I grew up in a psychiatric system that told me from the first encounter that my experiences were not real and that my emotions were not valid. I hoped to join a movement to end this de-humanizing and dismissing treatment of others. Yet I see, after Sera’s incredibly important blog, male psychiatric survivor activists jumping in to say that our experiences of sexism are NOT REAL and that the pain we experience is NOT VALID. It many ways this feels the same as the psychiatrists that looked down on me from their positions of power and labeled my valid experiences as “psychosis” and “mental illness”. It feels like a slap in the face from people who should KNOW BETTER.
In this movement, I have been spoken over and spoken for by men. I have seen national organizations that were supposed to be centers of “empowerment” where men profit on women’s labor and exploit women’s bodies. I had hoped that when I stopped keeping the company of mental health clinicians that this experience of being “spoken for” and “rationalized out my own reality” would stop. It has not. I still remain hopeful that our movement can become one that acknowledges intersecting oppressions. But this will only be the case if we keep listening to each other and making committed efforts to address these systemic issues.
I grew up in a psychiatric system that told me from the first encounter that my experiences were not real and that my emotions were not valid. I hoped to join a movement to end this de-humanizing and dismissing treatment of others. Yet I see, after Sera’s incredibly important blog, male psychiatric survivor activists jumping in to say that our experiences of sexism are NOT REAL and that the pain we experience is NOT VALID. It many ways this feels the same as the psychiatrists that looked down on me from their positions of power and labeled my valid experiences as “psychosis” and “mental illness”. It feels like a slap in the face from people who should KNOW BETTER.
In this movement, I have been spoken over and spoken for by men. I have seen national organizations that were supposed to be centers of “empowerment” where men profit on women’s labor and exploit women’s bodies. I had hoped that when I stopped keeping the company of mental health clinicians that this experience of being “spoken for” and “rationalized out my own reality” would stop. It has not. I still remain hopeful that our movement can become one that acknowledges intersecting oppressions. But this will only be the case if we keep listening to each other and making committed efforts to address these systemic issues.
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