[cleaningouttherooms]

AN ANTIPSYCHIATRY FAQ

03/2025 - for a prison abolitionist, psych abolitionist, pro-drug, communist perspective.

after a few weeks of work, here it is! trying to centralize some answers to the most common questions that people receive about psychiatry and psych abolition, also including a short introductory reading list. i will keep it updated if I think of any important questions or topics to include.

thank you a lot to @transmutationisms for his help, input and work, especially in the disability section!

feel free to share on other websites, print, etc. i might also try to work on a french translation in the future. love and power <3

[melodies-stereo]

sanatoriums, psychiatric hospitals, and lunatic asylums still exist btw, theyre just called psychiatric centers now. isnt it such a modern and progressive concept to imprison that schizophrenic/autistic/suicidal/anorexic/bipolar/etc. person in a strange space where theyre treated as subhuman, not allowed control over their own body or activities, disallowed contact with loved ones or the outside world, and not comfortable or safe whatsoever? and for long periods of time? or potentially forever?

[voskhozhdeniye]

Y'all realize that a lot of us without some form of community are going to die right?

[onthegreatsea]

the removal of physical media is not the inevitable progression of improving tech, its like the removal of the 3.5mm jack: purely a result of profit physical games still account for about 1/5th of all sales of video games

but by only selling digital games sony can be the ultimate arbiter of their price. they can stop you lending games and force another sale instead. they can stop the sale of second hand games and keep prices artificially high. they can set any price they want and that will be your only option.

[i-suggest-piracy]

i have a suggestion

[wiisagi-maiingan]

You've gotta think for yourself. Like you actually have to do research and talk to people and learn different perspectives and come to your own conclusions instead of basing your opinions and politics solely on what the people you follow online say. You've gotta form your own thoughts and not buckle the moment one of your mutuals gets mad at you for disagreeing with them.

"My mutual told me I was wrong about this extremely complex topic and I should shut up forever so I immediately deleted all my posts about it and made several apologies and I'll never ever disagree with my mutuals again and even after all that they still blocked me and are talking shit about me but I deserve that, I just have to be better" please stop this.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

It's actually very sad and kinda embarrassing how often I post about my opinion on something and people in the notes will be like "wow you're right this thing that I loved until this exact moment is actually evil and disgusting and I need to make a formal apology for ever thinking about it in any positive way" like hello? Do you not have a spine?? Are you so incapable of thinking for yourself that you're letting strangers online do it for you instead???

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Thinking for yourself also means recognizing when you're tokenizing other people and using them as an excuse to not examine your own internalized beliefs and biases btw.

[2pen2wildfire]

parents are allowed to straight-up torture their kids with zero consequences. they can withhold food and water, lock you out of shelter, confiscate your belongings, bar you from human contact, attack and harm you and exert complete control over your physical appearance. and this is just the norm. if you speak out against it you're seen as a delinquent or a predator. even otherwise progressive people get uncomfortable with the idea of dismantling the nuclear family unit because they still see it as the best way to keep kids safe when that simply couldn't be further from the truth. it's evil.

[0utlaw-t0rn]

I’m gonna regret this…

…forever

@tankhall

[non-dys-sys]

It speaks to the dehumanization of systems that We are not considered “true” trans people, regardless of our identities. A lot of it comes back to simplifying people down to their bodies, which is also a result of transphobia. However that’s not something we typically bring up because We worry that if We bring up other forms of oppression when talking about pluralphobia our posts will get derailed and the mistreatment of plurals will get swept under the rug in favor of centering singlets that are also oppressed. Even in progressive spaces it is seen as rude to even consider that plurals could be trans in similar ways to singlets, because We are seen as inherently broken, because we are viewed as subhuman. Trans singlets don’t want to associate with us because they see us as disordered individuals. To singlets We are interesting as concepts but unwanted as people. Plurality is seen as an add-on to transness that can (and should) be removed. Our experiences and identities are treated as something that is impolite to mention and should be put to the side to prioritize singlet voices.

[this-is-anti-psych]

“the difficulty of defining abuse within a context where certain coercive measures are legally permitted”

Aka where it would be clearly abuse in any other context, but psych wards are legally allowed to just do that shit.

This is why legality is not morality.

100%!!!! it might be (unfortunately) legal, but that doesnt negate the fact that psychiatric abuse is real and present in every institution!

It just shows how much mentally ill people are treated as subhuman.

[purplestargirlll]

"i raised u so well" is just the hottest thing to say during sex, right next to "u grew so much"

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

Isn’t it kind of fun how when your life sucks you just can’t talk about it with anyone

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

I’m serious though. When your life reaches a degree of suckage, you find yourself having to look elsewhere for anything at all to talk about. The things going on in your life are trauma dumping. Your past is probably also trauma dumping. So you have to get really weird about specific things or hope that others want to talk to you, because very quickly people are going to develop an aversion to you and the way your life sucks. Unless you just don’t talk about it

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

It’s socially isolating, which is dangerous—when you’re in this sort of situation, community is the difference between life and death, housing and homelessness.

I think the collective prioritization of comfort first is hurting people in a real and material sense

[crybabybat]

You literally have to understand that ur closest friends and loved ones may very well have kinks or fetishes that gross or freak you out and they simply won’t tell you because they know it grosses or freaks you out. Like you have no way of knowing if your best friend is into necro roleplay if she doesn’t wanna tell you. Sometimes you date someone for years before finding out they have a thing for incest. Maybe your coworker likes ageplay and diapers. Who gives a fuck. Nothing changes between you knowing and not knowing except your own constructed moral outrage.

[crybabybat]

WRONG!

1. Get comfy doing illegal shit. Laws are made up to enforce whatever the people on top want to enforce, anal and oral sex are technically a crime in several states currently if I recall correctly

2. It’s also illegal in many places to do any kind of play that causes pain to a partner, especially that leaves marks, including bruises.

3. Making judgements about people’s morality and personhood based on whether or not they fall into the class of “criminal” is bad. Stop

I understand that “kink and not a crime” is meant to refer to genuine acts of sexual abuse and rape, but you can just say that. Also we don’t need to bring that up every single time we talk about kink. It just strengthens the connotation between kink and abuse. If we’re talking about kinks and fetishes, we are automatically talking about roleplay and other kinds of consensual play between risk-aware adults 👍🏼

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

"do you want to go out to dinner?"

"as long as we're eating food and not nuclear waste."

"You don't have to say that every time."

[goinggawayforawhile-deactivated]

"is this an incest thing" we can only hope so

[ribbon-system]

my headmates #myheadmates

[headspace-hotel]

I think I have gained from my traumaposting that sometimes, it is not a good idea to do it scared. Sometimes you are way, way too scared, and you should consider the possibility of finding a way to do it not scared, instead of doing it scared.

[headspace-hotel]

it's not that I don't think "do it scared" can ever be a positive phrase, like if it's something like. "Oh, I'm scared to go to this party" but the "scared" is. nervous about the uncertainty of something, like not knowing people and things like that. That can be good.

Like, you don't have to wait for the ideal time to start doing things that could make your life better

but "ignore the fear and just do it anyway" is such an unstoppable and inescapable message, but on a basic level it is not true that fear automatically goes away when you expose yourself to the feared thing. Fear goes away when you expose yourself to the feared thing by your own choice and free will (not forced, coerced, or out of resignation because it seems like the only option), and when the experience feels safe enough that it can be a positive or at least neutral experience and help heal the fear.

people are very attracted to the idea that others have problems because they are not strong enough or too weak-willed or sensitive. Many people seem to like to believe that everyone's problems come from unwillingness to "do the hard thing."

As someone who viciously hated herself from very early childhood for being not strong enough, too weak-willed, and too sensitive, I have found that the method of doing things in spite of their "hardness" through sheer stubbornness and pain tolerance only created minimal progress.

"Pushing through" is useful in some circumstances, but using it as a primary tool for facing challenges results in expending enormous energy and difficulty for very slow results.

Examining why the thing is hard, and coming up with ways to make it easier, will take you six steps forward for every single step you take by "pushing through" without self-understanding.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

this is apparently a very hot take but i support people’s autonomy to kill themselves. a lot of people get angry when i say that tho. like im coming from the perspective of a formerly & recently suicidal person. things got better for me but thats not always whats gonna happen for people and i think anyone should be able to take themselves out of situations that arent going to get better. obvious unspoken nuance here but do you get what i mean?

I mean yeah if it's a question of systematically denying people basic bodily autonomy and traumatizing them further in the process of keeping them alive by all means possible and potentially "allowing" people to kill themselves I think we as a society need to be willing to risk that some people might kill themselves. I don't think bodily autonomy should come with exceptions. And locking people up against their will actually only increases suicide risk long term as it's usually a very traumatizing experience and doesn't actually resolve any of the reasons why these people want to die.