A gramme is always better than a damn

“If distress proves that the distressed are ‘defective’, it also proves that nothing much is psychologically distressing and damaging. It means that both cause and effect are located within ‘defective’ individuals. It is effectively a not guilty verdict for every form of oppression and abuse, and sympathy and solidarity with harm doers, and with the harm itself.

It has removed context from our suffering and made it a trivial matter, as well as making it an entirely individual problem, as if any upset or disagreement with our social system is proof of personal malfunction, and the system itself is flawless.

It enables a punishing approach to those who are most hurt from onlookers both inside and outside of the industry.

It promises a magical no-effort solution to “mental illness” where no one needs to change anything and no one needs to take responsibility for anything and we can continue to pretend that life’s a lark and anyone who doesn’t feel that way needs to be “fixed.” A gramme is always better than a damn.

The obvious reason for defining people as “ill” rather than suffering from the concrete realities of society is that “society” gets a pass, while the individual reacting to it is deemed the problem. Any question as to who benefits from that?

And don’t forget those abused by partners or guardians. If a wife or teen looks stressed and out of it while the abuser is well dressed and knows what to say the shrink will blame everything on the abuse victim. “Nobody’s fault. Just the crazy with the messed up brain. Their fault always. But we’re not ‘blaming’ ‘cause we write them off as hopeless so they can let us take care of them like five year old’s ‘till they die. See how nice we are!”