Being Encouraged to Lead
I was excited to be invited to the “Mental Health” Liberation Leaders’ Workshop in September 2021. It was led by Jenny Martin, our new International Liberation Reference Person for “Mental Health” Liberation. Part of Jenny’s vision is to have more Co-Counselors leading “mental health” liberation, and writing reports about it, and she set up the workshop to make that happen.
She asked several of us to lead sections on the intersection of “mental health” liberation with the different oppressions. We dealt with language, men, LGBTQ people, young adults, street drugs, psychiatric drugs, suicide, artists, inmates, and more. I led on women and “mental health” liberation.
When Jenny asked me to lead a section on women’s liberation, my first reaction was, “I can’t do that. Why me?” But I made an instant decision not to share my distress with her and agreed to do it. Jenny never heard about my distress patterns. I had a lot of Co-Counseling sessions discharging on leading at the workshop. One Co-Counselor reminded me that I was exactly the right person to do it. Another reminded me that it was an International workshop, and I was an International leader, which brought lots of discharge.
Below is some of what I said at the workshop:
As women we are set up by society to think we are “crazy,” especially when we show how badly we have been hurt. It is sometimes okay for women to cry, because it is seen as an aspect of our “weakness.” It is not okay for women, in particular Global Majority and Indigenous* women, to show our anger. [* The peoples of Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, and South, Central, and Caribbean America, and Indigenous people, are over eighty percent of the global population. These people also occupy most of the global land mass. Using the term “Global Majority and Indigenous (GMI)” for these people acknowledges their majority status in the world and interrupts how the dominant (U.S. and European) culture assigns them a minority status. Many Global Majority and Indigenous people living in dominant-culture countries have been assimilated into the dominant culture—by force, in order to survive, in seeking a better life for themselves and their families, or in pursuing the economic, political, or other inclusion of their communities. Calling these people “Global Majority and Indigenous” contradicts the assimilation.]
When we show our distresses in a big way, it is often seen as excessive or as being too emotional. We can get labelled “crazy.” More women than men get incarcerated in “mental health” facilities and given psychiatric drugs and electroshock.
We are also not supposed to fight for ourselves. We are not supposed to fight to end sexism. When we do, we might be labelled “crazy,” or people might say we have “crazy” ideas. When I’ve spoken up about sexism, people have sometimes said, “There goes Sondra again,” meaning, there I go with those “crazy” ideas again.
Historically, women’s biology was considered the cause of our “mental instability.” European men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries diagnosed women with “hysteria.” “Hysteria” comes from the Greek word hystera, which means uterus. Hysteria was what we were supposedly experiencing when we were “too” emotional. Guess what the cure was: a hysterectomy—the surgical removal of the uterus, or the uterus and ovaries. This diagnosis was used until 1980 (which is not long ago).
I’d like women to tell their “mental health” stories as women. We can also try using the words “female” and “woman” more often in our Co-Counseling sessions to help us focus on how “mental health” oppression has played a part in our hurts as women.
Thank you, Jenny, for asking me to lead. Not only did I have a chance to lead a section, but I am also writing about it! My next steps are to do more of both.
Euclid, Ohio, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of African-heritage people
(Present Time 206, January 2022)