"Lady, You Really Aren't Crazy"

[browngirl]

Lady, You Really Aren't Crazy at TheGloss.com.

I know I've been posting a lot of links lately (I've been really busy) but this one struck a chord with me; I have been the girl called 'crazy' by guys who were uncomfortable with the fact that I have and express emotions. (By 'express emotions' I don't mean bunny boiling behavior, either -- I tend to cry a lot, melancholy is the flip side of my vibrancy.) I do actually have mental issues (and am in treatment for them, as my therapist would attest) but merely having emotions is not actually insanity, no matter how many men told me so in my youth. And I'm not at all alone in this experience, which I knew even before I read this cogent article.

(By the way, we are not having the "Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?" discussion here. Different people make different choices about their sex lives, and there is a much broader range of valid and healthy choices than many societies, including Puritan-influenced US society, give credit. Also, actually crazy exes have already been cited in the comments to the article (which is ridiculous, because its point was not that No Women Are Ever Crazy but that too often discomfort-inducing emotion or any other deviation from someone else's mental ideal is used as a reason to call women 'crazy') so we won't be having Crazy Ex Storytime here either.)

Also, this cements my growing conviction that XoJane is not a site for me. I have a friend who writes there, so I've read there sporadically, but I got the impression that it's a much more socially conservative place than it thinks it is, much more normative and far less edgy than it presents itself. I read the article that "Lady, You're Really Not Crazy" is a reply to, and well, someplace that gives that article and its writer an approving platform is not someplace that needs my traffic.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

As Thomas Szasz said, crazy means "makes me feel uncomfortable."

[gosling.livejournal.com]

This.

[redbird]

Also, if someone says "my ex was mentally ill and that's part of why we broke up," that may well be true—just as it may be true that a particular relationship didn't work because of distance, or because one person wanted children and the other didn't. But mental illness doesn't mean "cannot have a good relationship" any more than "wants children" or "lives in Seattle" does. If someone says "women are crazy" or refers to all of his (or her) exes as crazy, that's a statement about the speaker, not the people they have dated.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Crying can be healthier than holding stuff in.

I cried my way through half of a graduation today... Combination of PMS, lots of sentimental speeches, and Life Stuff. I got it together by the time the 18yo walked across the stage to receive his diploma.

[asimaiyat.livejournal.com]

This one is pretty good, too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yashar-hedayat/a-message-to-women-from-a_1_b_958859.html It focuses on how calling women "crazy" is manipulative and controlling.

Also wtf is wrong with the guy in the XOJANE article? Seriously what is his problem?