some thoughts.

[annwyd]

So, there's stuff about "PC bullshit" floating around on the blogonets at the moment? I haven't read the post that sparked it off, because I've seen enough from quotes alone to know I'd just rage (fuck you, "kyriarchy" is an awesome and extremely useful word). But some things that crop up in the responses are making me uncomfortable

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Yeah, this is something I've been thinking for a while.

"Crazy", as a word, has a history that is much longer than the modern conception of mental illness, and a very rich set of meanings about mental states that are not all pejorative and are not something for which there is a good synonym. It happens that certain types of mental illness can be accurately described by it, and so people naturally use the word to describe them, but that does not make it a word that "means" mental illness and is being erroneously applied elsewhere. (Literally, the word means "full of cracks", though the metaphorical meanings about states of mind date to the 1617 at least.)

It does not make sense, then, to say "Well, this word is now being used to describe some kinds of mental illness, and so it should not be used for anything else." The word means that one is in a state of mind that produces absurd results, and if it is socially damaging (and I agree that it is) to paint all mentally-ill people with a word that's associated with that meaning, then

[brooksmoses]

Admittedly, I need to be a little careful making "appeal to established usage" arguments about usages, given that the figurative sense of "lame" was used by Chaucer in 1374, but I think there's a clear distinction that lameness literally does mean injured in a way that inhibits walking, whereas craziness does not literally mean mental illness any more than it means mentally-healthy absurd thinking.

[idyllictorture]

Interesting post. I've suffered from severe depression for pretty much all my life. But I've never had a problem with the word "crazy".

[cephiedvariable]

Okay

I

I have to admit that I have been hemming and hawing over making almost this exact same post on my lj for months now, but considering how little I post I kind of felt that it would be ill advised but oh my God.~

I have slightly different reasons for my objection to the policing of the words "insane" and "crazy", but you've really outlined something that I had discussed with a mentally ill friend a while back: the fact that being mentally ill isn't really the same sort of disability as say, being a paraplegic or being mentally challenged. There is a very dark, very dangerous side to it and as someone who is pretty thoroughly mentally ill I don't really feel it benefits anyone to more or less bowdlerize the language and the ideas surrounding mental illness. I was snapped at by someone in a class once for calling non-mentally ill people "normal". "Are you implying that mentally ill people are not normal!?" she demanded and I was like: "Dude, yeah. I am." With most disabilities, all it requires is a little extra effort on the

[agawa_jean]

Apparently tumblr is going through a "homophobia is ableist" phase as well right now, which I sincerely wish I'd never stumbled upon.

Anyway, I agree with what you've said. I don't really have the time to elaborate, not if I'd like sleep tonight, but I think this is basically because people know how to use the rhetoric but don't necessarily understand it, especially if they aren't talking from personal experience.

[cephiedvariable]

because people know how to use the rhetoric but don't necessarily understand it

Basically. This is why you are my favourite person.