Greetings, Mad ones, Mad supporters, and the Mad-curious.
I really didn't think I would ever have to say this, but Portland is making me mad.
Insert obligatory joke about hipster culture here, and moving on.
Portland, Oregon has a reputation for being a very progressive place, and for the most part I believe this is well-deserved. But this recent article out of Portland, concerning the transgender bathroom policy at their largest high-school, is drawing some very questionable praise from the trans* community, and as a somewhat radical member of that community (and a general anti-authoritarian) I felt the need to subject it to some harsher scrutiny. The article itself touches on some of the ideas I'm about to get into, but I felt it needed more.
Here is a link to the article in question: Article
Here is the most important thing you need to know from that article:
"Earlier this year, Portland Public Schools' general counsel Jollee Patterson sent administrators guidelines about how to deal with transgender issues, including bathrooms. 'This (bathroom) issue requires us to consider the need to support our transgender students, while also doing our best to ensure the safety and comfort of all students,' she wrote. The district said it was "best practice and desired outcome" for transgender students to use the bathrooms designated for their current gender. [emphasis mine] But students would also have access to unisex restrooms or health office restrooms if they chose, the letter read."
Just in case it wasn't clear in that block quote from the article, I am going to re-iterate it here: The official position of the Portland Public School district is that they WANT trans students in the bathrooms associated with their birth gender.
Now, on the off chance that I am reading this incorrectly, I will concede that it is possible the district is actually so progressive that by "current gender" they mean "current gender identity" and not "current legal gender." If that is the case, then bravo to Portland! But I somehow doubt that is really what they mean, since the "safety and comfort of all students" is cited in a disturbing recollection of so many segregation laws, illegal for almost half a century now.
The Grant High School in Portland is being praised for its decision to make more unisex bathrooms available for their trans* students, but no one is calling attention to the fundamental error of motivation. They are trying to "protect" the cis students by keeping the trans* students away from them. While they are not quite so bold as to forbid trans* students from using their preferred bathrooms, the administration tacitly approves harassment, bullying and even abuse of trans* students for using those bathrooms with its language about "desired outcome" and its absence of any official policy supporting the use of those bathrooms. The apparent justification is that cis students would feel "unsafe" or "uncomfortable" if they had to share their bathroom with someone whose assigned birth gender was different from theirs.
I think that's a preposterous excuse, even if it were true. And I'll concede that in some rare cases it might be, but I don't think the vast majority of cis students are really that concerned about it. And I think those that are concerned about it need to be getting help, because the moral arc of the universe bends towards integrated bathrooms, so high school is not the last they are going to see of this situation. To me, the administration's concern with "student comfort" is really just implied approval of transphobia; rather than challenging students to understand their trans* peers and to reconsider the possibilities, they allow fear of someone different to define their policy and create a "special bathroom system" for trans people.
Now it's true that anyone is allowed to use the unisex bathrooms, but I don't believe there won't be a stigma attached to it. "Hey Johny, why are you using the tranny bathroom? You coming out tonight?" Okay, so I'm not a heartless teenager anymore and I'm not the best at coming up with hurtful chatter, (I never was to begin with), but I think you see my point. Those students who are transphobic in the first place are only being given more ammunition to be hurtful and hateful when they see their former targets of harassment going into a special "unisex" bathroom that only allows one person inside at a time. While this may be a useful stopgap to allow trans* students an immediately safe alternative, it isn't solving the bigger problem of transphobia; it isn't solving the larger problem of the district fundamentally seeing being trans* as an unacceptable social deviance.
This sort of "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach is all too common in administrative affairs, particularly when it comes to socially deviant behaviors like depression, schizophrenia or, in this case, being trans*. "Gender Identity Disorder" is a thing of the past now, having been replaced in the DSM V with the somewhat more forgiving "Gender Dysphoria," but the fact is that being trans* is still considered a medical or even psychiatric disability, even without the word "disorder" attached to it. This thinking is shaping the thoughts of the professionals involved in the manner, in this case school administrators, and leading only to increased stigmatization.
Perhaps, in Grant High School's case, this will not turn out to be true. But I think it sets a very dangerous precedent when an administration's "desired outcome" is for trans students to go back to the "designated" bathroom. Even if I have misinterpreted that (and I really don't think I have), it is still a dangerous precedent to try to "solve" the problem of transphobia in schools by incorrectly assuming it is just a disagreement about bathrooms and creating "neutral" bathrooms which will always be politicized anyway. I will state it again for the record: having unisex bathrooms available is an absolutely vital part of creating a safe community for trans* students.
But making them the only institutional resource in response to an obviously intimidating and harassing student body? Expecting us, the trans* community, to silently accept an administration's declaration that we belong in our "designated" bathrooms or in special "unisex" ones, but not in the bathrooms of the gender with which we identify? And then to expect us to accept the praise and accolades being heaped on this $500 lock-changing as if it were a milestone victory for trans* rights, to be given a "special" bathroom that marks us as permanently different or even disabled, and no additional institutional support?
If I may be frank, fuck that shit. Why are the trans* kids being asked to use a special bathroom? Maybe the policy should read something more like "The best practice and desired outcome is for all students to be comfortable and accepting of each other as the gender with which they identify, but for students who are unable or unwilling to do so, they may certainly use the single-stall unisex bathrooms we have provided for their safety and comfort." Parenthetically I might add "Until they are ready to change."
I'm sick of this kind of stealth-marginalization of mental difference, and I'm sick of the approval it gets from the status quo society.
Sound off if you're as Mad as I am about this.
-Rius
One Mad rant per week about "mental illness" and mental health, and how society affects them.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Cam's suicide in Degrassi (or rather, how it is handled) makes me Mad
Greetings, Mad Nation and all visitors thereto.
The Weekly Madness has been out of commission for a year and a half, but this one event may finally be enough to rouse my advocacy from its long stage of dormancy and bring it back into weekly action. I am overflowing with a Mad response to this week's episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation, and so I cannot help but share it with all of my fine readers, present past and future.
Where do I even begin in analyzing this event?
First, a bit of context: if you don't already know, Degrassi is one of the most progressive shows on TV right now, being one of the (if not the singular) only TV shows to feature an out trans character in a prominent light. The show is lauded for its mature and sensible approaches to many issues previously considered way too controversial for TV of any age, much less TV for teenagers, such as Degrassi. The show certainly has its moments - its ups and downs, things it gets right and things it gets wrong - but overall I have come to expect a certain level of quality and, above all else, progressivism in their handling of controversial material.
So I was rather disappointed when in their most recent episode, the suicide of a character was announced, and the seemingly clear-cut solution was "Don't blame yourselves kiddies, just go to therapy!"
The thing is, there may certainly be situations where a suicide is completely random. I have attempted suicide before and I would pay thousands of dollars for a good explanation as to why; I cannot easily place any amount of blame on any party, animate or otherwise (except maybe the movie Twilight....don't ask). But I believe myself to be a very rare case, and that generally suicides are precipitated by specific events. A person starts off with hope, and hope prevents suicide in most rational human beings; it is events, filtered through a depressed awareness of reality, that gradually chip away at hope until suicide becomes an option. These events may be relatively innocuous and well-intentioned actions by others that cause unintended harm, or they may be violent, harmful incursions that, intentionally or not, break the suffering individual's hopes even further.
Given that this is the case, any situation where suicide is present bears investigation: what did the people who knew the person do, positively or negatively, that may have affected the situation? Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to suggest that anyone found to have a causal link to a suicide should be prosecuted (though I do believe that right should be reserved in very powerful cases); but I do think that a certain degree of responsibility needs to be obtained in order for real progress to be made. Suicide happens when a person feels they have been failed by an entire community; if there is anyone in the world they can turn to, they generally will. What needs to happen in the wake of such an event is that people need to understand why they were not turned to for help; or, in many cases more probably, what they did wrong when they were turned to for help.
In Degrassi, two students consider themselves responsible for this incident. One, who in my opinion does bear significant responsibility (seeing how miserable the suicidal student is, he yells at him, belittles him, and demands for him to change) is convinced by a friend that instead of feeling responsible, he should go to a counselor and become part of a task force to "make sure this never happens again." I am waiting anxiously, though with very low expectations, to see just what that task force will end up looking like in future episodes, and whether any real, substantive change will take place as a result. Regardless, I am disappointed that a counselor is seen as an adequate solution; how quick his friends are to point him to a stranger who knows nothing about his situation or his true feelings on the matter, a stranger he will probably be more capable of lying to in order to avoid feeling his true pain. The issue of seeing a counselor is actually NEVER problematized on this show, which is another grievous error, but I won't get into it at length at this moment.
The other student who feels responsible told the suicidal student to "get out of Maya's life," referring to a mutual love interest; he said this because the suicidal student recently cold-clocked him, revealing himself to be violent and unstable. Though it was a mean-spirited rebuttal, it was also meant as protection for a third party and was somewhat understandable given their relationship. Personally I feel he bears little to no responsibility, but that he should have someone to hear him out on the subject; instead he is told that he is stupid for feeling any responsibility (though it isn't clear if we are to take this seriously) and that is apparently the end of it. Again, I am anxious to see how this turns out.
But most painful of all is the overall handling of the student body reaction to this event, which culminates in a candle-lit vigil where Maya says, basically, "This is stupid, he was selfish, we shouldn't mourn him, he doesn't deserve this, no one should feel responsible;" the counter to this is a weak but insistent "He was sick and feelings are just feelings."
Neither of these viewpoints are appropriate or correct. Suicide is a complicated thing, the culmination of an individual and their struggles and the way the community responds to them. It is not a question of being sick, but rather a question of being failed. What people implicitly refuse to acknowledge in the wake of suicide is that to kill oneself might ever be advisable; they assume that to kill oneself is always wrong and therefore the suicidal individual must be "sick" or "mentally ill." They are wrong: suicide is sometimes appropriate, when there are really no better alternatives available, and a person is not necessarily "sick" for choosing it when faced with that decision. It is possible they evaluated the situation incorrectly, of course, and I believe in Cam's case he did, but on the other hand no one was really offering him any real help except, maybe, for Maya (and earlier episodes suggest she is more interested in making out with him than figuring out what's really bothering him). Was Cam a bit misguided in his decision? Perhaps. But others contributed to his misdirection with their own insensitivity and this NEEDS to not be swept under the rug. We can't wait for the magical some day when "It gets better;" we need to make it better in the here and now, before it's too late.
Part of what really bugs me about this is something even more fundamental, though: Cam did have options, and he was aware of them, but he did not have a chance to pursue them before the writers decreed he would kill himself. This, to me, indicates a fundamental failure on the part of the writers to understand both mental health and their own characters; that, out of ideas on how to develop a complex and interesting teen with a grab bag of emotional struggles, they simply used suicide as a plot stop. Not only is this terrible writing, but it underscores the fundamental assumption of the writers, which is that suicide is inherently unreasonable. That only someone who is unaware of their options would ever do it.
Cam probably could have solved most of his problems by quitting hockey and being allowed to go home. It would have been difficult but not impossible. No exposition is given to us whatsoever to explain his decision to commit suicide; it simply happens one day, rather suddenly at that. Because of this we are left to assume that it was a rash, impulsive decision that indeed can only be explained by sickness or selfishness, when in reality neither of these usually motivates a suicide. A much more powerful effect could have been produced had the writers showed us Cam's attempts at escape: had they shown us how he tried to go home but was rebuffed; how he had tried counseling and medicine and found them both useless or unavailable; had he, like most people in his situation, tried literally everything until there was nothing left to try but suicide. That is infinitely more realistic; it is a statistical truism that only 9 out of 10 people who are depressed respond positively to therapy and/or medicine, so an entire 10% of people who are depressed can be assumed unhelpable by such things. This woefully underrepresented percentage is erased from existence by suicides staged like Cam's, and I do believe such people make up a larger percentage of suicides than any others; people who are genuinely trying to be saved and find that nothing is available.
This is why I denounce "it gets better" and why I am very upset at how Degrassi has handled this issue so far; like with many other issues of mental health, the "progressive" aspect of the show tends to be lagging very far behind on an actual understanding of the state of discourse on suicide, at least within the community of the mentally marginal. I can only hope that in future episodes they dissect this event more intelligently, but I'm not holding my breath.
Please leave thoughts and comments below; hopefully we'll be blogging regularly once a week now.
-L
The Weekly Madness has been out of commission for a year and a half, but this one event may finally be enough to rouse my advocacy from its long stage of dormancy and bring it back into weekly action. I am overflowing with a Mad response to this week's episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation, and so I cannot help but share it with all of my fine readers, present past and future.
Where do I even begin in analyzing this event?
First, a bit of context: if you don't already know, Degrassi is one of the most progressive shows on TV right now, being one of the (if not the singular) only TV shows to feature an out trans character in a prominent light. The show is lauded for its mature and sensible approaches to many issues previously considered way too controversial for TV of any age, much less TV for teenagers, such as Degrassi. The show certainly has its moments - its ups and downs, things it gets right and things it gets wrong - but overall I have come to expect a certain level of quality and, above all else, progressivism in their handling of controversial material.
So I was rather disappointed when in their most recent episode, the suicide of a character was announced, and the seemingly clear-cut solution was "Don't blame yourselves kiddies, just go to therapy!"
The thing is, there may certainly be situations where a suicide is completely random. I have attempted suicide before and I would pay thousands of dollars for a good explanation as to why; I cannot easily place any amount of blame on any party, animate or otherwise (except maybe the movie Twilight....don't ask). But I believe myself to be a very rare case, and that generally suicides are precipitated by specific events. A person starts off with hope, and hope prevents suicide in most rational human beings; it is events, filtered through a depressed awareness of reality, that gradually chip away at hope until suicide becomes an option. These events may be relatively innocuous and well-intentioned actions by others that cause unintended harm, or they may be violent, harmful incursions that, intentionally or not, break the suffering individual's hopes even further.
Given that this is the case, any situation where suicide is present bears investigation: what did the people who knew the person do, positively or negatively, that may have affected the situation? Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to suggest that anyone found to have a causal link to a suicide should be prosecuted (though I do believe that right should be reserved in very powerful cases); but I do think that a certain degree of responsibility needs to be obtained in order for real progress to be made. Suicide happens when a person feels they have been failed by an entire community; if there is anyone in the world they can turn to, they generally will. What needs to happen in the wake of such an event is that people need to understand why they were not turned to for help; or, in many cases more probably, what they did wrong when they were turned to for help.
In Degrassi, two students consider themselves responsible for this incident. One, who in my opinion does bear significant responsibility (seeing how miserable the suicidal student is, he yells at him, belittles him, and demands for him to change) is convinced by a friend that instead of feeling responsible, he should go to a counselor and become part of a task force to "make sure this never happens again." I am waiting anxiously, though with very low expectations, to see just what that task force will end up looking like in future episodes, and whether any real, substantive change will take place as a result. Regardless, I am disappointed that a counselor is seen as an adequate solution; how quick his friends are to point him to a stranger who knows nothing about his situation or his true feelings on the matter, a stranger he will probably be more capable of lying to in order to avoid feeling his true pain. The issue of seeing a counselor is actually NEVER problematized on this show, which is another grievous error, but I won't get into it at length at this moment.
The other student who feels responsible told the suicidal student to "get out of Maya's life," referring to a mutual love interest; he said this because the suicidal student recently cold-clocked him, revealing himself to be violent and unstable. Though it was a mean-spirited rebuttal, it was also meant as protection for a third party and was somewhat understandable given their relationship. Personally I feel he bears little to no responsibility, but that he should have someone to hear him out on the subject; instead he is told that he is stupid for feeling any responsibility (though it isn't clear if we are to take this seriously) and that is apparently the end of it. Again, I am anxious to see how this turns out.
But most painful of all is the overall handling of the student body reaction to this event, which culminates in a candle-lit vigil where Maya says, basically, "This is stupid, he was selfish, we shouldn't mourn him, he doesn't deserve this, no one should feel responsible;" the counter to this is a weak but insistent "He was sick and feelings are just feelings."
Neither of these viewpoints are appropriate or correct. Suicide is a complicated thing, the culmination of an individual and their struggles and the way the community responds to them. It is not a question of being sick, but rather a question of being failed. What people implicitly refuse to acknowledge in the wake of suicide is that to kill oneself might ever be advisable; they assume that to kill oneself is always wrong and therefore the suicidal individual must be "sick" or "mentally ill." They are wrong: suicide is sometimes appropriate, when there are really no better alternatives available, and a person is not necessarily "sick" for choosing it when faced with that decision. It is possible they evaluated the situation incorrectly, of course, and I believe in Cam's case he did, but on the other hand no one was really offering him any real help except, maybe, for Maya (and earlier episodes suggest she is more interested in making out with him than figuring out what's really bothering him). Was Cam a bit misguided in his decision? Perhaps. But others contributed to his misdirection with their own insensitivity and this NEEDS to not be swept under the rug. We can't wait for the magical some day when "It gets better;" we need to make it better in the here and now, before it's too late.
Part of what really bugs me about this is something even more fundamental, though: Cam did have options, and he was aware of them, but he did not have a chance to pursue them before the writers decreed he would kill himself. This, to me, indicates a fundamental failure on the part of the writers to understand both mental health and their own characters; that, out of ideas on how to develop a complex and interesting teen with a grab bag of emotional struggles, they simply used suicide as a plot stop. Not only is this terrible writing, but it underscores the fundamental assumption of the writers, which is that suicide is inherently unreasonable. That only someone who is unaware of their options would ever do it.
Cam probably could have solved most of his problems by quitting hockey and being allowed to go home. It would have been difficult but not impossible. No exposition is given to us whatsoever to explain his decision to commit suicide; it simply happens one day, rather suddenly at that. Because of this we are left to assume that it was a rash, impulsive decision that indeed can only be explained by sickness or selfishness, when in reality neither of these usually motivates a suicide. A much more powerful effect could have been produced had the writers showed us Cam's attempts at escape: had they shown us how he tried to go home but was rebuffed; how he had tried counseling and medicine and found them both useless or unavailable; had he, like most people in his situation, tried literally everything until there was nothing left to try but suicide. That is infinitely more realistic; it is a statistical truism that only 9 out of 10 people who are depressed respond positively to therapy and/or medicine, so an entire 10% of people who are depressed can be assumed unhelpable by such things. This woefully underrepresented percentage is erased from existence by suicides staged like Cam's, and I do believe such people make up a larger percentage of suicides than any others; people who are genuinely trying to be saved and find that nothing is available.
This is why I denounce "it gets better" and why I am very upset at how Degrassi has handled this issue so far; like with many other issues of mental health, the "progressive" aspect of the show tends to be lagging very far behind on an actual understanding of the state of discourse on suicide, at least within the community of the mentally marginal. I can only hope that in future episodes they dissect this event more intelligently, but I'm not holding my breath.
Please leave thoughts and comments below; hopefully we'll be blogging regularly once a week now.
-L
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Temporary Madness Hiatus
The Weekly Madness will be undergoing a temporary hiatus. My personal and professional life are both in upheaval right now - between preparing for another move and training for a new job, I am 100% completely swamped and sadly don't have the time and energy necessary to keep up my indignant rants. As soon as I stabilize a bit more, I will resume your regularly scheduled Madness. Should be a few more weeks.
Thanks for everything and hope to see you soon,
R
Thanks for everything and hope to see you soon,
R
Saturday, July 23, 2011
"Positive Attitude" makes me Mad
Greetings, Citizens.
Today I want to talk to you about my Job Search, which is largely responsible for my repeated delays and cancellations over the last few weeks.
Now, Job Searching is depressing - everyone knows it - but that's not actually what I'm here to talk about today. I mean sure, it would be great if there were a less depressing way to do it than sending out 100 applications letters, hearing nothing from 95 of them, and hearing "no" from the other five after making time in your day to interview with them, but it's not really what I want to focus on. I want to focus on what to me is one of the most enraging parts of the Job Search process: Positive Attitude.
Virtually every single job posting you see, ANYWHERE, asks you to have a Positive Attitude, rendering the request redundant to begin with, so I'm already frustrated. But moving on: what is a positive attitude? Well, no one really seems to be able to agree on it, so now we're not only using a ubiquitous word, but also a meaningless one. Great. Still, I'm getting the subtle impression that my cynicism here is not falling under anyone's definition of "positive attitude," so now I feel ostracized for being skeptical about the completely arbitrary word choices of my company.
Basically, what "Positive Attitude" seems to mean is that you will do exactly what they tell you without thinking or complaining about ANYTHING, ever. Unless they ask you to think about it, of course.
Well, okay, this isn't terribly surprising; most jobs are like this, we know that, we begrudgingly accept it, and we go to work every day because we have to. Man, this really IS depressing, unless you're lucky enough to already think exactly like the company that hired you. But ultimately it's not really revolutionary enough to be discussed on The Weekly Madness; so why am I talking about it? I'm working up to something here - the grand daddy of all "positive attitude" schemes I've ever run into.
First point: if a company doesn't give you their name - or the name is something generic like "Integrity Enterprises" (randomly generated example) that yields several conflicting results when googled - do not interview with them. It is a scam. Even if it isn't a complete scam, it's probably a waste of your time in one way or another; let me tell you a little about my recent experience with such an interview, and why it made me so Mad.
I'm going to skip over the bulk of the agonizing of this interview, which was in an un-reschedulable group setting, filled with hyperactive self-proclaimed caffeine addicts (No, really?) that cussed and shouted and "didn't want to be the bad guy" and kept trying to get us all to leave by saying "some of you aren't going to make it, and you should just walk out right now - not to mention that the whole presentation was bookended with The Zohan, that Adam Sandler flick about an Israeli super-soldier becoming a hair dresser. This was to drive home that they "are not corporate America;" no, they like to have fun.
Don't get me wrong, I like to have fun too. But I don't really think an interview is the time to be having "fun," especially not when it's in the passive form of a movie screening. Really makes it seem to me like they're trying to make you forget what happened in the middle of the presentation by putting something ridiculous on either end. i.e, brainwashing us. But whatever - I do remember the middle of the presentation, as I practically stormed out when we got to it.
This was one of the MANY segments in our 2.5 hour group interview about how important it is to have a Positive Attitude. Now, I can handle your generic "positive attitude" where you are able to come into work and put a good face on it, especially for the customers, but are allowed to complain about things that suck on occasion. I mean, most companies, when they talk about "positive attitude," seem to mean that they just want to make sure they are hiring someone who can come in and do the work, even if they didn't have a great day/morning/whatever. Well, this is problematic; it definitely discriminates against people with profound depression; but from a purely business standpoint, it kinda makes sense. You want to hire someone who can work efficiently on a day-to-day basis.
My point being, I and many other Mad folk can handle this, more or less; especially if we're lucky enough to get a boss or coworkers that like to complain along with us on occasion. But that is not the kind of "Positive Attitude" this job wanted. What this job wanted was stated in big bold letters: "If you don't focus on any of the bad stuff, then nothing bad ever happens!" I'm basically quoting here. This job is encouraging people not only to never speak of anything unpleasant at work, but to never even THINK about unpleasant things; moreover, they go so far as to demonize those who do as lazy, selfish, and unmotivated. Anyone who thinks about anything negative has a "bad attitude" and is not welcome.
It's interesting to hear this kind of talk from people who are constantly shouting at us (trying to "Git Excited!"), and constantly talking down to the "hypothetical" members of the audience who "weren't going to cut it," and insulting anyone who had a different approach to "attitude" than them. The speaker went so far as to liken a person's description of their weekend, which was full of trials, to "Bullshit, bullshit, bla bla bullshit." This person also went so far as to suggest that everyone has been through roughly the same amount of crap and so no one has a right to talk about theirs as being worth particular notice. She cited her divorce while being laid off as an example; truly, a tough situation, but not by any means the worst you could expect to encounter in the work environment. The lack of sympathy is absolutely astounding.
So, this woman who is talking to us about positive attitudes is an overly excited, overly judgmental, extremely callous-seeming person, whose supposed three children I find myself praying for their deliverance. My point being, her own attitude does not seem to be "good" at all - it is merely high-energy and completely conformist and without sympathy. But she gets to hype it up as "Positive," all other attitudes as "bad," and force an entire room of people to agree with her because we are all desperate for a job.
This is a problem. This is actively programming people to become a part of a cultural system that represses and oppresses even the most basic expression of feeling and analysis. I feel like even Psychiatry would generally hold that it is usually dangerous for a person to never even THINK about what has troubled them; and most psychologists would definitely uphold this point. The fact of the matter is that misery and suffering are part of the Sapient existence, and if we don't actively work to integrate those experiences into our beings, they linger and lurk and fester and turn into very ugly personalities.
Hmm, kind of like the person who was giving the presentation, it seems. To illustrate exactly what I'm talking about in a non-Mad context, I will tell you that this job was to be a manager of a fragrance wholesaler, and we were all asked about our favorite cologne/perfume. I told her that I don't wear any because it is bad for my throat as a performer, which is true: airborne scented oils in high concentrations are damaging to throat, and every little bit matters when you need to project to the rooftops. Her response to this was basically to make fun of me and then move on.
How is this a positive attitude? It sounds more like being a bully. Because, guess what, that's what she is. Why? Because she has zero sympathy anywhere in her body, because she consciously and willfully squelches all "negative" feelings in her until she is nothing but a whirling dynamo of action, caffeine, and thinly veiled hatred.
These people are so fake, caffeine basically is their personality, but they talk about how they love working at this job because they get to be "who they are," and if you like getting to be exactly who you are then you'll love it to. Except I'm not fake, I'm real, and that means that I have shit in my life that I might want to discuss with my coworkers on occasion, as I'm sure they want to discuss with me; it's called "Kvetching" in Yiddish, and it is a cultural concept of bonding over the act of shared contempt. And you know what? Everyone does it. For these people they probably do it more often over the most recent celebrity scandal, safely transplanting it out of their own lives, while also removing any shred of substance from the act. Fine, I don't want to Kvetch about Usher anyway.
I was surprised to hear back from this job after the interview that I had passed. I thought, surely my hatred for them most have been rolling off of me in waves. But apparently you can't detect such things when you have a "Positive Attitude." So I told them I wasn't interested because I like to be negative, it makes things more real, and finally got a pause out of their hyperactive chipmunk on crack routine. Don't think they'd ever heard THAT one before.
See the thing is, I can work in an environment where I have to pretend to be in a better mood than I am, but not an environment where I am never allowed to think a negative thought about anything of substance. Not only would this kill me to try, but I simply wouldn't last; I would crack in front of them and get canned in the middle of the training program, wasting tremendous amounts of time and effort for naught. But even if I could get through that, it really would be emotionally toxic to do so. And this is really the heart of what I'm getting at here: This monolithic "Positive Attitude" construct is BAD for people. Patently. It isn't just repressive to Mad culture, it actively cultivates very unhealthy cognitive and emotional patterns in everyone it touches, Mad or not. For the supremely chill it will probably hit them less hard, as they have the emotional privilege of not feeling as upset about things, but it will still stunt their emotional growth.
I'm not saying the workplace needs to be a place where we can process our deepest emotions. But we at least should be able to blow off some steam; otherwise we're just lying to each other the whole time. Which only makes it harder to feel okay about blowing off steam in any other context. It's hard enough as it is, "Positive Attitude" doesn't need to make it any worse.
Sound off if you're feeling me on this, Mad Ones.
Sincerely,
R
Today I want to talk to you about my Job Search, which is largely responsible for my repeated delays and cancellations over the last few weeks.
Now, Job Searching is depressing - everyone knows it - but that's not actually what I'm here to talk about today. I mean sure, it would be great if there were a less depressing way to do it than sending out 100 applications letters, hearing nothing from 95 of them, and hearing "no" from the other five after making time in your day to interview with them, but it's not really what I want to focus on. I want to focus on what to me is one of the most enraging parts of the Job Search process: Positive Attitude.
Virtually every single job posting you see, ANYWHERE, asks you to have a Positive Attitude, rendering the request redundant to begin with, so I'm already frustrated. But moving on: what is a positive attitude? Well, no one really seems to be able to agree on it, so now we're not only using a ubiquitous word, but also a meaningless one. Great. Still, I'm getting the subtle impression that my cynicism here is not falling under anyone's definition of "positive attitude," so now I feel ostracized for being skeptical about the completely arbitrary word choices of my company.
Basically, what "Positive Attitude" seems to mean is that you will do exactly what they tell you without thinking or complaining about ANYTHING, ever. Unless they ask you to think about it, of course.
Well, okay, this isn't terribly surprising; most jobs are like this, we know that, we begrudgingly accept it, and we go to work every day because we have to. Man, this really IS depressing, unless you're lucky enough to already think exactly like the company that hired you. But ultimately it's not really revolutionary enough to be discussed on The Weekly Madness; so why am I talking about it? I'm working up to something here - the grand daddy of all "positive attitude" schemes I've ever run into.
First point: if a company doesn't give you their name - or the name is something generic like "Integrity Enterprises" (randomly generated example) that yields several conflicting results when googled - do not interview with them. It is a scam. Even if it isn't a complete scam, it's probably a waste of your time in one way or another; let me tell you a little about my recent experience with such an interview, and why it made me so Mad.
I'm going to skip over the bulk of the agonizing of this interview, which was in an un-reschedulable group setting, filled with hyperactive self-proclaimed caffeine addicts (No, really?) that cussed and shouted and "didn't want to be the bad guy" and kept trying to get us all to leave by saying "some of you aren't going to make it, and you should just walk out right now - not to mention that the whole presentation was bookended with The Zohan, that Adam Sandler flick about an Israeli super-soldier becoming a hair dresser. This was to drive home that they "are not corporate America;" no, they like to have fun.
Don't get me wrong, I like to have fun too. But I don't really think an interview is the time to be having "fun," especially not when it's in the passive form of a movie screening. Really makes it seem to me like they're trying to make you forget what happened in the middle of the presentation by putting something ridiculous on either end. i.e, brainwashing us. But whatever - I do remember the middle of the presentation, as I practically stormed out when we got to it.
This was one of the MANY segments in our 2.5 hour group interview about how important it is to have a Positive Attitude. Now, I can handle your generic "positive attitude" where you are able to come into work and put a good face on it, especially for the customers, but are allowed to complain about things that suck on occasion. I mean, most companies, when they talk about "positive attitude," seem to mean that they just want to make sure they are hiring someone who can come in and do the work, even if they didn't have a great day/morning/whatever. Well, this is problematic; it definitely discriminates against people with profound depression; but from a purely business standpoint, it kinda makes sense. You want to hire someone who can work efficiently on a day-to-day basis.
My point being, I and many other Mad folk can handle this, more or less; especially if we're lucky enough to get a boss or coworkers that like to complain along with us on occasion. But that is not the kind of "Positive Attitude" this job wanted. What this job wanted was stated in big bold letters: "If you don't focus on any of the bad stuff, then nothing bad ever happens!" I'm basically quoting here. This job is encouraging people not only to never speak of anything unpleasant at work, but to never even THINK about unpleasant things; moreover, they go so far as to demonize those who do as lazy, selfish, and unmotivated. Anyone who thinks about anything negative has a "bad attitude" and is not welcome.
It's interesting to hear this kind of talk from people who are constantly shouting at us (trying to "Git Excited!"), and constantly talking down to the "hypothetical" members of the audience who "weren't going to cut it," and insulting anyone who had a different approach to "attitude" than them. The speaker went so far as to liken a person's description of their weekend, which was full of trials, to "Bullshit, bullshit, bla bla bullshit." This person also went so far as to suggest that everyone has been through roughly the same amount of crap and so no one has a right to talk about theirs as being worth particular notice. She cited her divorce while being laid off as an example; truly, a tough situation, but not by any means the worst you could expect to encounter in the work environment. The lack of sympathy is absolutely astounding.
So, this woman who is talking to us about positive attitudes is an overly excited, overly judgmental, extremely callous-seeming person, whose supposed three children I find myself praying for their deliverance. My point being, her own attitude does not seem to be "good" at all - it is merely high-energy and completely conformist and without sympathy. But she gets to hype it up as "Positive," all other attitudes as "bad," and force an entire room of people to agree with her because we are all desperate for a job.
This is a problem. This is actively programming people to become a part of a cultural system that represses and oppresses even the most basic expression of feeling and analysis. I feel like even Psychiatry would generally hold that it is usually dangerous for a person to never even THINK about what has troubled them; and most psychologists would definitely uphold this point. The fact of the matter is that misery and suffering are part of the Sapient existence, and if we don't actively work to integrate those experiences into our beings, they linger and lurk and fester and turn into very ugly personalities.
Hmm, kind of like the person who was giving the presentation, it seems. To illustrate exactly what I'm talking about in a non-Mad context, I will tell you that this job was to be a manager of a fragrance wholesaler, and we were all asked about our favorite cologne/perfume. I told her that I don't wear any because it is bad for my throat as a performer, which is true: airborne scented oils in high concentrations are damaging to throat, and every little bit matters when you need to project to the rooftops. Her response to this was basically to make fun of me and then move on.
How is this a positive attitude? It sounds more like being a bully. Because, guess what, that's what she is. Why? Because she has zero sympathy anywhere in her body, because she consciously and willfully squelches all "negative" feelings in her until she is nothing but a whirling dynamo of action, caffeine, and thinly veiled hatred.
These people are so fake, caffeine basically is their personality, but they talk about how they love working at this job because they get to be "who they are," and if you like getting to be exactly who you are then you'll love it to. Except I'm not fake, I'm real, and that means that I have shit in my life that I might want to discuss with my coworkers on occasion, as I'm sure they want to discuss with me; it's called "Kvetching" in Yiddish, and it is a cultural concept of bonding over the act of shared contempt. And you know what? Everyone does it. For these people they probably do it more often over the most recent celebrity scandal, safely transplanting it out of their own lives, while also removing any shred of substance from the act. Fine, I don't want to Kvetch about Usher anyway.
I was surprised to hear back from this job after the interview that I had passed. I thought, surely my hatred for them most have been rolling off of me in waves. But apparently you can't detect such things when you have a "Positive Attitude." So I told them I wasn't interested because I like to be negative, it makes things more real, and finally got a pause out of their hyperactive chipmunk on crack routine. Don't think they'd ever heard THAT one before.
See the thing is, I can work in an environment where I have to pretend to be in a better mood than I am, but not an environment where I am never allowed to think a negative thought about anything of substance. Not only would this kill me to try, but I simply wouldn't last; I would crack in front of them and get canned in the middle of the training program, wasting tremendous amounts of time and effort for naught. But even if I could get through that, it really would be emotionally toxic to do so. And this is really the heart of what I'm getting at here: This monolithic "Positive Attitude" construct is BAD for people. Patently. It isn't just repressive to Mad culture, it actively cultivates very unhealthy cognitive and emotional patterns in everyone it touches, Mad or not. For the supremely chill it will probably hit them less hard, as they have the emotional privilege of not feeling as upset about things, but it will still stunt their emotional growth.
I'm not saying the workplace needs to be a place where we can process our deepest emotions. But we at least should be able to blow off some steam; otherwise we're just lying to each other the whole time. Which only makes it harder to feel okay about blowing off steam in any other context. It's hard enough as it is, "Positive Attitude" doesn't need to make it any worse.
Sound off if you're feeling me on this, Mad Ones.
Sincerely,
R
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Delayed Madness
Madness will be delayed this week. I hope to put something up this weekend but this night simply isn't conducive to good mental health. See you soon, citizens.
-R
-R
Friday, July 15, 2011
Madness as the new "Other"
Greetings, Citizens.
Tonight, I present you with another potential re-hash of many old ideas in a new form. Hopefully it will stick in your craw in a new way and leave you inspired. It is derived from many of the ideas utilized in my theory on Marxism and Mental Illness. It is an exploration of the deployment of "Mental Illness" by the Status Quo as the new "other."
The fact of the matter is, the Status Quo has been demonizing an "other" as part of its standard operating procedure since the dawn of mankind. From women, to people from different countries, to people from different cities; heathens, Jews, Puritans, barbarians, you name it. There has always been a scapegoat for people to blame all of their problems on; some nebulous "other" who, by virtue of being "other," exist as a sort of barrier that defines, by exclusion, who the status quo "is." "We are (insert group name here), and we're not like (insert "other" name here); we're better than them." These days, we are finding less and less obvious cases of this kind of dichotomy, but that isn't because the behavior has gone away; it has merely taken on another aspect.
To be sure, this kind of bald-faced othering DOES still exist. In today's culture, 7/14/11, many Americans view Immigrants this way, as do they view people who are gay. The term "homosexual agenda" is testiment to this fear of the "other" and what "they" will do if allowed "their way." This fear is a principle ingredient in constituting a sense of identity for the Status Quo, by providing them a common enemy to unite against.
On a subtler level, we see the same thing take place with Mental Illness. We are the ultimate other; those of us with a mental illness have something about us that it is institutionally valid to fear, discriminate against and outright judge. You see, for many rational-thinkers, it is no longer sufficient to take part in the identity-forming fears of immigrants or gay people or Jews or pagans; such individuals are, more or less, institutionally justified. This does become a complicated issue of semantics, but the bottom line is, you're not SUPPOSED to judge those people any more. That's not "PC."
But it is "PC" to judge the Mentally Ill. Even if is not PC to judge them as "bad" (though it certainly is a common practice, especially in the media), it is definitely PC to judge them as unfit, unsound, and generally not worth the same amount of attention as a person who is not Mentally Ill. In short, a Mentally Ill person is a second class citizen, via official Psychiatric sanction.
Now, there may well be some people who fall under this classification who probably should be treated as second-class citizens; vicious murderers and worse, people with absolutely no moral backbone and no hope for redemption. But this is just one type of person found under the category of "mentally ill," along with individuals like myself, and even milder-mannered people who simply have "depression." People who are doing their best to be good, who care about goodness, who feel they care about it more than anyone else around them. But despite this, our cries go unanswered, or dismissed as "mentally ill."
Whenever medical personnel agree with me, I am a bright young boy. When they disagree, I'm manic. It really does seem to be that simple; no one will admit it, but the number of times I've seen it happen is staggering. Mental Illness is used to excuse complete ignorance and persecution of dissenting ideals. And Psychiatry is getting away with it because humans seem to have a built-in need for there to be an omnipresent "other" to fear and reject.
It's despicable on so many levels, even a purely utilitarian one. Madness is just humanity's way of trying out new ideas; evolution is a process of mutation and selection. If we worship the status quo of Psychiatry as much as we do now, we do not allow for mutation; only selection. This cannot possibly lead to any real growth of the human spirit. Many of the world's most brilliant inventors and creators have been retro-actively diagnosed (a pathetic project on Psychiatry's part to "universalize" their modern findings, granting them additional agency by making it seem like "bipolar" has ALWAYS existed and isn't something they basically invented to categorize a behavior pattern) with a "mental illness," and it has often been attributed as a major source of their inspiration. If this is true, I can only assume that their inspiration would have been completely devastated by the medication and therapies of the modern approach.
This otherization of mental illness is not just bad for those who are different, but for the species as a whole. Humanity NEEDS us to keep on being mad to supply the energy for our own self-revolution. At least that's my take on it.
Hope you found something to agree with, Citizens. See you next week.
Sincerely,
R
Tonight, I present you with another potential re-hash of many old ideas in a new form. Hopefully it will stick in your craw in a new way and leave you inspired. It is derived from many of the ideas utilized in my theory on Marxism and Mental Illness. It is an exploration of the deployment of "Mental Illness" by the Status Quo as the new "other."
The fact of the matter is, the Status Quo has been demonizing an "other" as part of its standard operating procedure since the dawn of mankind. From women, to people from different countries, to people from different cities; heathens, Jews, Puritans, barbarians, you name it. There has always been a scapegoat for people to blame all of their problems on; some nebulous "other" who, by virtue of being "other," exist as a sort of barrier that defines, by exclusion, who the status quo "is." "We are (insert group name here), and we're not like (insert "other" name here); we're better than them." These days, we are finding less and less obvious cases of this kind of dichotomy, but that isn't because the behavior has gone away; it has merely taken on another aspect.
To be sure, this kind of bald-faced othering DOES still exist. In today's culture, 7/14/11, many Americans view Immigrants this way, as do they view people who are gay. The term "homosexual agenda" is testiment to this fear of the "other" and what "they" will do if allowed "their way." This fear is a principle ingredient in constituting a sense of identity for the Status Quo, by providing them a common enemy to unite against.
On a subtler level, we see the same thing take place with Mental Illness. We are the ultimate other; those of us with a mental illness have something about us that it is institutionally valid to fear, discriminate against and outright judge. You see, for many rational-thinkers, it is no longer sufficient to take part in the identity-forming fears of immigrants or gay people or Jews or pagans; such individuals are, more or less, institutionally justified. This does become a complicated issue of semantics, but the bottom line is, you're not SUPPOSED to judge those people any more. That's not "PC."
But it is "PC" to judge the Mentally Ill. Even if is not PC to judge them as "bad" (though it certainly is a common practice, especially in the media), it is definitely PC to judge them as unfit, unsound, and generally not worth the same amount of attention as a person who is not Mentally Ill. In short, a Mentally Ill person is a second class citizen, via official Psychiatric sanction.
Now, there may well be some people who fall under this classification who probably should be treated as second-class citizens; vicious murderers and worse, people with absolutely no moral backbone and no hope for redemption. But this is just one type of person found under the category of "mentally ill," along with individuals like myself, and even milder-mannered people who simply have "depression." People who are doing their best to be good, who care about goodness, who feel they care about it more than anyone else around them. But despite this, our cries go unanswered, or dismissed as "mentally ill."
Whenever medical personnel agree with me, I am a bright young boy. When they disagree, I'm manic. It really does seem to be that simple; no one will admit it, but the number of times I've seen it happen is staggering. Mental Illness is used to excuse complete ignorance and persecution of dissenting ideals. And Psychiatry is getting away with it because humans seem to have a built-in need for there to be an omnipresent "other" to fear and reject.
It's despicable on so many levels, even a purely utilitarian one. Madness is just humanity's way of trying out new ideas; evolution is a process of mutation and selection. If we worship the status quo of Psychiatry as much as we do now, we do not allow for mutation; only selection. This cannot possibly lead to any real growth of the human spirit. Many of the world's most brilliant inventors and creators have been retro-actively diagnosed (a pathetic project on Psychiatry's part to "universalize" their modern findings, granting them additional agency by making it seem like "bipolar" has ALWAYS existed and isn't something they basically invented to categorize a behavior pattern) with a "mental illness," and it has often been attributed as a major source of their inspiration. If this is true, I can only assume that their inspiration would have been completely devastated by the medication and therapies of the modern approach.
This otherization of mental illness is not just bad for those who are different, but for the species as a whole. Humanity NEEDS us to keep on being mad to supply the energy for our own self-revolution. At least that's my take on it.
Hope you found something to agree with, Citizens. See you next week.
Sincerely,
R
Friday, July 8, 2011
Cinematic Mental Health Movement
Greetings, Citizens.
This week I met with an interesting fellow by the name of Andrew Senn. He and his collaborators are putting together a group of like-minded individuals who have experience in the mental health system - those who have been put through it, so to speak. They are working on creating a video-based documentary to help add a new level of identity to various diagnoses and "symptoms," hopefully giving more freedom for empathy and understanding and encouraging people to have a real discussion about what "mental health" even means. I spoke with them so fervently about so much that I basically wore myself out!
They are still in the early planning stages but I think they have a lot to offer. Anyone who has been through the mental health system and lives in the Twin Cities area should definitely send Andrew a message and let him know that I sent ya. If you'd like his contact info, let me know so I can give it to you privately and not plaster it all over the internets.
Til next time,
R
This week I met with an interesting fellow by the name of Andrew Senn. He and his collaborators are putting together a group of like-minded individuals who have experience in the mental health system - those who have been put through it, so to speak. They are working on creating a video-based documentary to help add a new level of identity to various diagnoses and "symptoms," hopefully giving more freedom for empathy and understanding and encouraging people to have a real discussion about what "mental health" even means. I spoke with them so fervently about so much that I basically wore myself out!
They are still in the early planning stages but I think they have a lot to offer. Anyone who has been through the mental health system and lives in the Twin Cities area should definitely send Andrew a message and let him know that I sent ya. If you'd like his contact info, let me know so I can give it to you privately and not plaster it all over the internets.
Til next time,
R
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