It gets better. At least that’s what Dan Savage says, and he’s persuaded millions of people to repeat it often enough that it sounds true. He—and they—and I—want teens and twenty-somethings who are struggling with issues of sexuality and identity to bear up under the burden of loneliness and hatred; we want them to look beyond the immediate fear of bullying to a time in the not-too-distant future when they will feel free enough to be themselves in the open. It gets better.
The campaign has its detractors, of course, people who rightly point out that:
• it implies that young people should remain passive, waiting for a better future rather than working to make things better right now;
• it doesn’t actually get better for some people;
• the celebrity spots are instances of flagrant self-promotion masquerading as concern for a fashionable cause;
• when the Catholic League can dictate terms to the Smithsonian, we are reminded that “It gets better” cannot be regarded as a one-off campaign, but as part of an ongoing struggle because there’s a strong supply of Bill Donohue’s in this world.
And then there’s my complaint:
They, or some of them, or some circling close to them (whoever “them” is) seem to think that LGBTQ flies are the only ones getting their wings torn out. I’m concerned that maybe, just maybe, this campaign lulls us into a complacency about, or distracts us from, or blinds us to the many other groups who find themselves on the receiving end of routine discrimination / bullying / misunderstanding / ostracism.
What do we tell the mentally ill?
While I could name any number of groups here, there is only one I know much about, a group that is as diverse in its concerns as LGBTQ’s, with interests that often overlap. I speak of those who struggle with mental health issues.
In thinking about mental health issues, I have found it helpful to draw analogies to queer ideas. For all its hardships, one of the upsides of being, for example, gay is that, in and of itself, being gay doesn’t impair your ability to think, whereas being, for example, schizophrenic pretty much guarantees it. One of the interesting consequences of that fact is that most people who have published papers about queer ideas identify within the LGBTQ spectrum whereas those who have published papers about psychiatric ideas tend to identify outside the DSM IV. And one of the interesting consequences of that difference is that queer theorists think, among other things, about how to be someone and how to be that someone for a lifetime, whereas psychiatrists spend far more time thinking about how to cure someone. For those of us who think psychiatrists spend too much time barking up the wrong tree, it becomes useful to cannibalize the thinking of queer theorists who, because they tend to be more organized than us, have managed to develop a more coherent body of thought.
Then the “It gets better” campaign comes along and reminds me that it is, after all, only an analogy. For one thing, the relationship between sexuality and mental health is porous. Some people get depressed as a response to the intractable situation their sexuality seems to have placed them in. On the other side, some people experience their sexuality as a symptom of illness. Things get mixed up. For another thing, there are ways in which the analogy between sexuality and mental health doesn’t hold. For example, despite all the talk of closets, LGBTQ’s are far more out than the mentally ill. Where’s the bipolar guy doing his version of the “It’s get better” video for people with mental health issues? How about the schizophrenic begging for change on the street corner? Or what about the forty-year-old man who never leaves his room because he’s been hamstrung by an acute social anxiety disorder? How about a message for them too?
What are we afraid of?
Fifteen years ago, when I was first admitted to a psychiatric ward, the minister at the church I no longer attend suggested to my parents that it would have been easier if I had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. I think he was wrong, especially given that I’m still here while friends and family who had HIV/AIDS are no longer. Now I hear that minister’s comment as an expression of fear. He was working things through while his mouth was moving. I hear it as a normal response. We all carry fears with us of one sort or another. That’s part of what it means to be human. In fact, we wouldn’t survive without some measure of fear. We’d be like those people who can’t feel pain and, as a result, lead precarious lives. Contrary to what motivational speakers tell us, we cope, not by overcoming our fears, but by interpreting them correctly, giving them their due and no more.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed “homosexuality” as a category of psychiatric disorder from its DSM. Last month, the APA announced that in its forthcoming DSM-5, there will no longer be such a thing as “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” I’m not the only one who finds it amusing that the APA’s announcement should coincide with Time’s selection of Mark Zuckerberg as its person of the year—the man who has turned narcissism into a social requirement. But if homosexuality and narcissistic personality disorder can be expunged, why not other psychiatric categories? Depressives are just melancholy; manics are inspired; schizophrenics are blessed. Etc. It reminds us that psychiatry isn’t really an objective branch of science so much as a taxonomic exercise or an attempt to account for misery. It has far more in common with religion than science. As such, its terms are provisional and are infinitely revisable. For most of us, they are a matter of convenience. It is, after all, extraordinarily inconvenient to walk to work through the financial district and to pass a man like Michael with his hand outstretched and asking for help or, worse, looking for conversation. It is far more convenient to slap him with a label and shove him out of the way.
How are the mentally ill bullied?
I’ve already mentioned two ways the analogy breaks down: 1) those with chronic mental illness are disorganized and so they rarely speak with their own voice, and 2) as a consequence they are often far more closeted, which is probably another way of talking about isolation and loneliness. But there is a third way in which the analogy breaks down. We see it in the nature of the bullying.
First, there’s the question of timing. In matters of sexuality, the great threshold is puberty. In matters of major mental illness, onset is typically later. You may remember kids from high school who were morose or odd or different, but it’s unlikely that you remember anyone who heard voices that you couldn’t hear too or was convinced he had superpowers or wished she could spend all day in gym because she had so much energy she thought she might explode. Bullying in junior high and high school is more an LGBTQ experience than a mental illness experience.
Because the mentally ill typically don’t encounter bullying until after high school, the quality of that bullying tends to be subtler. Sure, there are still crude examples. The kids who roll a homeless man for fun. The suit who sees a panhandler and yells: “Get a job!” These are both examples of bullying. But some of the most insidious bullying finds itself embedded in institutions and systems. It’s hard to take the “It gets better” message to a bully that isn’t even human. How do you respond to a system that sees no place in it for your difference? That accords no legitimacy to you as you are but insists on changing you? That, as a matter of course, first engages you by administering mind- and personality-altering drugs? But, you say, there is space in our world for the mentally ill. There really is. They are our poets. They are our creatives. To which I answer: Right; and all gays know feng shui; and all lesbians are connoisseurs of craft breweries.
So how does it get better?
It doesn’t get better, not because things don’t improve, but because “better” is the wrong fucking adverb. Things get more. Things get different. Things get large. Things get complicated. Things get wise.
“It gets better” isn’t a description of how things will be; it’s an aspiration; it’s a wish. But as the genie says: be careful what you wish for. Will the world really be a better place if you and I get to sit around with our hot toddies and congratulate ourselves on how well we’ve done with our gayness or our craziness? Did we get to this place so we could pat ourselves on the back? In a world that has now embraced narcissism as a universal virtue, that may be be tempting. However, I suggest that we aspired to this place for a purpose—not to assert our particular identities in their narrow enclaves (LGBTQ, crazy, Filipino, dolphin) but to join hands across difference.
I feel like a person who sits with his tea while outside the storm rages. Rich Western states use their might to secure the world’s resources and devour the planet in the process. Those are the bullies I’d rather have a go at. In the meantime, having secured myself by asserting my identity, if the best I can do with my time is to go on asserting my identity and nothing more, am I any different than a tea-drinker in a storm?
I want things to get better, not so I can have everything that the bullies have. That would only make me like them. It gets better so that I can help them be better too. Calling for things to get better is not an exclusive proposition; it’s a yearning to fill the whole world with love. It gets better because you and I are committed to making it better for everyone, even (and maybe most especially) for the bullies.