Okay.
So y'kno how I
was gonna go back to Oxford to talk for that conference?
(And coz it's me
I was super nervous?!)
Like I kept on
joking to my friends about how ironic it was that the thing that made me
'qualified' to talk about mental health (i.e. being super duper mentally ill
myself!) also made me a terrible public speaker (coz it means I'm an anxious
mess)
Well it was
absolutely amazing and life giving and wow?!
Because my
time as a student at Oxford was incredibly difficult because of chronic mental
health stuff.
(Also not gonna
lie some people at Ox could be real entitled jerks generally, which isn't like a
particularly great atmosphere for anyone....)
So it felt
very symbolic and level up-ish that the last time I was at Ox,
in September I was graduating, and then returning only two months later to be
talking!?!! Tbh I think that's pretty rad and I'm proud of myself I think.
It also felt so,
so, incredibly important to be surrounded by so many amazing women of
colour doing such brilliant work to decolonize feminism when Oxford itself is
such a deeply colonial institution, which continues to alienate and exclude people of
colour, particularly black students.
(I mean Rev.
Jesse Jackson has personally called
Oxford out for their appalling admission rates for black students, like this is
an issue people!!!)
Saying this,
whilst I'm 200% a+ for creating spaces to discuss intersectionality, and the DH
agenda --within-- academia, I definitely don't want to limit discussions within
these institution's borders.
Definitely not.
Nope.
NO.
We need to look
beyond academic institutions for sure.
And it was super
cool to meet so many amazing people who were doing that (even
if my first introduction to them was at a university!)
Shout out to Sanaa
Hamid (who I'm a HUGE fangirl
of anyway!), Indigo of I Shape Beauty (was so brilliant to meet her irl
after working with her in the spring!), Hana Riaz, director of the Body Narratives i.e. my new favourite thing ever, Gladys Jusu-Sheriff, from WAND,the Women's
Association for African Networking and Development and Laura from WISH for all being rad and amazing. Expect
dorky fanmail from me soon!
Oh, and the talk
itself went suprisingly well? People laughed at my shitty jokes and the place
was packed! I mean I was expecting like 10 people but it was a full house,
people sat on the floor, people standing up! Wow! Everyone clapped and Dr Joan
Rutherford said I should be the head of the NHS which was lol.
The panel
discussion was super interesting and great too and I got to meet lots of lovely
people afterwards so yay!
In general it really confirmed that what we’re doing
with DH is necessary and to never compromise with stuff, no matter how many
passive aggressive white feminists say DH is alienating to them. That we need
to keep on challenging cis-centric, ableist bullshit. Because seeing these
issues getting unintentionally forgotten, even by women I really
admire (I mean both subjects weren’t really discussed at all?!) Well it just
shows that we really need to centre these things to truly progress towards
intersectionality, to truly decolonize these spaces.
Waiting for my second train there were fireworks on
the platform, and when I got home my Grandma gave me a packet of oreos and my
Mum gave me a mug that said 'I woke up like this'. The world can be scary, and
I do struggle, but being alive can be pretty magical sometimes.
Oh and if you couldn't make it, here is the transcript of my talk! Enjoy!
Hi! My name’s Bethany Lamont, I’m an artist and
writer, and the editor in chief of the mental health journal Doll Hospital
which I’m going to talk about today.
One of the first questions I get asked is if this project
is coming from my own personal experience, and the answer is yes absolutely! I
have struggled with mental health issues and suicidal ideation since childhood,
complemented with my neurovariance, which when combined can make functioning a
bit difficult sometimes.
This was particularly bad for me in May, which
was my final term at Oxford, I was struggling with chronic depression,
compulsive tendencies, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Lacking the resources and
language to deal with this stuff I ended up posting a lot of weird, and
probably quite unsettling tweets.
Around this same time an essay I wrote for Rookie
Magazine, on my own personal trauma was published. It was really well received,
but the constant flow of retweets, comments, and emails overwhelmed me, and
combined with my rather dubious social media presence I began to question if
the internet is always the best platform for survivors and mental health
sufferers to share their stories. Don’t get me wrong the Internet is great, not
just for cat videos, but for finding your community in a world that
consistently, and violently, erases marginalized identities.
But online there is really no such thing as a safe
space, and your small, safe tumblr circle can easily end up getting picked apart
by online trolls.
Propelled by all these mixed up feelings I posted
another tweet, not another weird self deprecating suicide note, but a call for
submissions, to see if any of my followers would be maybe interested in
contributing to a mental health zine, a vague sort of idea which I expanded on
in a blog post, where I wrote:
“What if I could keep the rad ethos of community and creativity of zine culture but create something that can reach more people than a small circle of tumblr and twitter? People who might not necessarily know what a zine is but know what it's like to stop breathing on the way to class, to stop eating, to want it to end, but to want, to not want, to feel like this?”
Okay, so the response for this kind
of blew up, I was getting submissions from all kinds of people, artists,
writers, poets, real grown up people, which was awesome, but one thing I kept
on getting told over and over again, was how ‘strong’ I was, which though well
meaning made me cringe a bit. A combination of respectability politics and
fixation with a feel good narrative, means there is a presumption that to
discuss an issue, you must be over that issue, this is not only misleading, I
mean I struggle with this stuff everyday, but extremely damaging.
In my desire to
move beyond simplistic ‘it gets better’ strategies I wanted to assemble a team
of editors and contributors who were also dealing and writing about this stuff
too, people who were interested in going beyond exploitative tell all accounts
of trauma and mental illness, and instead tell their stories on their own
terms, and in their own time. And no, what we publish does not offer a ‘cure’,
but instead offers an honesty that I believe is healing in and of itself.
When it comes to submissions
our attitude is that we don’t care about your clips, your qualifications, your
CV, if you want to create something about your experiences of mental health
you’re in basically. With many of our writers this is their first time being
published, however, we have also been lucky to receive contributions from more
well known artists and writers in this area including Latoya Peterson, editor
of Racialicious, Tavi Gevinson of Rookie Mag, mental health advocate and writer
Esme Wang, Mey Rude, whose the editor of the trans section for Autostraddle and
Kristina Wong, the performer perhaps best known for her one woman play, Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
One of the most
important things for me in creating Doll Hospital was to ensure it explored
mental health through an intersectional lens. Not to ensure it was on trend or
anything like that, but out of the desperate necessity to tell my story, and
those of my community honestly and accurately. In many ways I was feeling
frustrated as a woman of colour, albeit one with light skin and white passing privilege, as
someone from a working class background, as someone who is neurovariant, as
someone who falls under the queer and gender variant umbrella, that mental
health was presented as a weird sort of privilege for white middle class people
with too much free time.
It’s something I
reflected on in a piece I created for the coalition zine,a publication for and
by women of colour, where I wrote:
“What does it mean
for a young girl of colour, struggling with mental health and suicidal
ideation, to read the Bell Jar and feel nothing? Is she (I) not truly
depressed? Am I reading it backwards? Upside down? Is it wrong of me to
appreciate the remarkable gifts of these (white) women, struggling with similar
mental health troubles, take my notes, reference them in class, admire their
craft, but not choose to turn to them in my own time of need?”
Well, Kristina
Wong kind of my answers my question in her contribution to Doll Hospital, Mental Health and the Model Minority
“The truth is we’re not all the same. You
can’t shy away from saying that certain ethnic groups or races or genders are
considered to be more at risk for disease, or high-cholesterol – or in the case
of Asian American women, and people of color – depression.”
And it is this
necessity of difference that I hope Doll Hospital can work towards. Our first
issue has just been put together, we explore all kinds of topics from the
trauma of rape, to dealing with psychosis and being in a mental health ward, as well as more light hearted pieces on self care, and even an essay on
Kanye West, complete with fan art. Our contributors are from all different
experiences and backgrounds, because there is no one story on mental health and
to suggest otherwise would be kind of ridiculous.
In terms of accessibility it was important to me that this journal was available to everyone, regardless of their financial situation, so the journal is pay as you wish, you can pay a little, you can pay nothing, I don’t mind as long as you get to read. This is obviously a bit tricky logistically as printing costs money, so a few weeks ago we launched our Kickstarter to cover the costs of 100 copies, this was covered in cool magazines like The Toast and we ended up reaching our goal in just a week, we’re over £1,000 now which can help us cover distribution so we can ship it all across the world. But I’m definitely keen to raise more so I can compensate all our amazing contributors for their hard work. So if you’re interested in donating, or would like to pre-order a copy, you can head over to our Kickstarter page, which also includes an excerpt of the journal itself.
Because I guess what all this comes down to is that to speak of your struggles is not a privilege; it is a right. We need to challenge the idea that in order to speak authoritatively on ‘mental health’ you need to be university educated, middle class and white. In opening up the borders of who can speak, and in what way, I believe we can foster more inclusive, honest, conversations for women of colour, and, yes, white women too. Because we can’t go on like this. We need to do better.
Thank you for
listening ^_____^
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