By David Futrelle
Blabby racist YouTube “philosopher” Stefan Molyneux is brain geniusing again, and it’s not pretty. Though he’s not a doctor, or a psychologist, or really qualified to offer opinions on any subject at all, Mr. M has discovered the cause of ADHD — and conveniently enough it’s a group of people he hates: immigrants!
I guess the scare quotes around “ADHD” also indicate that the disorder he has just solved isn’t really a disorder in the first place.
But wait, I’m hearing that there’s another cause of this imaginary thing called ADHD, also according to Mr. Molyneux. It’s single moms!
But wait, you may say, if the problem is absent dads, aren’t the absent dads themselves kind of to blame?
No, because in Molyneux World, absent dads are caused by bad moms.
Heads, it’s bad moms; tails, it’s bad moms.
In conclusion, everything is always the fault of someone who isn’t a white dude.
Always good to check in with dear old Stefan and his little nuggets of wisdom.
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Steffie’s got it all wrong. It’s Rush Limbaugh’s fault. How many of us heard of ADHD before Limbaugh became well known? Checkmate!
Same old, same old. Men are not responsible for their own bad behavior; it’s all women’s fault for not punishing the men enough. And this flagrant irresponsibility on the part of women proves that they cannot be trusted with any societal power and it must all be hoarded by men…whose bad behavior is a given, remember.
It’s amazing how much money you can make by making arsehole feel good about being arsehole.
Also notice in this “theory” (used in the loosest possible terms), that girls/women/POC do not ever have ADHD themselves? It is all just “creative white boys”
Well, I guess that solves my quandary. Here I was thinking that I might have ADHD, what with my inability to concentrate and my RSD and my “being still causes physical pain” and my self-medicating through maladaptive overstimulation and my autism and shit. But since I’m Jewish, DFAB, and have two present and loving dads, it must be just….personal crappiness or something.
(Seriously, though, I am deliberating over whether or not I have ADHD proper, or whether it’s just my autism and anxiety playing tag-team on my ability to do anything. I have been both diagnosed and un-diagnosed with ADHD, and Adderall doesn’t work on me, but I have trouble concentrating to the point that it’s seriously affecting my life.)
ADHD proper is a chemical imbalance, and Adderall produces a totally different reaction in people who have it as opposed to those who don’t. If you don’t feel the effect calming your brain so you can think more clearly, you’re probably right that your attention problems are due to something else.
I’m a third generation ADHDer. (Do we have a cool name for ourselves? Help me, Internet) My grandmother, my dad, me. We were all raised by both parents. The fourth generation back were immigrants.
Maybe we are reading him all wrong and what he means is that ADHD goes up in proportion to immigration because immigration CAUSES ADHD. The bullshit racism could be a non-sequitur. It is Molyneux, after all.
Yknow what’s funny? This reminds me so much of how doctors in France diagnose autism, “it’s a psychological problem caused by rejection from the mother” or something like that.
@Shalimar
Thanks for the advice, but at the same time ARGHLBARGLR I WANT A SOLUTION TO THE THING THAT IS RUINING MY LIFE
@S.P.
absolutely understand the frustration. there are other drugs than adderall that work in different ways that you can try. And ruling out ADHD completely doesn’t provide a solution, but at least it would narrow down the possible explanations/treatments.
I am still utterly at a loss as to how men asking women out means women have greater choice?
For starters you could argue that the expectation for women to wait for men to approach them means they have far less choice (as they can only select from the ones asking them.)
Secondly the man is still CHOOSING who to approach. They don’t ask any and every woman to date them. So both parties equally are making choices.
But I forget. I am trying to find logic in misogyny land. First rule of misogyny: A Woman is always to blame.
He forgot to blame video games, T.V, Internet, social media, vaccines, toxin in the water, GMOs, safe space and anti-bullying rules in schools.
3/10, not a very woke guy.
/sarcasm
So, I was diagnosed with ADHD (now it would be ADHD-i, I suppose) in the seventies. Strangely, I was raised in a two-parent household. Maybe that guy wasn’t my real father or something? I mean, it’s not like Stefan Molyneux might be blithering on topics he knows nothing about, right?
It’s weird to see a right-winger complain about the dumbing down of education, given it’s mostly Republicans trying to ruin education in this country. There’s a bill in the Florida congress now to get rid of science requirements for high-school graduates, and it’s got nothing to do with making things easier on immigrants, but just making sure nobody learns any science that Republicans hate, which is most science.
Meanwhile, I have shiny internet things to be distracted by.
l was afab and identify as female, and my parents have been together since I was born. And yet I do have adhd. Guess I don’t exist? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ll be sure to fuck with Stephen if I ever have the misfortune to meet him in real life, he’ll probably be really scared of things moving without someone holding them.
This “argument” is so tired and specious.
Step 1: Ignore the medical definition of ADHD.
Step 2: Redefine ADHD vaguely as “boys will be boys”.
Step 3: Rage at the medical establishment/ schools/Western institutions for pathologizing “normal male behavior” (ie boys who flout rules and disrespect female authority).
Step 4: Blame the moms for separating from the dads, because otherwise how is Junior gonna learn how to shit all over women if women behave with self-respect and walk away from a bad relationship? How’s he going to grow up to be a stern disciplinarian if Dad isn’t there to show him how to cheat, gaslight, and belittle?
None of which has anything to do with actual ADHD, or single parenthood, but whatever.
This kind of thing is par for the course when it comes to Stefan “literally everything ever is about my mommy issues” Molyneux. After he blamed the fall of the Roman Empire on neglectful moms, however, I feel he never quite reached the same level.
@ Flora:
Maybe ADHD causes immigration? Because of the not being able to sit still in one place? /sarcasm
I’m gonna have to tell my current students with ADHD that they’re white. And half of them that they’re male. Those’ll be some weird revelations.
Molynucks’ barf reminds me that before the Enlightenment, everybody in the west solved problems by just thinking real hard at them.
Conservatives still do.
That statement needs air quotes around “everybody”, “west”, “solved”, and “thinking”, because that’s a laughable caricature that Rationalists™ and white nationalists alike think is true*, but has very little actual connection with how shit actually got done.
*For vastly different reasons; Rationalists™ like to use the Dark Ages as a large stick to beat people with while illuminated by the light of the burning Library of Alexandra, and white nationalists like to imagine Re-Becoming the Greatness that We Never Weren’t, because everybody knows that Greece and Rome became preeminent powers because of democracy and philosopher-kings and not, y’know, vast amounts of slave labor.
High IQ man apparently doesn’t understand spurious correlations.
High IQ man doesn’t understand spurious correlations.
Me and my sister and dad all have ADHD. I don’t have enough middle fingers for this guy.
My elder son had two fathers, and he was still diagnosed with ADHD.
That said, he got a really bad shake of the genetic dice from his birth parents.
JRichard – I’ve read about that – Lacanian psychoanalysts sitting in their offices with non-verbal autistic children, listening attentively to what the patient is not saying.
Huh, interesting. Apparently my daughter doesn’t exist, considering that she is the product of a very intact family, and female, but also was diagnosed with ADHD. (Good news: since the diagnosis, therapy and medication has shot her academics from lowest in her class to mid to high level in her age range within weeks.)