Gay men getting madder by the minute
The second ‘Private Lives‘ study here in Australia has confirmed that us pewfs are totally fucking mad and are getting madder, still, by the minute. This report conveniently apportions absolute blame for our burgeoning psychopathology to ‘heterosexism’…
‘There is now a well established body of research showing significant variations in the prevalence and patterns of mental ill-health between GLBT and mainstream communities (Corboz, Dowsett, et al. 2008; Herek and Garnets 2007; Meyer 2003; Smith et al. 2003). In particular, the research suggests that GLBT people are at increased risk of a range of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety disorders, self-harm and suicide, due to their experiences of heterosexist discrimination and abuse (Cochran and Mays 2000; Cochran, Sullivan and Mays 2003; Cox, Dawaele et al. 2009; Hillier, Jones et al. 2010; Pitts, Mitchell et al. 2006; Suicide Prevention Australia 2009)’.
While I can admire the ‘good politics’ of holding onto the now dated concept that heterosexism renders us fags crazy, that quaint finding is not reflected in how other researchers approach this problematic, which is mostly through the epigenetic lens, whereby gay men are born with a genetic predisposition to madness, but alternatively, for some researchers, in which homosexuality and mental illness are melded into one. Thus, cure one, cure the other.
The rush to get as many fags as possible into mainstream health services to have their madness treated will instantly leave at the door discussions about the impacts of ‘heterosexism’ or whatever upon our mental health to instead have us become the passive recipients of the pharmacological gear to which we will be plied, and our pathetic transition into the category of diseased subjects.
When, for example, serial homophobe Jeff Kennett claims that he wants to help out, we should all be extremely concerned…
Thanks for your writing on this subject. Ok so having read this article and the one on the shared etiology of “gayness and madness”, I’m trying to get a clear picture of your thinking around this. It seem like on the one hand you (I think rightfully) caution against apparent genetic origins on homosexuality and depression, but you also seem pretty unconvinced about the minority stress model. Can you spell out or point to an article that outlines how you see the relationship between non-hetero-ness and emotional distress (I am trying to avoid the term mental illness)?
Just to clarify my position (at the moment) I think the medical model of mental health/illness has a long way to go in terms of convincing evidence, and feel pretty strongly that the idea that heterosexism has a big part in making us unhappy, makes sense.
Penny for your thoughts?
If you look toward the epigenetic causation of mental illness (an argument that is central to the minority stress model), you start with the premise that us fags are born ‘vulnerable’ or sensitive to mental illness, suicide, substance misuse and some would still argue, paedophilia as well. Simply put, the right amount of hostility in the environment sets off (or triggers) our innate tendency toward madness. Now, for many within the LGBTI industry, promoting everyone who is not straight as inherently at risk of becoming defective fits in neatly with what Sarah Moore refers to as the ‘new paradigm of health’. I thought of your comments as I re-read her excellent article (Is the Healthy Body Gendered…? 2010) last night. We, in most western societies, have become fixated on declaring everything we can ‘unhealthy’ while demanding that those who carry this mountain of junk sort themselves out, or get sorted out. Whether the evidence finally surfaces to confirm that being gay is being possibly mad too, will not stop the necessary, belated discussion about how the ordinary business of life ever came to be so extremely pathologised. And so, as to your question about what might cause the purported spike in madness among us bent types? I should wonder, precisely what madness are we talking about? If someone, particularly another gay person browbeat you when you were a teenager, that you had a one thousand, four hundred per cent greater likelihood than your non-gay counterparts of being dead by suicide before you hit 25, would you wonder if you might be mad?