Today in lecture hall, a student offered, “lock all of the crazy people up,” as a solution to preventing mentally ill people from obtaining guns. Oh.
I do, on occasion, lose my mind. That’s my catch-22. My perfect pitch will always be contrast by my crazy. You know, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The first man I ever kissed was a schizophrenic. He wasn’t dangerous, and neither was I.
I wanted to ask that person in lecture hall, “Darling, what is ‘crazy’?”
Is crazy how you drive to work while texting?
Is crazy the look in a wife beater’s eyes?
Is crazy the stammer in the quiet boy’s speech?
Is there a particular pattern to crazy that we might follow?
Why do people draw a parallel between insanity and violence?
I’ve only known one mentally ill person whom the orderlies suspected had a propensity towards violence. Again, he was just misunderstood.
I have never seen a correlation between insanity and violence. I’ve been in two mental institutions. Never have I seen people more scared of their own shadows, or of their own voices. Never have I seen people more scared, beaten, and abused than I’ve seen there. They scream from the pain in their heads, and they’re promptly shoved up against the wall, or held down against a bed and sedated.
I’ll tell you what crazy is: crazy is personal suffering that society doesn’t understand.
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C; How Do You Take Your Coffee? (series)
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Violent tendencies and mental illness are not the same thing
amydentata:
Doing horrible things doesn’t require a mental illness
Not having a mental illness doesn’t render you incapable of committing atrocities
Everybody wants an easy answer for why people do horrible things
Everybody wants a clean separation between “normal” people and monsters
But that’s not how reality works.
Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel “same sex” or “same gender” attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?). But queerness doesn’t stop there.
This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.” A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who, given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to define their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy.
Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDs and other STIs.
Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don’t like in bed.
We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don’t expect one person to be able to fulfill all our diverse needs, fantasies and ideals indefinitely.
Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed.
Queer doesn’t mean “don’t label me,” it means “I am naming myself.” It means “ask me more questions if you curious” and in the same breath means “fuck off.
waywardvictorianconfessions:
To be honest, I don’t really care about Emilie’s personal life or anything like that. I just like her music. I’m like that with every musician, though.
Every time someone complains about social justice bloggers I am reminded of the need for social justice.
problematize:
Every time someone complains about social justice bloggers I am reminded of the need for social justice.
Also, I am reminded about the misinformation, lack of history, and sheer ignorance that exists in regards to social justice.
While sometimes I think people want to complain about the *methods* of certain social justice bloggers, too often people end up complaining about social justice in general, including its goals, which terrifies me.
When you dismiss social justice, you may not think you are, but you are dismissing the commitment of moving towards an equitable society free from oppression.
When you dismiss social justice, you dismiss the experiences and voices of people who have experienced and are experiencing (often multiple) oppression(s). You tell people who have experienced racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, ageism, classism, cissexism, colonization, etc. that their experiences and voices do not matter.
When you dismiss social justice, you dismiss all the varied forms of human rights, including (and where do I even start here?) gay rights, women’s rights, trans rights, labour rights, collective cultural rights, rights to food and water, rights to shelter, and rights to freedom, equality and dignity.
When you dismiss social justice, you dismiss social policies that combat oppression — everything from affordable housing to employment equity.
When you dismiss social justice, you also dismiss movements and events that stem from social justice, like, say, the civil rights movement, anti-globalization movements and all sorts of protests.
Social justice is important and it is worth striving towards. By all means, critique the methods of certain individuals and/or groups, but do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
![waywardvictorianconfessions:
To be honest, I don’t really care about Emilie’s personal life or anything like that. I just like her music. I’m like that with every musician, though.
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