You know that a person considers you less than human when they consider your non compliance as an indication of how fucked up you are rather than as an expression of your  autonomy.  Children are expected to be compliant or they are designated naughty and out of control, and in need of discipline, and “treatment”.  Most people are comfortable with calling these treatment programs aimed at children by their proper name, punishment.  They feel justified in punishing children for non compliance, seeing themselves as righteous judges with necessary authority over these lesser peoples.

People with mental and behavioral disorders are also designated naughty and out of control if they desire any say whatsoever in their diagnosis and appropriate “treatment program”, and therefore in need of discipline through a different treatment program decided by someone else.  To many of us who have been subjected to unwanted, unnecessary treatment programs, which we have experienced as being harmful to ourselves rather than as healing, we percieve this as punishment.  Not punishment for being ill necessarily, but as punishment for being different, as punishment simply for being who we are.  We percieve these treatments as a violation of our humanity and our right to autonomy.  We percieve those who insist on these treatments as authoritarian bullies with no respect for us at all.

As you can imagine, when the symptoms of our illness include paranoia and depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and a serious lack of self confidence, this punishment, by the very people we are urged to trust, is just another big setback, another huge knock, that brings on all the worst of the symptoms we spend every day fighting through.  All our own work on surviving and healing, that which we lead ourselves through, the most important healing work that most of us will do, is smashed back down to nothing.

When you hear the words “non compliance” used negatively to refer to a person with mental health or behavioural difficulties, try to imagine the positive words “expressing autonomy” were used instead.  All you need to do is see the person referred to as a human being with the right to self determination.  It’s simple really.

I’ve always felt the people who think being dependent on legal drugs makes them better than those on illegal drugs are really the sanctimonious ones. I’ve been dismissed as a junkie, even during times when my drug use was very mild, by people only too happy to shovel prescription drugs down their throats. I think I can safely say that there are few more sanctimonious than those whose opinion matches that of a ruling establishment.

It’s interesting how this keeps happening. Here’s a list of people who I see called sanctimonious on a regular basis:- breastfeeding women; homeschooling families; home birthing women; people who use alternative therapies of any kind; vegans and vegetarians; feminists; anti-racist activists; anti capitalists of all sorts; anti pornography activists. It’s an interesting list. Anyone who resists the status quo risks being dismissed as sanctimonious simply for making their decision, even when they do it silently, let alone if they dare to ever talk about their resistance. If I dare to talk aloud of my reasons for home birthing, I will be called sanctimonious, I will be told off for “judging” others who dont home birth, I will be suspected of trying to force other women to do it my way. It’s why I never discuss breast feeding with my friends - because my decision to do it long term is deemed to be shaming of other women who dont. It’s why talking about home ed is so awkward - because people are so defensive, they assume that my decision not to send my kids to school is a judgment on those who dont. I have damn good reasons for all of these things, i’ve researched and learned through reading, discussion and my own life experience, i’ve made my decisions accordingly. Yet somehow I feel like i’m not allowed to talk about any of it, in case it makes other people defensive, hurts their feelings. These people have their opinions protected and promoted in society by powerful institutions - the education and medical establishments, and the media, for example - you would have thought they’d feel secure - and yet my silence about my resistance is apparently necessary to give them confidence in their sanctity.

So anyway, on depression and drugs. There are loads of people who have mental and depressive illnesses and choose not to take medication, for a variety of reasons, including previous drug addiction problems and a well earned lack of trust in the medical establishment. I am one of them - I deliberately choose not to take medication. For me, this is an important resistance against those who would tell me that its “all in my head”, that I merely suffer from a chemical imbalance, and that what I live with is not the result of a bunch of really shit experiences. I will not have my history erased, my abusers excused, like that - I will not be made to blame for my disorder, and I will not be silenced with medication. I am not “lucky” that I can choose not to take drugs. I struggle, mostly on my own and mostly silently. I go through periods of time where all I can think about is how I could get fixed up and it might make me ‘normal’. But one reason that I resist being made ‘normal’, taking medication that make me artificially ‘okay’, is that I’ve been there and done that, and had the breakdowns. No more, thanks.

I think it’s also important to be aware of the probable outcome of the general belief in chemical imbalances, and how depressed people can all be turned into productive citizens if we just gave them happy pills (which btw is such a wrong name, ‘normality pills’ would be more appropriate, because they dont make people happyhappyjoyjoy, rather they make us better able to function according to the generally accepted (and pushed) standard of normality - and that is a helluva temptation). Drugs can be forced on people, they have been in the past alongside various other dodgy treatments, they are still forced on those who can be sectioned, and it is not an uncommon opinion that those of us who are ill and allegedly “a drain on resources”, or “dangerous”, or whatever else they’re calling us today, should be forced into treatment of whatever sort happens to be trendy this year. It is not by accident that marginalised peoples are also the ones most discovered to be mentally ill, or that mental illnesses themselves are ‘discovered’ to explain away the behaviours of those who are marginalised and oppressed, in particular those behaviours that are aimed directly at those who oppress them. Forced treatment of mental (and behavioural) illnesses and disorders in the main affect those who are already most oppressed in our society.

When we say we won’t take medication, it’s not us being sanctimonious or unrealistic, and it’s not that we suffer less urgent or painful illness. There are many good reasons to choose to stay off drugs, but it’s a difficult choice to make and to live with. I feel tempted a lot of the time, just like I still feel tempted to find someone who will sell me some speed, despite not having done any for years now. It’s not the drugs necessarily I want, it’s the alleged normality that they could bring. If I could just score a couple of lines worth I know I could get my house tidy, my bills in order, go outside, even be sociable and fun. More long term, I could get a job, have some money, buy nice things, have fun with the kids, keep my house clean, write more and better, lose some weight, and feel less para about the way I look. All of this and more tempts me all the damn time, and I hate being such a fucking mess. But I resist because I’ve been down that road and i’ve decided its no good, the temptation is real but the promises are hollow. My road has to be different - I’m sticking it out as long as I can and I hope, I really hope, that I can learn to better recognise my triggers, better recognise when i’m going through or about to go through an episode or mood, learn to cope with them better. In the long term I think I will be better off seeing it through and relying on myself, than relying on anything prescribed by some guy I see rarely and who knows fuck all about me.

I have no time to go on, but i’ve seen some very one sided discussions on drug therapies for depressive disorders recently, which are insulting, and presumptious, towards those who resist, and I wanted to say something about that.

Support for meritocracy allows racists to continue being racist, sexists to continue being sexist, almost everyone to continue attacking the “purpose” of those with disabilities or disorders, etc.  And yet I see an overwhelming amount of support for meritocracy and individualist centred brands of politics among so called progressives all over the place.  Class politics in the UK were already complicated enough for me to understand when they said you supposedly either had it, or you didnt, but the reality of who fell into either category was more complex than anyone wanted to admit, and what people were telling me never seemed to tie up with what I have actually witnessed and experienced.  Add meritocracy and the American Dream into the mix and the whole thing just spins so far out that noone makes sense anymore.

I’m confused.  I’m fed up.  Too many individualist leftists indulging in victim blaming and meritocracy worshipping, alleged anarchists and socialists indulging the evolutionary psychologists (thank you Dr Socks for introducing me to a whole new set of weirdos, but they do keep popping up everywhere don’t they) by accepting it as a “science” rather than as only slightly different explanations (excuses) for the same old entitlement and the same old oppressions.  Women are women because we have women’s brains, men are men because they have men’s brains, and men’s brains and women’s brains are fundamentally different except when that man is really a woman or that woman is really a man, but regardless - men’s brains whether in a man or a woman are superior and women’s brains whether in a woman or a man are inferior.

The left is too far right, women are still for sale but somehow capitalism becomes empowering when it’s us being commodified, and nothing makes sense.  Everything is backwards, contradiction is hailed as truth and truth is trashed as the rantings of crazy people who allegedly enjoy being victims, who are “probably” turned on by the victimisation of their sisters, that victimisation which they spend their time tirelessly trying to make public.  Somehow screaming NO! is really a sign that in secret, we like it, we desire it, we protest only because we find it sexually stimulating - now where have I heard all that before?  Are people really so desperate to fit in that they will overlook this stuff as if it doesn’t matter, as if this sort of blatant doublespeak and victim blaming language is compatible with liberation struggles?

Was I completely deluded to think that it was the people on the right who only cared about the lives and fates of their own selfish selves, and that those on the left were more inclined to care about the lives and fates of us all, collectively, as people all under the same sun?  When did the left start parroting Thatcher, who they claim to hate, but even so I’m really having difficulty seeing where the line is, between them and her.  “There is no such thing as society”.  Indeed.  Or maybe I’m too young to have understood until now that that was always the way, and only now am I beginning to see that no matter how much some people might say anti racism, no matter how much they might say feminism, no matter how much they might try to claim these positions and actions, i do not think it means what they think it means.

What an utterly cryptic and useless post I gave you.   I’m working it through, bear with me.  Too much going on, not a great enough handle on my own language to express what I need to.

Anthony Barron, rapist of female children, has been given a life sentence after being found guilty of a total of 89 offences, including rape and attempted rape, of at least ten girls, who were as young as 3. He made video and photographs of some of these assaults.

The mother of a four-year-old who was one of his victims said: “He came across as really nice, genuine, charming. A really nice person, is the only way to put it.

“[He appeared] caring and interested in how the children were doing, in some ways my welfare as well, after my husband and I separated.”

We are accustomed to hearing how children are ‘groomed’ by sexual predators, but it is rarely discussed how adults are also ‘groomed’.  Grooming is the emotional manipulation of minors for sexual purpose. But men who rape children very often have to gain the trust of adult parents before they are able to access our children, and to do this they apply the same manipulation tactics. Not coincidentally these same tactics are very often used by men who rape adult women, in fact these tactics are condoned as authentic seduction methods when used on adult women.  Seduction is the emotional manipulation of another person for sexual purpose.  A mans success with this manipulation marks him as a ‘proper’ man, a real ‘ladykiller’. Adult women in a vulnerable emotional state, after a break up for example, are seen as ‘fair game’ and desirable targets for male manipulation/seduction.

Robert Greene’s book, The Art Of Seduction, contains the following chapers (quotes are from the website):

Choose The Right Victim

“Study your prey thoroughly.. The right victims are those for whom you can fill a void.. They are often isolated or unhappy, or can be easily made so.”

Create a False Sense Of Security - Approach Indirectly

“If you are too direct too early on, you risk stirring up a resistance.. Haunt at the periphary of your target’s life - approach through a third party.. Lull the target into feeling secure, then strike.”

Create a Need - Stir Anxiety & Discontent

“Tension and disharmony must be instilled in your target’s minds. Stir within them feelings of discontent.. The feelings of inadequacy that you create will give you space to insinuate yourself.. Pain and anxiety are the proper precursors to pleasure. “

Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion

“The trick to making them listen is to say what they want to hear, to fill their ears with whatever is pleasant to them. This is the essence of seductive language.”

Isolate the Victim

“An isolated person is weak.. Give them the sense of being marginalized.. Lure the seduced into your lair where nothing is familiar.”

Take a look round the huge number of mens dating and seduction guides and you’ll see the same language over and over, the language of warfare and hunting. Male sexuality is overwhelmingly defined in popular culture as predatory. How can we as women trust any men when we know this, who can we trust when over and over men we thought were nice, genuine, and charming, are exposed as rapists and child molesters?

Christine Barron, the ex wife of the above child rapist, said:

I’m finding it terribly difficult to equate it with the man I knew. He loved children and children loved him. He wasn’t that kind of man as far as I knew. My family are shocked, I’m shocked.

Everybody thought they could trust him. He could be so charming, but obviously there was more to it than that.

Courtney Martin reads from her book,

“Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.”

Full video here, (50mins)