Sending this off anon so you can choose to answer privately or not: could you explain Mad liberation? We’ve heard it before but dont remember what ot stands for or what its about. Thanks and we love your& blog! We hope you feel better soon
so at its core, the term "Mad liberation" comes from reclaiming the term "mad"--synonymous with crazy, insane, etc. it's a term that people whose experiences do not line up with consensus reality--the reality experience that society punishes deviation from--are forcibly labeled in a world that devalues our experiences.
(a lot of people balk at the idea that consensus reality is something that it is "OK" to deviate from, or that it is not an entirely objective framework divorced from social context, but consensus reality is, in actuality, a very fluid construct. for example, a middle-class white Christian woman in the USA saying that G-d guides her decisions is saying something perfectly in-line with consensus reality in her social context--it's socially thought of as "OK" for her to believe that, even among people who don't personally believe that themselves. but change one aspect of that situation, and it could suddenly not line up with consensus reality, even if the beliefs themselves are essentially the same--a Black woman in the same situation, for example, is much more likely to be labeled as experiencing religious delusions. a pagan in the same situation would be labeled as mentally ill by the vast majority of psychiatric structures in the USA.)
(that's an incredibly simplified example, to be clear--there's so many factors that go into what determines consensus reality, and there's a ton of factors that go into what reality experiences are punished socially in every cultural context--i'm being US-centric because we're from the USA.)
Mad liberation and Mad pride grew out of the psychiatric survivor movement, and are often referred to in conjunction with Mad studies (academia focused on Mad identity and lived experience). they're, very loosely, about decentering the psychiatric lens through which Mad people are viewed, and centering lived experience and pride in identity.
Mad liberation is a neurodiversity movement, which means it often takes a psychiatry-critical stance, due to how the western psychiatric institution quashes a neurodiversity lens in favor of a pathology lens. (BTW, "neurodiversity" is a word that's been heavily, heavily watered down by the mainstream from its roots. its roots are directly opposed to the pathology paradigm; it's intended to mean that neurological variation is natural and non-pathological, and no neurological variation is inherently "disordered." here's a good article on the matter.)
i'm being incredibly vague and talking in general strokes, and that's on purpose--Mad liberation & pride is a very broad movement, and one that often requires a knowledge of certain paradigms and lenses that are seen as unthinkably radical from the perspective of someone raised in a white supremacist, hierarchical, pro-psychiatry, pathology-paradigm culture. without explaining the very broad strokes around the movement, without an understanding of the Mad history and survivorship that bonds the movement together, it's incredibly easy for an outsider to scoff at and dismiss it. "oh, those people are crazy!" and yet, that's the exact attitude that Mad folx want to challenge to begin with--the idea that our reality experiences are dismissable, are disordered, need to be dismissed for our own good.
(as a side note, no discussion of Mad liberation and Mad pride is complete without also discussing how often even completely "normal" behaviors and reality experiences are pathologized to uphold power structures in society such as white supremacy. Black activists have historically been, and still are, diagnosed with schizophrenia for talking about racism. homosexuality was a diagnosable mental illness under the psychiatric institution for decades. ODD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, is a disorder where the criteria is solely and only disobedience towards authority figures--disrespect for authority is considered a pathology all on its own and leveraged strongly against anarchists, socialists, anyone questioning the hierarchical structure of capitalist society. Mad liberation looks at these experiences as the logical end point of a society that pathologizes and punishes any reality experience outside of the status quo--so long as the system is what it is, it will always be carceral.)
anyway, i've talked for long enough, and i'm getting kind of repetitive/incoherent. interested parties can go to project LETS and the hearing voices network for more information, resources, and peer support/outreach. the Wikipedia article for Mad pride also has some pretty good links to follow in the citations, and does an OK job at summarizing some key historical moments. our DMs and askbox are also open for more specific questions or requests for more resources, if desired!
