processing the UCSB shooting {triggers}
May. 26th, 2014 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotessebeen thinking about violence, misogyny, and mental illness. I think that one of our takeaways as a culture NEEDS to be a re-evaluation of the seriousness of sexist hate speech; don't know that it's gonna happen, because we're so saturated in men's words of sex and gender violence that it's genuinely difficult to take them seriously. I don't want to know how much men hate me. I don't want to know that about them. But to brush aside rape and murder threats as "just internet trolling" is manifestly unsafe. when a man writes that he intends to murder women in an act of entitled "retribution," we need to be aware of the very real possibility that he will do so. nothing incomprehensible about it.
the fact that his mother noticed, understood, called the police on him, but when they came they thought he was "shy" and "polite" and so did nothing, shows that the flip side of the tone argument is also active and insidious: say horrible things in a "civil" way, and people will excuse you. "civility" is a dirty goddamn word.
as always, when a white-passing male pulls this sort of shit, everyone says he's mentally ill. many others have done the important work of showing how this assumption gets the axis of violence in relation to mental illness ass-backwards, indicating us crazy folk as perps when really mentally-ill people are so much more likely to be victims. but I also had the thought, this morning, that ideas about mental illness, violence, and sexism were part of what screwed me over in re: my ex, who was both mentally ill and abusive. When we met he was struggling to function through his OCD; his family hadn't done their research, swung from enabling his neurotic behaviors to asking why he didn't just stop them. he wasn't quite a misogynist, but he was definitely a bitter geeky manchild, and yes the way he talked about the girl he'd been with before bothered me a little. The only reason my mother could ever give me for the way she hit the ceiling when I started seeing him was his mental illness. I wonder, now, if she saw something of what was coming to me, if she perceived his potential for abuse - but because all she could say to me was "not that one he's crazy," and because I saw myself as "crazy," I got tangled up in a whole bunch of stuff about how mentally-ill people are still deserving of love. Not only does the labeling of entitled violence as mental illness contribute to the stigmaticization of non-neurotypicality, it also allows the mis-naming of entitled, violent, or abusive behavior as just mental difference. I'm reminded of Lundy Bancroft's observation in Why Does He Do That that individual therapy can actually make abusers much much worse. In fact, the argument could be made that while the shooter's parents DID get him diagnosed and into therapy, which would have been the right line of action in the case of mental illness, he may have never been crazy at all, just entitled and bitter and willing to damage others in order to ameliorate his own pain. obvs I can't know that, but I do know that I made that mistake with my ex, seeing problems as part of his disorder that we actually part of his assholishness and entitlement.
am finding Dark Angel to be sufficiently man-hating escapist catharsis; recommendations for further misandrist viewing would be appreciated. might have to go whole Hepburn tonight and rewatch Adam's Rib.
the fact that his mother noticed, understood, called the police on him, but when they came they thought he was "shy" and "polite" and so did nothing, shows that the flip side of the tone argument is also active and insidious: say horrible things in a "civil" way, and people will excuse you. "civility" is a dirty goddamn word.
as always, when a white-passing male pulls this sort of shit, everyone says he's mentally ill. many others have done the important work of showing how this assumption gets the axis of violence in relation to mental illness ass-backwards, indicating us crazy folk as perps when really mentally-ill people are so much more likely to be victims. but I also had the thought, this morning, that ideas about mental illness, violence, and sexism were part of what screwed me over in re: my ex, who was both mentally ill and abusive. When we met he was struggling to function through his OCD; his family hadn't done their research, swung from enabling his neurotic behaviors to asking why he didn't just stop them. he wasn't quite a misogynist, but he was definitely a bitter geeky manchild, and yes the way he talked about the girl he'd been with before bothered me a little. The only reason my mother could ever give me for the way she hit the ceiling when I started seeing him was his mental illness. I wonder, now, if she saw something of what was coming to me, if she perceived his potential for abuse - but because all she could say to me was "not that one he's crazy," and because I saw myself as "crazy," I got tangled up in a whole bunch of stuff about how mentally-ill people are still deserving of love. Not only does the labeling of entitled violence as mental illness contribute to the stigmaticization of non-neurotypicality, it also allows the mis-naming of entitled, violent, or abusive behavior as just mental difference. I'm reminded of Lundy Bancroft's observation in Why Does He Do That that individual therapy can actually make abusers much much worse. In fact, the argument could be made that while the shooter's parents DID get him diagnosed and into therapy, which would have been the right line of action in the case of mental illness, he may have never been crazy at all, just entitled and bitter and willing to damage others in order to ameliorate his own pain. obvs I can't know that, but I do know that I made that mistake with my ex, seeing problems as part of his disorder that we actually part of his assholishness and entitlement.
am finding Dark Angel to be sufficiently man-hating escapist catharsis; recommendations for further misandrist viewing would be appreciated. might have to go whole Hepburn tonight and rewatch Adam's Rib.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-26 06:32 pm (UTC)In the case of Elliot Rodger, it sounds like he was maybe paranoid schizophrenic, as well as toxically entitled.
eta: I think you're making an important point about how mental health issues can almost be used to cover up warning signs of abuse. Like with your mother and your ex -- there's no conventional way of saying, "this guy gives off Abuser vibes", she had to rely on "he's crazy".
no subject
Date: 2014-05-26 07:32 pm (UTC)Because when people are arguing socialization vs. mental illness right now, they're not actually arguing about those things; they're arguing who's to blame and therefore who should have changed to prevent this, society or the shooter. And the answer, of course, is "both".
I loved S1 of Dark Angel. My my misandrist fallbacks include Fried Green Tomatoes and Call the Midwife and peppy things like Whip It and Stick It. (I am not very good at vengefulness.)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-26 08:20 pm (UTC)Have you ever seen Earth 2? Because the entire storyline is, "Men are aggressively stupid and women are right about everything." Warning: There are a couple of eps at the end of the DVD set that are out of order; you need to figure out where they're supposed to go in the timeline.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-26 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 01:45 pm (UTC)But my bigger problem is with the 'violent people =/= mentally ill people' thing... because it often leads to sloppy logic that implies mentally ill people *are not* violent. I completely grok that mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, but it's quite possible for someone to be both! Also, definitions of 'violence' and 'abuse' get fuzzy and conflated in this discussion.
I think what bugs me is the corrolary to your point about seeing potential for abuse and calling it 'crazy' (likewise, i wonder if that's what my parents saw in my bastard ex) - *not* seeing abuse because all you see is 'crazy'.