no sex will turn out to be consensual. I argue that under conditions of compromised autonomy, consent must be socially and interpersonally scaffolded. To understand consent as an ethically crucial but nonideal concept, we need to think about how it is related to other requirements for ethical sex, such as the ability to exit a situation, trust, safety, broader social support, epistemic standing in the community, and more.
Empathy, Thick and Thin
When we empathize with someone going through something, we often draw on our past experiences with the someone and the something. These kinds of experiences gro
Why we started Polywork
Polywork has officially been live for just over three weeks, marking what was an amazing 12 months of hard work and love from our…
New study finds Canadian trans youth rarely detransition | Xtra Magazine
A group of Canadian researchers found that 97 percent of youth who seek treatment for gender dysphoria still identify as trans years later
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen
An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual att...
Feminine Panic: Who Gets to Own Masculine Narratives? - Unwinnable
The panic serves control, not preservation.
Polycrisis - Cascade Institute
The polycrisis program examines how today’s multiple crises are linked and how the polycrisis could create possibilities for positive outcomes.
Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity
In the usual order of things, lives run their course and eventually one becomes who one is. Bodily and psychic transformations do nothing but reinforce the permanence of identity. But as a result of serious trauma, or sometimes for no reason at all, a subject’s history splits and a new, unprecedented persona comes to live with the former person - an unrecognizable persona whose present comes from no past and whose future harbors nothing to come; an existential improvisation, a form born of the accident and by accident. Out of a deep cut opened in a biography, a new being comes into the world for a second time. <br /> <br /> What is this form? A face? A psychological profile? What ontology can it account for, if ontology has always been attached to the essential, forever blind to the <i>aléa</i> of transformations? What history of being can the plastic power of destruction explain? What can it tell us about the explosive tendency of existence that secretly threatens each one of us?<br /> <br /> Continuing her reflections on destructive plasticity, split identities and the psychic consequences experienced by those who have suffered brain injury or have been traumatized by war and other catastrophes, Catherine Malabou invites us to join her in a philosophic and literary adventure in which Spinoza, Deleuze and Freud cross paths with Proust and Duras.
