As long as we live under patriarchal capitalism, my instinct is that a general failure to thrive within it will be the cause and substance of the majority of mental health diagnoses. The question we are asking is basically, “how dare you be born female/poor/brown/weak/needy/wild/sensitive/free?” and not the more crucial, effective and urgent, “how ... See more

A young girl, obsessed with plant lore, prone to hallucinations, spends weeks singing to herself, inventing and speaking her own private languages. Is she autistic? Or is she Saint (f*ck*ng) Hildegard of Bingen?

We could diagnose these people. We could make them like us, bound by a system of classification that aims to reduce the amount of wonder i... See more

Sure, being diagnosed with ADHD helped me to navigate a system that wanted to control me or exclude me completely. But it still located the problem inside of me, rather than the deeply flawed system I found myself in. And the older I get, the more I believe that was an error and a harm. When I was young, I longed to be sent away to boarding school.... See more