Absolutely wild how disability exclusionists try to claim that mentally ill people dont have "real" disabilities and dont experience "bad enough" oppression. Their heads have got to be in their asses with their eyes closed shut as tight as possible.
-Mental asylums where mentally ill people were tortured and killed.
-The horror film industry is almost entirely based on stereotypes and societal fear of mentally ill people.
-Mentally ill people are disproportionately targeted with police brutality and incarcerated at far higher rates than ethical, often leading to the death of the mentally ill person while in police custody.
-True crime influencers and YouTube channels often solely focus on crimes committed by mentally ill people because that's their audience's favorite form of entertainment, because saneism and spreading stereotypes about mentally ill people makes the big bucks. There's a plethora of true crime channels that only post about crimes committed by mentally ill people. Their comment sections are full of ableists who believe that mentally ill people are inhuman and should be killed and locked up.
Most go-to insults, particularly the insults believed to be "tame," are insults that specifically make a comparison to mentally ill people. "Psycho," "psychotic," "psychopath," "sociopath," "schizo," "crazy," "insane," "loony," "narcissist," "bipolar," "mental," etc. Try going through your day and counting how many times people use ableist language against mentally ill people. You'll lose count by 10 AM. Some people will say this language multiple times in a single sentence. These insults are extremely normalized and accepted even by people who claim to be progressive. And these words are especially used when talking about criminals or murderers or "bad people." If somebody describes an infamous murderer, they usually start with words like "crazy," "insane," and "psycho." They'll call the criminal "psychotic" despite not knowing what that term even means. They assume that any criminal, any murderer, MUST have a severely stigmatized mental illness in order to do the crimes they committed.
-Mentally ill people are used constantly as scapegoats in society, such as when legislators weaponize the existence of mentally ill people for the purpose of passing harmful policies. Gun violence? Just blame it all on mentally ill people!
-Mentally ill people experience severe job discrimination and workplace harassment. It's incredibly difficult for mentally ill people to get hired.
-Today's psychiatric hospitals are still incredibly harmful, traumatizing, and unethical. It's common to leave these hospitals with more trauma than before you were hospitalized against your will. Your rights get taken away. You get viewed like you're not a fellow human being. You're trapped in that hospital indefinitely and aren't allowed contact with the outside world. All of your belongings are taken away. You're given a strip search at midnight. The walls are bare with the smallest windows conceived by humankind that are placed at the very, very top of the wall near the ceiling. And while you're imprisoned there, you're usually mistreated and traumatized further.
-Mentally ill people get excluded from the disabled community and disability activism until we're silenced. I cannot even begin to explain how often I hear physically disabled people consider the opposite of the word "disabled" to be "able-bodied." We get shoved to the side by fellow disabled people and told we "don't have it that bad" while you trample on us. I have to check whenever a person says "disability" or "disabled" to see if the person is actually just talking about physical disabilities. So many organizations and non-profits say they help "disabled people" and use just the term "disabled," but then you look at their website and their organization's description. They only help physically disabled people. That's the only group they're meaning when they talk about "disabilities."
-The physical aspects of mental illnesses get ignored because "Your illness is mental, not physical 😊"
-The creator of cripplepunk was an extreme saneist who did not consider mentally ill people to be disabled.
Please start giving a fuck about mentally ill people. Please start including us in disability activism.