Week 6 - Lewis, “We Are Certain of Our Own Insanity”

Wow this passage just reminds me of the horrors of the past as a society and how far we have in addressing homosexuality. My contempt for these views brought on by the fact that homosexuality was in the DSM in the first place. This is a mute point that does not have to go anywhere but in my opinion people have been gay for so long in terms of the scope of humanity it is disappointing that we still treat homosexuality as abnormal, or shocking when the historical prevelance of these kinds of relationships in which people are compelled to participate in substantiates that they are in fact natural and normal. But anyway I digress.

One quote I thought was interesting from the Lewis text, “the general definition of mental illness first proposed during the homosexuality campaign: a condition “typically associated with either a painful symptom (distress) or impairment in one or more areas of functioning (disability).”64 What intruiged me was the premise of the very definition not coinciding with what homosexuality is by nature. It is not distressing to the individual, until social and societal consequences are projected onto the individual. But the definition does not constitute homosexuality with being a disability, andexposes how social implications can find their way into policies and undermine objectivity.

This point found in the Lewis text was simply important to me, it reads, “By the early 1970s, it was not uncommon for feminist and antiracist critics to theorize psychosis both as an effect of oppression and as offering a privileged perspective on it.^72” Because this point exposes ways in which people attempt to subvert the status quo societal framework. Crafting a new lens to understand the world through these lived experiences.