Blogging Against Disablism, in a roundabout way
Inside my head, today is a weird day. The jumbled thoughts and emotions about Sex 2.0, about what I can/can’t, should/shouldn’t say are still swirling around. I’m trying to push that stuff away and stay positive. -But even that isn’t an accurate description, because I am positive. I don’t like the false binary here of positive/negative. I have a positive attitude about Sex 2.0 and I am very excited about it, and at the same time there are some things I’m apprehensive about. That’s not so out of this world, is it?
Last night, I started another “personal internet history” post. I’m happy with my first one, which I wrote after hearing about GeoCities’ impending shutdown; but I want to do another one that’s more of a straight chronology, similar to Rusty’s. One thing my first post did was take me back to exploring some things that I hadn’t revisited in a long time. Actually, I’ve been awash in reminders of the past lately, previous versions of myself confronting me unexpectedly. It’s been jarring at times but, I think, also good; it’s important to take stock once in a while of where we’ve been, and to acknowledge that those “previous versions” are not things that we cast off like a skin but rather we build on them, so who I was is still who I am, even if sometimes that person seems very distant.
This has been happening as I’ve been unpacking. The computers are one piece of it, and with any luck I will start making those videos next week. But there are many more little pieces here and there that I’ve come across; it’s funny how something as simple as a rainbow-colored hair clip can bring tons of memories flooding back. I have a bunch of stuff sitting out that I keep meaning to photograph, or something; and talk about what it means to me. Maybe more videos?
So delving into personal online history is just a natural offshoot of that.
But that post will come later.
I knew today was Blogging Against Disablism Day but I wasn’t planning to write anything about it. Then I read Cara’s post about depression and was motivated.
Technically I am a person with mental illness. -And it bugs me that I just wrote “technically.” I guess I have some of the same concerns about appropriation as amandaw does. Even acknowledging that, and defying the stigma (which I’ve been doing for over ten years now), still it’s not an identity I feel like claiming. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with that, but for some reason I just don’t feel motivated to name it as part of my identity, rather just a trait of who I am. I know that seems like a meaningless semantic distinction but I don’t want to get off on a tangent, so I’ll move on.
I said I’ve been defying the stigma for ten years, and it’s true, in many ways I have. I talk openly and unashamedly about my history with depression and the fact that I take medication. I talk about it as if it’s no big deal, it’s just a natural part of daily life; which it is. At the same time, I’m also always aware in the back of my mind that this can be a small act of revolution, depending on who hears it; here I am, normalizing mental health issues and making the treatment of mental illness about as interesting as the treatment of, say, asthma or high cholesterol. For people who are still caught up in the stigma – either from feeling ashamed that they have mental illness or from harboring negative bullshit stereotypes about people with mental illness – this can have an impact.
In the latter case, it’s the same principle as the “I am a sex worker” PSA; it’s the same thing Jenny has talked about in describing her interactions with Republicans, how if she puts things in the context of “what if it was me?“, they start to get it. Humanizing is important. If you know me, and think I’m an okay person, and then you happen to find out I have a history of depression, it might make you challenge your own assumptions. “Huh, here’s a person with mental illness who’s a functioning adult just like me… so I guess they’re not all crazy and weird!” Or, “Hey, I think so-and-so is pretty cool. Oh, she’s also a sex worker? Huh, maybe they’re not all damaged and drug-addicted!” And so on.
Jenny does it by giving concrete examples; I remember one was something like, “What if I had a child, and I said if anything ever happened to me I’d want my sister to take care of my child; then I die in an accident and my sister wants to adopt my child, but she can’t, because she’s a lesbian” – suddenly, to the Republican she’s talking to, it’s about people, not faceless “issues.”
So that’s how I’ve always approached mental illness. For the most part.
Cara’s point here really resonated w/ me:
I’ve never mentioned this here before, though you may have seen me mentioning it in passing on other blogs or on Twitter, despite the fact that it would have been exceedingly relevant to do so on more than one occasion. The answer is simple: I’ve seen the reactions to it. I’ve seen that daring to confess any sort of mental illness and/or instability can be used against you, especially in the blogging world where credibility is regularly attacked, and where women are often called irrational just for having an opinion. And that people with anything short of “normal” mental health are often called irrational just by existing.
As I said when I was interviewed on the Cult of Gracie radio show a while back – sometimes I am hesitant to talk about some of the not so great parts of my life, because I’m afraid of how others with an agenda might try to use them against me. Someone hearing about my history of verbal and emotional abuse, growing up w/ an alcoholic father, being suicidal and being hospitalized in a psych ward, might use that information for their own means to try to prove whatever fucked-up theory they have about sexually expressive women, for example. They might pair that information with posts I’ve done about wanting to be a sex worker, and go, “A-ha! See??” But I didn’t sign on to be anyone’s poster child, and I go back and forth on it, because should I really let the threat of what someone might do control when and if I speak about my own life? The answer is not always clear-cut, because it depends on what the impact would be of what they might do.
The problem, as I said on the radio show, is how to balance that, and not go too far in the other direction. Sometimes as sex-positive feminists (as with many other identities), we try to over-compensate as a defense mechanism. It’s totally understandable – it’s an act of self-preservation. When people are waiting, watching, always at the ready to use our lives to further their own agendas, we feel the need to constantly focus on how happy, healthy, and well-adjusted we are. And it’s not bad to talk about those things; but if that’s all we talk about, then once again it’s easy to see us as not really human: perfect, flawless, completely well-adjusted, no hang-ups.
But that’s not reality. As humans, we are all a jumbled mess of contradictions, good and bad stories. We don’t live in isolation, and the words and actions of others affect us, just as our words and actions affect others. And having had painful things happen to you doesn’t automatically erase your agency, your ability to make informed decisions, your status as a “well-adjusted adult.”
As I said above, for the most part I haven’t ever claimed mental illness as an identity (although I did claim it during an identity exercise we did at the Desiree Alliance conference). And I hear every day the little pieces of the stigma that are woven into our society so intricately that it would be easy to not even notice. How many times have I heard, for example, when talking about someone who’s done something batshit and you can’t understand what the hell they’ve done, someone says, “She’s crazy. No, really, she has, like, a mental illness.” Because that shows that they’re REALLY crazy! They have a mental illness? Well, suddenly there’s just something so beyond the pale wrong with them that you can’t even try to figure it out, you can’t even reason with them, they’re not like us regular people who sometimes do crazy things.
And there are some rare occasions where this sort of distinction is important; but the way it’s often used? Nope. Because most of the people who throw it around are not qualified to make a diagnosis and probably don’t know what truly constitutes, say, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
They don’t know that they could be sitting there conversing with a person who has a mental illness. Because that person doesn’t match their preconceived notion of off-their-rocker non-functioning.
For a more specific example: there’s a guy who used to work where I work who was a real asshole, and a creep, and a weirdo. Sometimes his name comes up and we all laugh about what a fucking tool he was, because what can you do but laugh? (He sucked.) Invariably someone will bring up how he mentioned to a coworker that he had been in a mental hospital. Everyone will go, “Ohhhh!” Because see, that proves it! He’s FUCKED UP! Seriously! Last time it happened, I don’t know if I mentioned it or just thought about it, but I always wonder, how many of them would guess that I’ve been “in a mental hospital” too? Does that mark me as fucked up? Or maybe, just maybe, if someone got treatment, then they are NOT fucked up? (Leaving aside for a moment the topic at Jane Brazen’s, about whether or not certain kinds of “treatment” actually does a damn thing half the time.) That’s the part that has always confounded me. People will be like, “You know, she takes medication.” Well, GOOD! If she has a condition that she needs medication for, it’s good that she’s taking her medication! It would be bad if she weren’t on medication!
Talk about a headfuck.
I’m pretty good at confronting the mental illness stigma when I see it and just not giving a fuck about what anyone might think, because it’s their problem and they need to deal. But I realize there are a few areas where I’ve let shit slide, and I need to be better at calling it out when it happens, not just laughing along and pretending like there’s nothing wrong. And I need to remind myself that it’s okay to talk about the bad as well as the good, and people are going to make of it what they will, but in the end the only person who knows the truth of my life is me.
Thanks for writing about this. It’s always so convoluted for me. It would be ridiculous for me to say that my mental illness and sex work are not related, but I also don’t want to feed into the radfem ideology of the “damaged whore” who needs to be saved from constantly repeating her trauma and self-abuse.
I’ve recently been thinking through mental illness and its relationship with disability and disability activism. That framework fits, but I always feel uncomfortable. Something about “visibility” or something. Like I have to be visibly crazy. Which, actually, I am, thank you, scars.
I thought a lot about whether I should be posting what I do on my blog about my mental illness and then talking about sex work, but I echo what you said: you can’t hold back because of what someone might do. If we don’t start talking about the relationship among mental illness, sexuality, and sex work, then the only people who will be talking about it are the Melissa Farleys of the world. SerpentLibertine is someone I admire in this regard for her willingness to tackle these stupid stereotypes.
Crazy people don’t always have a mental illness and people with a mental illness are not always crazy. And just because you’ve been hospitalized nine times in various facilities for depression (a former client) doesn’t mean you did X, Y and Z. But, some people just don’t get it and they never will until they’ve personally known someone who has dealt with these types of issues.