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sophiaserpentiaOver the past few days I've been tagging the entries in my journal (I'm back to Nov. 2004 now, what a wonderful tool tags are!) and have noticed a pattern -- a few contentious journal entries aimed at Christianity and usually inspired by anti-queer agitation in the news, followed by a resolution not to let myself get drawn into posting divisive comments. Then a month (or even a week) later, I'm doing it again.
I've been wondering over the past few days whether it is possible to examine the question of power inequality without getting drawn into divisiveness. The prime examples often cited are from exemplary people -- MLK Jr. and Gandhi and a brave few who are able to speak about racial or sexual or religious inequality while remaining completely unflappable. They've set a standard of perfection and dignity which is admirable, but which sets the bar uncomfortably high for the rest of us to meet in a healthy way.
Then this morning it came together when a friend mentioned in a locked entry that even things like reading a newspaper can trigger a PTSD response -- fear and anxiety. I haven't been able to find online an article outlining a clear exposition of this link, but many times the advice given to people being treated for PTSD includes avoiding the news media.
I began to wonder if maybe PTSD makes oppression possible. If people of a given class are more likely than average to suffer from abuse, then a random person from that class is also more likely than average to respond with fear and anxiety to news about similar things happening to others in the same class.
Figures for the prevalence of depression in our society are estimated at 5-7%, with higher percentages for women than men. The one-year prevalance for generalized anxiety disorder is 3%, again with higher percentages for women than men. Compare this to the figure of over 40% of people in the GLBT community at any given time I cited a while back.
Now, depression statistics are not proof of PTSD, but they might be suggestive of it. Other evidence which I've cited before show very high percentages for major disruptive or traumatic abusive events in the lives of GLBT people. So it does not seem out of line to suppose that much of the depression or anxiety experienced by GLBT people is due to (mostly undiagnosed) PTSD.
One line of research has suggested a link between racism and PTSD response.
The picture is starting to become clear. I noted above the higher depression and anxiety figures for women because the typical explanation is to suppose that there is something about women's biochemistry that makes them more prone to mental illness. In light of sexism, could it be that women are simply traumatized more often then men?
So, news of intolerance-inspired abuse spreads like fire through an oppressed community and generates fear and anxiety not because they can imagine it happening to them in an abstract way, but because on a mass scale it triggers a PTSD flashback. In the GLBT community, this response can also be triggered by anti-gay comments styled in Christian language because so many of us were traumatized with this language as the soundtrack; for example, one fourth of us have been expelled or alienated from families or homes, often because the parents could not accept their child's "un-Christian" lifestyle.
Anxiety, fear and depression dampens one's will and lessens one's access to political and economic resources -- creating an advantage in someone who does not have it. Therefore PTSD is an effective tool of exploitation and therefore of oppression. Furthermore, in a typical victim-blaming pattern it is often cited as "proof" that there is something inherently inferior or unclean about women (feminists)/racial minorities/religious minorities/queer people or the way they live.
This thought doesn't give me a lot of optimism for the question I posed at the outset.
I've been wondering over the past few days whether it is possible to examine the question of power inequality without getting drawn into divisiveness. The prime examples often cited are from exemplary people -- MLK Jr. and Gandhi and a brave few who are able to speak about racial or sexual or religious inequality while remaining completely unflappable. They've set a standard of perfection and dignity which is admirable, but which sets the bar uncomfortably high for the rest of us to meet in a healthy way.
Then this morning it came together when a friend mentioned in a locked entry that even things like reading a newspaper can trigger a PTSD response -- fear and anxiety. I haven't been able to find online an article outlining a clear exposition of this link, but many times the advice given to people being treated for PTSD includes avoiding the news media.
I began to wonder if maybe PTSD makes oppression possible. If people of a given class are more likely than average to suffer from abuse, then a random person from that class is also more likely than average to respond with fear and anxiety to news about similar things happening to others in the same class.
Figures for the prevalence of depression in our society are estimated at 5-7%, with higher percentages for women than men. The one-year prevalance for generalized anxiety disorder is 3%, again with higher percentages for women than men. Compare this to the figure of over 40% of people in the GLBT community at any given time I cited a while back.
Now, depression statistics are not proof of PTSD, but they might be suggestive of it. Other evidence which I've cited before show very high percentages for major disruptive or traumatic abusive events in the lives of GLBT people. So it does not seem out of line to suppose that much of the depression or anxiety experienced by GLBT people is due to (mostly undiagnosed) PTSD.
One line of research has suggested a link between racism and PTSD response.
People who are victimized because of their race share an unfortunate legacy with victims of terrorism. Both suffer the effects of violence inflicted on them because of factors beyond their control—effects that are often both severe and chronic.
This is the contention of Chalsa Loo, Ph.D., a clinical research psychologist at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’s Pacific Islands Division. The center is a project of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
... She noted that her findings on the relationship of racism and PTSD are in line with those of studies done in the mid-1980s that showed that African-American Vietnam veterans showed more psychological problems and adjustment difficulties than Caucasian soldiers. She suggested that a major factor in the postwar problems experienced by African-American veterans may have arisen from guilt and rage related to emotionally identifying with the "devalued" and oppressed Vietnamese people they were fighting.
"This finding tells us that the personal experience of racism is a potent risk factor for PTSD," she stated, and one to which clinicians and researchers have rarely paid attention.
The message for psychiatrists, Loo suggested, is that clinicians who fail to account for and discuss possible race-related stressors with their non-Caucasian patients are potentially missing a major cause of PTSD symptoms. (from Race-Related Stressors Can Trigger PTSD)
The picture is starting to become clear. I noted above the higher depression and anxiety figures for women because the typical explanation is to suppose that there is something about women's biochemistry that makes them more prone to mental illness. In light of sexism, could it be that women are simply traumatized more often then men?
So, news of intolerance-inspired abuse spreads like fire through an oppressed community and generates fear and anxiety not because they can imagine it happening to them in an abstract way, but because on a mass scale it triggers a PTSD flashback. In the GLBT community, this response can also be triggered by anti-gay comments styled in Christian language because so many of us were traumatized with this language as the soundtrack; for example, one fourth of us have been expelled or alienated from families or homes, often because the parents could not accept their child's "un-Christian" lifestyle.
Anxiety, fear and depression dampens one's will and lessens one's access to political and economic resources -- creating an advantage in someone who does not have it. Therefore PTSD is an effective tool of exploitation and therefore of oppression. Furthermore, in a typical victim-blaming pattern it is often cited as "proof" that there is something inherently inferior or unclean about women (feminists)/racial minorities/religious minorities/queer people or the way they live.
This thought doesn't give me a lot of optimism for the question I posed at the outset.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-24 04:43 am (UTC)("this is just dishonest." "Perhaps you might cease the hypocrisy")
"Your argument is with someone else so please stop projecting it onto me."
No - you were the one who started this. Notice I didn't respond directly to a single comment you made. Yes, I used two words you like to use in a comment made not to you but to S. But you couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you? No, you had to start something. You could have let it go - after all, I didn't go to your journal and say something to you or respond directly to any of your comments or even mention you by name. You could have said to yourself, "Oh, I will ignore her because she is being crude and unreasonable." But you didn't. How very impressively Christian of you!
What do you hope to accomplish by all of this? Did you think by being snide to me you will change my mind? Do you think I will thank you for being so "principled" by saying I am living a sinful life because I happen to not be straight but out of the GOODNESS OF YOUR HEART you don't think I should be beaten up for it? Excuse me for not being wildly grateful for your splendid gesture of humanity. Oh, you think my family is inherently wrong but you aren't a bad person because you aren't actually beating us up? No, you don't beat people up - but you encourage the attitudes that tell people we are less worthy of being treated with kindness than you are. So yes, my argument is with you. No, I have no tolerance for someone who sneers condescendingly at my family. (Not that I ever claimed to be a PC liberal anyway - you decided that about me for some unknown reason.) My family is all I have. You are trying to convince people we are bad.
"It's all, frankly, in your head."
Didn't I say you'd pretend I was crazy? Of course you would. It's fun to play let's pretend, isn't it? Allows you to avoid all responsibility for the hurt and anger you cause other people by telling them God hates their family structure (Don't forget to tack on some insincere expression like "Love the sinner hate the sin!" when you say that. I'd so hate to see you break protocol.)
You know what I am? I am the end result of what Christianity does to people - the fruit on the tree, so to speak. I am the karma of Christianity, the Awful Fact, the Skeleton in the Closet. I wasn't taught to feel this way by liberal parents - I was taught to feel this way by the behavior of everyday Christians, telling me I'm bad, all the time, everywhere I go - signs, pamphlets, churches, preachers, parents, teachers, friends, prominent Christians in the media, and I go to read my friend's journals and they are there too, talking about how we just need to accept that they think we are sinful and suck it up and take it without complaining, or somehow WE become the bad guys. You can't let there be one place in the world where we can relax and not be bothered with your disapproval of our family, can you? No, you have to watch like a hawk and combat every disapproving word you see, as if you are some hunted species under continual attack instead a citizen of a country where virtually every lawmaker must at least pretend to be of your religion in order to be elected and there is a church on almost every corner of every town. Then you act surprised and disapproving when we become hostile.
You want me to shut up and go away but I exist and hundreds of thousands like me exist. Just because you don't want to hear how much pain and anger your religion causes doesn't mean it's going to go away. Just because you deny that your religion is causing this pain and anger isn't going to make it not be so.
But I'm sure you will stew in your smug denial anyway. Because it's so much more comfortable for you that way.