Beyond Misogyny: The Trafficking of 'Peer' Allegiences for Fun or Profit

Sharon Cretsinger
author at http://mildlydysthymicinamerica.tumblr.com

Introductory comments:

A couple of weeks back, the Director of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, Sera Davidow, posted an important and widely reviewed piece on that sought to address sexism and mysogyny in the consumer survivor and ex-patient movement. Dear Man: Sexism, Misogyny, & Our ‘Movement’, http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/11/ dear-man-sexism-misogyny-our-movement/  This is my response: 

I’m feeling pretty brain dead, but attempting to put together a cognizant comment here as I can see we have just about everyone represented, including TAC. I didn’t make it all the way through some of the comments. I’m not sorry that a pages long narrative about some dude’s struggle to become more enlightened to the issues of women just simply does not impress me or hold my interest.

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic recently. It is not a new topic. It is not a new dynamic. I have personally been talking about this for years. So, does anyone have the wherewithal to come out and say WHY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW????? Because there is a reason. And many of you know what it is. As long as this topic is packaged eloquently and generally for public consumption, it hardly becomes a topic at all.

My world is a little simpler than all of this. I don’t know if it is right to say I care more about psychiatric survivor issues than women’s issues, because I believe them to be inextricably linked, along with other issues of other marginalized groups. I’m not opening that can of worms, right now, though. I will make a few brief points and be done.

–Many folks of all identified genders still do not understand either the theoretical or practical concept of emotional labor (I like to call it shit work). This is a concept that goes beyond who does the dishes and sweeps the floor at home when both partners have paid work outside the home. Emotional labor includes the smile, the request with please and sugar on top, the “extra mile” to make people feel good and cared about in many contexts. It happened to me just the other day when I was told in a job interview that part of the job was to “smile” and that “sometimes you need to be a mother” to the individuals for whom supports are provided. Let me be clear. I am not here to fucking smile so you can feel good. I am nobody’s mother, and since psychiatry robbed me of that opportunity, I have to assume it also relieved me of the related duties. I don’t need to provide anything with sugar, including your coffee, which I will not make for you. There is a huge deficit within our culture with regard to identifying and rejecting emotional labor; and, women bear some of the responsibility for that.

–I often stand alone in my work and my opinions, and that is quite alright with me. I am happy to have comrades who are true equals, when they are available and willing, of any gender and stripe. And let me be clear on this also: If you show me you are not my comrade, if you treat me as less than, if you expect me to defer to you, if you think you can tell me how to behave in public, how to express myself, if you think you can verbally or literally bitch slap me just because you don’t like what I said or what I stand for, I will fuck you up. By any means necessary. I will make your snake pit look like a motherfucking country club. That is MY feminism. It is irrelevant to me who shares it, and while I would like a changed world, I am not holding my breath. I am focused on things I can actually impact in there here and now.

–Too many of our people, including our women, continue to collude in systems that are inherently oppressive. This includes organizations that pander to the opposition by putting oppressive language such as “mental health” in their titles to, I suppose, better dialog with the oppressor so, I guess, if asked nicely, he may stop oppressing us? I end this sentence with a question mark because I am not really sure what is going on with that. I haven’t been asked to join any of those organizations. Again, I do not hold myself up as an expert on what women, mad people (and other groups) need to do. But I have taken back my language and I use it as I damn well see fit as a vehicle for my voice. It feels pretty good most of the time. So, I would have to say that if women want to be free of misogyny, they might consider their affiliations and perhaps walk away from some whose missions and language oppress others. For me, this includes any organization employing or training any type of clinical professional and/or Certified Peer Supporters. People who make their names and monies on the exploitation of our people like that are not better than sex traffickers; and, it is disgusting when they are women, other marginalized groups, and especially disturbing when they are actually OF our people. But that is a whole other rant for another day.

I want a better world, just like many others here. I also recognize that our civilization is in decline and therefore progress is unlikely. If you want freedom, stop defending oppression. If someone is treating you with misogyny, kick his ass. All people need to stop the anti-intellectualism that is everywhere and really think about the choices they are making and what they mean on a larger scale. It is also necessary to consider what you are really willing to give up personally for the better world you think you want, if you believe it can happen.

My drying skin only
is my own.

Without, the clashing colors
Never dull
(And deep lie the grays)

A bony world
with ragged edges
(A swift swirling whirling within)


The winds about
are much too strong
(Ephemeral lightning
melts and mixes
with echoless thunder)


My drying skin only
is my own.

Beyond Recovery

the point for me

is more than recovery

more than hospitals & therapy
TMS and ECT
being given a pill
or confined against my will
until
i’m symptom free

more than a good prognosis

after a bad diagnosis

more than treatment plans
goals, objectives
that moderate my invectives
impulsivity

the incapacity you seek
to remedy
in my unique neurology
through various directives
intended as corrective

That’s all well and nice
laudible, in fact, advice

But I refuse to pay the price
the unbearably high cost
--however admirable
in its intention
to apply the best conventions

--of me being lost to you
and you being lost to me

Of losing opportunity
for us to explore
with curiosity
the outer possibilities
of our unique humanities

I’m not willing to miss the chance
to climb the fence
transcend the trance
of indifference
between your experience & mine

the way our histories define
the way we think, behave
perceive, believe,
relate to fate
based on the contingencies

the alternate realities

that made you you
and made me me

and made us each
strive to survive, revive,thrive

so differently

perhaps our only commonality
the stark universality

of trying to stay alive

Hot Off the Press from the CVMC ER

'They don’t want let go of the high – so they fight it.’  Just heard that from a very sweet-seeming, soft-spoken ER nurse who moments before injected my secluded, restrained, trauma-survivor friend with another round of neuroleptics. 

She’s been in the ER since Tuesday morning.  The ‘lawful’ 72 hour hold that the hospital imposed ran out yesterday morning.  They say she is a danger to herself or others because she is ‘assaultive’. 

As it turns out, the only ‘assaults’ have been against hospital staff who refused her request to leave AMA on Monday morning, and then began pressuring her to take humongous doses of neuroleptics that, according to our friend, from painful past experience, “would put me out for three days.” 

More painfully, she wasn’t refusing meds altogether. She was willing to work with them – willing to be reasonable.  She simply wanted a chance to try it her way first:  lower doses, certain meds not others, certain times of day.  She did not pull these requests out of thin air.  This is not her first rodeo.  These were meds and doses and timings that she knew, again, from past experience, had a pretty good chance of doing the trick. 

Per the hospital: No deal.  Our way, or else no end to the nagging, no end to the deception, no end to trying to slip 2 pills into the meds cocktail instead of the ½ pill that you agreed to. 

And then when you get frustrated, angry, feel violated, betrayed, dare to express that – Well, you’re becoming escalated.  So time for seclusion until you calm down.

You don’t’ agree? Ok, we’ll just take you down. 

When you fight that – like any truly free person would if people you don’t trust try to take you to a place you don’t’want to go, tie you to a board, inject you with chemicals you experience as poison, and leave you for hours without human contact.  But it’s not seclusion anymore because we’re watching you through a portal.

If you’ve been there before, you know what’s ahead.  We all do.  That’s how the system works.

But, says the on-call doc I talk to the next day  - another kind man who clearly seemed to care, but in all the wrong ways, and in all the wrong directions that modern medicine trains healthcare workers to think of as 'caring': “She’s lucky she’s not in jail.  She assaulted several people.  But of course we don’t do that to them. We understand they’re not in control.”   

November 19, 2015 

 I wrote this about my daughter who left when I was very ill not realizing the illness was from side effects almost 15 years ago.  Its as relevant today as it was then given the holiday season approaches and our relationship has not improved.

LOST DAUGHTER

                                                                                              by Kathryn Egan

The sun conceals itself guiltily in the sky

Longing to reveal its brilliance but must wait

As to do so would surely set all things awry

Perhaps, more than likely, its all too late.

We're tricked and deceived as we seek the light,

Our painful losses, ourselves we cannot blame.

As each person turns away, its our right

To evaluate if, in fact, they really came.

This is acceptable in measuring a lost friend,

though how do we discern the motive of a love?

If like the willow, in the wind we must bend,

Can I ride and survive the raging gale above?

Its Christmas to the rest of the world.

Today most certain, I am not a supple tree,

So lying in bed, in my blankets curled,

This usually jovial time can pass by me.

She said it was the illness she couldn't take.

She could not withstand watching the pain

But this insidious disease and I cannot separate;

Its part of me, though not the same.

Yes, I've changed and do not smile as often,

But you've thrown away chance as you leave.

I can't see how the blow can soften

With assurances of love on Christmas Eve.

So as this illness lives in partnership with me,

To reject it, lays brick upon brick of a wall.

Through the eyes of a teen, you cannot see,

The pain you've delivered and how deep I fall.

You Are So Beautiful

YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL

Do not weep for broken logs

For those that are split apart

For knuckled twigs

Or that which is bent.

Is any wood straight

Without imperfection?

Honor that which makes you different.

A perfect log will roll off the fire.

You, though, are steadfast,

And cherished.

Large tree growing in the sidewalk, Centro Atlantida, Canelones, Uruguay

April 14th, 1966

one day
molding clay
one May


someone something
hears
you say


rain, rain,
go, away,
come, again,
some,
other,
day,


go away
go away


goes away


then the streets seemed clean enough
what with the new signs emblazoned
TRASH IS NOT INTRINSICALLY BEAUTIFUL


the rain in Spain
falls mainly in the plain
but Ernest Hemingway knew
it falls on mountains too


sing come again some other day


sing


swing

Long Island Railroad

The train glides smooth
Through Einstein's paradox.
Green windows dirty
Lovers embrace
And the drunks.

Some grace might come
If tired feet
Could stretch and kick
Till oblivion's end.


When bridge around
The tableau wearies
Yellow seasick waves
Can break.


O, I could tell you -
But let it be.
I'm homeward bound
On the 5:23.

poem

yes now i grow so
slow and yet i
feel my growing strongly
strange enough
to cry o please
sir help me hid this
my growing here inside
a pretty picture frame


so stern they
say it
might be beat
down with a strap
slap or word
just right


i am brave i
tell them
never
i say


but my god
the pain

Lunch Lady Communist --Julie Greene

This piece was one of my very first blog posts, some ten years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed reading the piece aloud to audiences several times. As it is here, I have made very few changes from the original piece.

--Julie Greene

LUNCH LADY COMMUNIST

She was everywhere, but mostly in places where she could scold me and tease me, saying I’d never grow up, and in part that turned out to be true, as it is for most folks, but that’s another story altogether.  She meant I’d never be tall.  Despite my deep-down wishes, she turned out to be right, but not for the reason she claimed.  It was heredity that dictated my height, not how much of my mushy, out-of-a-can, institutional, bland, school lunch food I ate.

She was a Lunch Lady.  Of all the Lunch Ladies, who were all in their 40’s or 50’s, she was the meanest.  They wore their hair, which only hours before had been in curlers, under hairnets, their faces powdered, lipstick neatly applied.  They weren’t at all like Grandma Ruby, who wouldn’t have been caught dead with a net in her hair, or like Grandma Dottie, who made the best, juiciest chicken--indeed, it was the only thing she could cook--and smelled like cinnamon--no, the Lunch Ladies made me think of the fish in our classroom’s aquarium: they moved in synch; they all came to work at the same time and left at the same time, did the same jobs, wore the same aprons, had their hair done on the same day of the week, but if you looked closely you’d notice differences, and like the one fish in the aquarium with the black streak on its side, this Lunch Lady was mean, the meanest of them all, and her single purpose at our school was to pester, tease, scold, harass, and embarrass--me.

Even the first time it happened I already hated her for it.  Our school cafeteria was the size of a classroom that might hold, say, 60 students if a class were to be held there, and that was perhaps how many of us ate in that room at lunch time, about ten tables of us, both students who brought their lunch in from home and those like myself who were unfortunate enough to have to purchase school lunches.  On that day, the food, if you could call it that, consisted of mashed potatoes, peas, and fish sticks, the latter for the Catholics who had fish every Friday.  Something green was served on the side of the fish in a little cup; I learned that this was called tartar sauce and I wouldn’t eat the fish stick if any of the sauce had touched it because you never know if one of the lunch ladies had traded her snots for it. 

Walking back to my table, I noticed that the peas not only were slimy but some were sunken in like raisins.  “Gimme one,” said one of the girls.  I didn’t know her name, because she had a twin; she was either Susan or Sarah and I didn’t know which.

She grabbed a pea off my tray.  “Eww,” she said.  “I don’t want it.”  She put it back.  “Me and my sister ate already.  You’d better hurry up or you’ll be last.”

Karen Johnson, who was better at pitching a baseball than any boy, had eaten peanut butter fluffernutter that day.  She was casually peeling grapes.

I decided to eat the Jell-o first.  It had what looked like whipped cream on it, and I didn’t know if I should eat that first or the Jell-o.  If I did it wrong, I would be the laughing stock of Mrs. Seaman’s first grade class.  I took one sliver of Jell-o, felt it slide down my throat like a worm, and then went on to the peas, which had some kind of grease in them.  Nope.  Won’t eat.  They smelled like a nursing home, besides, like the one my mother took me to when we went to see some aunt I wish I never had who hugged a dysfunctional teddy bear and howled like an animal in a cartoon.  I took a bite of mashed potatoes but they tasted like cardboard.  

(I had in fact eaten cardboard, shirt cardboard from the Chinese laundry; I did it on a dare from the redhead down the street named Italo Rapponi, who was also called Guy.  He said I couldn’t do it and I did, but a few minutes later, after his mother had called him inside to help her match the family’s socks, I threw it up in the berry bushes that separated his yard from the McKenna’s.)

Piece by piece, I rejected my lunch that day.   I couldn’t eat any of it, and with Steve McKenna kicking the back of my chair, and Susan-Sarah tugging at my hair, I decided to bring my lunch to the “Return” window uneaten.  Played with, maybe, but uneaten. 

It was the first time, so I didn’t know, didn’t know that she was there, didn’t know she would even take note of how little (if anything) I’d eaten, didn’t know she, Communist that she was, would take it upon herself to single me out as the bad one.  I casually left my tray at the window and turned to leave when I caught her eye.  There she was.  Auburn hair.  Green eyes.  Lips with little cracks around them so you could tell she wasn’t young anymore.  And a deep, tenor voice, that said, “If you don’t eat, little girl, you will never grow up; you will always be little.”

Pause.  What seemed like a moment of silence in the noisy lunchroom startled and shamed me.  “Little girl, little girl, you will never grow up.”

I had to get out of there.  Away from the Communist Lunch Lady.  Away from the other kids, who were probably pointing and laughing forever at me by now.  As I turned, I dropped my fork.  I knew I had to pick it up or I’d be in even more trouble, so I bent over to get it, then thought of my little rear end I was exposing for spanking, quickly straightened, placed the fork at the window and, trying to look casual, trying to look big and tall, I paced myself along the wall toward the back of the lunch room, toward the back door, I would walk past Miss O’Connell, walk past the TA’s, walk past the police lady and everyone else and be on the street and free, free from the laughing kids, free from the Communist Lunch Lady, free from the embarrassment and shame that I lived with every single day, every yesterday, every today and tomorrow even, at that school.  I would shake off the image of “Little Girl” and be someone else for a change.

“Hey,” said Karen Johnson.  “Want part of my banana?”

I did.  “Thanks.”

The Communist Lunch Lady worked at our school for another year, and then I didn’t see her again.  It was a daily struggle to avoid her while returning my tray to the window, and I was generally successful, but when she was impossible to avoid, I’d mix up my vegetables to make them look eaten, which generally didn’t work.  My stance hardened over the months and “little girl, little girl…” didn’t have the power over me that it once had. 

I think the fear of never growing up is just as bad as the fear of growing up, and I’ve felt both, though at different times.  It’s kind of the push-me-pull-you that we call maturing.  Or, to quote a cliché, “Two steps forward and one step back,” or, sometimes, “One step forward and two steps back.”  Growing up is the ache and the angst of childhood and adolescence; we want to grow, and at the same time we want to stay right where we are, right where we are at the moment, and stay kids, just for a little while longer.  If there was anything the Communist Lunch Lady taught me it was a sense of bashfulness, which grew into shame and embarrassment as I grew; she was not the only teacher I had of this dreaded concept; there were others.  But while growing up certainly meant learning, it meant unlearning as well, like back-and-forth brush strokes.  Growing up meant unlearning being little.  It meant unlearning shame and embarrassment.  It meant busting out of that whole scene, and becoming myself.  And somehow I did, and am doing just that.

Villanelle

By MARTY FELKER

Once more his fingers tear away at stone,

And soon he will have fashioned forth a heart.

He is mad, he is mad who pierces bone.

How dare you dream in tunes I don't condone?!

You'll learn a sober fugue will make you smart!

Once more his fingers tear away at stone.

Not cloth will bear the wear of years outgrown,

But cars that fail a boy's a boy's first start.

He is mad, he is mad who pierces bone.

If only his son, before flight, had known

How density in flying plays a part!

Once more his fingers tear away at stone.

Young Zeus would laugh to hear the virgins moan;

His father smiled; conception had been tart.

He is mad, he is mad who pierces bone.

With pain grows love that dying hate has sown.

Forgive the words a turning soul must cart.

Once more his fingers tear away at stone.

He is mad, he is made who pierces bone.

Penrose Hospital 1981

By SARAH KNUTSON

i will not go gentle

into any night of yours

no matter how many times

you tell me it’s a good one

/in this world we do not choose

parents or our lovers

the wind blows our lives

where she pleases/

i do not care

if he’s saved

multitudes of others

i will not repent

any of my sins

to the man in the white cloak

sitting beside the well

,
his fountain pen of life

dipping into dark ink

drawing buckets of insight

dripping it in phrases

onto white tablets

with stone pages

prescribing absolution

in capfuls

after each diagnosis

promising

an asymptomatic salvation

for all

who lap up the new age Word

like beggars

&believe, believe, believe

that they are born again in the spirit

of science most high
chemical improvements
to deity based religion

modern psychiatry

can work miracles

/haven’t you heard already/

for those who take all of it

on faith

i will find a fountain

to drink from 

that is not 

your instrument

or go thirsty

/we do

not in this world

choose our lovers/

jesus was an orderly 

on a hospital psych ward

I know this 

because I saw him there

he changed my bedpan

and I offered to wash his feet

with urine

either that

or the glucose

draining into my forearm

to keep indifference

from starving me to death

/they were the only ointment

i had to offer/

and later that day

while begging forgiveness

i thought

he would make a gentle lover

if only for a moment

he could stop

being god

/but we don’t choose

in this world

our lovers

& with or without

god the wind blows

where she pleases/

that particular day

i remember

a staff nurse came to tell me

they had scheduled an examination

that morning

internally

/it wasn’t her fault/

they don’t tell

crazy people things

someone

/it wasn’t her/

will be doing

inside their body

/she was following orders/

i refused to go

it wasn’t her  

/fault/

body

she came back

with the head nurse

a true believer

in hospital

order

worshipped

like a gospel

truth passed down

new every morning

on shrouded charts

left on the hallway wall

obscure scribblings

by gods

we never saw

the face of

/the Word

according to 

any M.D.

on rounds/

spreading now

like a great commission

into my bedroom

i did not need an angel 

or a brighter star

to figure out these women 

were not 

my servants

i could tell this

despite the 40 watt illumination

they were standing in

the worn metals binding each

wedding ring finger

a sign

/these sisters weren’t just anybodys

virgins mary/

i tried to refuse again

while the head nurse stared at me

with eyes like silver pieces

i could not see behind

waiting for me to sell

my body, like hers

a good woman

bears her cunt like a cross

she meant

without using that word

/if you want to get out of here

pick up your piece , missie

and bare it/

i went

/we do not choose

our lovers

 i begged

forgiveness later/

when the doctor came

for me alone

we both knew

he had won

i lay spread on my back

on a white table

and hardened

my amber eyes

grey as iron

he stood behind the sheet

erect

confident 

stainless

steel instrument  

in hands

faint sneer 

curling the lips

he entered

and i dared not move

/i went back to my room

and atoned

for both our sins

with vomit

,we do not choose

or lovers/

today i save myself

only i do it monthly

and with my own blood

i have communion 

five straight days

and am reborn

each time

i dip into wells

of living water

streaming down my legs

remember i am alive

and drink

/we love whom we love

ourselves included/

declaring this

our only freedom

bites an apple

old as sin

/Satan, 

wearing red 

lipstick

,is the only

liberated man/

AMA (Against Medical Advice) in 4-Wheel Drive

By SARAH KNUTSON

Give it a rest you see
don’t pester me
stop getting off
on how much you
helping me

You ain’t never gonna trap
my sorry morass
if you just care-jacking me

--The street I’m on
don’t repeat so neat
you got to drive off road
to find my back woods

Do some tracking
Daniel Boone
follow the footprints
seek out the signs
telltale droppings
fragrance left behind
existential scents
that make sense
to the wild inhabitants
of my mind

Bits of skin
still fresh on branches
meadows matted down in patches
vacant forms
on crumpled grasses
thickets hiding second chances
stifled gasp
as breath catches
 subtle entries
shadowed dens
sentries raised
from gathered thatches
haunted by the wind

Thirty years of
memory swatches
feral imprints
prescient snatches
fierce & reckless
far from stale

--You sure you wanna risk
 your pretty tail
in the boondocks of my off-trail?

Cuz, there ain’t no safe place
to leave a trace
where I pace
This beast
don’t trample
within no lines
that you can define
in the least
by your sample

Let me give you a little tip
before we take this trip

This is the story
in my territory
around this incarceration
that you call ‘a hospitalization’:

Examination is defamation,
contamination of my situation
with professionally-encripted spamination
and a pathology of your creation

 -- The mythology
of your qualification
to boost your reputation
by predation
of my information

All co-signed, doubly-blind
in justification
of social condemnation
with medical authorization
for a diagnostic confabulation
lacking in empirical foundation

If you think I’m cynical
Let’s get clinical
There ain’t no paranoid
That can fill the void
of no detection
of connection

My reality
requires validity
if you sitting with me
you got to listen to me
If you got empathy
leave your smarts
& your degree
in the glass room
with my sanity
so we can both take stock
of the rocks

Mind your manners
treatment planners!
It’s not polite to stare
The hunt you’re on
with managed care
isn’t about my welfare
it isn’t about my needs and lacks
my poor insight, bad hygiene
low ambition,
want of skills or motivation

Ladies & gentlemen!
Shift your gaze
to the man behind
the mellow yellow haze
Follow the sound
of clinking coins
pick up the trail
turn left at the sign
for the neuroleptic cocktail
 --Right behind that you’ll find…

A ritual
that pays and pays
for all the rats who run the maze
--the bedfellows
who make the stuff
& sell the fluff
to the pros who sell the ills,
the ills that say we need the pills

So if you really you care
about my welfare
stop acting
like you’re only there
to serve my best interests

Give it a rest
Dare
to share the risk
at the edge of the abyss
where we both might miss
or find the ridge
that’s bridge enough
for both of us

Take your focus
off the psychiatric
hocus pocus

--Model some boundaries
with the psychobabble gobbledygook
This safari we’re on
isn’t about my big buck!

Get out of my truck!
It’s my trek
It’s my terrain
It’s my survival
at stake out here
This is my wilderness
& I want to steer -

I’m gonna drive
My Own Way
 To ALIVE!