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

[cephiedvariable]

Okay

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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 part of other people for them to more or less remain a functioning member of society. With most disabilities, the disabled person is not the deficient one- our society's ableist structure is usually the problem. Mental Illness, however, is almost impossible to cater to or accommodate for in its more serious stages because it is unpredictable and seriously impairs someone's ability to function in ways that are not even close to being tangible. It's a little more complex. :P

Also- and this is going to be a huge dick thing for me to say but oh my god- I have noticed that most of the prominent people in the Mental Illness portion of the Disability blogosphere are people who are self-identified as Depressive. I don't see a whole lot of psychotics or manics involved in the community.

Now, Depression really sucks okay. I don't want to get into tragic hierarchies here because mental illness is not a great thing to have no matter what but but y'know. Y'know.

... crazy and insane are not the oppression words for depressed people. Crazy and insane is for the schizos, the bipolars, the severely anxious, the borderline. It's for those of us who have hallucinated, who have paranoid delusions, who do crazy shit and say crazy things and accomplish superhuman feats before crashing.

I might just be butthurt because I was once banned from a "safe space" for objecting to certain language policing done by someone with undiagnosed depressive disorder. While I stated upfront that I was bipolar and her post struck me as misinformed and othering, I was kicked out and given a warning. I feel like there some definite and unacknowledged oppression Olympics going on in the ableist community when it comes to mental illness. Depressed white kids who want in on the social justice and don't quite feel oppressed enough. guhuhdsfhdskjf

Anyways.

I'm a terrible person and now that that's off my chest...