I was really uncomfortable with this comment and I’ve been thinking about it sense you left it because I wasn’t sure why it bothered me so much.

There are probably people who could say the same thing about the “local psychiatric hospital” that I was held in. One thing to think about is that even though it may have been mainly positive for you (assuming you’re not having a stockholm syndrome-type reaction), it probably wasn’t that way for everyone who was there. If you were in an institutional environment were people were held involuntarily, the stuff Amanda Baggs is saying still applies.

Also, how was it positive? What positive things did it accomplish? I mean this as a rhetorical question to make a point: Could those things being accomplished in another way?

One positive thing that was accomplished at the place that I was held was removing adolescent girls from abusive and dangerous home environments for at least a few days (incidentally, this was less time than they would hold ME, even though I was coming from a much safer and more open environment than the institution, when most of the girls weren’t). They were able to connect with some people and resources they might not have otherwise been able to. This was generally after a suicide attempt, so it was when things had really reached a breaking point for them and something needed to change. Creating those resources is important.

So… are quiet rooms, forced drugging, restraints, extremely regimented lives, etc necessary to get support to girls who are living in abusive and unsafe environments? Are those things necessary to create a safe spot for people in general? If those girls don’t have a better option than the local psychiatric hospital, that’s not because a psychiatric hospital is actually a good or effective way of doing it.

No, that’s just me getting over some traumatic stress from junior high school and being more open about who I am, and I am not afraid to talk about autism, which even just a year ago I was extremely hesitent, and didn’t like to. In fact, in the last four years, I have overall gained more abilities, but because I am going to be independent in college there is more expected, which makes it more apparent, and that combined with the fact that I don’t suppress my stimming like I used to. Not to mention the stress of having to deal with these people.

Whereas, in my writing classes, many people lie down or sit in unusual places, and that’s just business as usual. I thought that, due to the nature of the class, that they would be similarly permissive. This isn’t like government or marine science, where the class is more or less structured, and it was during the announcements, when everyone just talks and you can’t hear them anyway.

My parents were even called, and my dad acted like he was concerned. I was very perplexed of the whole thing.

Belfast: yes, this is indeed fascinating stuff.

As for being too weird for the weirdos……..it’s all relative. Everyone must be slightly mad to stay alive for very long in this world……going anathema to your basic needs and desires in an institution is mad but very necessary for survival, as many have written about here. I had to make something come out. Even if these words are only an approximation.

This hostility and discrimination and labeling “weird, insane, mental, crazy” and other nonsense is what we really need to be rescued from. Better yet, it’s what we have to rescue ourselves and future generations of “social misfits” from. I think of so many faces……unhappy miserable faces of people stuck in those horrid places. I cry under my covers. Ivan wishes he could go and get them out by force. He knows better though. One extremist can undermine an entire movement.

Athena.

Have read (and enjoyed-if that’s the right word for such depressing material) author’s “Lucifer Effect”, “The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: 25 Years After the SPE”-and especially “Discontinuity Theory: Cognitive and Social Searches for Rationality and Normality-May Lead to Madness”. Discontinuity theory experiment really caught my interest, and was about induced cognitive dissonance leading to paranoia. That theory explains a lot to me about how I experience/interpret things & also seems similar to how people react to those who defy stereotypes, violate expectations, and towards phenomena they don’t understand. Fascinating stuff.

I think the point of all this is that you can’t ever really just assume that any group of “outcasts from the mainstream” is going to consist entirely of people who would never bully anyone else. People need to be aware of their own potential to act cruelly toward others or else they’re going to have a hard time recognizing and avoiding actions that could lead them in that direction.

Pretty much all the worst abuse I’ve ever experienced has come from people who claimed not to see themselves as “that type of person”.

I guess there are autistics who design role-playing games and have acquired encyclopedic information about them.