I'm Confused, You Say "Liberal" Like It's a Bad Thing

Few things crack me up about angry conservatives more than their use of "liberal" as an insult to people like me. It's no more insulting than calling me a brunette. Or short. Or Italian. It's what I am. If you're trying to turn what I am into a thing to insult me with, then you need to go back to kindergarten and re-learn how to be mean, because you're doing it all wrong.

Liberals believe in equality in all its forms. Economic equality. Gender equality. Marriage equality. Racial equality. Liberals want everyone to have the same starting point, so that one group doesn't have to work ten times as hard for the same paycheck. Liberals want everyone to enjoy the same rights, respect, and humanity. Liberals want a system that works because everyone benefits from it. A world where there are no losers.

So the fact you think you can insult me by calling me a compassionate, realistic person who doesn't want anybody to be left behind? That is fucking hilarious.

What rural white straight Christian America needs to realize is that progressives are, in fact, working to improve their lives as well. Progressive policies will put a fuck of a lot more money and power and freedom in their pockets than conservative ones will. But there's one little catch: we're not going to do it at the expense of minorities. You want a piece of the pie? You have to make exactly one concession. And that concession is to respect the rights of everyone else at the table.

But that, unfortunately, is where we keep losing them. These are people drunk on hatred, violence and ignorance. Stoned out of their goddamned minds on it. They will not let go of it for anything, and like the Skinner box rat, they will ignore the food lever and pull the drug lever until they all drop dead.

And no, before any conservative assumes what I'm about to say next, I don't want that to happen. I would much rather see them come to their senses and get on board the train that isn't heading straight for a fucking cliff. But if they're going to insist on being lost causes, then there is literally nothing anyone can do to get them out of that box and away from that lever. You can't help an addict that doesn't want to quit. You can't make an intelligent peacemaker out of someone who likes being an ignorant, hateful bigot.

The only reason progressives will leave you behind is because you give us no goddamn choice. We have far more important shit to do and far more pressing problems to fix. We can't sit around and waste time coddling your feelings when people on this train are dying. And it's frankly a long enough train that if you get your shit together, you can hop on at any point.

So you want a slice of the pie? You make that concession. It's your turn to sacrifice something for once. We're out of time, out of options, and out of fucks.

The Other Conversation About Mental Illness Nobody Wants to Have

As much as I love that we're finally having a much needed talk about mental illness, there is a highly disturbing undercurrent that I've been seeing all through the current rhetoric. In particular, around purported "support" communities on sites like Tumblr. Yeah, I know, I heard the collective groan, too. But while it's easy to dismiss Tumblr as the indie coffeeshop of the internet at which disaffected millenial hipsters gather, it's important to remember that it's a really big indie coffeeshop with 550 million users (almost 380 million of which are millenials, and this is going back to 2015). Thus, it's a significant influence, however dumb it may be.

And this disturbing undercurrent I've noticed is that a lot of the rhetoric around Tumblr appears to be pro-illness, and very much anti-recovery/management.

What I mean by this is that anytime a user brings up information or advice on how to get back to living, invariably somebody will barge in calling it "neurotypical bullshit" and not-so-subtlely implying that if you can function, you're not really ill. And that commentary will get shared and reblogged far more widely than the original advice.

As someone with diagnosed major depression and on medication for it, I can't even begin to tell you how fucking dangerous this is. And it's the conversation everyone seems to want to shut down.

Because from what I can gather, these Tumblr types are treating being mentally ill the same as they treat being LGBT or brown or some other born-with-it attribute that's perfectly normal. Thus, any attempt to manage the symptoms of a mental illness is seen as "changing who you are" on the order of ex-gay therapy or some shit.

And well, let's just say there's a reason we call them mental illnesses instead of mental personality traits or mental superpowers. These disorders are not a normal and healthy part of the human experience like homosexuality is; they are, in fact, serious problems whose symptoms need to be managed so that the patient can lead as full and happy a life as possible. And that is not achieved by outright encouraging maladaptive and dangerous behaviors and shitty coping mechanisms, while rejecting any attempts at symptom management as "ableism."

It's especially prevalent against the simplest of advice. For instance, a very common piece of (hella good) advice for people with disorders that encourage isolation and stagnation (depression, various anxiety disorders, avoidant personality disorder, etc.) is as simple as making yourself get bathed and dressed in the morning and doing simple maintenance on your living space (wash the dishes, take out the trash/recycling, etc.).

I can tell you firsthand this is important as hell; depression in my case makes me feel sluggish and worthless and it's very easy to get into a rut of "fuck it" and spend all day housebound and still in my pyjamas. Because I have so little energy or desire to expend it, that going out to do what needs done feels like I'm being told to climb Everest. Forcing myself to get washed and dressed first thing in the morning gets me over that hurdle. It prevents me from curling up in that ditch and turning off the world.

This is not a "bootstraps" argument. Getting dressed in the morning does not cure depression, nor does being able to get dressed in the morning mean I don't still have it. What it means is that I've made it over a very important hurdle very early in the day, so if I have to do something else that requires pants? I'll be less likely to shirk the task because hey, already got pants! But to the Tumblr crowd, this is "internalized ableism" because having depression is something I can't control and the rest of the world should understand that.

Welp, allow me to answer in a way they'll be able to process it:

Because again, depression is not a personality trait. It's a mental illness. It has symptoms which adversely affect daily life, and those symptoms need to be managed. Not to achieve some arbitrary definition of "normal" but because the symptoms of depression are highly unpleasant themselves. Managing them is part of feeling better and happier.

Encouraging other people to engage in harmful behavior patterns because you personally like using your all too often self-misdiagnosed alphabet soup mental illness as an excuse to get out of doing shit you don't want to do? That is ableism. Worse, actually.

We need to have frank discussions about mental illness because we need it to be seen as an illness rather than a character flaw. What these Tumblr types are doing is exactly the opposite; they are treating the illness as a character trait that cannot and should not be changed and overcome.

That is not the conversation we need to be having. Please, cut it the fuck out.