Oh for decency's sake, failblog and Pharyngula!

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Why the hell are we using our justified disgust with Christianity to be utter assholes to mentally ill persons?

No, ladies and gentlemen. This isn't funny. It's frigging immoral, imho. Do you think its easy for mentally ill persons to have relationships? Do you think its easy for them to find understanding persons, especially if they are able-bodied, who have the time and the understanding to stick with them through thick and thin? This is your abled-bodied privilege stinking up the place, yo. Not funny. In fact, EPIC FAIL.


DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS.

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Schizophrenia is a disease, not a character flaw.

I can't bear Pharyngula any more, especially the comments section. Did he get called on it?

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I didn't check. *goes to peek in full hazmat suit*

[kadath.livejournal.com]

For those about to get covered in other people's privilege, we salute you!

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I had to just skim those comments. They were fucking awful!

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Myers himself can be pretty bad, but he has some shame and is capable of apologizing if someone manages to beat the point into his head. But his commenters are fucking unbearable.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Out of 25 comments only two show any damn sense. And the last one hurriedly assures how they got the joke.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

I just had to call somebody directly above you on the f'list on this crap. No response yet.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I saw it. I cannot believe what he chose to complain about!

[kadath.livejournal.com]

TWK is good on subjects where he's already seen the light, and open to being called on his privilege and generally reacts well on those where he hasn't, but goddamn, I wish he'd do the work himself once in a while.

[sajia.livejournal.com]

I have always disliked PZ Myers since he wrote that piece justifying the despoiling of native american graveyards in the name of science. It was the beginning of my education in the racism of white atheists.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I have always disliked PZ Myers since he wrote that piece justifying the despoiling of native american graveyards in the name of science


WHUT???????????

[sajia.livejournal.com]

A couple of years some Native American groups opposed archeological excavations of their graveyards demanding respect of their belief systems. Myers said that superstition was superstition, (though admittedly he did realize the need for sensitivity) and that just because a site was holy in the eyes of a band didn't mean archeologists didn't have the right to set up digs on it.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

ITS A BURIAL SITE. RIP DOESN'T APPLY TO NATIVE AMERICANS TOO?????

[sajia.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it was just the graveyard or also shrines and sacred spaces. I could be wrong, I read the article a long time ago and couldn't be bothered to bookmark it.

[sanguinity]

Do you remember if this about Kennewick Man, the Hood Canal Bridge, or something else? Or search terms I could use to find it?

[(Anonymous)]

I just can't remember. I was too irate to make a note of it. I'm thinking it might be a Navajo site, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[sajia.livejournal.com]

That was me, at a public computer, oops.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

He's consistent in that he doesn't think Christian burial grounds are inherently sacrosanct, either, but it's still like, "Dude. Maybe you should consider the history and power imbalance at work here."

[la-vie-noire.livejournal.com]

seriously, fail blog has bring so much fail lately, there was the transphobic one too some days ago, and many many more.

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

See, I read that, and I see a Christianist zealot who refuses to seek psychiatric care because it's of the devil. That or a "christian" community that discourages members from seeking care. "Self-controlled" is a screaming red flag, and the kind of people who would insist that mental illness should be "self-controlled" instead of treated by a professional deserve to be mocked.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Be that as it may, though, thats not what PZ is mocking. He is basically comparing the mental illness with Christianity.

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

Gotcha.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Not the people who are suffering it, especially a condition that distorts perceptions as badly as schizophrenia does. It's one thing to yell at somebody to go to the doctor when they've got the flu, and something else entirely to do so to someone with a mental illness. Society at large believes 1. that the flu is real, 2. that it's not a character flaw if you get it, and 3. even if being sick makes you unpleasant to be around, you still deserve compassion and medical treatment. None of these are true about schizophrenia.

The people and culture who are pouring that toxic nonsense into a mentally ill person's head, on the other hand, deserve all the opprobrium one can dish out.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

what you said.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

I have to remind myself of what I said regularly, and my mental illness is an "acceptable" one that responds well to available treatments. It's the least I can do to stand up for people who have it worse.

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

Good point. I tend to project alot of my own guilt at not having gotten treatment myself, because I was part of a cult-like group and believed the rhetoric about mental illness being a sin, etc. etc. Much that went wrong in my life would have been very different if I had just gone to see a damn shrink instead of trying to "pray away" my illness.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Hurting yourself like that isn't wrong, per se. It's just tragic.

[hari-mirchi.livejournal.com]

Also, since I can't edit, none of my disorders cause the same extent of distorted perception as schizophrenia. So while it's easy for me to say "Well, *I* should have been able to realize that I had a medical condition" that doesn't apply to someone with a different disorder than I have. I have to actively remind myself of that.

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Schizophrenia is a bitch and a half, especially if you end up with paranoid-type and are convinced the doctors are trying to poison you. And fucking Reagan closed the mental institutions, so it's immensely difficult for schizophrenia patients to get the kind of long-term intense care necessary to stabilize them enough to phase over to self-care.

Not that the institutions were great, mind you, but they were better than being left to fend for yourself until you die or end up in our crime-against-humanity prison system.

ETA: I realize this is Amero-centric, but I don't know enough about other countries' mental health systems to speak to them.

[claws-n-stripes.livejournal.com]

I'm going to add to the above my agreement, and utter disgust.

I do have a question. Wouldn't "neurotypical privilege" be more accurate than "able-bodied privilege"?

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Sounds good!

[kadath.livejournal.com]

NT usually refers to the autism spectrum, so it might be confusing in this context.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

Ah.

[sanguinity]

It took me a long time to figure out what Pharyngula was doing with that, and then when I finally did? The disgust, it burns.

[seize.livejournal.com]

Pharyngula has pissed me off before, but this is just...keyboard smash.

I'm an evolutionary biologist, I should love that blog...but he frequently makes me angry. And not just when he's being a privileged jackass like in this case.

...Hm....I'm having trouble extricating what may be a valid anti-PZ argument from "tone" bullshit. I'll probably post on my journal about this later.