I would describe all people described as crazy as mentally ill, unless we're talking about "gay doesn't mean homosexual, it just means dumb", which is also bad.
I have bipolar II and definitely see it as a slur.
See, I go into hypomanic states and do things that are what you'd typically see from a "crazy" person. Buzzing my head, getting into bad financial situations, intense obsession, etc. When I do those things, I'm usually aware that what I'm doing isn't 'normal', but since the rationalizations flow pretty thick, the corrections are nearly impossible to act on. Medication helps, but everything I've tried has significant side effects that are almost as bad as the illness itself. Being called crazy, or receiving comments or looks that imply craziness rather than applying basic empathy skills... fucking sucks.
"Hah, what are you, schitzophrenic?"
"That guy's nuts"
"Why would you do that, are you insane?"
"Noise sensitivity? That's fucking weird.."
"I'm quitting because people are calling me crazy my back. It's just childish.." "What? Grow a thicker skin!"
It's out of our control and we do the best that we can to avoid the problems we have, so being called "crazy" is just another slap in the face. It effects our daily lives, our job prospects and, well, every aspect in our life. It's similar to issues of race, regligion, etc, but since it's an enormous aspect of our thought process, it's just.. different, so the social stigmas are almost incomparable. Not to mention that it has a near identical stigma to a homeless person screaming on a train. It fucking sucks.
Utterly unpersuasive. The reasoning in that Quora response means that "harasser" and "wrong" are also slurs, because the Quora response equates denigration with "slur territory".
As an ongoing fact in my life, I've noticed that (a) I use words like "crazy" in broad and insulting ways, and that (b) some people seem to complain about it. And I'm open to being persuaded that I ought to change my ways. But I haven't yet heard an argument that persuades me.
It seems to me that the whole notion of "craziness" or of "mental instability" or even "mental health issue" etc is the notion of socially-atypical behaviour that the speaker judges to be harmful or undesirable (as contrasted with "eccentric", etc). If I hear someone say "that's crazy", I assume they mean "that's weird and I disapprove". (I haven't quite nailed it down. There's a bit more nuance here, in that if someone says "that's crazy", and then someone else says "it's not crazy, it's evil", then you can imagine the first persona conceding the point... so clearly "crazy" sometimes implies a certain degree of helplessness in the bad-weirdness.)
Do you think "crazy" means something fundamentally different from this? Do you actually think it makes sense for people to stop observing that behaviours or people are atypical, or stop observing that they disapprove of particular instances of weirdness?
At this risk of going on a tangent, here's a tangent. Sometimes advocates for people with mental health issues note that it does not make sense to fear folks with mental issues, because such people are more likely to be the target of violence than the perpetrator. What a hilarious fail. I assume that it's true that such people are more likely to be the target than the perpetrator, but I don't care. I care about whether they're more likely to endanger me than an apparently-not-sane person is to endanger me. It's not some kind of zero sum game where being crazy makes a person more endangered and thereby makes them less dangerous to others than they would be if non-crazy.
As someone who's called "crazy" because of mental health issues, I use "crazy" all the time to describe things that are colloquially "out of this world". That said, I would never, ever use that word to describe another person. It's a very, very harsh word that I, and others, unfortunately hear very often. Like I said in a previous comment, it fucking sucks to hear. Usually it's from a third party telling me after the fact, which for some reason, makes it sound even worse - probably because it took a lot to get that person to even bring it up.
Sorry for the double post, I just wanted to comment on your last point.
Holy shit. Just because someone has a mental health issue doesn't mean they're violent. Everyone I know who has mental health issues are the friendliest people I know. This is the exact sort of attitude that makes issues with HR incredibly difficult. And trust me, it is unbearably difficult. I can't explain how many times and how frustrating it is to explain this to so many people. We're mostly sincerely good people, albeit, 'off'. Sorry for my brain, yo.
I don't mind the double-post, but I'll reply to both of them at once.
I have mental health issues. Nearly everyone I care about has mental health issues. Some of those issues are moderately serious problems, some are minor annoyances. It sucks having problems. I'm sad you have problems. I'm sad I have problems. I hope your problems resolve themselves, and/or you learn better coping strategies, and that life is as nice to you as possible.
But none of that changes my perspective that it's reasonable for me to characterize the world around me. And I have a limited cognitive budget. There's a whole bunch I don't know about the world, including mental illness, so I by no means assume that my model is terrific, but I still need to make choices. Y'know, I don't know if it will rain today, but I still need to decide what jacket to wear. Identifying other human behaviour as extreme is useful. Identifying other human behaviour as harmful is useful. Identifying other human behaviour as extreme-and-alarming-in-ways-that-seem-like-maybe-they're-mental-illness is useful. Knowing more would be better, but I've got a whole bunch of shit to learn, and this is seriously not my top priority. Based on all of the above, it seems to me that the only sane thing to do is sometimes identify other people's behaviour as crazy. And since I live in a city, with millions of people, most of the people I meet get an instant shallow analysis, because otherwise I wouldn't get anything done. So for my limited-cognitive-budget purposes, some people are "that crazy person". I don't know if I've never called a person "a crazy", but I don't see a problem with doing so.
To your point in this comment, I never for a moment said that "just because someone has a mental health issue, they're violent". I encourage you to read more carefully. I said that arguing about their probability of victimhood is a logical fail that does not help address fears that such-and-such a person is a threat. It has no predictive value, and will not persuade most people that have the concern in the first place.
First about violence: You're wrong. Mental illness does not predict violent behaviour. Someone with a mental illness is not more likely to hurt you than someone without a mental illness. This is very clear from all the statistics we have. You not knowing this is a concrete example of your ignorance of mental illness.
The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime (and partly because they've been dehumanised by people calling them crazies) says more about you than it does about predicting violence.
> If I hear someone say "that's crazy", I assume they mean "that's weird and I disapprove". (I haven't quite nailed it down. There's a bit more nuance here, in that if someone says "that's crazy", and then someone else says "it's not crazy, it's evil", then you can imagine the first persona conceding the point... so clearly "crazy" sometimes implies a certain degree of helplessness in the bad-weirdness.)
But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".
I don't care what language you use. But you need to know, so that you can make an informed choice about the language that you use, that when you use words like "crazies" to describe groups of people it's the same to many people as someone who says things like "I got jewed on that deal", or "those uppity negros". You're on the wrong side of history, and it makes you sound like an ignorant bigot. If you don't care about that then go ahead, but if you do care what people think of you then you might want to use different language.
Another reason to stop: by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness. Since you want people with mental illness to get treatment it seems weird to create a culture that makes it harder for them to do so.
Another reason: Severe mental illness (bipolar, psychosis, borderline) affect about 5% of the population. This will include people you know, or their relatives. You're inadvertently insulting your friends. You probably don't want to accidentally offend people you know. One of the reasons they haven't told you that they (or their loved ones ) are medicated is because your views are stigmatising and discriminatory.
Wrong about what? What claim did I make that's wrong? Oh, wait, you're just assuming that I disagree with you, so that you can be mad. You assume that I assume that mental illness predicts mental behaviour, but I said nothing of the kind. I think? Right?
> Mental illness does not predict violent behaviour.
That's an interesting claim (interesting in the sense that I am interested, but not yet convinced). Two minutes of googling found mild disagreement with your claim, and was in general utterly consistent with my previous beliefs (e.g. [0]). Care to cite evidence in favour of your claim? If it turns out that you're correct about the facts, I'm interested in knowing more.
Note, btw, that while the summary at that link makes it look like you're right, when you read the actual findings, it says the opposite of what you claimed.
So, unlike when I wrote the previous comment, now I have started to believe that mental illness _does_, to a small degree, predict slightly increased violent behaviour, though not nearly as much as being young or male or substance-abusing, all of which are about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning.
> The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime
This sentence is you being an asshole. Please stop. Obviously I meant "when I am assessing whether or not I should consider mentally ill people dangerous, what I am concerned with is whether or not I should not consider mentally ill people dangerous, as opposed to some other issue which is unrelated for the purposes of my security". Obviously I did not mean "In general I care about no one but myself" or some other farcical interpretation which no one would admit to in public.
> But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".
That is not a correct description of this thread. My comment was a reply to a comment that contained a link, which talked entirely about whether or not it was okay to call people and behaviour crazy. Did you follow the link and read the argument? Your description of "this thread" is a correct description of the original word used in the title of TFA, but the conversation is at this point broader than that. I dunno if I personally have ever called anyone "a crazy", but maybe I have.
> by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness
I'm not at all convinced that that's true. I think it promotes stigma against the behaviour characterized as "crazy". And I think it's pretty clear that that's what is happening in TFA's title: online harassment is being implicitly characterized as so inappropriate that it brings into question the health of the brain that committed it. I'm in favour of that implicit characterization.
> Another reason: ..... You're inadvertently insulting your friends
I don't agree that I'm insulting the friends, and family, and loved ones, and self, that I know, with mental illness. (You're so cute in your assumption that I'm in the privileged group.) If we're all getting along fine, maybe the problem is you. Or maybe you're right, and I misunderstand everything, and the problem is me. But just stating your implausible claim over and over again is frustratingly unpersuasive.
Thank you, by the way, for not getting distracted by the claim about violence, and after making your comment about it, moving on to the more interesting main point.
"Crazy" even when not strictly about mental health implies lack of self-control or good judgement, which will be insulting for people who pride themselves in self-control and good judgement.
"Weird" or "bizarre" is perhaps a little more neutral.
You know, I used to be really arrogant, but then I started listening to people that try to tell me things, and now I just wish I'd started doing that sooner, because I regret spending so much of my life as a bigot.
> I assume that it's true that such people are more likely to be the target than the perpetrator, but I don't care. I care about whether they're more likely to endanger me ...
nice, man. The combination of your egoism and [lack of] empathy reminds about that rant of an SF techie against those homeless people because their presence affects his enjoying of life.
not only he slurs here, he just stereotypes some group of people this way from the start. It is kind of divisive and an efficient way to initiate combativeness. (Not that i let go waste any good chance to stereotype and to get divisive/combative myself, yet i don't whine about harassment toward me after that. You reap what you sow.)