just weird, I guess [M]

[Disclaimer: Does not express system-wide opinion.]

I don't know whether it's some kind of vestigial attachment to words or whether it's because of some pattern I'm sensing underneath them that I dislike, but I have a rather bad reaction to some neologisms in various marginalized communities. Like, irrationally bad. Some of them irritate me to... a degree that doesn't really make sense. Maybe it's a pattern of how people pick them up and use them and what their spirit of intent seems to be in doing so, that's actually irritating me, but I keep having responses to the words themselves. But extremeness to the degree where... like, we don't even want to look at/read something that might have certain words in it, because we haven't figured out how to regulate our emotions around them yet.

And I know that it's really not reasonable, as in, the extremity of the emotion is not justified by what it's a response to. I am not trying to justify or excuse it. On the other hand, because I think there is something in me that's being set off by the patterns of how people... turn words into symbols sometimes, if anyone ever has a bad reaction to some kind of neologism we've coined, if they really dislike it, I want to make ourselves open to discussing it with them. Because even though the nature of our existence is such that we have to coin words from time to time because none exist in the language of the dominant culture, I want all of the words we coin-- if we mean to suggest them for others' use and not just our own shorthand-- to be logical, pronounceable, and reasonable extensions of how English is currently used and pronounced. And I also don't want to justify them, or our use of certain words over certain other words, with anything widgety.

(After running into the sharp corners of various other people's widgets-- people in groups we ourselves belong to-- about "You must use X word instead of Y word, because if you use X word, it always universally necessarily implies this!", and... not agreeing with them, we're even starting to have misgivings nowadays about things like "you must not say 'alter' because it implies that we are merely 'alternate' to some more real person!" Because... who the hell are we to say it implies that for everybody? It's not a word we want to use for ourselves because it has a psychiatric history we don't like, but if another plural system wants to reclaim it for themselves, even if we don't agree, nowadays we can't really get up in arms about "no, you must not use it because it ALWAYS NECESSARILY IMPLIES THIS!" No, actually, it doesn't necessarily. We're not going to be presumptuous about language and cognition and what connotations words have in others' brains, given how often ours is at right angles to the apparent norm. Though by the same token, if we don't want to use it for ourselves, we don't need a great widgety justification for it-- no more justification than "we don't want to use it for ourselves.")

An appeal for help, because... we're not sure where to go.

A woman we know in Chicago, Illinois is being locked up in a psychiatric ward and given drugs against her will. She has been a revolving door mental patient since she was a teenager and has no one in her local area to advocate for her. Her doctors are putting her on heavy doses of neuroleptics which are making it very difficult for her to move or communicate, and want to continue keeping her on these high doses. She already has severe ongoing health problems as a result of being put on toxic levels of these kinds of drugs by one of her past doctors, and, as a result, has a great deal of difficulty with mobility and self-care. She could live independently if she had someone to assist her with this stuff-- especially someone who could drive her around-- but is at a point where she's very suspicious of most offers of "help," due to how she's been treated in the past. (She had transportation at one point, but her caseworkers refused to take her anywhere after she lost bladder control in their van. She needs a consistent supply of Depends, but her caseworkers won't buy them for her.)

Our housemate& have already tried contacting Mindfreedom and the ACLU. Mindfreedom basically said they couldn't do anything because they're an "awareness" group, and the ACLU gave them a list of other groups to call. They've tried leaving messages on those, but any kind of other help she could get, regarding both getting her out of the psych ward and getting a place to live and disability services on a long-term basis, and transportation, would be very appreciated.

(Also, I would hope that this would go without saying, but any replies along the lines of "if she's in the hospital, you shouldn't interfere, it's probably the best place for her and her doctors know best" will be deleted. SHE WAS NOT HAVING ANY EMOTIONAL CRISES, SHE IS NOT VIOLENT, SHE IS NOT "DANGEROUS" TO HERSELF OR ANYONE ELSE. She was evicted from her apartment because she wasn't able to clean it and has nowhere to go. And she is not benefitting in any way from having levels of drugs in her system that make it almost impossible for her to speak or communicate verbally. And given that one of her past doctors almost killed her with toxic doses of drugs, and her life has been endangered many times since then by the ongoing health problems they caused, when no one was helping her with self-care, we don't believe it's the safest place for her to be right now-- far from it.)