Why we shouldn’t use mental health to marginalize and discredit other women, a thesis:

This has come to my mind in light of the Britney Spears situation. I read a thread where fellow women were making very sweeping confident statements about her being mentally unstable/ crazy. And I began to think “Do we really know that or is that just what her male handlers like her father want her to believe”.

Much of the behavior surrounding what was been referred to as her “breakdown”. Was really under the influence of a cocktail of drugs from Sam Lufti an incredibly negative parasitic influence within her camp. Even the infamous situation of her swinging her umbrella at the paparazzi it’s not certain can qualify as mental instability when you consider that the specific paparazzi involved has long been known for pushing celebs to the edge and has had several physical run ins with and lawsuits from other celebs, including Kanye. Further, if you’ve seen video of how they absolutely swarmed and surrounded and take into consideration that she was other Kevin Federlines house gate having just been denied visitation with her children and trying to have a private cry about it in the car with her cousin, I don’t think it’s right to label her mentally unstable for acting out- I’m fairly certain majority of male celebs would’ve gotten physical and started pushing and punching and that would be perceived as them just being men- not totally cuckoo and in need of being locked up. Those were two separate incidents but in both she was pushed.

It’s become obvious from her testimony that even if she has had some mental health struggles that her team and conservatorship has been purposefully exaggerating and playing that up to make her look mentally incompetent before the general public and also to make her docile for their financial abuse of her. They: 1. Made her go out to facilities to seek mental help when they deemed fit purposely so that she would be photographed doing so when they easily could’ve brought mental health doctors into the house instead, and which she specifically requested. 2. Put her on lithium as punishment for saying no to another Vegas residency, an incredibly strong and rarely called for med that you’re not even supposed to take more than 5 months and which she said left her able to string together a coherent sentence. They then of course posted all kinds of videos of her looking out of it to her social media, to affect the public perception of her capacity to govern self and allow them to control her hard earned money to their benefit.

Now that it’s been publicly exposed how unethical and dishonest her conservatorship has been in their representation of her mental health begs one major question to me:

Why are people, especially other other women, still so quick and happy to use polarizing and humiliating language when talking about her- Shes crazy, unstable, unfit, mentally ill”

Words have meaning and it’s clear that this language around her and view of her has been largely and purposefully cultivated by her team to allow them to steal from and abuse her with impunity. That team being mainly men led by a narcissistic father and several male doctors (the one who punitively put her on lithium with no real assessment or review) and her male lawyer (who in 13 years didn’t even inform her she could petition to end the conservatorship and who has breached client confidentiality by giving information to her father inappropriately that did not serve her best interests.)

Why are women, even women here continuing to pigeonhole her as loony and unfit when it’s clear that it’s all been part of a conspiracy to financially abuse and control her.

I think many women don’t recognize the gendered and misogynistic tones the terms crazy, loony, psycho carry. That they are often used on women for doing nothing more than daring to disagree, for being too powerful, too independent.

Here’s an excerpt from an article on how labeling woman “crazy” has long been used to humiliate abuse and control them:

For eons, misunderstood mental health challenges have been used as a weapon against women, to persecute them, to demonize them, to rob them of all agency. From the 16th century witch hunts, which deemed women acting ‘abnormally’ as witches who needed to be killed, to the 1800s, when outspoken and opinionated women were institutionalized for ‘hysteria,’ to the present-day, where women are still gaslighted and labelled “crazy,” “difficult” or “psycho,” poor mental health has always been used to further oppress women.

The term hysteria even has its roots in the Latin word for womb (similar to hysterectomy).

And of course the doctors and lawyers and judges making the determination as to who was mentally ill and what constituted mental unfitness for hundreds of years were all what? Men

You see how it was used both as a tool of misogyny and the patriarchy to control and discredit powerful women going way back.

Calling and labeling women crazy has long been used by men to marginalize and humiliate us as a group and tie our hands behind our back.

Many male celebs- Charlie Sheen, Shia LaBeouf and Kanye have gone “crazy”, yet none were subjected to Britney levels of control or humiliation. Both Sheen and Shia even physically assaulted others and yet still are free and allowed autonomy.

I see it everywhere in life, even from other women, where the term crazy is used to punish or dismiss and humiliate another woman.

It’s often used as a put down to smear other women when we feel socially rejected by them and ive even seen that in my own family

Example: My sister goes to a baby shower. Another woman is sitting at a table nearby her back to back. She comes in angry. All night this girl sat with her back turned to me. Didn’t even say hello. Shes psycho!! Sarcastic nasty laughter Cuckoo! She needs to be checked in the head

My mother the other day calls someone who didn’t pick up. Within a minute she’s on the line with another woman speaking about the first woman sneeringly- “Well you know how she is. She’s unstable. She’s mentally ill. She’ll be sitting right there and not even pick up. She’s not in her right mind. Not right in the head” (Like her not answering a phone is really the basis for someone who’s not even a doctor to make a psychological assessment and go around stating it as fact). It was being said out of anger to degrade her. For the record the party in question called back less than 10 minutes later. But I’ve seen this happen time and time again with women when they face perceived social rejection from another woman or when she behaves in a way that they think doesn’t fit social norms (dying her hair too much, too promiscuous, taking chances they don’t agree with and just generally living their lives for them)

This is gendered misogynistic language that’s long been used by men to discredit us as a sex and we shouldn’t be playing into it- using it ourselves. Just like we shouldn’t be calling other women bitches or bossy or sluts because it works against us.

Calling a woman crazy though often stands at a special intersection of misogyny and ableism. It shows a certain level of underevolvment and crassness both on mental health and gender issues.

When someone calls a woman crazy to us- as Britney’s male handlers are trying to present her, we should question it and even rebuff it, just as we would if a man claimed his ex gf was crazy. Because it’s the same thing on a larger scale. We ought to look at the party pushing that view and ask what their agenda may be in labeling her that way, or what they did to make her act out

Although “crazy” in itself is not a gendered term how it’s applied certainly is.

First of all the entry level to be slapped with the crazy label is far lower for women than it is for men. So many behaviors seen as normal behavior in men- anger, sexuality are considered abnormal or can be spun as crazy in women. At the same time the burden of proof for a man to be labeled crazy is sky high and many engage in deeply psychotic, off the rails behavior without ever being called anything more than eccentric- Woody Allen anyone?

At the same time being caught in that label becomes a terrible self confirming feedback loop and inescapable trap for women in a way it isn’t for men. If a woman is called crazy and fights back because it’s insulting and degrading, her anger is seen as abnormal and further confirmation as her crazy. It becomes the basis of even further accusations of insanity because look how “uNsTaBle” she’s acting by responding to disrespect.

Meanwhile a man like Brett Kavanaugh can get ragingly angry about and fight tooth and nail against a narrative about himself he finds untrue and no one will ever label him as crazy or unstable for that behavior. It’s looked at as fair game and as confirmation of his masculinity and power.

Do you see how much easier it is for women to slip into the label and how much more difficult it is for her to escape it once it’s stuck. How even without real proof it becomes both the accepted narrative and a self confirming cycle she can’t escape. The crazy label basically becomes a chinese finger trap for women in a way that it isn’t for women. You more and more enmeshed in it the more you fight against it. Because as a woman your anger, howsoever justified, is just interpreted as further proof of insanity and abnormality

tl;dr- Crazy is gendered sexist language that has been used to disempower and degrade women as far back at the 1500s. Im tired of seeing women employ it just because they’re angry with another woman or feel she rejected them socially. It works against us- just like the word bitch and slut shouldn’t be in any feminists vocabulary when referring to another woman as it empowers men to use it to degrade and abuse us too, in worse ways than we’d even intended. No one should be speculating or making negative implications or diagnoses on another party’s mental health if they are not a doctor and don’t have a fucking medical degree. Keep your opinions and arm chair diagnoses to yourself especially when it comes to other women. It’s not your place and all it does is hand men a weapon to use against all of us and a way to degrade us