Why are rates of psychological distress continuing to rise despite decades of expanding diagnoses, medications and individual treatments?
Perhaps because human suffering cannot be understood in isolation from relationships, communities and the wider intepersonal & social dynamics they are contained within.
What we are witnessing is not a crisis of disordered individuals, but a crisis of relational & social harm and disconnection, as well as the inappropriate medicalisation of its consequences—something which, on the contrary, needs social and interpersonal intervention, not further "fixing" of individuals who are only expressions of it.
Using data from: https://t.co/XI5fFp0MOM
'He has a point, but he's too blunt.'
From the start, a key tactic of the gender identitarians has been linguistic prescription, and it's proved shockingly successful. Trans activists' shibboleths and euphemisms have been allowed to penetrate the upper echelons of our culture with devastating consequences to freedom of speech and belief. Huge swathes of liberal media, the arts, academia and publishing have thrown themselves with gusto into the defence of a quasi-religious belief causing provable real world harm, and in their arrogance they've been outraged when people they assumed were part of their In Group have refused to march meekly along in lock step.
Time and again, I've seen and heard well-educated people who consider themselves critical thinkers and bold truth-tellers squirm when put on the spot. 'Well, yes, maybe there's something in what you're saying, but it's hateful/provocative/rude not to use the approved language/pretend people can literally change sex/keep drawing attention to medical malpractice or opportunistic sexual predators. Why can't you be nice? Why won't you pretend? We thought you were one of us! Don't you realise we have sophisticated new words and phrases these days that obviate the necessity of thinking any of this through?'
As the vibe shifts, and a lot of people in the elite professions start trying to reposition themselves, the obvious place to start is, 'it's not that I couldn't see your point, but did you have to say it that way?' We dissenters were supposed to find a way of questioning the chemical castration of children while calling it 'gender affirming care.' We were meant to defend the rights of vulnerable women while also using female pronouns for male rapists. We should have found a way to discuss fairness for women and girls in sport, while pretending that the ineradicable physical advantage men have over women doesn't exist.
Either a man can be a woman, or he can't. Either women deserve rights, or they don't. Either there's a provable medical benefit to transitioning children, or there isn't. Either you're on the side of a totalitarian ideology that seeks to impose falsehoods on society through the threat of ostracisation, shaming and violence, or you're not. The alternative to being 'blunt' - using accurate, factual language to describe what was going on - was to surrender freedom of speech and espouse ideological jargon that obfuscated the issues and the harms caused. We've always needed blunt people, but we need them most of all when being asked to bow down to a naked emperor.
The term 'mental illness' is a way of ideologically capturing as a 'psychiatric issue' what could be more accurately seen as diverse forms of demoralisation, social suffering, situational distress, confusion, loss, trauma, iatrogenic & relational harm. The term is a smokescreen.
We refuse to be bullied & intimidated by pathetic, socially-inept losers like Thomas Michael Moncrieff Carlin.
Remember back when Police Scotland admitted they were misogynistic & promised to do better?
Join us on Saturday to show them, & the assorted social misfits, that we don't bully easily.
#199DaysLater
#WomenWontWait
"The mental health interventions preferred since the 1980s are ones that have pathologised, depoliticised & commodified our emotional distress –robbing it of its capacity to illuminate social ills, galvanise social action & facilitate lasting/meaningful personal & social change".
As Lewis Carroll understood, asserting the ability to arbitrarily change the meaning of words is really asserting the most raw, totalitarian form of power. More power than Nero would have dreamt of. That’s what it’s about. Nothing else.
Eek! Ultra processed foods may account for >50% of household purchases in the UK - topping the tables for Europe. Ultra processing = Destruction of food matrix = negative health effects. Are the benefits of the Mediterranean diet (Blue bubbles below) largely due to ‘whole foods’?