I notice a lot of people use terms like “psychotic” or “psychopath” as insults and negative descriptions on here. These are clinical terms that are used to describe real people with difficulties, not boogeymen! I don’t disagree with the sentiment that these people are doing wrong, but if you wouldn’t use the r-slur or “autistic” as an insult (which you shouldn’t) then you shouldn’t use these words either. And I get the idea of calling someone delusional, but take care that you don’t just mean “I disagree with them.” Though by posting on neurodiverse I imagine I’m preaching to the choir.
Sincerely, a casual schizoaffective disorder haver.
So as I understand it, psychopathy is a disorder that incorporates low empathy and antisocial behaviors. A psychopath need not be a mass murderer and can, in fact, be indistinguishable from any other person on the street. The connotation of being a harmful, violent person is not necessarily the reality. My stance is “Any person is capable of any thing.”
Some would argue that being indifferent to others’ suffering is
just as bad asequal to taking pleasure in it. If we’re going to treat the word psychopath as derogatory, you could say the same about sadist.I’m pretty sure “sadist” isn’t used to demonize and stigmatize neurodivergent people the way “psychopath” is (at least, I haven’t personally come across it in that context but if someone else has pls lmk.) Therein lies the difference imo. Low empathy is not an inherently “evil” trait btw, it is a very common trait among neurodivergent people in fact. Painting people with low empathy as bad people because of their low empathy is ableist.
Quick internet search later: it seems “sadistic personality disorder” is an unofficial personality disorder that some people subscribe to. Hmm. That’s definitely one ableist context for the word, so I’m wrong there.
So part of being inclusive towards all sorts of neurodivergent people is embracing, encouraging, and accommodating their differences, right? Are we supposed to to treat people who take pleasure in making others suffer the same way?
You were right about “psychopath” before, I’m kind of wondering how we should treat sadism then.
you lose a lot of consideration when your divergence puts others at risk. Maybe some non-fetish sadists need something like that dementia village.
Right. I think the difference there is that a psychopath typically has a physical difference in their brain that limits their empathy ability. Now you can also say a sadist is born with the desire and they can’t really control it, so I’m not sure where the answer lies there. I typically don’t use sadist as an insult (or at all, really) but I can see the arguments.