Sexuality is intimately tied to gender identity. For men and women, sexuality primarily centers on penetrative intercourse and the acts of erogenous stimulation. But there’s a whole world of genders out there which have sex differently. And for proof, you only need to look at the sexes of diverse animals in nature. Plants use flowers as sex organs, fish fertilise eggs, and mushrooms are weird. If any of those creatures were intelligent enough to invent gender, their genders would surely involve a different conception of sex.
Certain nonbinary gender identities also have sex weird. For swarmgender and dronegender people, sex is mind-melding. Experiencing oneness of identity with a partner or a collective. I thought I was asexual until the first time I did it, and in fact for a year afterwards until I thought back one day and realised “Wait a fucking minute, that was totally sex!”
Neurotypicals have a hivemind. A very faint and weak one, in comparison to the level of connection I would consider “sex”, but the way everyone is forced to think the same thoughts and be part of a collective is certainly sexual to me. They all have a shared sense of empathy calibrated to one another, and most of them get hostile when it doesn’t work on autistic or narcissistic people. They dehumanise, depersonalise us, or take us to be in bad faith, assuming bad intent. They get violent, at the idea that we will not or cannot at some level mind-meld with them.
And when your sexuality is based on mindmelding, well all of that feels just a bit more personal. Me and my collective don’t let just anyone into our swarm, and I refuse to be part of the neurotypical hive. I used to be, but I don’t know if I even could after discovering myself beyond what neuronormative society will accept as real or possible.
I can take the time to patiently and slowly build a little bridge between myself and one other person, allowing their sense of empathy to work on me. But it’s individualised. The data bandwidth required is too much for a mass broadcast, I need the high fidelity of a personal connection in order to teach someone empathy for any of the strange stuff. So yeah, I have sex with some neurotypicals when they demand to understand me. Their empathy won’t work on me if I don’t fuck them.
But I can’t have sex with everyone. That’s too many people. And there’s times I’m tired, or frustrated, and I don’t want to have sex with someone who’s being rude to me. And then they always come out with “You should be more patient, you should tailor your arguments to me, you shouldn’t call me a transphobe just for spouting rhetoric”.
And, well, I don’t like it when neurotypicals get upset that I won’t fuck them.
I guess my comment was taken as bad faith so I’ll just speak plainly: I don’t understand what OP is talking about and it’s very confusing to me.
Well, you’d understand if I mind melded with you, but I don’t want to do that, so if it’s important to you, you’ll have to study. It’s important to me to be open about my identity and be treated with dignity for it, but I don’t care whether there’s empathy or understanding involved as long as there’s no violence.
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Apologies, I am aggressively bad at social interaction and my go-to is trying to make people laugh, often without fully considering how it could be rude. Politeness as a concept is confusing to me, like most things about people.
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the failure mode of clever is “asshole”
You just explained Reddit and Quora in 7 words
My contrarian brain wants to argue with this article’s conclusion by saying that the failure state of polite is patronizing and the failure state of direct is rude
Why this information needs to be conveyed to you I don’t know, but it skipped the forebrain and went straight to the fingers, so sorry
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No this is me sucking at conveying intent again lol
I really have kind of given up on understanding social rules so I just try to be nice and make people laugh and sometimes it works
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I’m not a he
My apologies, comrade. I’m not good with pronouns.
Thanks. By the way I was reading through the modlogs, and they kinda gave the impression that if someone’s gender did involve aircraft, your team would be transphobic to them. And I don’t like that. It’s simple statistics that sooner or later someone with an aircraft gender is going to come along. It’s blind luck that I’m swarmgender instead of uavgender, and I don’t like that you would have treated me differently if the dice had rolled a different way. One of my partners is otherkin and one of its kintypes is airplane, and it sounds like y’all would treat it with hostility just because some transphobe made a joke more than ten years ago.
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If transphobes can successfully get leftists to attack minorities by making the existence of those minorities seem offensive, then the transphobes have won
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I use those terms because they’re similar to the terms used by other people in the identity fusion community. I think it all descends from the hivemind trope in science fiction. Some writer analogised creatures like the Borg to insects, and it stuck.
I’m extremely intrigued what this mind melding looks and feels like. Anywhere to read more about it? It’s the first I am hearing about these things.
Well, I can’t exactly show you something happening in my mind. But look up the concept of egregores from chaos magic, that should serve as a starting point to understand how sex works
I kind of envy your willingness to link with others like that. I used to be a whole lot more open with my energy, but repeated trauma from psychic vampires got me to seal that up like I’m aging wine in the cellar of my chakra stack. On the far side of that, the concept of sharing such a deep link like that would scare the absolute devil out of me-- how do you manage it?
I don’t view it as all or nothing. I experienced absolute fusion with someone who hurt me, and I’m not in a rush to go that again. But partial fusion, that’s easy. I do a little bit of sex, the equivalent of a quick handy, to any transphobe who demands their sense of empathy work on me
Oh I know all about egregores and chaos magick which is why it intrigued me as it sounded very tantric. I guess you create one that is the hive mind and then connect to it together? Sounds awesome.
Yeah, build a shared identity together, and identify as it. The magic is easier if you have narcissistic plurality
Chaos magic?
I apologize in advance if this is improper or offensive, please let me know if that is the case.
I was wondering if there was any similarity between the ‘sorcery’ or ‘magic’ stated in this article which Alan Moore refers to and what has been mentioned in the parent comment. I use quotes because I don’t want to refer to something dissimilar and potentially cause invalidation.
The article gives an interesting idea of the conception of ‘magic’ and grounds it in historical terms which I appreciated. Are there any comments or opinions that spring to mind?
EDIT: here’s a link without a paywall
Oh, Aleister Crowley? Yeah, he’s part of the history of the same vague realm as I practice. One of my biological parents is a fan of his writing. I didn’t know this until I’d already dived deep into my own exploration of magick. I suspect that’s because my parent does sex magic the same as I do, and didn’t want to teach me about it for obvious reasons. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was magick involved in my own conception, which would make for a nice story. Magic may be in my blood, or at least a genetic predisposition to similar ideas.
I’m not familiar with Crowley’s specific ideas, but I know he has a prolific place in the history of modern occultism. Chaos magic is the branch of these traditions which is intensely focused on the scientific method and the correct practice of psychology. Chaotes are encouraged to borrow from any tradition they find interesting, to keep what works, and to discard what doesn’t. I never had to go very deep into the history of magickal traditions to look for material, because my own NPD is a fantastic tool for magic. Hmmmm… maybe the same genes responsible for formation of NPD in the midst of an abusive environment also make someone a good magic user. That would make sense, because narcissism is so deeply magical. Or maybe it’s purely developmental, and narcissists just get a lot of practice in because magic is our coping mechanism.
Personally I find the works of Robert Anton Wilson to be the best Chaos Magical Theory. “The border between the Real and the Unreal is not fixed, but just marks the last place where rival gangs of shamans fought each other to a standstill.”
That’s a fantastic quote, where can I start reading them? Do they have a book you’d recommend?
Holy fuck I love that quote
Is there somewhere I can learn about swarmgender, drone gender, or mind-melding (as used in this context)?
I recommend watching Star Trek: Voyager through a queer lens.
There aren’t any specific sources on my gender because it’s so uncommon, and so hard to discover about yourself if you do have it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I know more about it than anyone else in the world.
Try researching “gravity” on the day the apple fell on Newton’s head, and you’ll run into the same problem. Academia and documented science only explore what people have already thought of before and written down. And when it comes to a gender identity that even Hexbear attacked me for having during my first days on the site… yeah, nobody’s gonna publish this stuff and risk all the hate speech they’d receive.
Interesting. Why Voyager specifically? Is it because of the isolation of the ships crew, or the presence of 7 of 9 and the exploration of hiveminds/individualilty?
7/9 and the early borg plotlines. Voyager is crap otherwise. Janeway is transphobic, their native american consultant was a fraud, and I refuse to acknowledge the borg queen as canon given that the borg were explicitly stated to be communists in their first appearance. The entire point of them is they’re communists! But 7/9 is a good drone and watching Janeway misgender it and force it into a species identity it hated is a very good plotline for all the angst and #relatable energy.
Tuvok also has sex (mind melds) every time they need information or reform out of a criminal, and that’s pretty accurate to my experiences. In TNG they establish it’s a deeply personal experience, and Enterprise uses mind melding as an allegory for being gay, which is actually accurate to my experience. And having the security officer solve every problem with sex is just my life tbh
So yeah, I have sex with some neurotypicals when they demand to understand me. Their empathy won’t work on me if I don’t fuck them.
Could you explain what you mean by this? I was intrigued by the title and as far as I can tell this is a key part of that initial statement.
Building a mental bridge. Opening up my mind so they can read it. That’s what empathy is, mind reading. And for my gender, it’s an erotic activity. One I don’t enjoy when I’m coerced into it as a matter of personal safety. I’d rather have conversations with neurotypicals in which we don’t feel a need to read each other’s minds. There’s no need to bring sex into every conversation, but some people get aggressive if you don’t.
Nobody should get aggressive over something like that. I think, however, I’m unclear what you mean by empathy. My interpretation of “reading someone’s mind” in this context is more akin to recognizing social cues than having or displaying empathy for another person’s situation.
I understand that I’m not at all equipped to even make a comment on the concepts you’re talking about. I’m just trying to understand how I could engage with society in such a way that, if we were to randomly meet, you would not feel as though you were being harassed.
Affective and cognitive empathy are two different skillsets. Affective empathy tells you what people are feeling. Cognitive empathy tells you what they’re thinking. Recognising social cues is part of cognitive empathy, and that’s why autistic people are said to struggle with cognitive empathy.
When I’m closed off from the NT hivemind, I’m a black box to cognitive empathy. You can’t see inside, you can’t guess my motivations. And there are lots of people who respond to that with hostility. Just having the option of closing myself off when I want to would be what I want.
Can I ask, and I don’t mean to pry, how does this work? Like, without allusions to fiction, what does building a mental bridge look like in reality?
Neurotypical thought is governed by cause and effect. The same causes will result in the same effects. If you’ve been in the same situation a dozen times and paid attention, then when that situation comes up again, you can identify which mental causes will result in which actions of the neurotypical. I use my repository of past experience to make educated guesses at what other people are feeling that makes them act in the way they are. Then I know what’s going on in their head.
Narcissistic thought is governed by the rules of fiction. To understand what a narcissist is thinking, all you have to do is be genre savvy. So to make others feel empathy for me, I have to convince them on some level that they are interacting with a fiction. Once they’ve got their art critic hat on, they’ll understand me. So I talk about fictional scenarios and try to rope that person into my reality. Or I try to tell a story they find compelling that they’ll be able to predict the next beats of based on their culturally learned understanding of stories.
Once I understand them and they understand me, we have two way empathy.
That’s really fuckin cool
Thanks!
One side effect of narcissistic thought being based on fiction is that, well, a lot of our deepest held ideals are fictions: Justice, Honour, Fairness, Science, Truth, Hope. These are ideas human beings invented. And real people cannot hope to live up to them. Narcissists can. On the other hand, though, there are plenty of less savoury fictions: Evil, Malice, Hopelessness, Vengeance, Punishment, Authority.
If you understand the rules of the Narcissistic brain, it’s actually very easy to manipulate a narcissist. Risky, and dangerous, but not technically hard. You just have to get the narcisstist to tell the story you want told. Do you want a hero? A mentor? A damsel? A devotee? These are fictional character archetypes, and with consent, a narcissist will play them. Everyone wants to be a hero, we can actually do it. The trouble is, if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with a villain. A crusader. A devil. A betrayer. When the narrative is disrupted, it seeks the most stable equilibrium. There’s no guarantee you’ll like it. That’s why narcisstists are seen as abusers.
Few people are capable of true introspection and improvement. Neurotypical or otherwise. But if you find a narcissist who is, then you have a true paragon.
Sorry for originally taking this down.
I got a complaint and felt that it was best to take it down since I’m still new to modding, but as someone that is neurodivergent themselves, I feel that I was too quick on the draw.
This is fascinating OP; I understand you’re speaking literally here, but I can also see what you’ve described above as a kind of metaphor for neurodiverse experience in general. I certainly connected with almost everything you wrote, though I’ve never thought of this kind of lens to examine interactions between folks. The neurotypical hivemind is a powerful and useful concept when trying to understand the lay of the land in modernity, so thank you for introducing me to it!
EDIT: Also kind of jealous at your ability to mindmeld on that level at all. Something to be proud of I would think. And interesting to contemplate how atomised we all are, neurotypicals included, despite being part of a weak hivemind.
I can mindmeld like this because I’m a narcissist. Conventional wisdom would say narcisstists struggle with empathy, but that’s based on neurotypicals observing narcissists who are in the depths of our trauma responses. The truth is, narcisstists can control our level of empathy. We can turn it all the way off, or all the way on. And obviously, people stuck reliving a trauma pattern due to CPTSD would have their empathy turned off most of the time. But when we choose to, we have the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes absolutely. And that’s how you get a mind meld.
Hi, hoping to learn more. When you say neurotypicals have a hivemind is that in reference to how they interact with others who are neurodiverse on the whole or as individuals who are neurotypical? Or does something like the hivemind manifest in any interaction between groups (of people? of identities? of an alter or set of systems? sorry if this is offensive, not sure what wording to use as this is new to me)
Would the hivemind also manifest in intra-neutypical interactions, or does the interaction between hiveminds necessitate certain qualities of the hivemind before an interaction could be considered to happen, like in the case between swarmgender individuals and say a cisgender heterosexual woman wouldn’t be considered a hivemind since the woman would not have enough grounding to be considered a hivemind (as they may not explicitly identify with it let’s say)
I don’t know if this is applicable, I watched Psycho Pass and they had something similar but I wouldn’t want to misgender you or anything or draw similarities where there are none. I thought it was cool as hell, they collective Sibyl that kept society in order could not judge others like it which were made of several individuals since it would mean it could judge itself. Became a huge plot point for the second season.
The hivemind is something neurotypicals consistently work to try and maintain, and a good number would be happier if there were no neurodivergent people and they just got to spend their lives in the collective. Fractures in the hivemind exist at social and political boundaries such as race and culture. White supremacists wish only to mindmeld with other white people, and seek to construct an ethnostate to that end. It’s still a single hive, but it has regions of increasing connectivity and bounaries of decreased connectivity. Colonisation of the new world was a big culture shock to everyone involved, and the white people chose to resolve the differences between their two hives by using cultural genocide to bring the natives into the white hivemind. Which is why I see the pattern of thought and allowable identity prescribed by the hivemind as implicitly white supremacist. The hivemind doesn’t have room for twospirit genders, or traditional communist ways of doing things, or for religions which conflict with european christianity and monoatheism.
Most ND people are part of the hivemind on some level, but not as much as they or their oppressors would like them to be. They want more empathy and understanding. Some try to assimilate through processes like ABA, and some campaign for equal rights within the boundaries of normative society. And some, like me, discover that what we are looking for in life cannot be found within a fundamentally broken system.
This sounds a lot like the concept of cultural hegemony, at least to me. But through a different lens.
Yeah, exactly. Or the concept of consensus reality. It’s all the same thing.
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Sounds a bit like a combination of “intense vibing” and “edging” and I’m all for it.
