What It Means

I thought it would be good to compliment my previous post, Freedom of Speech?, with the dictionary definitions of the two major discriminatory names used in society.

The argument is that calling a person these words is bad but using them to describe a non-person is not. I strongly disagree and I feel the definitions show that these words are used to describe mostly negatives that then link back to people (whether we are aware of it or not).

These words were FIRST created to describe people (which was the reason I heard someone would never say nigger, because it was first meant to push a certain population down) therefore we should be careful of using these words.

I know that language evolves but it all comes down to the word first meaning a messed up person and then being applied to a messed up situation.

Crazy

adjective

1.

mentally deranged; demented; insane.

2.

senseless; impractical; totally unsound: a crazy scheme.

3.

Informal. intensely enthusiastic; passionately excited: crazyabout baseball.

4.

Informal. very enamored or infatuated (usually followed byabout  ): He was crazy about her.

5.

Informal. intensely anxious or eager; impatient: I’m crazy totry those new skis.

Insane

adjective

1.

not sane; not of sound mind; mentally deranged.

2.

of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a person who ismentally deranged: insane actions; an insane asylum.

3.

utterly senseless: an insane plan.

Thought #4: A Divide Within A Divide

Thought: In my 3rd year of social work I took a required research course (which I’d never thought I’d need and now I do research lol). In groups we had to do a meta-analysis on a topic of our choice and present the findings to the class. My group and I chose restorative justice for youth. One day we were in the library organizing and all that and got onto the topic of mental health (I can’t remember why). I came out as having borderline personality disorder and the older man in my group laughed and said, “You don’t have BPD, I know people who have BPD and you aren’t one of them.” I was taken back and don’t remember how I responded but I know my face made a “wtf, how dare you, I can’t believe you just said that, is this actually happening” look. Who was this man to tell me what I was? He knew nothing about me but that of been where his “conclusion” came from. Without a DSM definition of what makes people experiencing BPD awesome you would assume that someone who was very nice, smiling, laughing and overall super cool would not have a mental health issue but this is NOT TRUE! Looking back his statement is perpetuating the “damning” stereotype, the belief that becoming well is no possible. As a person with BPD do I always need to angry, unstable and impulsive? NO! There is clearly “normal” and “abnormal” within “crazy”. It bothers me that because I don’t act a certain way or feel certain things people within my own community could pass judgement like that. He’s not a member of the mental health community to my knowledge but I have experienced and done it myself, decide if you are “crazy” enough to be let in. It’s horrible. We don’t know people’s experiences and the last thing we need to do is further negatively divide a divide within human variation. 

 P.S. This man was not aware of the years of therapy and the work I still currently do to keep all destructive emotions in check. I should have unleashed them then!