MEntal Health & FeminismHello lovelies! This week I want to introduce a new segment for the Purrfect Feminist Perspective called Feminist Fridays! Feminist Fridays is about feminism with a real life application. Sometimes people talk about these ideas and discussions can get really theoretical which can translate in our lives as not something we think about practically. Or as something that is an interesting thought exercise but not to take with us. My hope is to combat this by bringing it back to the world around us. Originally, the plan was to post this in May, in honor of National Mental Health Awareness Month. Life got busy and I didn’t want to share this with you before it was fully ready, so the date has been pushed back until now! So, let’s talk about mental health and its relationship with feminism. Millions of people around the world suffer from mental health issues. It is something that 1 in 5 adults in the United States will struggle with in their lifetime. Within the last several years, public discussion on mental health has, thankfully, risen. Today, I want to go beyond the discussions on its prevalence, the way it appears, how it affects people or coping mechanisms. I want to talk about its relationship with gender. For this blog post, I will be focusing on women and men. However, it is important to note that transpeople and those who identify as gender fluid also face struggles with mental illness and part of the feminist movement pushes for these issues to gain more recognition and literature so those who aren’t cisgender get the help they need and deserve. Currently, there is not much literature or studies dedicated specifically to people who are non-gender conforming, most studies questioning the validity of their gender identity. This is why this article will focus on cis-women and men. Historically, mental health in general wasn’t well understood. However, for women it was mostly written off and not taken seriously, or used as a tool to push the message of women being inferior. For most of history, this was done with the diagnosis of hysteria. As far back as 1900 BC Eygpt, women were diagnosed with “hysteria.". Documents have symptoms of hysteria involving those similar to depression as well as seizures. It was thought that this was caused by the uterus moving around the body. Original treatments involved strong smells being used to move the uterus back in place. This idea continued well into the 1700s. It changed slightly throughout history: during the Middle Ages hysteria was from the devil and exorcism was the cure, in the Renaissance it went back to being a wandering uterus and some midwives used masturbation to ease symptoms. Throughout this time hysteria was thought to be a female disease because women were considered “inferior.” While during the 1700s thought moved away from the uterus and to the brain, making it something both genders could suffer from, it still took until the 1980s for hysteria to be removed from the DSM (the manual that defines mental illnesses and how to diagnose them). Why is this important to know? How does any of this, while maybe interesting information, relate back to the feminist movement? Today, statistics show women being more affected by mental illnesses than men, up to twice as likely. One out of four women will receive help for depression in their lifetime. It is believed 8-15% of women experience post-partum depression, something hasn’t been well understood in the past and is still stigmatized. Statistics say women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety related issues and more women than men have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to sexual violence and abuse—another issue that affects women more than men. It is important to note that these statistics could be skewed due to under reporting from men. This is itself a feminist problem. It is often discussed that men feel like they can’t talk about mental health issues because talking about feelings or revealing being in an abusive relationship isn’t “manly.” Feminism about equality for all genders on all fronts, this means wanting men to feel they can discuss these issues in a nonjudgmental way and receive care/help. An unfortunate but true fact is that prejudice exists. And they are hard to remove and lead to discrimination. Throughout history, women’s health issues have been dismissed and written off because they were women. In today’s society, it’s common to hear someone say a woman showing emotion is “at that time of the month.” Earlier I noted the stigma surrounding post-partum depression. This behavior hasn’t ended. There are messages being sent to and about women in mental health that perpetrate sexist ideas. While doing research for this post, I came across articles that refer to risk factors for depression being about internal issues dealing with social ties such as divorce while for men it’s external with career and financial issues. However, other articles will word similar ideas with very different effects. Instead of a risk factor being lack of social support or marital issues, it’s stress from being a single parent or caring for a sick relative. It’s about social status in the idea that women have higher rates of poverty and have financial worries. The rewording of these same ideas, since both do deal with social ties, changes it from sounding that women’s happiness is dependent on her relationships to stresses in her life due to an inequality of power/opportunities and social expectations placed by the patriarchy. Messages like this in media affect our perception of everything. It goes from women being dramatic about a boyfriend breaking up with her to an unequal footing in the world causing extreme stress that leads to depression. Media shapes our reality and calling for more accurate representations is important. What we can do about this is look at the messages in our media. This includes literature. For every book that does an amazing job discussing an issue, there will always be those that give wrong messages. By monitoring messages being portrayed around us and helping educate our family, friends and coworkers about them we can slowly change the narrative. We can also use media to send a message! The Yellow Wallpaper by Charolette Perkins Gilman is one of my all-time favorite short stories. First, because it’s amazing. If you haven’t read it please do. I linked to a PDF version of it to the title and it will take like 20 minutes. Second, because Gilman is a boss bitch for writing it. For those who haven’t read it, or it’s been a really long time, The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman whose husband is a doctor and has prescribed her to follow the rest cure to help her “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency.” The rest cure is exactly as it sounds: resting… by laying in bed all day and not being allowed to do anything. As the story goes on, the narrator slowly goes insane and begins seeing a women trapped in the wallpaper of the room she’s locked in. The story ends with the narrator walking around the room declaring that she set the women free and her husband fainting at the sight. I could do a whole analysis on this short story alone (future review perhaps????) but a couple things I want to pick out for this subject: the dismissal of the narrator’s feelings on her well-being and stigma to women’s mental illness. Gilman writes that maybe if the narrator’s husband wasn’t a doctor she would get better faster since he doesn’t think she’s actually sick, but she can’t do anything about it because he’s a well-respected doctor. Her brother, another doctor of high standing, agrees that nothings really wrong and she should just have a little rest. She disagrees, but due to her social standing can’t do much about it. Also, during the story we learn that the narrator had just had a baby, suggesting that she was suffering from post-partum depression. Modern readings of the story have suggested this is another reason her brother and husband don’t take her “nervous depression” seriously. Why is this so amazing? Because Charolette Gilman wrote it in response to her doctor telling her to do the same thing: rest and do nothing. After almost losing her mind, she decided to stop the treatment, start working again and then wrote this story based on her experience to show others what the treatment is like. She sent a copy to the doctor she had been seeing! She later learned that one woman’s family decided against this treatment because of the story and that even the doctor changed his practices after reading it. Media shapes reality and it can reshape reality and mindsets. Knowing these things, understanding the past women have with mental health, the struggles men and non cisgendered people are facing is as important as discussing current coping mechanisms because everything is connected. Prejudiced opinions can have far reaching effects into aspects of life that may not originally come to mind. This is why it’s important to take time to educate ourselves continuously. Whether that is on your own or by reading something like Feminist Friday posts. As always, this is a starting point for discussion. So what are your thoughts? Did anything surprise you? Spark a realization? What questions do you still have? But most importantly, in what way are you going to apply this to your daily life?? Please feel free to share below!
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Hello, love! Please, don't mind the cat hair. I'm a lover of all genres (except romance, ironic, I know), and potentially --accidentally-- obsessed with feminist literary theory. Feel free to scroll around, hopefully see a few cats, and find a good new book or two!
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