En Garde, Dickhead.

narwhalmessengerbag asked: Where do you draw the line for telling people to be kind to each other without demonizing people with mental illnesses who have to work harder at that?
patrexes:
there is no line.
for some people it’s harder to treat people well, because of instinctive reactions like quickness to anger, or lack of empathy, or whatever. that’s it, it’s just. harder. it still has to be done. it’s a moral imperative.
demonization comes when people equate those instinctive reactions, or traits that are difficult to work around and still be ethical… with the idea of an inherent badness.
there is no personality disorder that makes someone abusive. there is no personality disorder that makes someone evil. can we be more prone to harmful behaviors? absolutely. that’s why we need to keep ourselves in check. always. and that’s stressful and it often necessitates a very strong support system, and it sucks that it’s that much harder for us to… exist as people… but that’s just how shit is.
saying we need to be kind is not demonizing the mentally ill; saying that “saying we need to be kind is demonizing the mentally ill” implicitly strips us down to a diagnosis with no autonomy. hard pass, thanks.