*The term “Mad” is a contentious identifier. I use Mad as a form of resistance but not all diagnosed persons are on board. The debate on the preferred label is its own domain. My personal position on the debate is that people get to describe themselves. However there remains some ethical debate as to whether or not those who identify one way can/should be used in work about another, e.g. whether or not someone who does not identify as Mad should be mixed in with work on Madness. Other descriptors include: mentally ill, disabled, mentally diseased, mentally disordered, (affectively) neurodiverse, psychotic (psychosis), pathological (psychopathology).
Being a woman in philosophy has always been tainted by experiences ranging from silencing and discrediting to aggravations and assaults. That so many women forged ahead in philosophy with a “fuck around and find out” attitude has been a blessing to those of us who came in under them. And still, many of us trudge forward through the rationality-trenches behind them. Whether philosophy has saved a woman, or abused a woman, or whispered in her ear that eventually it will all be alright, many women find good—but not always so good—reasons to remain within its fold. What we have learned, though, is that the taint of silencing, discrediting, aggravations, and assaults have made some of us Mad. And for those of us who were already Mad to begin with, philosophy beckoned to us, offering itself as a place where our Madness just might find a home. Sometimes I think it is true love. Sometimes people tell me it’s just Stockholm syndrome.
Madness in academia carries a danger that makes one’s ability to exist—professionally and existentially—precarious. For one, colleges and universities provide a wide variety of services and accommodations, including emotional and psychological encouragement, which they certainly do not so lovingly extend to faculty. Students struggle with “disorders/mental illnesses/mental distresses” that must be intercepted and accepted, lest the tuition disappear. But what of the faculty? No such support: no outreach, no offerings of accommodations, and excessive difficulty receiving accommodations. Ah, but wait, they do always reply to a distressed scream with the phone number to the employee benefits EPA. When faculty can see that they are not particularly permitted to be Mad or neurodiverse (or both), they see the importance of keeping it their dirty little secret. One woman explains: “I felt so alone during my first few years on the job, but now I know I wasn’t. I have since talked with over a dozen academics who have struggled with mental illness, including depression, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia. All of them agreed that the way academe is structured exacerbates existing mental illnesses and, in some cases, causes them. And we agreed that while academics often talk colloquially about being anxious and depressed, we don’t talk enough about mental illness, especially less common diagnoses like bipolar disorder. As one of the people I talked to said, academics pretend to tolerate neurodivergence when what they really mean is ‘it’s acceptable to be anxious about all the work you have to do.’”
There is a double-bind, oh yes, another one, consisting of coming out and being regarded as incompetent or staying in the Mad-house and being labeled all sorts of nasty things, such as difficult, undesirable, and problematic. These things about oneself—whether one craves its embrace or craves its excision—can almost never, not fully, and not even remotely be hidden for very long. Again, do you want to be a fuck-up, or do you want to be incapable? As one woman admits, “Stigma against the mentally ill, especially those with schizophrenia, is perhaps the most profound of all stigmas today. I, myself, came forward only after achieving academic tenure—and after many years of listening in silence as people, joking and otherwise, used words like ‘crazies,’ ‘lunatics,’ and ‘nutcases’ to describe, well, people like me.” Another woman offers what may be more familiar to many of us: “A part of me still believed that I was not sick—just weak—and that I could ‘fix’ myself without help. I am, after all, a professor. I couldn’t be that sick. I simply could not reconcile the version of myself who has accomplished so much with the version of myself who is disabled.”
Madness and neurodiversity have always been gendered —not only in how many of us become this way, or how Madness biologically and behaviorally manifests, but also in how it is normatively affixed to our conference name tags at philosophy conferences. We walk around with labels in bubbles over our head, and in the case of mental health, they are gendered a bit more so than in academia generally, given the emphasis on logic and rationality. Men can ask questions that are challenging, but women ask questions that are combative. Men can be/have been adored for their outspokenness regarding their mental health, whereas women are merely making excuses for their behavior. (Let’s take a moment to pay homage to all the #s: #notallmen, #notallMad, #etc.) There are definitely more and less dignified ways of going about this, but even whether one can be regarded as speaking out in dignified and credible ways is gendered. This has been my, and many others’, experience. What makes being a Mad and/or neurodiverse (what I like to call affectively spicy, and another person added neuro-spicy) woman philosopher distinct from any other academic lies within the discipline’s “essential” nature.
A woman. In philosophy. As a woman in philosophy. The contrast between rational and irrational and objective and emotional can almost make you as hysterical as your shrinks say that you always already have been. People rarely expect women to be anything else except flighty, overly emotional, and occasionally hysterical. Except in philosophy. Where you’re expected to be otherwise, but just happen to never be as good at rationality as you should be. One woman says “In philosophy, my mind is my research tool. If my mind goes, there is no lab work or data to fall back on. Mental illness makes my research apparatus malfunction. How can I or my colleagues accept this? How do I know when my research tool is too broken to be used?” Or even worse, when those who claim to support you don’t know how. The failure of allyship in philosophy is nothing new. But it is one of the key sources that can lead women in philosophy to mental illness. Further, the degree to which mental illness can be exacerbated by failed allyship cannot be overstated. Another woman says: “As a mentally ill philosopher, my experience as both a graduate student and a professor has led me to always assume I’m being gaslit. I’ve met many people who claim to be sympathetic to this disability spectrum, even assert a specialization in this area, only for them to perpetuate the same unethical and dehumanizing stereotypes, treatment, and discrimination that they allege to disdain. I always remind myself that the institution of academia is not meant for me or those like me, which is replicated in the attitudes of those I encounter even if they themselves don’t realize they’re embodying such hostility.” So if one is not already worried that their research tool is broken, there is someone right around the corner to let them know that it is.
This leads to a very particular kind of injustice related to testimony. It is not only an injustice of all the epistemic varieties, it is also directed at one’s critical competency with respect to how they speak to their own lived experience as a constitutive component of their research in Crip/Madness/Disability philosophy. I’ve been told I don’t understand the research on my very existence. I’ve been told that I should read the research written by men in philosophy who are three times removed from any women they reference as deficient. I’ve been told that my personal experience with Madness makes me incapable of reflecting on it rationally and objectively. So, in effect, my Madness undoes my philosophy on my Madness. But, as has been (hopefully) getting a lot of traction, many of the Mad are daring to be bad by not only writing out loud, but also telling others to step back. One philosopher nails it when, speaking specifically to suicidality qua psychosis, she says: “it’s time we stop centering non-suicidal persons [aka ‘sane’] in discussions of suicidality [aka psychopathology]. If you have never known what it’s like to want to die and to actively seek that out in earnest, then maybe you don’t have much insight into what a person in that state ought to be doing. Maybe, if folks quit talking about experiences they have never lived, others who are actually living those things would have space to share their stories, without shame.” While this is an important move towards phenomenological reclamation, it is distinct in philosophy because we are, in effect, refusing the purported rationality and objectivity of both (usually male) philosophers and (usually male) psychiatrists, for whom rationality and objectivity define their intellectual identity—by denying ours.
As I’ve written elsewhere, just as a general fact of having to exist in a “sane” world, Mad people medicate—willingly or unwillingly. But much like artists, philosophers thrive on their self-conception as novel. And many of us, like artists, define ourselves primarily in terms of our creativity. If, just like artists, philosophers love themselves for blurring the line between genius and madness, imagine how it feels for a woman in philosophy to have to medicate her madness away. Imagine what it would feel like to lose one of the only positive places your madness can fly you to. We can all think of at least one woman in philosophy who is brilliant and amazing and “just needs to take her meds.” There are certainly more than a few. But meds, as many people know (either as oneself or one’s loved one), can kill the self. It can feel like an act of violent suffocating, where the only thing you feel motivated to do is take another pill so that you might eventually get invited. But, ironically, out goes the motivation to create. The affective thrill of writing slowly floats away like a soft cloud on a breezy day. Service work? Who has the energy? I’m not saying that medication doesn’t work for many people. But I will say that for some women in philosophy who suffer deep forms of Madness, they make one pliable to the point of un-philosophizing. I often think about others’ demands for the Mad to medicate as an existential form of Revise&Resubmit. Just a few anti-convulsants might get you on the panel.
It is important to note here that whether or not to medicate, and the benefits of medicating, and the influence of medicating on one’s being is an extremely controversial debate amongst and with the Mad community. But it is a personal issue. And it sure as hell is a personal choice—being my body, and all. And every person who critiques a philosopher for not taking their meds is blaming them for choosing to not unravel their philosophical selves for others’ philosophical selves . . . if that is what it feels like to them.
Another woman in academia explains what we all know, because we’ve all be told: “There is a tremendous stigma, still, around mental illness. People may believe, consciously or not, that you are unreliable or even dangerous, and they may fear you. They may think you can’t do the work or your scholarship isn’t good, even if it is very good. That may not be intentional on their part but can nonetheless have a big impact on your work life and your prospects for tenure.” I’ve seen a few Mad and/or neurodiverse women be run out of philosophy for being unreliable or “dangerous.” Some have been quietly, but outrightly, banned as bona fide members. Some have left academia altogether. Most of these women have been recognized by others, but only in hushed and pitying voices, as groundbreaking scholars who just can’t keep it together. I may not belong to this sacred group of women, but I have shared in some of their experiences. I was denied tenure, which thankfully was overturned, and then denied Full Professor. Everyone was shook, but no one was shocked. I have . . . failed to launch . . . due to my “interpersonal difficulties” that follow from my “inappropriateness,” “aggression,” “outbursts,” and even my “boisterousness.” Really. I am apparently, wholly, existentially, “a [walking] violation of ethical standards.” I’ve been called an addict to my face and behind my back because people don’t understand, or care to understand, what bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorder disintegrations look like (absolutely nothing wrong with addiction; it is just that my disorders are based on binges). I’ve lost speaking engagements because people didn’t want to risk me having meltdowns—regardless of whether or not it was because they were warned (and people have been warned) or because they’ve heard or read me speak out on my diagnoses. But again, I am not the only one. It’s just that I, somehow by some grace of some goddess, am probably the luckiest one of us thus far . . . as far as I know.
Philosophy specifically, and academia generally, chews Mad women up. Somehow I’ve managed to hang on just hard enough to not be spit out just yet. If it weren’t for philosophy, I would have no reason to hang on at all. Is it Stockholm syndrome? I don’t care. Not when philosophy gives me, and some others, a reason to live to create. But being a woman in philosophy? A Mad and bad woman in philosophy? All we can do is be our very best version of rationally hysterical.
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Alida Liberman or the Associate Editor Elisabeth Paquette.
Shay Welch
Shay Welch is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Spelman College. She is currently the Scholar-in-Residence for the city of Atlanta's public art project; the project is titled "Public Performance Art as Resistance to Epistemic Injustice". Recently, she was the 2020-2021 Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation Distinguished Research/Creative Scholar. She was Chair of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory and is a committee member for the Emotions Matter national non-profit organization. She is especially interested in supporting first generation students and students with cognitive and affective disorders.
