Is mental illness, like, totally gay?
Dec. 19th, 2003 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138I know, I know, homosexuality was taken out of the DSM several editions ago, at least in the sense of automatically comprising a form of insanity. That's not quite what I'm getting at, though.
At some point when randomly pondering the aforementioned recent fandom meltdown, I identified one of the unspoken undercurrents that'd been bothering me about it. This particular argybargy was about whether a specific character could be fairly construed as insane. As with pretty much all things, this issue can be debated back and forth on several grounds. but one question I had about it got lost in the ensuing flamage: "Why does it upset you so much if other fans call this character insane?". On reflection, I'm not sure the question was lost by accident.
From a purely fandom-based perspective, there's seldom a really good reason for flame wars to erupt; the ultimate tinder always tends to be an underlying principle that extends into real life: whether an opponent can be so evil or a protagonist so good that *any* method of combat can be considered justifiable and even righteous; the extent to which good intentions may ameliorate a bad outcome; the hope or lack of redemption from various states of wrongdoing.
And in this case, the unspoken assumption is that Insanity Is Bad. It's so Automatically Bad that it shouldn't even have to be explained *why* it's Bad, and anyone who asks that question is either too stupid or too deliberately perverse for further debate to be productive. It really does remind me of nothing so much as the old flame wars with the anti-slash crowd, except that soemtimes they'd actually try to trot out the usual reason why they thought homosexuality was inherently Bad. In this case, there are no justifications being offered at all. Insanity Is Bad. Nuff Said.
I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or oddly nostalgic to see it being invoked as an old-fashioned automatic taboo. Leprosy has been demystified as a virus, even assuming that the Biblical version is really Hansen's Disease rather than a relatively minor autoimmune disorder like lupus or psoriasis. Physical diseases aren't generally interpreted as the outward sign of inner moral corruption n'more. And yet it's evidently still unspeakable in some quarters to have one's neurotransmitters go haywire, or to've been molded by formative events into behavior that may be a reasonable survival response to that abnormal context, but is vastly dysfunctional when brought into the realm of normal interaction.
Although the part I really don't get is why the anti-insanity partisans seem to think that sanity would exculpate that character's actions, but I suppose that's something the legal system hasn't really worked out either. The classic insanity defense hinges on being unable to tell right from wrong, but the classic definition of a psychopath is someone who does know right from wrong but just doesn't care. (Or rather, psychopathy = awareness of societal standards of right/wrong without questioning the standards in general-- e.g., segregation in the Old South-- but coupled with a belief that those rules don't personally apply, whether because the person is above them somehow or will just never get caught.)
Oh, and while I'm still waiting for a second viewing of ROTK before I formulate my Grand Unified Opinion of it, I want a mumak. Mumakil are cool. A mumak could stomp the gubernatorial Humvee into blintzen and poop on it for good measure. And we'd never have to mow the lawn. Not that we have a lawn, but it's the principle of the thing.
At some point when randomly pondering the aforementioned recent fandom meltdown, I identified one of the unspoken undercurrents that'd been bothering me about it. This particular argybargy was about whether a specific character could be fairly construed as insane. As with pretty much all things, this issue can be debated back and forth on several grounds. but one question I had about it got lost in the ensuing flamage: "Why does it upset you so much if other fans call this character insane?". On reflection, I'm not sure the question was lost by accident.
From a purely fandom-based perspective, there's seldom a really good reason for flame wars to erupt; the ultimate tinder always tends to be an underlying principle that extends into real life: whether an opponent can be so evil or a protagonist so good that *any* method of combat can be considered justifiable and even righteous; the extent to which good intentions may ameliorate a bad outcome; the hope or lack of redemption from various states of wrongdoing.
And in this case, the unspoken assumption is that Insanity Is Bad. It's so Automatically Bad that it shouldn't even have to be explained *why* it's Bad, and anyone who asks that question is either too stupid or too deliberately perverse for further debate to be productive. It really does remind me of nothing so much as the old flame wars with the anti-slash crowd, except that soemtimes they'd actually try to trot out the usual reason why they thought homosexuality was inherently Bad. In this case, there are no justifications being offered at all. Insanity Is Bad. Nuff Said.
I'm not sure whether I'm disappointed or oddly nostalgic to see it being invoked as an old-fashioned automatic taboo. Leprosy has been demystified as a virus, even assuming that the Biblical version is really Hansen's Disease rather than a relatively minor autoimmune disorder like lupus or psoriasis. Physical diseases aren't generally interpreted as the outward sign of inner moral corruption n'more. And yet it's evidently still unspeakable in some quarters to have one's neurotransmitters go haywire, or to've been molded by formative events into behavior that may be a reasonable survival response to that abnormal context, but is vastly dysfunctional when brought into the realm of normal interaction.
Although the part I really don't get is why the anti-insanity partisans seem to think that sanity would exculpate that character's actions, but I suppose that's something the legal system hasn't really worked out either. The classic insanity defense hinges on being unable to tell right from wrong, but the classic definition of a psychopath is someone who does know right from wrong but just doesn't care. (Or rather, psychopathy = awareness of societal standards of right/wrong without questioning the standards in general-- e.g., segregation in the Old South-- but coupled with a belief that those rules don't personally apply, whether because the person is above them somehow or will just never get caught.)
Oh, and while I'm still waiting for a second viewing of ROTK before I formulate my Grand Unified Opinion of it, I want a mumak. Mumakil are cool. A mumak could stomp the gubernatorial Humvee into blintzen and poop on it for good measure. And we'd never have to mow the lawn. Not that we have a lawn, but it's the principle of the thing.