I’m probably going to make myself unpopular with some people if i say this but we need to find a language of power, oppression and violence for the enforcement of circadian rhythm and the constant, entirely normalised torture enacted on those whose bod...
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I’m probably going to make myself unpopular with some people if i say this but we need to find a language of power, oppression and violence for the enforcement of circadian rhythm and the constant, entirely normalised torture enacted on those whose bodies cannot conform.
And I don’t think I am exaggarating when I say “torture”. Sleep deprivation is widely considered a form of torture, even though legal definitions are often lacking.
I mean like sure. Okay. Maybe it’s not torture to have to get up after 3 hours of sleep every day for a job because theoretically you have the freedom to switch jobs. Maybe it’s not torture to be woken up by construction noise after 1-4 hours of sleep 50% of the time, and be kept awake by similar noise the rest of the day, because theoretically you have the freedom to move.
But how do people with a late or non-24 circadian rhythm fare when they’re in a hospital? Care home? Prison? Places they can’t leave? How do children and teenagers with such circadian rhythms fare in countries where showing up to school at 8:00 at the latest is mandatory and enforced by police unless people comply?
Even if you’re lucky enough not to be in any of these situations, it is relentness. And we do not have the language, or even the social concepts, to talk about this properly.
If someone has an upstairs neighbour that wakes them at 2 a.m. every night and keeps going with the noise until mid-morning, this is considered outrageous, unfair, and while it’s usually very difficult to prove and enforce, it’s also illegal.
But if someone has an upstairs neighbour that wakes them at 9 a.m. every morning and keeps going with the noise until afternoon, this is… maybe going to draw a sad fatigued smile from other people with a non-normative circadian rhythm because we all know there’s nothing we can do, while everyone else will shrug and imagine we could just go to bed earlier. But morning people’s 2 a.m. is my 8 a.m. and this is not something I can change.
Even medical research leaves us completely alone. Not only is circadian variaton pathologized, but the research is generally just bad. I’ve never seen research on circadian differences that took into account the social factors or even considered the potential impacts of living in a society that’s hell-bent on not letting you get a restful sleep, at all, ever.
Instead, we get tautologies and popular knowledge such as “Before midnight is the most restful part of sleep, even for night owls!” which to those who know sounds a lot like “Straightening your spine until your chin is at least 165 cm above the ground is good for your back, even for short people!”
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(This is inspired by a lifetime of misery and the acute experience of my neighbours deciding to take out a goddam hammer at 10 in the morning, on a day where i was FINALLY able to get some proper sleep at all, and it doesn’t make sense to go back to sleep now that it has mostly stopped because I have a place to be at 13:00. To translate this to morning people times, I got woken at what would be 1 a.m. for you because my neighbours were hammering lazily, slowly, casually, as you do on the weekend, and this is completely normal and there is nothing I can do about it, and I have a place to be at what for you would be 4 a.m. which is also completely normal and everything always starts this early.)
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Regarding this comment about "taking out a hammer at 10 in the morning" - if we start taking into account that anybody around us could be chronospicy, when should anybody do anything that produces loud sounds? When should roadwork or housework be done?
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@kirenida @skye That's actually a good question. Perhaps with less strict societal norms and more opportunities to move there could be houses with differing house rules? Work done inside the house ain't necessarily audible from another one.
Not yet sure how that could help people with shifting rythms.
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@skye wait, noise between 20 to 9 and 14 to 16 is not illegal in other places?
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Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)replied to Laxystem (Masto/Glitch) last edited by
@skye this can actually get you arrested here.