I can’t believe I got sucked into a thread with a child abuse denier but it looks like I stepped in it. Sally caught the stink of evil for what it was off the bat in Why are so many kids mentally ill? while I was doing my “multi-perspective, tease out the complexities” liberal tolerant fence-sitting claptrap like a lamb jumping for the knife. The post brought out the “You’ll have to pry this troublesome child’s pharmaceuticals from my cold, dead hands” grandstanding by a mother who’s first post was an incoherent mess of spelling and grammatical errors; who’s style became remarkably more intelligent and articulate as she was challenged step by step, until she revealed that oh my stars and garters she happens to work in an official capacity with impaired children. It’s all very creepy and gotcha, the way this mindfuck game is played: present yourself initially as an inferior adversary, then gradually demonstrate your ability to think and speak like educated people, make jaws drop by alluding to some vague expertise of your own in these matters and you win, flounce away, savoring your devastating impact. I remember as a DV counselor encountering this type, it was the child rapists who above all felt entitled to be seen as good people, superior to their judges, and would call the child abuse hotline and attempt to paint a picture of reality that the counselor would validate as acceptable parenting, but the more you tease out those complexities the more the truly horrifying picture emerges. It’s very manipulative, almost seductive, and deliberately bewildering, once you realize what you’re dealing with the world drops out from beneath your feet. You will physically age for every call you get like that. Not to say I know what this woman’s deal is, but given she devotes 400 words to disputing the prevalence of child abuse and follows that with a disingenuous handling of the question of environment in assessing what makes a child run riot I’ve got the old chills up my spine today. I think she is amused by her own deft avoidance of the issue of environmental impact on behavior, as if that can only mean we are talking about this:
flawed plan, thank you for caring about my child’s environment. It’s been an interesting adventure, often to the surprising benefit of everyone, to make the environment more comfortable for him.
We were lucky to find a gifted OT who could help give us insight into the kind of activities that were calming to him, and those that helped to strengthen and organize his activity level and concentration, and raise his level of physical balance and bodily awareness. Brava!
Fail. “Environment” is code for what is going on in that house and I’m sure she knows it.
So I dropped by the more enlightened comforts of Pandagon, and see they’re trying to figure out how to make a DV victim testify against her abuser, since it is a frustration for law enforcement (to say nothing of the Cause) that so often women who have been abused recant their testimony and the beater goes free. A helpful commenter gained traction with this idea:
One could argue that beaten and brainwashed women are in mental health crisis, and should be treated the same way as anybody who is considered a danger to themselves.
In other words, they could be committed for a short time to receive the mental health services they require to fully restore their agency.
Fail fail, headdesk, emergency, smelling salts, seriously, Amanda says there are no right answers; I think there are, but that’s not it. After leaving my own typically inscrutable, hysterical 500 word comment I turn from that thread to todays paper and find
AP Exclusive: More than 800 employees have been suspended or fired for abusing mentally and developmentally disabled patients since fiscal year 2004, state officials said Tuesday.
Abuse, where? Mental health facilities! Which means? Governor Goodhair:
I have no words.
The state is doing its job, because abuse *is* its job. See my post “The Thing Itself Is The Abuse”, and just about everything at Rad Geek.
The domestic violence thing is difficult. Some feminists seem to like to argue that the physical evidence (bruises etc) should be all the evidence needed to convict, even when a testimony is recanted. I find this *very* problematic, because it leads straight to the criminalisation of fully consenting BDSM activities… which, perhaps not coincidentally, many of these (so-called) “radical feminists” are against, and regard as “inherently patriarchal” and/or as “consented-to abuse” (the latter phrase being one which makes me shudder in disgust and horror, because the whole definition of “abuse”, for me at least, is “that which is not consented to”).
Personally i don’t think that a statist “justice” system (which, by definition, is founded on violence) will ever be able to deal “rightfully” with such issues. Which doesn’t mean that i know what is the “right” way… tho i definitely think that dismantling the whole edifice of patriarchy, statism and capitalism would help…
Rad Geek is the only libertarian I can read but I’ll check your post too. I believe in the idea of people joining together to solve their problems in good, effective government myself. But the problem with Amanda’s post is her expectation that a person who has been traumatized could produce what she asks. If everyone else is expected to give witness testimony about a crime why shouldn’t a DV victim have the same responsibility? Yes, why indeed?
Oh, yeah, when people have been abused the response should be to fucking imprison them and further mindfuck them by denying that they are imprisoned by calling it hospitalization. Makes *total* sense. Not.
How about this: Get rid of the law that says that molesters can only be charged within so many years of commiting the crime. That way, their victims can press charges against them *whenever* they’re ready to talk.
hey, there. I thought you could appreciate this.
http://www.theonion.com/content/
news/more_u_s_children_being_diagnosed
sorry for the format
I do, it’s my all-time favorite; this one’s great too – Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love of Pharmaceutical Companies:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46032
Thank god for the Onion.
To be honest that thread with the mom who-turned- what appears- to- be- a- school psychologist -bothered me too.
She’s not a psychologist, you don’t need much credentialing to work with kids in this culture, much less kids with disabilities. She strikes me as someone who found work with children that lets her justify what she does with her own kid.
Or maybe because of her job was convinced that drugging was/is the norm?
She’s too defensive to be acting within the interests of her kid. She has an agenda that frees her from examining her parenting; the problem is the kid and stuffing him with psychotropics is the solution. God help us when these kids grow up.
[...] of ink spills about the known atrocities taking place in Texas MHMR residential facilities. From my initial link three weeks ago of 800 disciplinary actions taken against Texas state schools to the latest [...]