My family subscribes to Reader's Digest and the caption on their November 2013 cover makes me very sad.
"Are you normal or nuts? Your quirks, dreams, anxieties explained."
And then a few days ago I watched a Mike and Molly episode in a which a character's possible mental illness was horribly made fun of. I am sure that Molly was called "nuts" or something very similar.
Both of these things are recent evidences of how far we still have to go in our society towards removing stigmatizing language.
Calling someone "nuts" is stigmatizing, because it others them, draws upon their natural reservoirs of shame and fear, and makes it hard for those that are already struggling with those feelings of shame and guilt that often follow mental illness that much harder to seek help and treatment. How are we, those with mental illness, supposed to trust a world that considers us "nuts?"
Link Love:
Making good on past harm should be about the here and now, rather than the possibility of an afterlife, though. And it should be about the general balance of good in the world rather than your personal benefit; apologies, and addressing your harm in the face, aren’t about deriving a personal reward but rather about breaking down harmful structures and admitting your complicity in them. Themes of redemption and atonement often don’t touch upon this in pop culture. It’s about the character’s personal journey and characterisation, about who the character is and will be rather than about society at large.
Rick’s models were college-age American women, coming from four different step dance teams. Owens invited the women to Paris to help him express his personal aesthetic – and his commitment to nontraditional beauty, confidence and power.