Divine divergence
Freddie deBoer on the valorization of mental illness:
Marianne Eloise wants the world to know that she does not “have a regular brain at all”. That’s her declaration, on the very first page of her new memoir, Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking. The book catalogues her experience of a dizzying variety of psychiatric conditions…By her own telling, Eloise has suffered a great deal from these ailments; I believe her, and wish better for her. But she would prefer we not think of them as ailments at all. And that combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement is emblematic of our contemporary understanding of mental health.
Actually it’s emblematic of our understanding of way too many things. I don’t think I’ve thought of it this way before but “that combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement” is an excellent description of the trans ideology, and an indication of what’s so repellent about it. Both self-pity and self-aggrandisement give me the crawls, and I bet I’m far from alone in that. They’re qualities that are very unsurprising in children and teenagers but after that they need to be left behind.
Eloise is a champion of neurodivergence, an omnibus term that’s recently ballooned in popularity, which can include autism, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, or indeed any other psychiatric condition that’s hot right now.
Ah yes – the “difference” approach. That explains why Laurie Penny got so indignant the other day when Ted Kuhner talked about autism as a severe disorder as opposed to Just Being Different.
The idea is that there’s a group of people whose brain chemistry differs, in some beautiful way, from some Platonic norm. And it’s an idea that’s taken on great symbolic power in contemporary liberal culture.
It seems to start from the unexceptionable idea that people shouldn’t be persecuted or neglected for being different, and to go from there to being different is always good no matter what. It’s a non sequitur, but try telling the LPs of the world that.
There is, for example, a thriving ADHD community on TikTok and Tumblr: people who view their attentional difficulties not as an annoyance to be managed with medical treatment but as an adorable character trait that makes them sharper and more interesting than others around them. (They still demand extra time to take tests, naturally.)
And as for gender dysphoria…
As always with Freddie, he is insightful one minute and completely bonkers the next. He sees the trees, and misses the woods, or vice versa.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/it-would-be-cool-if-you-would-refrain?s=r
Trans people themselves are not the problem, he is mis-stating the issue massively, it is the ideology that underpins it that is. Also it is self-ID that is the bigger problem to wonens’ spaces rather than TIM. TIM may also pose a risk, but it is much lower. Males who can just magically become women are the problem. And he cannot see that, or chooses not to.
His insistence that NATO caused the Ukraine war is another such entry into his oeuvre. He just loses all of his previsously stated positions because he wishes to state another thing that contradicts them. He is a confusing thinker. I no longer have any time for him, he adds nothing to the conversation.
I have to admit that though the name rings a bell I don’t know what else he’s written or what he’s like over all.
CCCC @1
I’m not familiar with him either, but I just read an article of his on the subject, and if it’s an accurate summation of his thoughts on the matter I think you’ve oversimplified his position.
He says
Then he goes on to say
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-war-in-ukraine-is-many-things
Surely this is a reasonable assessment of a big part of Russia’s motivation. I don’t think he’s saying “it’s all NATO’s/America’s fault”; he’s certainly not expressing any fondness for Putin.
I get annoyed by the many idiotic tu quoque arguments I’ve heard from Putin apologists (“Yeah well the U.S. has done bad things too so who are we to judge!!!?”) But I don’t think this is one of them.
(Sorry if this is too far OT.)
I share your disappointment that he doesn’t have a better grasp of gender criticism.
And they’re not at all uncommon among people with mental illness, and probably other kinds of suffering as well. It’s compensatory, of course, but once one falls into the narcissistic trap of feeling special, even for a painful reasons, it can be very hard to get over. (Ask me how I know. On second thought, please don’t.)
In my mind the self-aggrandizement goes along with the “everything happens for a reason,” and “we suffer so that we can learn (grow, become more empathetic, whatever)” drivel I’ve heard all my life.* I hate that insidious glurge with a passion. It may help people cope in the short run but as a life philosophy it can literally be deadly.
And now it underpins whole political movements. Le sigh.
* I prefer the internet meme “What doesn’t kill you gives you a set of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a dark sense of humor.”
One doesn’t have to be pro-Putin to accept Freddies point. And I guess I could be accused of tu quoque by having a little queasiness about the loud “Russia is uniquely evil” thing, given American perfidy. It’s the moral posturing. Not that app is in is right at all of courses
I remember years ago listening to a disabled activist’s talk, in which she corrected well-meaning non-disabled people using the ‘different and special’ language, basically saying ‘no, it’s not fun or great or amazing to have a disability. It’s painful and difficult and challenging, and frankly yes I’d very much prefer not to be disabled, but I don’t have a choice in this situation.’ Yes, it is part of her ‘identity’ and having a disability shaped the person she is today, but that doesn’t make being disabled an amazing magical experience. There do seem to be some disabled people, like at least some Deaf community, who value their community and, in a sense, appreciate that their disability has given them something they perceive as valuable. Some autistic people perceive their disability in the same way; Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark was an interesting exploration of this.
LadyM@3:
This is sort of diverting off the topic of the OP, but there is a good reason why those countries “on Russia’s front porch” all clamor to join NATO: because they’ve been subject to decades (or in some cases centuries) of Russian atrocities exactly like what we’re seeing in Ukraine right now. So for a writer to claim that it’s somehow NATO’s fault (even if viewed “mechanistically”) when the little kid runs behind the tough guy to avoid the cruel bully is, to me, indicative of a very shallow and immature reading of the history of that area. (Not on your part, on the part of that writer making the claim.) Americans can certainly understand the fear of belligerents on one’s border–we got quite upset at missiles stationed in Cuba, for example–but we in the USA and NATO don’t have centuries of repeated, predictable behavior of murdering and raping our neighbors like Russia does. NATO has been on Russia’s border since about 1950, without once leveling a Russian city or murdering its citizens or even threatening to do so, but Ukraine was free of the Russian yoke for, what–only since about 1990?–before their independence became intolerable to the Russian thugs and they decided to start a war in 2014. Even the evils in which the USA has taken part against our neighbors, of which among the most shameful I can think of is the way we treated the indigenous peoples in North America from our founding, are at least acknowledged, if not yet made right. Russian propaganda to this day says that my grandfather’s home on Muhu Island was twice bombed and destroyed from 1929 to 1942 because he and those around him were “nazis” according to the Russians (sound famliar?), not because the Russians wanted total hegemony over that land and didn’t care who they killed to achieve it. (My grandfather ran a farmer’s coop and worked as a gardener and lectured his children on not getting involved in wars; if anything, he was a pacifist capitalist.)
(I shall try to reel in my ranting about my feelings on the Soviets and Russia in the future; I’m sure that I’ve made myself quite clear on this, and nobody wants to hear a broken record.)
As someone who has struggled with mental illness all my life, I get frustrated and angry with people who give the “different and special” argument. It is a disease, godammit, and it hurts. It can impair functioning in so many ways. Not just the way society expects us to function in conformity, but the way we want to function for our own ends. I was and am grateful for treatment options (the ones that work) and am angry about all the quack medicine, armchair diagnoses, and foolish misunderstandings of what mental illness is.
I think we could make a world where mental illness carries no more stigma than other illnesses, such as cancer, for instance, without having to turn every person with a mental illness into a magical unicorn. And, one where people go around claiming a mental illness they don’t actually have, just because it’s trendy. A good example is OCD, which has caused many impairments to my functioning. People claim OCD if they have some habit that bothers them when it doesn’t follow the usual pattern; that isn’t OCD, that is normal human functioning, liking things to be predictable. OCD is much, much more, where you can’t function if the “habit” doesn’t follow the usual pattern. It can paralyze your mind.
Would it be fair to say that most (all?) mental illnesses are traits that are normal and useful in modest amounts, but exaggerated to the point of being harmful?
James @ 7 – no please don’t try to reel in your “ranting” on this subject: you have direct familial experience that I for one find enlightening.
Part of the issue is the genuine desire to remove the stigma from disabilities. This can only be done by recognising the difficulties and limitations disabled people face and all doing our best (as individuals and societies) to compensate to a reasonable extent. Of course people sometimes over-compensate and of course they sometimes patronise. It can be as annoying as hell, but in my experience people are (usually) trying to help and any misunderstandings are due to social ambiguities… which are due to the stigma surrounding disability.
Few disabled people are likely to be upset by sincere attempts to be helpful. I navigate some pretty hairy terrain in my chair and it’s fairly common for people to ask if I need help. They are almost always well-meaning and I’m usually touched by the offer. Contrast that with a time a few months ago when a man took hold of my chair and attempted to ‘help’ me across the road. There’s a difference between recognising likely limitations and being a gigantic arsehole who believes their sense of benevolence trumps someone else’s bodily autonomy.
But I accept that there’s a huge gray area. This exists partly because we’re not sufficiently frank about what disabilities are. By definition, we struggle with some things most people don’t. There, that’s much of the stigma (the social awkwardness part, anyway) removed.
If we adopt euphemisms like “special”, all we’re doing is compounding the stigma, making interactions and offers of (or requests for) help even more socially difficult. It mystifies disability, when all that’s really needed (in situations like these) are a bit of empathy and sincere offers of help where it seems to be needed. We need to be more than usually patient with people like my niece, for example, who has dyslexia. It limits her ability to process things other than writing; she struggles in stressful and unexpected situations and can’t cope with the anxiety this generates. So we compensate by recognising this, giving her some opportunity to make meaningful choices and to back out if she needs to, while still encouraging her to push her limits where she feels safe. Another family member thinks she’ll never learn to cope unless she’s thrown head first into deeply stressful situations. He says she can cope with it, and we’re all terrible people for not believing in her.
Both these approaches are well-intended, but one is de-stigmatizing her disability and the other is increasing the stigma.
Obviously that’s not all that’s needed in societies; we need infrastructure and education and funding and so on, too. But my point is that to treat disabled people like people, we first have to recognise that what they have is a disability.