InsaneJournal

Current mood:	bitchy
Entry tags:	ij life, rants, rl: mental

venting
Okay, I realize that some people get Very Very Upset by having their profile called a "diagnosis". And I am okay with that, we all have things that get up our nose, right?

What I am not okay with is being talked to as though I am Complicit In My Own Oppression by not finding IJ problematic. I know when I'm being oppressed, okay? I have never had any trouble seeing Skanky Gender Issues, even before I understood the feminist lingo and the concept of appropriation, and I am, like, a grownup now and shit. I do not need to have Ablist Privilege explained to me in small words.

When I say it doesn't offend me, I mean IT DOES NOT OFFEND ME. I mean I have looked at the evidence, and found nothing to convict squeaky*. I mean, sry2say, that I think you are wrong about what is going on here. I accept that you're offended, I'm sure you have reasons, but don't act like I'm stupid because I'm not offended.

* Also, am I breaking some sacred rule of Serious Business Protocol if I call people by their intertubes handles, or what?

* * *

I think what gets me is it reminds me of my mother, and all those Nice Ladies in SPED. "You shouldn't say that, honey, people won't understand that you're just kidding," even when I obviously was not kidding, or when it would have been obvious that I was kidding were I not eight years old and thus somehow not supposed to grasp the concept of bitter irony. "Not everybody gets what you mean" when you say you're freaking out, you're psycho today, you're busy with the voices in your head, you don't think it was worth gnawing through the restraints this morning, so don't say those things. Pretend you're just like everyone else, even though they all know you're not. I mean, if you kid about it, they might think you're not suffering, and we all know that's wrong.

Anyway, mental illness is not nearly as quantifiable as all that. Haven't we had enough go-rounds about My Oppression Is Not The Same As Your Oppression? We're invisible, and we're not easily categorizable, and to some extent we're subjective (consider what was a mental illness a hundred years ago is a lifestyle now, or vice versa), and here's the thing: it can happen to anybody. Paranoid schizophrenia is not bipolar disorder is not senile dementia, but let's face it, we're all nuts to the mundanes. Maybe Squeaky pardon me Jason isn't a loony himself, but he might be one day, and then the joke will be on him if it isn't already.

And he's not running the asylum. He's running the chain, as it were, and the inmates are running the actual asylums. And the asylums themselves are not built to shut us away and silence us, but the opposite: for us to get together and talk. See? Secretly it's an empowering tool to give a voice to the afflicted. You get what you bring to it.

And it peeves me to be spoken to as though, because squeaky's personal opinions are not known, I don't have any choice in the matter. As though by being here I am aligning myself with his beliefs, whatever they turn out to be, even though I can't possibly know them.

Or, alternatively, as though, if I am not insulted by his terminology, I am "not sick enough".

Ooh, there's a good one. A classic.