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@thiswasdumbme
Authorities are more than twice as likely to break up a left-wing protest than a right-wing protest.
Just thinking about how the entire reason I barely post on Tumblr any more is because I got chased off by @slatestarscratchpad’s psychotic cult followers literally just for pointing out this fact regards the double standard way left-wing and right-wing activists and adherents are treated. You know, despite “rationalists” liking to claim they care about facts and logic.
Was reminded in my notes lately that the rationalists/Less Wrong crowd are still the Ben Shapiro/Prager U type that are alt-rightists hiding behind fake intellectualism, and wish a movement that actually genuinely cares about facts and logic versus being a fake right-wing front would show up.
You know, I think what confuses me about the whole “male power fantasy” deal is that literally nobody ever explains what a “female [power] fantasy” would look like, then.
Because real female fantasies like Bayonetta that were, you know, actually made by women specifically to be their female fantasies still get poo-poo’d as somehow still being “male fantasies”. Meanwhile, I see all these attempts to replace Barbie via “realistic” dolls that are chubby and have bad skin and lousy hair and boring clothes, and it’s like. Dude. I think you missed the entire point of those sorts of dolls, which is to have fantasies about cool stuff. I cannot fathom why as a kid I would have wanted a doll that’s just the same ugly boring crap I see in the mirror each day.
I also find it telling that when women write about their fantasies a la Twilight and 50 Shades, they get universally panned by feminists everywhere. I mean, yes, I find them really cruddy as well, but still there’s no getting around the fact that these are also “female fantasies” created by women.
So, like I said in my opening, I’m now honestly confused as to what would be considered an acceptable “female [power] fantasy” by feminists, that doesn’t amount to “realistic” boring crap that does not in any way, shape, or form actually qualify as a “fantasy”.
i feel like that margaret atwood quote perfectly describes these so called female fantasies like twilight and 50 shades.
I’m literally not sure what the point is of reblogging an old post calling out the misogynist attitude held in society that even fantasies created by women for women are still viewed as male fantasies, just to express that misogynist attitude.
It’s like, thank you for being an example of the very misogynist behavior I was criticizing? Did you want a cookie or something?
So I’ve been catching up on The David Pakman Show and watching him livestream-comment a Trump rally and it’s the first time I’ve watched one of these instead of reading a transcript/summary and...
Like I already knew Trump was bad from the summaries alone, but watching him is even worse. Literally how can anyone vote for this guy? I figured like maybe there’s some aura he has that overcomes all the lies and horrible policies but no. He’s just a rambling twit that made me feel second-hand embarrassment the entire time, and the majority of what he said was stuff that you’d know was false just from reading a newspaper, not even needing any real research.
And then he ended it with playing YMCA. For real? I like the song, but who the heck plays it at a political rally? He also realizes the Village People are LGBT icons, right? XD
Granted, he’s the head of the party of people who think science is a hoax and think wearing a mask is the worst thing they’ve ever been asked to do and it’s OK to assault and harass people just trying to do their jobs, so... maybe I shouldn’t be surprised they lap this stuff up. :/
So after being screamed at by yet another “equality proponent” who actually does nothing but spout bigoted identity-based myths and stereotypes and victim erasure and has frothing at the mouth meltdowns when called on it, I’m starting to remember why I got seduced into the anti-SJW crowd for a time until I found out they were really anti-all-social-justice.
Like, there has to be an equality movement out there which actually cares about treating people by equal standards where differences are based on actual empirical differences in individual lived experience, caring about all victims inclusively, and focusing wholly on solving problems and helping people. Where there’s no identity-based myths and stereotypes, no erasing and gatekeeping victims based on identity, no ignoring facts and statistics in favor of pat narratives, like just none of that bullshit. Just helping people and solving problems based on the actual facts of the issues, plain and simple.
There has to be a movement like that. I just wish I could find it. All I’ve found so far is constant disappointment.
It never ceases to confuse me how much time I spend having people who claim to oppose bigotry and promote equality, nevertheless arguing I’m a bad person for caring about all victims equally, holding everyone to equal expectations of behavior, and basing my evaluations on people’s actual lived experiences.
In turn, it never ceases to confuse me how people who claim to oppose bigotry nevertheless spend so much of their time artificially dividing victims of issues based solely on their identities, applying double standards based on identity, and stating conclusions that stem from identity-based stereotypes and assumptions.
I noticed I picked up some new followers, so hello!
FWIW, I am a 40-year old American who’s an old skool flavor leftist from back when Bernie and Warren-style social democrat economics were actually considered mainstream leftist in the US, and when social justice meant caring about and representing all victims of serious problems versus gatekeeping victims according to what identity they are.
I’ve been admittedly quiet for a long while since I made the mistake of getting suckered into the rationalist cult by thinking they were reasonable people, and got chased off with a vengeance when they found out I had finally realized they were really secretly alt-rightists and I was going to start calling them on it. :P (There’s a story I actually really should tell sometime.)
I probably should come back to blogging regularly one day. I have a lot of shitty false political and social narratives like that Mental Health Twitter thing to set the record straight about. Especially since I am someone who tries to be logical and practical who is beyond tired of the Logical and Practical Mindset currently being appropriated and misused by the alt-rightist assholes like the aforementioned rationalists, or Shapiro, or Prager U. Being logical and practical definitely needs some reclaiming by the left, stat.
In the meantime, might I interest you in some superheroes? I have a sideblog called Superdweebs that is devoted to “everything quirky and unusual about superhero/villain stories”. It’s also been quiet for a while, but there’s 692 pages of existing content so it probably should still keep you entertained for a while.
Person: I'm demanding you refrain from [behavior I don't like].
Me: Does that mean you're equally willing to refrain from your doing [behavior I don't like] to me?
Person: [insults, whining, lectures, mockery, etc.]
Me: Then you have your answer about my own behavior I guess.
One thing that people in general and especially progressives need to learn is having what you think is a good motive doesn't absolve you from having to avoid problematic language. Because people in general also need to learn that when you post a public message, EVERYBODY sees it and not just the people you're aiming at.
I say especially progressives because while conservatives obviously also do this, they’re also open about not caring about anyone’s feelings. But for us who are usually more empathetic, when we do this sort of behavior it instead becomes a blind spot of self-awareness.
We spend all day harping on the need for others to avoid problematic language and framing in regards to certain groups, but then use that language ourselves when we mistakenly think it's only "acceptable targets" who will see. And we too often backpedal and refuse to take personal responsibility by victim-blaming that if our message hits innocent bystanders by accident it’s their fault for not looking the other way.
When, no. If you choose to post something publicly instead of as a private message, you have to accept it's going to potentially be seen by the entire public. That’s simply a fact.
And another fact is that it’s not the job of any person to overlook sexist, ableist, classist, racist, xenophobic, or any other manner of bigoted or hateful language no matter how good a cause you think you have. It’s instead your job to refrain as much as possible from hateful language that could potentially harm an innocent person.
Plus, let's face it, even if you are sending a direct message that can only ever be heard by a guilty person, you still should question what you are being in the dark if you’re quick to think in and use hateful language, myths, stigmatizations, stereotypes, etc. in the first place. If you would avoid saying something about a given trait/identity/other category to a completely innocent person, that's a sign you should also avoid saying or thinking that something even to people you don't like.
If someone is worthy of your anger to begin with, then stick solely to making valid criticism about the specific reasons they make you angry. Leave the cheap shots, digs, and broad brushes in the circular file.
Hey, Tumblr in general, I’m apparently about to really piss you off: Here’s the tweet that shows what life is actually like as a neurodivergent person or for that matter what it’s actually like for most human beings in general.
Tagging a few people who could stand to see this since Tumblr replies are honestly just too restrictive:
@its3ambuthereiam
@iblessthecranesdowninafrica
@the-cowboy-robot
@queendmsigil
@eternallyvanned
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Seriously, though. I’m tired of how sentiments like the other White People Twitter tweet and some of its responses regularly paint this weird Magical Fantasy Land where all neurodivergent people everywhere are all living cushy privileged lives where our symptoms are a mild inconvenience to us and we instead do whatever we want while a legion of servants bends over backwards doing everything for us who have it much harder than us neurodivergent people as a result.
Because here on Actual Planet Earth, what actually happens is that being neurodivergent or often even just admitting you’re having a hard time in general, is heavily and severely stigmatized to the point where we regularly get abused, harassed, neglected, and abandoned the moment we have a single symptom and to where as a result people struggling with mental issues are scared to even express that they need help because they don’t want to be seen as “weak” or “a burden” or “harmful” or “trash” or so on.
And so many of us actually have zero support whatsoever and cope with our issues mostly or entirely alone. Not, it needs to be emphasized. because we chased everyone away by being abusive to everyone as you like to imply. But because our behaviors that are actually only harmful to ourselves but still require time and effort to help with, are still seen by others as “too much to deal with” and so we’re still viewed as “too demanding”.
And most neurodivergent people--and let’s be real, most human beings in general--are actually really expected to behave according to the tweet I linked in the OP here: Inhumanly chill in all situations no matter how stressful or horrific and never showing any signs of having any normal human emotional needs.
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There’s also a few links that can give a primer on further education for the actual reality of the situation, with some relevant quotes pulled out and my emphasis added where relevant.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/201808/the-tragedy-mental-illness-stigma
About half of people in the United States are estimated to have a diagnosable mental illness at some point in their lives. Whether we’re talking about major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, OCD, schizophrenia, or a host of other mental health conditions, this accounts for more than 160 million people in this nation alone. These are people like you and me. They’re people we encounter everyday—those who teach our children, fix our plumbing, bus our tables, pilot the aircraft we ride on, and write the books we read. In fact, we may actually be talking about ourselves.
Despite the fact that excellent medications and therapies exist, only about half of people with mental health difficulties will ever get treatment, even people with serious mental illnesses like Hinshaw’s father. There are many reasons why people don’t get care, including cost and lack of access to qualified providers. But a major reason people don’t seek treatment, even when access and funds are available, is stigma.
People with mental health difficulties remain among the most stigmatized groups in the world today. It’s the reason Hinshaw’s family never talked about his father’s absences. People are often worried that if their friends, family, or employers found out, this could mean the end of relationships and the loss of jobs. And these concerns are warranted. In half of U.S. states, admitting to a history of mental illness can lead to loss of a driver’s license, inability to serve on a jury or run for office, or even potentially loss of custody of a child.
https://www.rtor.org/2020/04/27/how-to-handle-abusive-relationships-and-mental-illness/
One of the most harmful misconceptions about abusive relationships is that they are the product of mental illness. Research demonstrates that those who commit violence in their relationships are no more likely to be mentally ill than the general population, and it’s understood that it’s abusive people’s value systems that are unwell rather than their psychology. Even so, mental illness does play a role in destructive relationships, but not necessarily in the way you might think.
Domestic abuse victims are more likely to suffer from poor mental health, including depression, anxiety, and even severe conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. One study in Australia found that victims of domestic violence, in particular, have double the risk of developing depression and anxiety disorders after the end of their relationships. In an inverse study in the UK, researchers found that women who had talked to their doctor about mental health problems were three times more likely to go back to their doctor and report domestic abuse or violence.
and
Abusive relationships and mental health are two of the most uncomfortable topics of conversation out there, but the two are linked. People in abusive relationships are more likely to experience poor mental health, and those with poor mental health are more likely to find themselves in abusive relationships. It’s an unfortunate two-way street, but there is help.
https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/mental-health-myths-facts
Myth: People with mental health problems are violent and unpredictable.
Fact: The vast majority of people with mental health problems are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Most people with mental illness are not violent and only 3%–5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. You probably know someone with a mental health problem and don't even realize it, because many people with mental health problems are highly active and productive members of our communities.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-mentalillness-crime-victims/risk-of-being-a-crime-victim-goes-up-with-mental-illness-diagnosis-idUSKCN1IX5W2
Based on nationwide data from more than 2 million people in Denmark, researchers found that in the 10 years following a diagnosis with any psychiatric disorder, a man’s risk of being the victim of a crime that was reported to police rose by 50 percent. For women, the risk went up by 64 percent compared to women without mental illnesses.
The greatest increased danger was from violent crime: men’s risk of being a victim rose by 76 percent while women’s went up nearly three-fold, the study team reports in JAMA Psychiatry.
and
“We hope that the study findings will highlight the importance of the risk of being subjected to crime and violence that people with mental illnesses right across the diagnostic spectrum face,” said lead author Kimberlie Dean, associate professor and chair of forensic mental health at the University of New South Wales in Matraville, Australia.
We also hope it will motivate more research to improve our understanding of the risk and how to combat it and (help) towards re-balancing public perceptions about mental illness,” she told Reuters Health in an email.
https://ibpf.org/how-mental-illness-affects-police-shooting-fatalities/
In 2015, the Washington Post conducted the first ongoing tally of officer-involved shooting deaths of the mentally ill. Nationwide, at least 25% of people who are shot and killed by police officers suffer from acute mental illness at the time of their death. People with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be fatally shot during an encounter with police than people with their mental illnesses under control.
and
The perception of people suffering mental illness as violent and dangerous is another reason police are called. Officers are the only people often perceived by the public to be able to deescalate mental health crises. According to the American Psychiatric Association, most people with mental illness are not violent, but using the law enforcement as a blunt instrument contributes to the stigma that they are. In fact, people with mental illness are more likely than others to be victims of a crime, not perpetuate them.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/people-dont-die-from-suic_b_5675778
What people don't realize is depression is a silent, isolating, slow-moving killer. Some who experience it will commit suicide -- about 39,000 people every year. Some will attempt to take their life and others will be so paralyzed by fear that they will be alive, but not living.
and
That's the thing about depression: When you are in it, people around you seem happy. They seem to have it together. And if you suffer, the last thing you want to do is take their happiness away or bring them down. You feel like a burden to those around you.
So the depressed stay isolated and in pain, lonely and sadness.
and
When they do open up, do not brush it off or ignore them. There is nothing for you to fix. Just listen. Sometimes, just knowing they are not alone will help them move out of the pain.
The goal of helping is giving people who suffer from depression a voice and allowing them to be heard. This pulls them out of isolation and helps them feel loved.
All of this is the reason why people like me and @shatterst-r @headspace-hotel @unsuretati @sadbiboi and other folks on that note get so angry any time sentiments like that tweet which paint a false picture of the experience of mental illness come across our dash. Because as the links I gave show, the sentiments in that tweet literally kill people and literally cause suffering for others.
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I also get that some of you are now trying to backpedal and claim “Hey idiot this is meant solely address abusers and abusive behavior lol”.
But here’s the thing there: When you aim a sentiment at “Mental Health Twitter” (or Tumblr), that’s what you get. ALL of Mental Health Twitter/Tumblr AND everyone in their connected friend circles AND everyone in their connected friend circles AND etc. etc. That’s what happens when you post something on the public internet.
And so the sentiment isn’t just seen by abusive people who need to be told about their abusive behavior. It’s seen by (actually mostly neurotypical) abusers who will instead mine it for ammunition against their neurodivergent victims. It’s seen by neurotypical people who buy into the stigma that neurodivergent people are uniquely violent and demanding. It’s seen by neurotypical people who buy into the stigma that the most common reason for refusing therapy is laziness. It’s seen by neurotypical people who use it as a reason to abandon and neglect neurodivergent people who are actually not being abusive but do need a lot of support.
It’s also seen by abuse victims who are used to seeing the “explode” rhetoric wielded as victim-blaming against them and so get re-triggered by that. It’s also seen by depressed people who feel like they’re a burden and have their suicidal ideation reinforced by that.
And so on and so on.
So let me give an example of one possible better way to frame it so as to reduce the possible collateral damage:
“Hey Abusive Asshole Twitter, I’m about to really piss you off: There are no excuses for abusive asshole behavior. None. It’s not anyone’s job to roll over and let you treat them however abusively you want, for any reason.
“Oh, and guess what else? People are allowed to be done with your abusive asshole behavior whenever they want. They don’t owe you endless patience while you make excuses why they deserve your abuse (hint: they don’t) or where you continually claim you’ll stop but then never do.”
I hope that makes our stance a little more apparent. If you truly want to just address abusive people, then just... address abusive people. And only abusive people. I honestly don’t see why this is an unreasonable thing to ask.
Since those of us on the progressive side of things respect this concept when it’s black people, LGBT people, Muslims, immigrants, etc. We respect when they ask us to refrain from problematic framings and language that causes issues for them, no matter how well-intentioned we were.
So neurodivergent people have equal right to ask for the same respect of refraining from problematic framing and language that causes issues for us, no matter how well-intentioned you were. We respect your right to address your own issues, but we also have a right to ask that you do so in ways that don’t make our issues worse.
Hey, Tumblr in general, I’m apparently about to really piss you off: Here’s the tweet that shows what life is actually like as a neurodivergent person or for that matter what it’s actually like for most human beings in general.
@shatterst-r @headspace-hotel @sadbiboi
You know, I realized we honestly should just report that tweet as hate speech. I just don’t have time in my own life any more for trying to debate with bigotry, victim-blaming, or abuse apologia, and if Tumblr wants to claim to be supportive of suicidal people and mental illness in general, they have no excuse for not completely nuking that post same as they have other hate speech posts. (Especially since ironically Twitter suspended that tweet’s account themselves for violating Twitter rules.)
Since a lot of the people reblogging in agreement I see are doing so in a sea of supporting other social justice matters, so we clearly can’t rely solely on other progressives to call out hate speech. :/
I think why that mental health tweet pissed me off to this strong a degree is basically...
The majority of my serious mental health issues are my PTSD and my anxiety, which were directly caused by people being abusive towards me over the decades. **
So in turn the overwhelming majority of my cases of my “exploding” at people were actually ones where someone was being abusive or otherwise mistreating me, I actually first asked them politely or otherwise reasonably to stop, they refused and instead continued the mistreatment, and I only eventually “exploded” because I was out of ways to get the person to stop their mistreatment.
And yet I would continually be punished and berated for my reactions being allegedly “hurtful” anyway, often by people who had the power to stop the mistreatment themselves but refused to do so when asked.
As such, the amount of times I’ve “exploded” at people who weren’t mistreating me is actually extremely rare despite my issues, and I’ve already always apologized every time they’ve happened.
So all that people expressing the sentiments in that tweet does is normalize that constant victim-blaming I run into whenever I need to defend myself against mistreatment because I’m expected to “apologize” for “exploding” at someone who was actually mistreating me, thus why it infuriates me so much.
I also run into the constant double standard where any time my friends and family ask me to jump I’m expected to drop literally everything and go “how high”, regardless of how I’m feeling that day... yet the second I’m the one who needs help all I get is being ghosted or told how demanding I’m being.
So the notion that it’s neurotypical people having infinite patience for helping mentally ill people while expecting nothing of us in return is a laughable crock of BS compared to the actual reality, let me tell you.
** Since while I also have ADD, depression, and social awkwardness that are more internal or cause by something other than people’s intentional actions, those things do not produce “episodes” where I “explode” at people and indeed seldom cause any serious problems for anyone but me alone.
You know, real talk. That mental illness bullshit reminds me that nobody warns you that the biggest thing problem with growing older is that you will realize you’ve been stuck having the same conversations over and over for the past 20 years.
Because someone will try to knock a couple brain cells together and think they have some amazing hot take, when no, it’s actually just the same bullshit that people have been saying for decades, that was already bullshit when you first heard it 20+ years ago and turns out is still bullshit now.
And in fact, it’s actually more like rank smelling necrotic dead horseshit now because in the intervening decades there’s been massive craptons of statistics readily available to literally everyone debunking the argument and yet. People. Are. Still. Saying It.
Like, there’s metric craptons of statistics showing that mental health issues are on the rise, that America’s mental health system is broken beyond belief, that mentally ill people are often shamed and abused for showing signs of mental illness, and mentally ill people are actually overwhelmingly victims of non-mentally ill people in general, and yet here we are decades later with the same tired bullshit sentiment that it’s primarily mentally ill people who have to worry about checking their behavior that actually is what drives a lot of the abusive treatment mentally ill people deal with.
Along those lines there’s metric craptons of statistics showing it’s actually transpeople who are overwhelmingly victims of violence by cispeople, and yet here we are decades later with the same tired sentiment that it’s cispeople who have to worry about predation from transpeople.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing gun control works in literally every other Western country to reduce gun deaths without actually causing knock on effects, and indeed works in many US states to boot, yet here we are after 20 years in America still making the same long-debunked claims why gun control is bad.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing that poverty in America is actually caused by a long string of factors from wages being artificially suppressed to automation and outsourcing killing jobs to the dismantling of unions depressing wages to discrimination of a wide variety of types and so on, yet here we are after 20 years still making the same long-debunked claims of “laziness” and “fiscal irresponsibility”.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing climate change is real and adversely affecting humanity and a legitimate threat to our civilization if not survival, and yet here we are 20 years later still making the same long-debunked claims that it’s just a hoax or not manmade or not an issue or…
And just, seriously, name an issue, and we’ve probably been having it for 20 years with the deniers making the same false claims and myths that have already been debunked over and over. And by “20 years” I’m actually just referring to roughly the period of my life I was old enough and had enough contact with other people to have discussions about the topic. Since a lot of the issues in question have actually been around for decades before that on top of it.
And nobody warns you that you will eventually get tired and cranky because it’s like “Oh my actual god why are we still saying this get some new material.” And then everyone acts like you’re being unreasonably cranky and rude when it’s like, “Look sweetie, this might be your first rodeo but it’s my several dozenth over literally decades rodeo and literally five whole seconds of research on your part would have made you realize this is wrong and so you shouldn’t make me have to read this for the several dozenth + 1 time where it’s still just as wrong now as it was the first time I ever saw it.”
And eventually you will start going insane, possibly even literally, because you feel like you’re stuck in a Groundhog Day loop any time you discuss anything more weighty than the weather.
The whole mental health tweet is BS. I reblogged it with a fucking essay and honestly the way neurotypicals or even higher functioning neurodivergents treat people who are autistic, psychotic, or personality disorder type is appalling. I’m a psychology student with some pretty intense mental illness stuff and a history of trauma and I have rants for ages
Yeah, I’ve seriously heard the sentiment in that tweet expressly stated on social media dozens and dozens of times over the years, including here on Tumblr as a direct post, so my reaction on seeing it on the White People Twitter post was “Oh god not this fucking bullshit again.”
I’ve also dealt with it being more obliquely stated over the decades. I touched on this in a few posts I made recently, but it’s relevant here as well.
My report cards as a child were littered with messages about how I “don’t play well with others” and “am not growing emotionally” even though the problem was that other kids would physically assault me and verbally abuse me and so I was forced to be constantly trying to defend myself or having negative emotional responses to that mistreatment.
I was told by teachers things like how I was being oversensitive for crying in response to bullying and asking for help, and told I deserved my treatment for “acting out”.
My mother was verbally abusive and occasionally physically abusive, and whenever I tried to defend myself or simply had a bad reaction to her abuse, I was a “problem child” who received various amounts of punishment and lectures as a result.
I suffered from depression due to my father dying, and I basically was allowed a week to grieve about it, and then I was expected to go right back to being a diligent student and daughter or else I was lazy. Even now as an adult if I have an episode of depression or even just my growing physical issues due to getting older and have to slack off something as a result, I get hit with accusations of laziness.
I had ADD as a child (or “being hyperactive" as they called it back then), that did cause me to sometimes have legitimately bad behaviors, but the problem is the extent of the treatment the doctors gave me consisted of telling my parents “don’t give her sugar” which as you can imagine did basically nothing to help.
My time away from my mother finally living on my own with a roommate for ten years was probably the healthiest period of my life. Where it turns out that being finally free of assault and bullying from my peers and my mother’s abuse and similar triggers, and instead mostly being around people who behaved like fairly reasonable human beings, meant I actually had no problem behaving like a reasonably healthy and mild-mannered person.
Who’d have thunk it, that if you put someone in an actual healthy and supportive environment, they’re going to be mostly well-adjusted even if they still have some inborn issues to deal with?
But then thanks to the financial crisis in 2008 I lost that stability and was forced into both again triggering situations and finally forced to move back to my mother.
I particularly had one job during that unstable period where I spent the entire month I was there being harassed by the other workers in various ways, had my requests to be placed way from said workers denied, then when I finally blew up at too much harassment and started crying and yelling to be left alone, was fired for allegedly being “dangerous” (again, for doing literally nothing but crying and yelling to be left alone after being harassed for a month), and then was further denied unemployment as a result.
Now it’s general exhortations to “be nicer” if I ever have a negative reaction to mistreatment or other situations it’s actually normal human reaction to feel negative about.
The mother who verbally abused me as a child turns out to still be verbally abusive even as I’m now busting my butt caring for her? I have to be “understanding” and “be nicer”.
Medical person was negligent in their job to the point where it literally threatened mine or my mother’s safety? Not allowed to get angry, “be nicer”.
Social worker was negligent in their job to the point where it literally threatened mine or my mother’s safety? Not allowed to get angry, “be nicer”.
Landlord was dangerously negligent with the maintenance he’s contractually obligated to be doing but isn’t? Not allowed to get angry, be nicer.
Even online, I’ve had so many situations where someone was being harassing, inappropriate, insulting, abusive, etc. and people let it pass without comment, but if I’m anything other than blandly polite in response, even if it’s just a tiny bit of snark, I’m the real badly behaving person who needs to learn to be nicer.
So I’ve reached the point where I alternate being either having no emotions at all to things and being blandly inhumanly polite even when something legitimately bad is being done to me or my mother, or I have moments where I finally snap and fly off the handle at something precisely because I’ve been expected to bottle up so much and behave like a robot the other 99% of the time and there finally was a “last straw” situation.
And so ironically many times it’s not even about mental illness per se, it’s about this fucked up societal view in general that any “negative” behavior or reaction is always bad even if there’s actually a 100% justified reason for the behavior. It just hits mentally ill people the hardest because they’re most likely to have regular instances of what’s viewed as “negative behavior”.
It’s also about how “treatment” for mental illnesses or other negative behaviors too often focus solely around the person having the behavior and not addressing any triggering causes of the behavior. Like in my case, those ten years I was on my own away from my mother and around peers who generally treated me decently, my behavioral issues and symptoms mostly vanished simply because the triggers that were continually re-causing them mostly vanished. What remaining symptoms I had that were built into me as a person, I thus was far more able to cope with almost entirely on my own because I didn’t have all these exacerbating external triggers constantly getting in the way.
Conversely, a lot of my treatment as a kid and now in recent years as an adult focused solely around my own behavior and literally nothing about addressing the triggers. So of course I never got/get better because the lion’s share of my issues were being directly caused by the various triggering situations. It’s like trying to heal a stab wound by putting a bandage on it and then sending you right back into the same room as the perpetrator who’s still holding the knife, so they of course just stab the wound back open again.
And especially since an adult I’ve been trapped in an environment with the same old triggers again, I’ve found that all my old behavioral problems have come rushing back and all the coping mechanisms I built up for my other issues are eroding as a result.
And just, ugh. I could go on for pages myself. Like, TL;DR, look, I recognize I’m not the easiest person to deal with sometimes.
But you know, straight up here, a lot of my mental issues are ironically expressly caused by other people over the decades actually 100% expecting me to roll over and let them treat me whatever way they want, or by shaming and victim-blaming me for saying I want to be done with their shit while they refuse to find help on how to learn to not be shitty. And the majority of these people are/were neurotypical and/or “socially acceptable” yet still behaved in shitty ways turns out.
Likewise, my remaining mental health issues I was born with or are basically permanent now, are actually fairly easy for me to cope with and mitigate when I get to be in a healthy environment. So you know, maybe people shut the fuck up with the constant acting like it’s mentally ill people who are uniquely required to moderate their behavior when non-mentally-ill people generally do jack shit to moderate their behavior and thereby are the reason why some of us are mentally ill or more mentally ill than we otherwise would be, in the first place.
I too was the child that didn’t play well with others. I was always blamed for fighting even tho in reality it was me defending myself against bullies. As a teen I struggled to integrate with other teens as I lacked the social skills and thus I became rather hard to interact with just because I was used to rejection and mockery so I developed a rather jaded and angry personality to protect myself from a life of misery among peers.
Now I’m an adult with horrific attachment issues, a family that still won’t acknowledge that their lack of attentiveness to my mental health in my youth did this damage, and a bunch of bizarre health issues. It’s great. I average three psych ward visits a year, and I struggle to live with other people because people tend to find me difficult and annoying because I struggle with boundaries because no one has ever let me set them in my own life
Yuuuup. Ran into that too, now that you remind me. Had a rap sheet of detentions and suspensions as long as my arm, and 98% of them were due to bullies deciding to come over and pound on me and teachers deciding that we were both “fighting”.
In my own case, I admit I generally do fine when other people are honest and decent and if they feel I’m doing something wrong, actually take the time to explain why in an actual good faith way. I then am typically more than willing to in turn apologize and explain myself. During that ten years I both was around generally decent people offline and online discourse was substantially more civil, I did fine and was nothing more than a bit dweeby and overserious at worst.
But if I encounter people who decide to behave in some sort of hostile and confrontational way instead and refuse to respect requests for more civil discourse, I tend to then eventually get PTSD triggered and become angry and defensive and escalate, because I have that fight or flight instinct programmed into me. This in turn tends to cause people to pile in lecturing me about my behavior, which in turn causes me to get even more angry and defensive, which causes more people to pile in, and down the spiral it goes.
Which is another reason why I hate that tweet with a burning passion, because it’s almost the entire opposite way around: If I’m exploding at you, it’s because YOU were the one persistently being a shitty asshole to ME even after being initially asked more politely to stop, and so due to the trauma I went through I’m eventually at my wits end with your crap and exploding is the last resort tactic I learned for such scenarios.
So it therefore is also irritating to get lectured at that people are allowed to say they’re “done with you” when opposite way around my dude: Generally other people are the ones who refuse to respect my trying to say I’m done with them (or at least done with their crappy aspects).
So my own therapy sessions tend to be mostly useless because my mental issues that cause my most serious conflicts also tend to be the ones primarily caused by external factors (and especially primarily other people’s actions). And since as my therapist likes to tell me constantly the only actions I can change are my own, that leaves me basically at a perpetual impasse.
Because if you can’t turn yourself into an emotionless robot, you’re not allowed to do anything about the external factor(s) causing the emotions, and you’re not even allowed to at least express/vent the emotions, then all that’s left is continually locking the emotions away in your head until you end up as the stressed, miserable, burnt out container of frustrations and anxieties that I’ve turned into.
You know, real talk. That mental illness bullshit reminds me that nobody warns you that the biggest thing problem with growing older is that you will realize you’ve been stuck having the same conversations over and over for the past 20 years.
Because someone will try to knock a couple brain cells together and think they have some amazing hot take, when no, it’s actually just the same bullshit that people have been saying for decades, that was already bullshit when you first heard it 20+ years ago and turns out is still bullshit now.
And in fact, it’s actually more like rank smelling necrotic dead horseshit now because in the intervening decades there’s been massive craptons of statistics readily available to literally everyone debunking the argument and yet. People. Are. Still. Saying It.
Like, there’s metric craptons of statistics showing that mental health issues are on the rise, that America’s mental health system is broken beyond belief, that mentally ill people are often shamed and abused for showing signs of mental illness, and mentally ill people are actually overwhelmingly victims of non-mentally ill people in general, and yet here we are decades later with the same tired bullshit sentiment that it’s primarily mentally ill people who have to worry about checking their behavior that actually is what drives a lot of the abusive treatment mentally ill people deal with.
Along those lines there’s metric craptons of statistics showing it’s actually transpeople who are overwhelmingly victims of violence by cispeople, and yet here we are decades later with the same tired sentiment that it’s cispeople who have to worry about predation from transpeople.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing gun control works in literally every other Western country to reduce gun deaths without actually causing knock on effects, and indeed works in many US states to boot, yet here we are after 20 years in America still making the same long-debunked claims why gun control is bad.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing that poverty in America is actually caused by a long string of factors from wages being artificially suppressed to automation and outsourcing killing jobs to the dismantling of unions depressing wages to discrimination of a wide variety of types and so on, yet here we are after 20 years still making the same long-debunked claims of “laziness” and “fiscal irresponsibility”.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing climate change is real and adversely affecting humanity and a legitimate threat to our civilization if not survival, and yet here we are 20 years later still making the same long-debunked claims that it’s just a hoax or not manmade or not an issue or…
And just, seriously, name an issue, and we’ve probably been having it for 20 years with the deniers making the same false claims and myths that have already been debunked over and over. And by “20 years” I’m actually just referring to roughly the period of my life I was old enough and had enough contact with other people to have discussions about the topic. Since a lot of the issues in question have actually been around for decades before that on top of it.
And nobody warns you that you will eventually get tired and cranky because it’s like “Oh my actual god why are we still saying this get some new material.” And then everyone acts like you’re being unreasonably cranky and rude when it’s like, “Look sweetie, this might be your first rodeo but it’s my several dozenth over literally decades rodeo and literally five whole seconds of research on your part would have made you realize this is wrong and so you shouldn’t make me have to read this for the several dozenth + 1 time where it’s still just as wrong now as it was the first time I ever saw it.”
And eventually you will start going insane, possibly even literally, because you feel like you’re stuck in a Groundhog Day loop any time you discuss anything more weighty than the weather.
The whole mental health tweet is BS. I reblogged it with a fucking essay and honestly the way neurotypicals or even higher functioning neurodivergents treat people who are autistic, psychotic, or personality disorder type is appalling. I’m a psychology student with some pretty intense mental illness stuff and a history of trauma and I have rants for ages
Yeah, I’ve seriously heard the sentiment in that tweet expressly stated on social media dozens and dozens of times over the years, including here on Tumblr as a direct post, so my reaction on seeing it on the White People Twitter post was “Oh god not this fucking bullshit again.”
I’ve also dealt with it being more obliquely stated over the decades. I touched on this in a few posts I made recently, but it’s relevant here as well.
My report cards as a child were littered with messages about how I “don’t play well with others” and “am not growing emotionally” even though the problem was that other kids would physically assault me and verbally abuse me and so I was forced to be constantly trying to defend myself or having negative emotional responses to that mistreatment.
I was told by teachers things like how I was being oversensitive for crying in response to bullying and asking for help, and told I deserved my treatment for “acting out”.
My mother was verbally abusive and occasionally physically abusive, and whenever I tried to defend myself or simply had a bad reaction to her abuse, I was a “problem child” who received various amounts of punishment and lectures as a result.
I suffered from depression due to my father dying, and I basically was allowed a week to grieve about it, and then I was expected to go right back to being a diligent student and daughter or else I was lazy. Even now as an adult if I have an episode of depression or even just my growing physical issues due to getting older and have to slack off something as a result, I get hit with accusations of laziness.
I had ADD as a child (or “being hyperactive" as they called it back then), that did cause me to sometimes have legitimately bad behaviors, but the problem is the extent of the treatment the doctors gave me consisted of telling my parents “don’t give her sugar” which as you can imagine did basically nothing to help.
My time away from my mother finally living on my own with a roommate for ten years was probably the healthiest period of my life. Where it turns out that being finally free of assault and bullying from my peers and my mother’s abuse and similar triggers, and instead mostly being around people who behaved like fairly reasonable human beings, meant I actually had no problem behaving like a reasonably healthy and mild-mannered person.
Who’d have thunk it, that if you put someone in an actual healthy and supportive environment, they’re going to be mostly well-adjusted even if they still have some inborn issues to deal with?
But then thanks to the financial crisis in 2008 I lost that stability and was forced into both again triggering situations and finally forced to move back to my mother.
I particularly had one job during that unstable period where I spent the entire month I was there being harassed by the other workers in various ways, had my requests to be placed way from said workers denied, then when I finally blew up at too much harassment and started crying and yelling to be left alone, was fired for allegedly being “dangerous” (again, for doing literally nothing but crying and yelling to be left alone after being harassed for a month), and then was further denied unemployment as a result.
Now it’s general exhortations to “be nicer” if I ever have a negative reaction to mistreatment or other situations it’s actually normal human reaction to feel negative about.
The mother who verbally abused me as a child turns out to still be verbally abusive even as I’m now busting my butt caring for her? I have to be “understanding” and “be nicer”.
Medical person was negligent in their job to the point where it literally threatened mine or my mother’s safety? Not allowed to get angry, “be nicer”.
Social worker was negligent in their job to the point where it literally threatened mine or my mother’s safety? Not allowed to get angry, “be nicer”.
Landlord was dangerously negligent with the maintenance he’s contractually obligated to be doing but isn’t? Not allowed to get angry, be nicer.
Even online, I’ve had so many situations where someone was being harassing, inappropriate, insulting, abusive, etc. and people let it pass without comment, but if I’m anything other than blandly polite in response, even if it’s just a tiny bit of snark, I’m the real badly behaving person who needs to learn to be nicer.
So I’ve reached the point where I alternate being either having no emotions at all to things and being blandly inhumanly polite even when something legitimately bad is being done to me or my mother, or I have moments where I finally snap and fly off the handle at something precisely because I’ve been expected to bottle up so much and behave like a robot the other 99% of the time and there finally was a “last straw” situation.
And so ironically many times it’s not even about mental illness per se, it’s about this fucked up societal view in general that any “negative” behavior or reaction is always bad even if there’s actually a 100% justified reason for the behavior. It just hits mentally ill people the hardest because they’re most likely to have regular instances of what’s viewed as “negative behavior”.
It’s also about how “treatment” for mental illnesses or other negative behaviors too often focus solely around the person having the behavior and not addressing any triggering causes of the behavior. Like in my case, those ten years I was on my own away from my mother and around peers who generally treated me decently, my behavioral issues and symptoms mostly vanished simply because the triggers that were continually re-causing them mostly vanished. What remaining symptoms I had that were built into me as a person, I thus was far more able to cope with almost entirely on my own because I didn’t have all these exacerbating external triggers constantly getting in the way.
Conversely, a lot of my treatment as a kid and now in recent years as an adult focused solely around my own behavior and literally nothing about addressing the triggers. So of course I never got/get better because the lion’s share of my issues were being directly caused by the various triggering situations. It’s like trying to heal a stab wound by putting a bandage on it and then sending you right back into the same room as the perpetrator who’s still holding the knife, so they of course just stab the wound back open again.
And especially since an adult I’ve been trapped in an environment with the same old triggers again, I’ve found that all my old behavioral problems have come rushing back and all the coping mechanisms I built up for my other issues are eroding as a result.
And just, ugh. I could go on for pages myself. Like, TL;DR, look, I recognize I’m not the easiest person to deal with sometimes.
But you know, straight up here, a lot of my mental issues are ironically expressly caused by other people over the decades actually 100% expecting me to roll over and let them treat me whatever way they want, or by shaming and victim-blaming me for saying I want to be done with their shit while they refuse to find help on how to learn to not be shitty. And the majority of these people are/were neurotypical and/or “socially acceptable” yet still behaved in shitty ways turns out.
Likewise, my remaining mental health issues I was born with or are basically permanent now, are actually fairly easy for me to cope with and mitigate when I get to be in a healthy environment. So you know, maybe people shut the fuck up with the constant acting like it’s mentally ill people who are uniquely required to moderate their behavior when non-mentally-ill people generally do jack shit to moderate their behavior and thereby are the reason why some of us are mentally ill or more mentally ill than we otherwise would be, in the first place.
Not this post again…
On an extremely basic level I agree, but…
Is there really a big problem with mentally ill people “refusing” to get treatment, expecting people to “roll over” for them, and making up “excuses” for their behavior? This post is not just saying that people who are mentally ill have the ability to be harmful to others and need to apologize. It’s portraying mentally ill people as feeling entitled to hurt people while not wanting to recover or improve, and portraying toxic behavior in a relationship with a mentally ill person as coming from the mentally ill person by default.
I’m mostly saying this because this sort of take is everywhere now—why is there such widespread discussion of how mentally ill people abuse others and no discussion of how people with mental illnesses can be vulnerable to abuse? Why is it assumed that a mentally ill person will feel “entitled” to others’ support and friendship? Why is there so much reassurance that people are allowed to leave a relationship with a mentally ill person, so much discussion of how draining and difficult relationships with mentally ill people are? Why is it so damned common to “remind” mentally ill people that they can be abusive and harmful to others, that their symptoms harm others, that others are allowed to leave them, to not be “entitled,” etc etc…
The underlying presumption is that 1) mentally ill people don’t know or don’t care that they hurt people and 2) mentally ill people are automatically at high risk for being toxic or abusers.
So is what OP is saying untrue? No. But it’s already a long-standing ableist stereotype that mentally ill people abuse others. I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the point where mental illness is so often discussed in the context of “entitlement” and wanting to be coddled. Having a mental illness isn’t a privilege, and yet mentally ill people are so often discussed not as vulnerable, but as having too much power to harm others and as being too likely to see their needs as more important than others.’
Why?
Why?
I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life and have many friends who do. This tweet just…seems so far from the reality of mental illness. Many people who are mentally ill feel that their existence is a burden on others. People who attempt or complete suicide often feel that others would be better without them. Mental illness is feeling like you’re making everyone’s lives worse. Mental illness is being terrified of asking for help. Mental illness is wishing it was worse so it would be justifiable to ask for help. Mental illness is getting to the point of self harm and suicidal ideation because inconveniencing others makes you feel like you want to disappear into nothing, and you just want to not bother or hurt others. Mental illness is feeling guilty just for spending time with your friends because you feel like you’re a drain on their lives.
I have been through that. And it makes me kind of want to personally ask OP what kind of world they live in where those toxic entitled mental illness sufferers have gotten a little TOO confident and need to be knocked down a peg. Like…what. Where do you live. What dimension.
People die because they feel like others’ comfort is more important than their need for help and support. Regularly. So many of us are still fighting to get to the point where we feel it’s all right to TELL people we’re suffering. It’s unnecessary and evil to “remind” us that we’re a toxic burden without ever discussing how to support mentally ill friends, how to communicate your needs to them, how to maintain a healthy relationship where one or both of you are mentally ill, without ever making a single post for mentally ill people to help them tell if they are being abused.
Because mentally ill people are sometimes abused! And the rhetoric that presumes that they are by default more likely to be the abusers or to be toxic or hurtful to others is very easy for abusers to use against them! Why are their lives not, comparatively, important?
Think about it! Why isn’t it “here’s how to have healthy relationships where mental illness is involved,” not “friendly reminder to mentally ill people that you can hurt others and that you might be just making excuses about your mental illness?” Why is it framed like this? If not because mentally ill people are somehow automatically the toxic ones?For some reason, it’s not “here’s how to set healthy boundaries with mentally ill friends, here’s how to respect your friend’s boundaries as a mentally ill person, here’s how to maintain your mental health without relying all on one person,” it’s just this passive-aggressive, spiteful, nasty bullshit.
Yes, I agree with this post, sort of. But in this post you hear about a mentally ill person “exploding on” someone and are immediately expected to assume they are unjustifiably hurting their hypothetical friend, when let’s be real, there are people who will watch you have a panic attack and think it hurts them more than it hurts you, and get mad at you for having the audacity to have a symptom in front of them. What does “exploded on” mean? Did I do that when I started crying in my friend’s car the other day? When I had an anxiety attack at a sleepover? It would be easy for a shitty friend to use that terminology. For an abuser to use this exact phrasing. Having a mental illness does not mean the world gives you favors or treats you specially. It does not mean you are privileged. It doesn’t mean you have a position of power in a relationship.
This may just be me being autistic and having heard this exact crap a thousand times from autism moms who act like their child is an inanimate object, but. It is, frankly, not harder to be close to someone who is mentally ill than to actually have to fucking experience it. That’s the autism mom bullshit all over again. It’s not harder to “deal with” your autistic child’s meltdowns than it is for your child to go through them, and under normal circumstances, this is absolutely 100% also true of your friend’s symptoms. Yes, protect your mental health. No, you cannot always be available to help your friend, and they can’t expect that. But. Seriously.
The part about “making excuses” possibly bothers me the most. It strongly implies that getting treatment=recovery to the point that your symptoms will never affect anyone, and that a person who “explodes” on their friends is not getting treatment and is “making excuses.”
To be completely blunt, you don’t get to decide whether or not someone is “making excuses!” Mental illness isn’t a choice. Like. Yes you’re responsible if you hurt others. But not being “fixed” doesn’t mean you’re “making excuses,” how ableist can you possibly get. I have hurt people because of my mental illnesses. It is simultaneously true that it was wrong to do that, and completely false that it was because I was “making excuses” and just stubbornly refusing to recover.
The phrase “making excuses” in the context of any illness or condition should SCREAM “ableism” to everyone. “If you’ve not recovered you’re just not trying” is ableist as FUCK no matter what type of condition it’s talking about. It is not different than telling someone with diabetes that they should just “try harder.” The end.
Mentally ill people do not want to be sick. They do not want to suffer. Why is this such a difficult concept. The people who say this about anything other than mental illness are immediately recognized as ableist.
And finally. Not everyone can access mental health treatment. I have gone through long periods where I couldn’t afford it. Some people have been abused by therapists. Some people live with shitty parents who won’t let them go to therapy. Sometimes you get an awful therapist that doesn’t help you. Some people do not have the financial privileges to seek treatment! I have been there and it sucks and it’s awful! Framing not seeking treatment as “making excuses” is gross!
Furthermore, the idea of mentally ill people refusing to be treated is yet another ableist stereotype, used to justify subjecting people to treatment without their consent. Just. Another thing to think about.
Like…It’s a valid point but there’s so much underlying ableism in here. I just thought I had to write all this out because the way it’s framed, this isn’t a helpful take, and there’s a lot of grossness in it.
Like, no shade to people who have reblogged it. I just have a lot of problems with this tweet and I hate seeing it more than I can express
edit: shit this is long, sorry for the…rant
Don’t be sorry for the rant, this all needs to be said louder for the people in the back who think “mentally ill people need to be told to worry about how they affect others” and it’s like, we know sweeties, we’ve been told that five billion times to the point where as headspace-hotel says many of us literally kill ourselves because we think we’re being a burden on and hurting others.
I just want to go “this” to literally everything you’ve said. Since I often have moments where I’m talking about my 4 decades of life and I realize how I’m saying all these horrible things that happened to me in my life in this calm, detached tone. Realizing how I see other people falling to pieces over one instance of something and being shown sympathy, while I often went through multiple times over the course of years but was mocked and abused if I showed any emotion over it. Realizing just how much crap I’ve been forced to bottle up and hide and robotize about myself.
And it’s because of the sentiment in that tweet, which actually a very old and common victim-blaming take from mentally able people, or even just from people who are privileged to have not gone through a horrible experience. I’m not allowed to basically be human and have human reactions to things because I get bullied, berated, and lectured how I’m “hurting people” every time I show a shred of emotion, and that’s the actual real common experience for mentally ill people to have.
Trust us, we already know we’re not allowed to treat you however we want because you berate and bully and abuse us if we show even a tiny shred of emotion or symptoms around you.
Trust us, we already know you’re allowed to be done with us whenever you want because you abandon us at the drop of a hat the literal second we show a single emotion or symptom and berate and bully and abuse us for asking for a single shred of support or help.
Trust us, we already know you think it’s an “excuse” that we don’t seek treatment because we don’t have insurance. Or it’s an “excuse” when our therapist provides therapy that is at best useless or at worst actively harmful. Or it’s an “excuse” when we don’t want to take drugs that cause us bad side effects. Etc.
And, man, I would basically just be repeating all of of headspace-hotel’s post here. Like, I too am dismayed this sentiment is becoming more popular. Especially when you consider a lot of people like myself have mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, PTSD because we have been abused, bullied, and other mistreatment, and so we spend a lot of time being punished and berated for “acting out” in response to our being abused via people claiming we’re the “real” abusers for acting out.
And I know people have been commenting on my being a “keyboard warrior” and belaboring this post, but god, do you know how many times I’ve dealt with this exact shitty attitude from mentally able people over the decades? Do you know how fucked in the head I am by now for having to forcibly bottle up so much of my symptoms or reactions to horrible experiences and robotize and dehumanize myself so I’m not told I’m "hurting others”, or how much of my illness I have to cope with entirely alone and on my own with no support because people decide they’re “done with me” the literal second I show a symptom or need help from them? Stop. Fucking. Saying. This. Shit. Let. Human. Beings. Have. Normal. Human. Emotions. And. Reactions. Stop. Punishing. Mentally. Ill. People. For. Being. Mentally. Ill.
You know, real talk. That mental illness bullshit reminds me that nobody warns you that the biggest thing problem with growing older is that you will realize you’ve been stuck having the same conversations over and over for the past 20 years.
Because someone will try to knock a couple brain cells together and think they have some amazing hot take, when no, it’s actually just the same bullshit that people have been saying for decades, that was already bullshit when you first heard it 20+ years ago and turns out is still bullshit now.
And in fact, it’s actually more like rank smelling necrotic dead horseshit now because in the intervening decades there’s been massive craptons of statistics readily available to literally everyone debunking the argument and yet. People. Are. Still. Saying It.
Like, there’s metric craptons of statistics showing that mental health issues are on the rise, that America’s mental health system is broken beyond belief, that mentally ill people are often shamed and abused for showing signs of mental illness, and mentally ill people are actually overwhelmingly victims of non-mentally ill people in general, and yet here we are decades later with the same tired bullshit sentiment that it’s primarily mentally ill people who have to worry about checking their behavior that actually is what drives a lot of the abusive treatment mentally ill people deal with.
Along those lines there’s metric craptons of statistics showing it’s actually transpeople who are overwhelmingly victims of violence by cispeople, and yet here we are decades later with the same tired sentiment that it’s cispeople who have to worry about predation from transpeople.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing gun control works in literally every other Western country to reduce gun deaths without actually causing knock on effects, and indeed works in many US states to boot, yet here we are after 20 years in America still making the same long-debunked claims why gun control is bad.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing that poverty in America is actually caused by a long string of factors from wages being artificially suppressed to automation and outsourcing killing jobs to the dismantling of unions depressing wages to discrimination of a wide variety of types and so on, yet here we are after 20 years still making the same long-debunked claims of “laziness” and “fiscal irresponsibility”.
Or there’s metric craptons of statistics showing climate change is real and adversely affecting humanity and a legitimate threat to our civilization if not survival, and yet here we are 20 years later still making the same long-debunked claims that it’s just a hoax or not manmade or not an issue or...
And just, seriously, name an issue, and we’ve probably been having it for 20 years with the deniers making the same false claims and myths that have already been debunked over and over. And by “20 years” I’m actually just referring to roughly the period of my life I was old enough and had enough contact with other people to have discussions about the topic. Since a lot of the issues in question have actually been around for decades before that on top of it.
And nobody warns you that you will eventually get tired and cranky because it’s like “Oh my actual god why are we still saying this get some new material.” And then everyone acts like you’re being unreasonably cranky and rude when it’s like, “Look sweetie, this might be your first rodeo but it’s my several dozenth over literally decades rodeo and literally five whole seconds of research on your part would have made you realize this is wrong and so you shouldn’t make me have to read this for the several dozenth + 1 time where it’s still just as wrong now as it was the first time I ever saw it.”
And eventually you will start going insane, possibly even literally, because you feel like you’re stuck in a Groundhog Day loop any time you discuss anything more weighty than the weather.
