I am thinking about a student I taught this term who let me know early on (I invite all my students to tell me about anything they think I should know that might interfere with or complicate their ability to fully engage in my course) that she had Borderline Personality Disorder. In the last week of term she was hospitalized due to a mental health crisis. Her final essay came in 2 days before my grade submission deadline (past, even, the extension we had agreed upon) with the disclaimer at the top of page one (erratically formatted) that she had written it in an hour during a manic episode. I wrote back and encouraged her to request a medical incomplete for the course, which I would support. Then I read the essay. It was strikingly insightful, original, bringing two unlikely works together to gain a broader systemic understanding. It bore the mark of her very distinctive approach to reading and interpreting texts. Remarkable. And unlike her other written work, not composed with the kind of tortured misguided effort to impress me with arch, stilted prose. So sometimes literal “craziness” can bring exceptional clarity.
In my experience calling women “crazy” is most commonly a way to dismiss and invalidate them when they are actually speaking truth to power - calling men out on their shit. (Like your colleague in fact.)
We dismiss so-called “crazy” women at our collective peril.
You aren’t crazy, but the people running the current U.S. government certainly appear to be. It sounds as if the professor who wrongly called you “crazy” was using a defense mechanism against you based on pure misogyny.
Crazy feels like a slur we give to nonconformists. The paradox when I think about my own experience: I was never called crazy until I stopped tolerating societal and relational craziness.
“Some of the most brilliant, creative people are a little bit crazy.” Your post leave me feeling excited to get a little more crazy each year. Thank you for this.
For some reason, this essay made me immediately think of Marge Piercy's 1976 book "Woman on the Edge of Time"---the disassociation of being called "crazy" when you are quite sane---it's been so long since I read it that I can't remember the outcome, but the experience stuck with me. I've always thought it crazy that no one calls Trump crazy---but I realize that saying that is missing the point. I very much appreciate your explanation of gaslighting "a process that functions to make someone feel fundamentally defective in some way for states of mind to which she is actually entitled." Perhaps that is what's illustrated in Piercy's book. We have every good reason to be angry, every good reason to feel under attack and yet are not allowed to.
Thank you for another insightful piece, Kate. It suddenly unlocked a repressed (for a good reason) memory of my ex husband calling me crazy by saying that I needed to “get checked” (by some mental health professional, apparently) because I was not happy with some aspect of my marriage to him. Even when I did not buy it consciously, it obviously had a very negative effect on me, and even today (exactly seventeen years after our separation and subsequent divorce) it hurts so much, and I am able to see how it’s been affecting all the other relationships I’ve had after him, as if I needed to accept anything without questioning it, for fear of looking crazy. I don’t see how we couldn't try to reclaim the term “crazy," but I understand it’s not a simple task. However, I also love the idea of being wild. If we can’t get fully rid of the constant feeling of trying to not look or be crazy, why not embrace the uniqueness and singularity of our wild selves in our own creative ways?
My narcissistic ex husband gave me a book about how to recover from being the daughter of a narcissistic mother. Because I was the crazy one who needed fixing, and that book was a hint. The ploy backfired though, since it described how daughters of narcissists are likely to end up with narcissists as mates, and there he was right in the description. It’s funny how abusers aren’t seen as mentally ill. As if being obsessed with destroying the person you’re supposed to love isn’t the very definition of insanity.
I don't know if The Yellow Wallpaper is still taught in gender studies classes but it was assigned to me when I was about 18. My recollection is that being called "crazy" then led to social alienation and institutionalization. It is a threat to both social inclusion and personal autonomy. I also recall that the boredom of institutionalization and "bed rest" was in fact crazy-making. It makes me think of Sara Ahmed's play on words--if you complain about harassment, you will be harassed which could be converted into something like if you point out the insanity of patriarchy, you will be declared insane.
Kate, I bless you for this. I am a strong and independent woman who for decades has spoken truth to power. They've been unable to break me (so far, tho they're getting closer), so I have often been neutralized with the "crazy" label.
I guess I'm too "uppity," like Hillary Clinton. Only she has more power and status than I do, so I must be horribly uppity. Oh and I'm fat, which makes me shockingly uppity.
When I reached my 70s without being involved in any legal proceedings (other than divorce), I thought I was safe enough. But I've learned that a male bully doctor at a major medical system (not Hopkins, tho I'm in Baltimore) has put a poison pill in my medical record, that can be accessed by any new doctors I seek anywhere in any system. It doesn't say "crazy" per se, but that's how just about any HCP reading it would summarize it.
So now I've contacted a lawyer, and I have to fight my label in order to get basic medical care. And I think this post will be invaluable to me, and to my lawyer, in the arguments to come.
One day in 8th-grade math, I suddenly raised my hand amid a long presentation of Right Angles. I said, “Oh, I get it! And if you turn it around it’s a Left Angle!” The teacher walked back to her desk and put her head on her arms down on the table laughing so hard. Then she announced “Class canceled. No homework today!” I thought it was brilliant, but the crazy undoing suddenly gave us all a break. Took me awhile in the laughter to realize I was the unexpected hero for no homework.
I’m reminded of the line in Shirley Valentine, where she says her husband used to tell her she was ‘a mad cow’ [the tone showing affection laced with admiration] and now ‘he just thinks I’m mad’. [the tone shows disgust and dismissal] That is the knife edge women and others walk when we show our real selves and deviate from the most prescriptive and proscriptive patriarchal expectations. Sigh. The defense is not reclaiming the term but undoing the culture that gave it such sinister power.
At this point in my life, I just want to lean into these kind of accusations. If I’m so crazy and unpredictable, I wonder why you think it’s wise to provoke me. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m both an abuse survivor and post menopausal. I’ve suffered the consequences of a lifetime of being meek and agreeable. Now I just want to smash the faces of people who get in my way. I mean, I don’t do that, but my tolerance for this kind of devaluation is almost nil.
Maybe it’s time we all start foaming at the mouth and baring our fangs. It would be nice if men were afraid of us for a change.
I've been labeled crazy, out of my mind, bizarre, out of touch with reality; some of the time that's been correct. But I've also been called insightful, and capable of expressing feelings that most people cannot. But, I hear you.
I’m thinking that the most positive use of “crazy” has always been in relation to men who are “mad geniuses.” An 18th/19th century trope, but men were allowed to be “crazy” and brilliantly creative at the same time. Women had no access to that category, as far as I can tell.
Also, re: current uses, this is why I think that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was a great show. It played with the stereotype in a productive way and made Rebecca both “crazy” and smart and likeable and self-aware much of the time.
I'm not a woman but I've had experiences along this line. Two or three years ago (about three years after I retired as a professor), a former chair buttonholed me after a local Democratic Party meeting and referred to me as "crazy." I felt the insult and remembered that she had previously called me a "doofus" to my face because I (at least in my view) wouldn't go along with making personal friendship the primary value in department decisions. I also had the consolation of knowing that the tide had long since turned against cronyism and that I had retired as an insider with the new group of cool people. I also knew that my former chair didn't know half of it--how long I had suffered with narcissistic grandiosity, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and heavily suppressed rage related to growing up in an abusive family and how much work I had put in and therapy I had undergone as I disciplined myself so I could finish a grad program, do a dissertation, hold a job, and be a decent husband and father. Gaining the self-control Kate Manne discusses has been an overriding life project for me along with the self-doubt about being over-controlled. My current thought about reconciling this is to reflect on my long-time identification with the closing number in my favorite movie, "All That Jazz," and especially Ben Vereen's stereotype breaking performance of "Bye Bye Life." At bottom, what I think I identify with is the "exuberance" of the performance and I think I have a core exuberance that I've never figured out how to integrate into my routine social life without people freaking out and thinking I'm crazy.
There's a very interesting and beautiful new book out that relates to this post, edited by art historian Jenny Anger - Surrealist Women Artists and Mental Illness.
Much to reflect upon, here.
I am thinking about a student I taught this term who let me know early on (I invite all my students to tell me about anything they think I should know that might interfere with or complicate their ability to fully engage in my course) that she had Borderline Personality Disorder. In the last week of term she was hospitalized due to a mental health crisis. Her final essay came in 2 days before my grade submission deadline (past, even, the extension we had agreed upon) with the disclaimer at the top of page one (erratically formatted) that she had written it in an hour during a manic episode. I wrote back and encouraged her to request a medical incomplete for the course, which I would support. Then I read the essay. It was strikingly insightful, original, bringing two unlikely works together to gain a broader systemic understanding. It bore the mark of her very distinctive approach to reading and interpreting texts. Remarkable. And unlike her other written work, not composed with the kind of tortured misguided effort to impress me with arch, stilted prose. So sometimes literal “craziness” can bring exceptional clarity.
In my experience calling women “crazy” is most commonly a way to dismiss and invalidate them when they are actually speaking truth to power - calling men out on their shit. (Like your colleague in fact.)
We dismiss so-called “crazy” women at our collective peril.
You aren’t crazy, but the people running the current U.S. government certainly appear to be. It sounds as if the professor who wrongly called you “crazy” was using a defense mechanism against you based on pure misogyny.
Crazy feels like a slur we give to nonconformists. The paradox when I think about my own experience: I was never called crazy until I stopped tolerating societal and relational craziness.
“Some of the most brilliant, creative people are a little bit crazy.” Your post leave me feeling excited to get a little more crazy each year. Thank you for this.
For some reason, this essay made me immediately think of Marge Piercy's 1976 book "Woman on the Edge of Time"---the disassociation of being called "crazy" when you are quite sane---it's been so long since I read it that I can't remember the outcome, but the experience stuck with me. I've always thought it crazy that no one calls Trump crazy---but I realize that saying that is missing the point. I very much appreciate your explanation of gaslighting "a process that functions to make someone feel fundamentally defective in some way for states of mind to which she is actually entitled." Perhaps that is what's illustrated in Piercy's book. We have every good reason to be angry, every good reason to feel under attack and yet are not allowed to.
Thank you for another insightful piece, Kate. It suddenly unlocked a repressed (for a good reason) memory of my ex husband calling me crazy by saying that I needed to “get checked” (by some mental health professional, apparently) because I was not happy with some aspect of my marriage to him. Even when I did not buy it consciously, it obviously had a very negative effect on me, and even today (exactly seventeen years after our separation and subsequent divorce) it hurts so much, and I am able to see how it’s been affecting all the other relationships I’ve had after him, as if I needed to accept anything without questioning it, for fear of looking crazy. I don’t see how we couldn't try to reclaim the term “crazy," but I understand it’s not a simple task. However, I also love the idea of being wild. If we can’t get fully rid of the constant feeling of trying to not look or be crazy, why not embrace the uniqueness and singularity of our wild selves in our own creative ways?
My narcissistic ex husband gave me a book about how to recover from being the daughter of a narcissistic mother. Because I was the crazy one who needed fixing, and that book was a hint. The ploy backfired though, since it described how daughters of narcissists are likely to end up with narcissists as mates, and there he was right in the description. It’s funny how abusers aren’t seen as mentally ill. As if being obsessed with destroying the person you’re supposed to love isn’t the very definition of insanity.
This was me as well. I married my mother. Ruined my life for a long while.
I don't know if The Yellow Wallpaper is still taught in gender studies classes but it was assigned to me when I was about 18. My recollection is that being called "crazy" then led to social alienation and institutionalization. It is a threat to both social inclusion and personal autonomy. I also recall that the boredom of institutionalization and "bed rest" was in fact crazy-making. It makes me think of Sara Ahmed's play on words--if you complain about harassment, you will be harassed which could be converted into something like if you point out the insanity of patriarchy, you will be declared insane.
Virginia Woolf comes to mind ...
Kate, I bless you for this. I am a strong and independent woman who for decades has spoken truth to power. They've been unable to break me (so far, tho they're getting closer), so I have often been neutralized with the "crazy" label.
I guess I'm too "uppity," like Hillary Clinton. Only she has more power and status than I do, so I must be horribly uppity. Oh and I'm fat, which makes me shockingly uppity.
When I reached my 70s without being involved in any legal proceedings (other than divorce), I thought I was safe enough. But I've learned that a male bully doctor at a major medical system (not Hopkins, tho I'm in Baltimore) has put a poison pill in my medical record, that can be accessed by any new doctors I seek anywhere in any system. It doesn't say "crazy" per se, but that's how just about any HCP reading it would summarize it.
So now I've contacted a lawyer, and I have to fight my label in order to get basic medical care. And I think this post will be invaluable to me, and to my lawyer, in the arguments to come.
So thank you.
Seal’s song “Crazy” has been a favorite of mine since it came out. The refrain,
“But we’re never gonna survive,
unless,
We get a little crazy”
I’m proud to say it’s my theme song now & I belt it out whenever I feel like it!
One day in 8th-grade math, I suddenly raised my hand amid a long presentation of Right Angles. I said, “Oh, I get it! And if you turn it around it’s a Left Angle!” The teacher walked back to her desk and put her head on her arms down on the table laughing so hard. Then she announced “Class canceled. No homework today!” I thought it was brilliant, but the crazy undoing suddenly gave us all a break. Took me awhile in the laughter to realize I was the unexpected hero for no homework.
I’m reminded of the line in Shirley Valentine, where she says her husband used to tell her she was ‘a mad cow’ [the tone showing affection laced with admiration] and now ‘he just thinks I’m mad’. [the tone shows disgust and dismissal] That is the knife edge women and others walk when we show our real selves and deviate from the most prescriptive and proscriptive patriarchal expectations. Sigh. The defense is not reclaiming the term but undoing the culture that gave it such sinister power.
At this point in my life, I just want to lean into these kind of accusations. If I’m so crazy and unpredictable, I wonder why you think it’s wise to provoke me. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m both an abuse survivor and post menopausal. I’ve suffered the consequences of a lifetime of being meek and agreeable. Now I just want to smash the faces of people who get in my way. I mean, I don’t do that, but my tolerance for this kind of devaluation is almost nil.
Maybe it’s time we all start foaming at the mouth and baring our fangs. It would be nice if men were afraid of us for a change.
double like 👍🏼👍🏼
I've been labeled crazy, out of my mind, bizarre, out of touch with reality; some of the time that's been correct. But I've also been called insightful, and capable of expressing feelings that most people cannot. But, I hear you.
I’m thinking that the most positive use of “crazy” has always been in relation to men who are “mad geniuses.” An 18th/19th century trope, but men were allowed to be “crazy” and brilliantly creative at the same time. Women had no access to that category, as far as I can tell.
Also, re: current uses, this is why I think that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was a great show. It played with the stereotype in a productive way and made Rebecca both “crazy” and smart and likeable and self-aware much of the time.
I'm not a woman but I've had experiences along this line. Two or three years ago (about three years after I retired as a professor), a former chair buttonholed me after a local Democratic Party meeting and referred to me as "crazy." I felt the insult and remembered that she had previously called me a "doofus" to my face because I (at least in my view) wouldn't go along with making personal friendship the primary value in department decisions. I also had the consolation of knowing that the tide had long since turned against cronyism and that I had retired as an insider with the new group of cool people. I also knew that my former chair didn't know half of it--how long I had suffered with narcissistic grandiosity, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and heavily suppressed rage related to growing up in an abusive family and how much work I had put in and therapy I had undergone as I disciplined myself so I could finish a grad program, do a dissertation, hold a job, and be a decent husband and father. Gaining the self-control Kate Manne discusses has been an overriding life project for me along with the self-doubt about being over-controlled. My current thought about reconciling this is to reflect on my long-time identification with the closing number in my favorite movie, "All That Jazz," and especially Ben Vereen's stereotype breaking performance of "Bye Bye Life." At bottom, what I think I identify with is the "exuberance" of the performance and I think I have a core exuberance that I've never figured out how to integrate into my routine social life without people freaking out and thinking I'm crazy.
There's a very interesting and beautiful new book out that relates to this post, edited by art historian Jenny Anger - Surrealist Women Artists and Mental Illness.
Highly recommend: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180704/