My post on normalising oppression through language originally highlighted four words. Here are two bits I took out.
When you use “crazy” to mean intense or excitable or strange, you are hurting people. People with mental illnesses suffer because of your language. There’s a huge stigma surrounding mental illness, which just compounds the issue. You are to blame for your contribution.
[…]
I’m working on not using “crazy” and its cousin “mad” inappropriately. By which I mean I’m making a concerted effort and that when I mess up, I work harder.
Believe me when I tell you that when I took those sections out it wasn’t to make myself look better – I mean, of course you don’t think that, I’m sharing this now. The reason I took it out was because I wasn’t sure that I was advocating for people with mental illnesses so much as offering my own perceptions, which would have been inappropriate for that post. The crux of the issue is this: I know that “crazy” is considered offensive by people with mental illnesses where it’s applied to them. But I hadn’t heard complaints about it being used elsewhere.
Is the use of “crazy” and “mad” appropriate in the following sentences?
‘When she discovered that the jam was gone, she went crazy.’
‘She must be mad to like those toe sock things.’
‘That advertisment is maddening.’
‘I had a crazy time getting here in the traffic.’
For the first and second, I say no, because it’s misappropriating an experience. She didn’t really develop a mental illness because the jam was gone, it’s being used as an expression. And it’s being used improperly as crazy is not a term to be applied to mentally ill people. Particularly with regard to the second, the word is being used to denote extreme negativity. (I have nothing against toe socks, it was just the first slightly different thing that someone might dislike that jumped to mind!) Of course, I’m not an authority on this, not having a mental illness. The third and fourth sentences raise question marks for me. No one and no one’s illness is being overtly denigrated as best I can tell. But loaded words are still being used.
Is it the evolution of language? Well, “gay” has evolved from happy, but we can all agree that the argument that it’s evolved to mean “stupid” is not the case and offensive. Is it metaphor? I don’t know. I don’t know if that would be appropriate. Is it simply a kind of language integration I don’t understand? Possibly. I’ve made it clear that I’m not entirely sure how these words function.
Opening it up, something similar applies to verbs of perception. How must people who are blind or who have vision impairment experience the use of “hear” and “listen”? How must people who are deaf or who have hearing impairment experience the use of “see” and “look”? Throughout this post, there are movement and communications metaphors: speak and encounter and struggle. If language is predicated on how we experience the world, what does this mean for people with disabilities? Do I change my language, change it in some situations, or continue on describing my experience using the tools life has granted me?
It’s all around us, woven through our conversation. It’s in our slang and in our formal language, it’s not just in English, it’s well and truly established.
‘Listen to your heart.’
‘You need to have a good long look at yourself.’
‘Seeing as we’re getting along so well…’
I can’t speak – there it is again, what should I use instead? – for people whose experiences are not my own. I can’t make definitive decisions on this. I can only do the best I can with the information I have and adapt when I’ve given more.
There’s also something to be said about the nature of disability and how many people with mental illnesses, hearing impairment and vision impairment experience their conditions, as disability, sometimes disability or no. That’s something for another post.
I’ve been trying to monitor the use of these coded words in my language (and, to a lesser extent, the language of those around me and in the media) and I’ve discovered that they are everywhere. If they are as problematic as this post suggests they might be, society has a huge communication problem. I like to consider myself someone who makes a concerted effort to use language respectfully with others and I’m not encountering (changed that from hearing! It’s everywhere) much protest from marginalised groups.
I’ve struggled a bit to find information on this subject. I’ve encountered the usage of “listen” and “hear” by people with hearing difficulties and that of “see” and “look” by people with sight impairment. And I haven’t found anything on the use of “crazy,” “mad” and the like. But this post is aimed at outsiders using respectful language and I’m doing my best as an outsider here, on this blog which tries to be inclusive.
When is it appropriate to appropriate these terms, if ever? Is this a situation like the male gendering of humanity? Just like man on the moon, mankind, ‘he’ as default? Or is this something that’s cool with the marginalised people in question? I don’t know, but I’ll continue to try to negotiate language respectfully. And I’ll always defer to the groups in question on the use of their own language.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis–change the language, change one’s perception. It’s flawed to a certain extent but it’s a great concept. Not sure if you can get them down in the Antipodes, but Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy explores that in a feminist SF context.
Personally, as someone with mental illness, crazy in a general context (i.e. ‘you’ve got to be crazy, trying to get there in fifteen minutes’) doesn’t bother me. I don’t know why exactly.
Native Tongue is on my to-read list (I think we have *exactly* the same taste in fiction). Her “For the Sake of Grace” is one of my favourite stories ever.
Thanks for the personal input.
It’s a long time since I read the Native Tongue trilogy, I remember quite enjoying the first two but the third book lost me.
I’ve been trying to be more aware of my language use too, I keep catching myself using terms like crazy when talking to my Dad (who is bipolar) and cringing. I must just ask him what he thinks about it.
As someone who is mentally ill, “Crazy” doesn’t bother me much, for some reason.
Why does that “Grace” story by S.H.E. not ring a bell for me? I thought I’d read all her stuff.
I don’t speak for all people with mental illnesses of course, but as someone who is ill, here’s my take:
Works like “Crazy” and “mad” don’t bother me. There’s a meaning of “irrational” or “inexplicable” there which, well, we need a word to describe those sorts of things. When I am suffering an episode, I might act crazy, or think crazy or both, which would effectively make me crazy for that amount of time. I’m okay with this and I can joke about this as long as it’s a particular instance. (An issue I take is that crazy is often used in sexist ways, such as ‘women are crazy when they have their periods’ which does seem doubly othering to me as a woman who suffers from mental illness. Or when people think it’s okay to joke the same way I do about it. It’s okay for me to say “well, I think X but I am crazy!” and not so much for someone with no mental disability or illness to say “Well, yeah but you’re crazy!” which since I do have an illness, being said so generally takes on an added edge than just “You like toe socks? You’re crazy!”)
What bothers me are comments like “Someone forgot to take their crazy pills this morning” or “They oughtta be put in a mental institution!” or “She’s schizo” or “He’s bipolar or something!” Because, well, that does stigmatize me either specifically by naming my illness or generally by naming a specific illness which is obviously meant to be extrapolated to all mentally ill people (and more damagingly in the first cases, stigmatize me getting the treatment I need.)
Okay, as someone with a history of mental illness, and also a history of being a language nerd, I can maybe address this example:
I think it’s useful to understand what the connotations of “crazy” are, and for once I think it’s valid to look at the origin of the word. “Crazed” meant “cracked” (like “crazy paving”), which carries connotations as a word-image of being fragmented (i.e. implying “a broken mind”, when used to refer to mental health problems), but also carries the mental image of when you crack a pane of glass or something: the cracks spread out over a wide range very rapidly, and follow seemingly unpredictable paths. Thus crazy, when talking about a person’s behaviour, means that they are “running wild”, acting unpredictably or in an unchecked manner.
For these reasons, it is a hugely offensive term to use to refer to someone suffering from a mental health problem, but is entirely okay to refer to someone’s behaviour as crazed or crazy.
“Maddening”, also is okay, because it usually refers to developing rage or frustration, and not to developing negatively-associated behaviours. To quote a famous saying, “anger is a brief madness”, and I think this is true, certainly for those who are prone to rage. I think that anger can indeed be akin to a brief mental health imbalance (and anger management, of course, helps the rage-afflicted to deal with that, just as there are techniques that help me with my depression and stress).
However, I do think “She must be mad to like those toe sock things” is much more troublesome, because what is implied is “has taken leave of her senses”, or “incapable of making informed choices”. Obviously, these terms are as much disempowering to the person at whom they’re aimed as they are to people with mental health problems – and the idea that PwM (to adapt the shorthand I’ve seen in other discussions!) are unable to make our own choices about our lives is obviously very problematic.
I think there is a place to use “mad” and “insane” when we literally do mean that someone appears to have a fundamental disconnect with reality: some branches of the religious right, for example, might be described in that way.
In general, I think that for PwM it is more about disappropriating the language used, to say we are not of cracked-mind (“crazy”), we are not disconnected from reality (“mad”), and our decisions about our lives are as valid as anyone else’s (I want to qualify this because, having been on the brink, and having known someone who actually did kill themselves, obviously not all those decisions are good ones, but with better help, better choices can be made). Incidentally, I don’t know what the law is in other parts of the world, but there is no law against killing oneself in my country, so to say “committed suicide” is factually incorrect and is disrespectful to both the deceased and any relatives/friends/loved ones left behind.
maevele, you should check it out. As a matter of fact, there are elements in it relevant to this discussion.
It’s wonderful to have so many PwM, if I can use the term SnowdropExplodes brought in, in this discussion. There’a a great deal of nuance here and you’ve certainly given me food for thought.
I’m really enjoying this blog post & the comments on it. I can only really talk as someone with a history of mental illnesses in my family but I pretty much agree with Icca, I’m more bothered by the usage of specific mental illnesses to describe something rather than “crazy” or “mad”. Like when calling things/people “psycho” used to be really popular (I guess it still is), or referring to something/someone as schizophrenic or bipolar with no basis (and I’m guilty of this myself unfortunately). I’ve honestly never thought of how we use “crazy” and “mad” and “insane” before though, and I really appreciate your thoughts and Snowdrop Explodes.
I hope it’s okay if I blogroll you, btw, I need more awesome people.
By all means. Cheers. :)
Yeah, I’m with TR and Icca–people saying ‘Oh, I’m so OCD’ like it’s a goddamn adjective drives me up the wall. No, you really don’t understand, no.
(And maevele, if you come back, hello! you know me as someone else…)
Ah, Bene, would you check the comment policy? Certain types of swearing really get to me.
Oh no…sorry, Chally. My fingers get ahead of me sometimes. My apologies.
That’s quite all right.