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So there have been a lot of suggestions that James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, for those of you who somehow haven't heard, may not have been well. Like, mentally, this may not have been a healthy person. This, according to many, is an ablist inference to make.
Here's one.
I have seen this linked around as well.
Here's my vibe on it. I think that unaddressed disordered thinking is a necessary, if insufficient on its own, component of this kind of tragedy. And I am not sure that's ablist. Like, "making unhealthy and even destructive decisions that impair your life and those lives around you" is... um... kind of what disordered thinking results in if nobody does anything; that's why it's bad.
I think for me it comes down to this: the vast majority of mentally ill people are a danger to no one and a few are a danger to themselves at most. The number of mentally ill people who are a threat to others is a vanishingly small portion of the vast and diverse population of people who have (or should have) a diagnosis.
So James Holmes.
Nobody is assuming out of nothing and nowhere with no evidence that Holmes is mentally ill. He has demonstrated grossly disordered behavior, and odds seem good that his behavior seems reasonable to him! Which... means we're probably looking at disordered thinking. The people crying "ablism" say all we know about him is that he massacred strangers and told the cops he's a comic book supervillain. Which is... not nothing. I would say that is actually a very significant thing for us to know here.
I just... you know, it's that he told the cops he's a comic book supervillain. Until then I was riding right along thinking, "This looks like the action of a stable and reasonable individual. I see no evidence of disordered thinking in this massacre," but then he had to go and say he's the Joker.
WAIT NO THAT'S A LIE.
A civilian opened fire on dozens of strangers at a movie premiere. If that is not a mentally ill person, that's a funny goddamn picture of healthy and adaptive thinking. Add in that he claimed to be the Joker and my doubts become very smallish indeed. It's icing, though, really.
Yes, I am aware that there is a stigma against mentally ill people that makes it harder for them to get treatment. I think about that every time I see dissociatives portrayed on TV and in books and in roleplaying/writing communities as having an "evil" personality that hacks people up for funsies. It makes perfect sense to me that most mentally ill people are not violent, nor are most acts of violence pinnable on mental illness.
I am also aware that individuals whose mental illnesses are being addressed really are no more dangerous than anyone else. I am also aware that untreated mental illness eats away at the things that make people not just pleasant to be around, but safe to be around, especially in the case of things like personality disorders. Read that link again. Does reality have an ablist bias?
Not all acts of violence are attributable to mental illness, but the denialism surrounding the mere possibility that Holmes's might be is really puzzling to me right now. People without a mental illness commit violence all the time. A lot of that is because of pervasive bullshit like racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, etcetera, and these are sane people who have been fed bullshitbullshitbullshit by society, but unfortunately because it's society telling them "those people don't count" and not a voice in their head, they're sane. They're wrong and they're horrible, but they're sane. If we really must divide it into teams, they're on my "team," much to my dismay.
Because seriously, if we aren't going to say that James Holmes's behavior was influenced by mental illness, then we have to say that he was mentally healthy. We don't have all the evidence, but contrary to some people's assertions, we don't know nothing and what we do know sorta has that "this boy ain't right" smell about it.
We can do the equivalent of "LALALALA HE WAS JUST HORRIBLE SO THERE IS NO EXPLANATION" or "LALALA THE DEVIL MADE HIM DO IT" but both amount to "we don't like the explanation so let's just pretend there isn't one." We really can begin to venture a guess that Holmes may not be wired particularly well. I am surprised we can't say that without every fucking anxious or depressed person on Tumblr screaming "HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT I AM A MURDERER!"
Joe Scarborough was being ablist, though. It's a little ridic to be like "I think these mass murderers are all a little autistic" because that is so fucking far distant from how autism works that the only reason he could possibly say that is a certain "well all mental illnesses are interchangeable so w/e they're all psycho" sort of thinking that is not useful and is ablist.
But what doesn't seem ablist to me is looking at someone who caused brutal murderous random mayhem in the style of a comic book and movie supervillain he later claimed to the cops to be and saying, "That boy doesn't seem right."
Just like how all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, we can say that as a general rule people who re-enact violent large-scale comic book supervillainy are mentally ill without arguing the reverse: that as a general rule mentally ill people re-enact violent large-scale comic book supervillainy.
Going to go out on a limb and say that that kind of thing is probably a fairly reasonable warning sign where mental health is concerned. I mean, it's a red flag by my personal standards. Y'all people on Tumblr are welcome to consider it a non-factor, though. You go ahead and suspend judgement until you get a more obvious sign of his mental problems than... you know, the attempted supervillainy.
Here's one.
So, one more time, because oh my god you just don’t get it, JAMES HOLMES KILLED PEOPLE BECAUSE HE’S A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING, NOT BECAUSE HE’S CRAZY. BECAUSE BEING CRAZY AND BEING A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING ARE NOT. THE SAME. MOTHERFUCKING. THING.
I have seen this linked around as well.
We are the ones who have to live with the stigma you perpetuate. I am at risk of being killed because you tell the population that I am dangerous-despite that I am one of the 97% of developmentally disabled people who has been the victim of non mentally ill, non disabled violent perpetrators. You make the world more dangerous for me every time you do this. You make it more dangerous for my entire community.
We are not your scapegoat, and the trope of the dangerous neurodivergent is not only irresponsible, it is sloppy. Do some real research instead of lazily reaching into the bag of tropes every time someone does something terrible. Statistically speaking, we didn't do it, and spreading the idea that we did has very real consequences that can mean life and death for us.
Here's my vibe on it. I think that unaddressed disordered thinking is a necessary, if insufficient on its own, component of this kind of tragedy. And I am not sure that's ablist. Like, "making unhealthy and even destructive decisions that impair your life and those lives around you" is... um... kind of what disordered thinking results in if nobody does anything; that's why it's bad.
I think for me it comes down to this: the vast majority of mentally ill people are a danger to no one and a few are a danger to themselves at most. The number of mentally ill people who are a threat to others is a vanishingly small portion of the vast and diverse population of people who have (or should have) a diagnosis.
So James Holmes.
Nobody is assuming out of nothing and nowhere with no evidence that Holmes is mentally ill. He has demonstrated grossly disordered behavior, and odds seem good that his behavior seems reasonable to him! Which... means we're probably looking at disordered thinking. The people crying "ablism" say all we know about him is that he massacred strangers and told the cops he's a comic book supervillain. Which is... not nothing. I would say that is actually a very significant thing for us to know here.
I just... you know, it's that he told the cops he's a comic book supervillain. Until then I was riding right along thinking, "This looks like the action of a stable and reasonable individual. I see no evidence of disordered thinking in this massacre," but then he had to go and say he's the Joker.
WAIT NO THAT'S A LIE.
A civilian opened fire on dozens of strangers at a movie premiere. If that is not a mentally ill person, that's a funny goddamn picture of healthy and adaptive thinking. Add in that he claimed to be the Joker and my doubts become very smallish indeed. It's icing, though, really.
Yes, I am aware that there is a stigma against mentally ill people that makes it harder for them to get treatment. I think about that every time I see dissociatives portrayed on TV and in books and in roleplaying/writing communities as having an "evil" personality that hacks people up for funsies. It makes perfect sense to me that most mentally ill people are not violent, nor are most acts of violence pinnable on mental illness.
I am also aware that individuals whose mental illnesses are being addressed really are no more dangerous than anyone else. I am also aware that untreated mental illness eats away at the things that make people not just pleasant to be around, but safe to be around, especially in the case of things like personality disorders. Read that link again. Does reality have an ablist bias?
Not all acts of violence are attributable to mental illness, but the denialism surrounding the mere possibility that Holmes's might be is really puzzling to me right now. People without a mental illness commit violence all the time. A lot of that is because of pervasive bullshit like racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, etcetera, and these are sane people who have been fed bullshitbullshitbullshit by society, but unfortunately because it's society telling them "those people don't count" and not a voice in their head, they're sane. They're wrong and they're horrible, but they're sane. If we really must divide it into teams, they're on my "team," much to my dismay.
Because seriously, if we aren't going to say that James Holmes's behavior was influenced by mental illness, then we have to say that he was mentally healthy. We don't have all the evidence, but contrary to some people's assertions, we don't know nothing and what we do know sorta has that "this boy ain't right" smell about it.
We can do the equivalent of "LALALALA HE WAS JUST HORRIBLE SO THERE IS NO EXPLANATION" or "LALALA THE DEVIL MADE HIM DO IT" but both amount to "we don't like the explanation so let's just pretend there isn't one." We really can begin to venture a guess that Holmes may not be wired particularly well. I am surprised we can't say that without every fucking anxious or depressed person on Tumblr screaming "HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT I AM A MURDERER!"
Joe Scarborough was being ablist, though. It's a little ridic to be like "I think these mass murderers are all a little autistic" because that is so fucking far distant from how autism works that the only reason he could possibly say that is a certain "well all mental illnesses are interchangeable so w/e they're all psycho" sort of thinking that is not useful and is ablist.
But what doesn't seem ablist to me is looking at someone who caused brutal murderous random mayhem in the style of a comic book and movie supervillain he later claimed to the cops to be and saying, "That boy doesn't seem right."
Just like how all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, we can say that as a general rule people who re-enact violent large-scale comic book supervillainy are mentally ill without arguing the reverse: that as a general rule mentally ill people re-enact violent large-scale comic book supervillainy.
Going to go out on a limb and say that that kind of thing is probably a fairly reasonable warning sign where mental health is concerned. I mean, it's a red flag by my personal standards. Y'all people on Tumblr are welcome to consider it a non-factor, though. You go ahead and suspend judgement until you get a more obvious sign of his mental problems than... you know, the attempted supervillainy.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 04:00 am (UTC)From:Would it be wrong/discriminatory/ablist to state that people who commit those kinds of crimes lack empathy for others? It's not saying they all have mental illness, but there does seem to be some sort of root item that produces these kinds of behaviors.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-28 01:14 am (UTC)From:Ya know, I read those tumblr and LJ comms that are all about social justice and activism and stuff, and some of them do good work and a necessary job of opening eyes and making people look at things differently, but so often they go off the fucking rails on some semantic point or a Hulk-like leap of logic, and I just can't believe most of those people are doing anything more than counting SJ coup.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-28 03:24 pm (UTC)From:What's SJ coup?
no subject
Date: 2012-07-28 05:01 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-07-30 02:53 am (UTC)From:I'm pondering something though - yes there is a stigma around mental health treatment, so that those who need it often avoid it, and those who could benefit in a small way (as opposed to life-saving critical ways) never even consider it. Is there any way to shift societal thinking so that the stigma is around NOT getting treatment? If someone had significant physical damage, most people I know would consider them an idiot for not going to an emergency room. There would be some compassion and sympathetic noises for the ones who don't have health insurance, but overall, you're expected to get help. About ten years ago, a co-worker (let's call him Bob) got mugged, and the attacker managed to break Bob's jaw in two places. Bob came to work the next morning, in pain, and planning to tough it out. It took all five team members, the boss and the department director to convince him to seek treatment. He ended up needing surgery, and had his jaw wired shut for six weeks. It never would have healed on its own.
If it's so obvious for physical damage, why is it so backwards for mental or emotional damage? Maybe I'm oversimplifying, and I have the benefit of open-minded friends and family. But really, what can be done to shift this mentality?