Vocally crazy: on privilege and the risks and benefits of being out

I am vocally, explicitly out about being bipolar (especially, but not only, online). I also reclaim the word “crazy” — because although my “mental illness” looks almost nothing like what is portrayed in popular media as “crazy”, I have the same diagnosis as some of those wackadoo characters. Or some of my friends do. Or someone in my family does. And none of them act quite like that either, but that doesn’t stop the world from believing that what they see on the little and big screens is what “crazy” really is like. So I say fuck that, and take back my word: I am crazy.

If not the TV stereotype, what does that mean? When I am not particularly stable, I maybe laugh a little too loud, or cry a little too often, or get overwhelmed a bit too easily. I might retreat from public spaces, or find safe, private hidey holes in the IKEA warehouse. I might speak a little too truthfully, a little too hyperbolically, of the ways in which I am hurt by the world. I use pain I can control to cope with pain I cannot. But I am not, outside of my self-perceptions, in any way delusional. I don’t have visions or hear voices. I don’t assault people in the street. I don’t “act crazy”. Except? For me¹, that is what it means to act crazy.

My reclamation of that label — my proclaiming it loudly and often, in every sphere I can — is an act of revolution. It is a public service I offer not only to my fellow crazies, but to the emovtypical², who often truly have no clue what conditions like bipolar and other mood disorders actually look like. We are, all too often, the Other, those people, the strangely enigmatic oracles of lazy plot-writers. In the normal world’s mind, we are not to be trusted, not with anything, because we are so damn crazy.

In fact, that’s exactly what a troll said to me last week:

[...]

You’ve made it a point to stress at every turn in the road that you are not well. Mentally or physically. This long winded rant against even trying to do your job as a parent is nothing more than you trying to make yourself feel better for inadequacies you feel towards the job you are doing and justification for refusing to even try to raise your child.

Or it could just be following the trend of your other entries… and you could just be ranting and raving at some perceived slight directed at you by the universe. A perceived slight against you that ultimately does not exist outside your own mind; a mind that you freely admit isn’t well and is not to be trusted.

(emphases mine: the word “raving” is highlighted because of its close association with madness — eg “the ravings of a madman” — making it a marker of hate speech when used dismissively against a person with a mental illness)

That is what being crazy means to a large, vocal segment of the emovtypical population: my mind is not to be trusted. Not just when I am unstable, not just it comes to mood regulation, not just when I have to evaluate how I look or what people think about me³, but at all. About anything. Ever.

And that? Is why my being out is a reflection of a hell of a lot of privilege on my part. The worst I have to worry about, realistically, is a cuntscraping troll taking a drive-by potshot. I am white, and partnered (with a neurotypical straight white man, nonetheless), and live in a (albeit rented) single family home in a nice residential neighbourhood. I grew up middle class, and have affluent-ish family I could call upon in an emergency, who would come running to protect and defend me. I live in a country where, for now, just having a diagnosis isn’t quite enough to warrant removal of one’s biological child (dare to also be single, or queer, or have children via surrogacy, or not be white, or not be solvent, and it might be a different story). I am, most likely, not going to have my child taken away from me because I am out. My partner is not likely to lose his job. I am not likely to be denied housing. And these things are true in part because I have so many other areas of privilege to protect me⁴; so very many other people are not as lucky as I am.

There is this, also: I have very little to lose. I do not have aspirations to public office. Unlike a family member of mine, I do not work in a high powered, high risk field, where people, concerned over their millions and billions of dollars, might very well fire him, however illegally, if he were to come out as I have about our shared diagnosis. I do not have any job which is dependent entirely on the approval of one or a few persons who may have the same prejudices against mental illness that my dear troll does. I do not risk my livelihood with my advocacy, if only because I do not have one.

Openness, vocalness, outness are good for an invisible, marginalized group: we’re here, we’re [crazy], get used to it! It helps to replace highly distorted stereotypes with real faces, real lives, real persons. As more and more people in a group are out, more and more people not in that group know someone who is — and suddenly, they start caring. No longer is it just “those people” who have to worry about discrimination and hatred and violence and the loss of rights and dignity; it is someone you know, someone you might care about, someone you’re willing to stand up for. These are all very good, very important things.

But openness, vocalness, outness can be dangerous, even lethal, for an individual who is marginalized: when someone comes out as mad (or queer, or trans, or a rape or incest survivor, or any other oft-invisible oppressed way of being), they might risk losing their job, losing their children, losing their life. Outness cannot be dictated, imposed, or required. It must not be. It can only be chosen, based on an individual assessment of risk and worth, and the outcome of such calculations will change with each individual, and often with each situation.

For those of us who risk relatively minimal consequence, though — a rare douchebag troll, the scorn of someone whose opinion doesn’t affect us — by virtue of our multitude of other protections, or our lack of anything much to lose, or our sheer awesome courage, I think it important we do come out, as often as we have the opportunity and the spoons to. I do not want to make it an obligation, but to some extent — when it is safe-ish for us, when we do not drain ourselves with it — I think we are called to be out. I certainly feel I am.

We must be aware of this, though, when only or mostly those individuals with other areas of privilege come out: we risk perpetuating the privileges we have. Rather, we risk continuing the marginalization and oppression of those in our group who are “not like us”. Think of White queer rights activists blaming Black Californians for the passage of Prop 8 — not only perpetuating a hateful trope (and being wrong), but forgetting that those black people include queers just like us. Think even of my protestation above that I am not that kind of crazy: some people are. Some hear voices; some wander unkempt down the street muttering to angels and devils invisible to anyone else; some are not able to take daily care of themselves; some never achieve any sort of stability. As I attempt to break the stereotypes — because most of the mentally ill are not “that” kind of crazy — what does that communicate about those most marginalized of my people? Am I saying that they, because they fit more closely with the TV portrayals, are not worthy of the respect and the dignity I demand — am, thanks to my relatively privileged life, capable of demanding? I hope not. I try not. Yet that is something I must work against in all my mostly-privileged advocacy.

With all this — the trolling, having to be on guard against oppressing others, cutting off some possibilities for my future — is being vocally crazy worth it for me? Yes. A thousand times yes. Naming my crazy helps keep me sane. It allows me to connect to others who have been there and have an idea of what it is like. It gives me community, and allows me to offer hope to those who are where I was years ago. It transforms bipolar from something about which I am supposed to feel shame into a point of pride. It lets me say fuck the haters, and allows me to seek support from my friends near and far, and they say fuck them too. Being vocally crazy is a reflection of my privilege, yes, but it is privilege I will gladly use to help me survive — and, I hope, make it easier those who follow.

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