The goal of this essay was to explore the relationship between people with mental illnesses and their identities. I am proud of using my scene of memory to attempt to explain an issue that can be difficult to talk about. I think that one area I could work further on would be the overall flow of my paper.

Matthew Milligan

Mr. Block

English 3

9 March 2018

Identity is the accumulation of one’s characteristics. Each individual part of a person blends together to make up the larger self, so in order to establish an identity it is important for one to be aware of the aspects of themself. However, when a person has a mental illness, their own self can seem like a stranger. People with mental illnesses can struggle with forming an identity outside of their illness, but regardless of that they do have one. It is harder for this to be understood though because there is a tendency in society to place stigma upon those with mental illnesses.

Having a mental illness makes forming an identity confusing. Madeline Wikerson explains this in her article Mental Illness and Identity by saying, “For example, I don’t know if I’m naturally a borderline pessimist/realist or if that’s due to my depression. I don’t know if I’m naturally a worrier or if that’s just my anxiety. I don’t know if I care a lot about what people think or if I wouldn’t care at all if I were to be cured of my illnesses.” Having a mental illness changes the ways in which a person perceives themselves and others. People with mental illnesses have intrusive and irrational thoughts that overpower reason. These thoughts are hard to silence and wind up making it difficult for a person to comprehend who they are. For many people like Madeline it is hard to tell where the illness stops and where the person begins.

Even though mental illnesses make it harder for somebody to understand the characteristics of themselves, that does not mean that those characteristics do not exist. In the article When You Struggle to See Your Identity Apart From Your Mental Illness, Anna Lente writes, “I see my identity includes having mental illnesses, but I am much more than that. And I remind myself that I change. My identity changes over time. My experience of mental illnesses changes.” When a person has a mental illness, it cannot be denied that there is an affect on who they are. However, the effect does not determine all that they are. No one person is defined by a singular characteristic, and a person with a mental illness still continues to grow regardless of the impact that their illness has on them.

Besides the internal problems caused by having a mental illness, people with mental illnesses are also affected by the stigma placed upon them by society. Melissa Kirk explains this in her article Who Am I? Self-Identity and Mental Health by saying, “If you're ‘mentally ill’ (read: if you often struggle with emotional experiences that are uncomfortable and you choose to be honest about it), that is you, you are it, and everything else about you is suspect.” When a person has a mental illness they can be placed within a box where none of their other characteristics matter.  Despite having multiple thoughts and emotions, people will continue to see only the label they gave.

Mental illness is a complex issue that people look at in a simple way because they do not understand it or because it makes them uncomfortable.  Instead of looking at the problem as a whole and figuring it out, it is easier to give a person with a mental illness a label and choose to see only that label. This diminishes the person with the mental illness and keeps them from being seen as a whole. Many people with mental illnesses fear this judgement and try to keep their struggles hidden because of it, which only adds on to the issue.

While each person is impacted by their mental illnesses differently, I have experienced firsthand how having one can affect your identity daily. When you live with anxiety, it never fully leaves you. Even when I find myself relaxing or having fun, there is still a voice in my head casting doubt my way. Sometimes the voice is screaming and overriding my thoughts, while at other times it is a whisper that I can ignore if I try hard enough.  Everyday is a battle of ups and downs.

The times where I commute to school are usually when it’s at its worse. I hop off of  the train and find myself faced with the station platform, which seems to stretch outward into infinity. I know in reality that the walk from the platform to the trolley stairs is brief, but when I start to worry time slows down and warps itself. As I walk I listen to music, which is supposed to be a lifeline, but my heart is beating too fast and I am breathing heavily. My face flushes and it feels like the eyes of every commuter are on me and I have to keep reassuring myself that they are not.

My breath shortens as my mind begins to race like a flooding dam. All I can think about is how stupid I must look, or if my school bag zipper is open even though I have checked it three times already. My palms are sweaty and I am nervous for school because I got the answer wrong in class yesterday so now everyone knows I am dumb. I bite my lip as my thoughts pick up and the next thing I know I am reduced to a fidgeting zombie and I am imprisoned by my own thoughts. I feel my body go on autopilot as my mind is taken away from me.

That is what anxiety feels like. You no longer own your thoughts as they are taken away by an illogical voice that will not shut up. When I get like this, it is hard to understand my thoughts and emotions and it can be difficult to know who I am. When my anxiety gets the best of me I know that I just have to continue going through the motions until I can find myself again. I know that that self exists.

Works Cited

“Mental Illness And Identity.” The Odyssey Online, www.theodysseyonline.com/mental-illness-and-identity. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

“When You Struggle to See Your Identity Apart From Your Mental Illness.” The Mighty, themighty.com/. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

“Who Am I? Self-Identity and Mental Health.” Psychology Today, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/test-case/201012/who-am-i-self-identity-and-mental-health. Accessed 8 Mar. 2018.

Politics in the United States has changed a lot over the last few decades. In the past, Democrats and Republicans have been able to come together and pass laws to improve our country. However, now that is very rare, with a party often needing to control the White House and both houses of Congress to pass meaningful legislation. As our politics grow more divided more divided so has the nation’s identity. We are being pulled apart from each other by dramatic ideological differences between the major parties and political language that is divisive and disrespectful.

The bases of the two major political parties are as far apart from each other on policy issues as they’ve been in the last hundred years. For the last 23 years, Pew Research has conducted polling to seek the opinions of the two major political parties on several basic policy issues such as the role of government and environmental policy, among others. When they first started conducting the poll there was an average difference of 15% between how the two parties thought of these issues. (Taylor) Now, the difference between the two parties is a whopping 36%. (Taylor) These differences have led to a lack of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill. In recent years both parties have passed bills without the support of a single member of the other party voting for it, such as the Affordable Care Act in 2010 or the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. This leads to disappointment and anger among the minority who feel that their views are not being heard by the rest of the country. These feelings, often aimed at the majority party, has led to an ever-rising tension between the two parties.

One of the greatest things pulling people apart are the social differences between the two political parties. Take race, for example. According to additional Pew research, 75% of Republicans believe that “blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own conditions.” (Taylor)  Only 28% of Democrats share that viewpoint (Taylor). In addition, while only 13% of Democrats think homosexuality should be discouraged, 37% of Republicans believed it should be. (Taylor) The differences between the parties are even greater on opinions about gay marraige. Similar divisions exist on issues related to immigrants, poor people, and an assortment of other issues. As a consequence, given that Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, a number of groups scorned by many Republicans feel excluded and ostracized.

The language used by elected officials and candidates has also served to pull our country apart. During the 2016 campaign, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said that half of all Trump supporters were deplorables. Meanwhile, the Republican Donald Trump has taken offensive statements to a whole new level, most recently blaming the FBI for the mass shooting at a Florida school, because they had devoted too many resources to investigating his ties to Russia (Twitter). During the campaign, a video surfaced of him bragging about sexually assaulting women, and at various times he has made numerous statements that have offended African Americans, Latinos, immigrants, and Muslims. We’ve gotten used to these statements, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t further divide us. Every time Donald Trump or someone else takes to Twitter, it riles people up, causing clashes between their supporters and those who find what they said wildly offensive.

A difficult characteristic of our divisive politics is the increasing dislike for those with whom we disagree. A plurality of both Democrats and Republicans (44 and 45 percent, respectively) said they dislike those who are members of the other party.  Only 14% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats said that they had many friends from the other party. From these statistics, it is clear that there is more than just an ideological divide between the parties, but a social one as well. Democrats and Republicans tend to stick to themselves, but when we don’t associate ourselves with those whom we disagree with it become difficult to find compromises and repair the relationship between the two groups.

In the last decade, politics has become the most dividing issue in our country. As the parties’ voters continue to be further divided and candidates and politicians continue to launch verbal attacks on each other, it is likely that these trends will continue. Americans will become more and more divided, the number of people who say that they dislike members of the other party will rise, and people will continue to feel as though they don’t belong in their communities.

People with disabilities make up 15% percent of the world, and they continues to grow. They’ve been around since the dawn of humanity, and during this time, they’ve been discriminated against, had countless injustices committed against them, and have been isolated away from society. People with disabilities were caged, probed, experimented on, and left to sleep in their own feces. This incapacitated them even more than they were. It was inhumane and cruel. It fixed the perspective that disabled people have no place in society and are inferior to non-disabled people, and this still takes place today, especially in the education system.

In 1978, Ed Roberts, an impactful leader of the Disability Rights movement performed a speech at a CIL hearing, discussing the advancements the movement he had fought so much for. He was also revealing the issues that was still present regardless of the advancements made. Roberts stated, “The prevailing factor, and the most difficulty that people with disabilities have, is the underdevelopment of our communities and of our society.” Roberts is stating that due to the underdeveloped society, people with disabilities have had a lot of difficulty fitting into society and becoming a part of society. The problem with popular culture is that they have a fixated view on people with disabilities. The view being that they are inferior mentally and socially, and they enforce these views on them, making them self-conscious in their ability to live among non-disabled people. This discrimination is representative of society’s norms surrounding the culture of people with disabilities, which is to throw them into a corner and exclude them from participating in society with the rest of abled people. People who do not have any kind of disability believe themselves to be superior to those with disabilities socially because of the misconception that a disability lowers your social ability to communicate with everyone else. And the way society “takes care” of people with disabilities, especially today, has done nothing but reinforce all of these misconceptions about people with disabilities into them.

Gunnar Dybwad, who was an educator and advocate for disabled rights, wrote a book discussing how society handles people who are mentally challenged/disabled institutionally and how it worsens their conditions further than what their conditions call for. He stated, “Today’s more comprehensive knowledge has made it clear that such unilateral identification is most misleading and apt to hinder effective program development, whether in practice, teaching, or research.”(Dybwad, 1) This is just stating that categorizing mentally challenged/disabled people only worsens the way society and institutions treat them. Categorizing them is unfair since every single one is different in their own way and they need their own specialized learning plan in order for them to rehabilitate, grow, and prepare to become a part of society. They shouldn’t be categorized and receive treatment based on their category. The education system back then negatively affected children with disabilities, putting them on a path to failure. All because of the belief that they are not as good as people without disabilities.

But, with the advancement of the Disability Rights Movement in the 1960s, all of that was supposed to have changed. It didn’t. Instead, society and the government only found new ways to discriminate against people with disabilities. The discrimination now occurs within the education system, students with disabilities continue to be affected. This type of treatment, isolating children with disabilities and categorizing them as their own group in schools, is still enforced in today’s education system. Teachers and administrators of the education system continue to isolate people with disabilities, by putting them in different classrooms and separating them from all the other “normal” children. This reinforces the oppressive ideas into the children with disabilities’ heads. Raising them with negative and restrictive ideas about their ability to live and function in society. And they justify these actions through the means of pity and lack of expectation. Teachers, who are supposed to be leaders to children, have such extremely low expectations for children with disabilities and they pity them, so they “do them good” by isolating them in their own space, stuck in their bubble where they’ll never learn to become a part of society. They’re taught that they are an entirely different species compared to the “normal” kids, and they go about the rest of their lives with this attitude.

I know this because of my own personal experience. I went to a demonstration school, which means that it is a school that specializes in demonstrating different programs that are specifically for special-needs children. There was a program for autistic children, emotionally disabled children, and deaf children. I was in the deaf children’s program. I remember many times where I was told, by my teachers, that I was not going to make it in life, not become successful because of my disability. They told me I had no chance. However, I was able to look past what all my teachers said and succeed regardless. They also tried to keep me in my own bubble with the rest of the deaf children, teaching me that I only belong with them. And in that bubble, they dumbed down the deaf kids by limiting their academic potential with overly-simplistic learning plans. But, my mother and I had fought for a better learning environment because we knew I had a lot of potential, even as a young child, so I was put into a classroom with all the other kids who didn’t have disabilities. Soon after, more deaf kids from my program followed and joined me, and they were able to do much better than they were expected to do. But, the other kids from the deaf program and other programs were not so lucky. In my program and the other programs, the students’ grades were suffering and there was no reinforcement of their capabilities. They just gave up on them and expected them to fail.

This only worsened their situation within the educational system. They were literally being set up to fail because they had no confidence in themselves, in their identity as someone who has a disability. They were not supported or taught that they can do so much better than what everyone else expects them to. The current educational system fails at rehabilitating these children and it’s designed to ensure their failure in society.

Bibliography

• Dybwad, Gunnar. "Mental Retardation". Social Work Year Book, 1960.

• Roberts, Ed. “C.I.L A.M Sessions.” Testimony on CIL. Testimony on CIL, 5 May 1978, Berkeley, California.

Eric Valenti

Mr. Block

English 3

8 March 2018

A Fight with Masculinity

Masculinity has changed and developed since the role of men in society was first introduced. Males believe that they have to adhere to social norms in order to survive the persecution of society. Modern-day masculinity roots back to the 19th century, during the industrial revolution. George L. Mosse explains in his book, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, that media began to really spread its wings in the 19th century due to the fact that magazines and newspapers were being produced at a rapid rate. He explains that men were separated by their social class and their power.

Media has helped create gender norms that people feel compelled to follow because of the language that is used to destroy ideas of belonging. Media has shaped expectations of masculinity and men’s interpretation of what a man is. Men in media are demanded to be powerful and emotionless. Basically, a macho bag of muscles. I’m no exception to trying to fit into these norms. It started the first time I watched the film “Rocky” with my father.

It was a hot summer night. The street light gleamed in through the window, providing our living room with a dim candle-like light. My Dad was sitting in the living room fast-forwarding through the commercials with his feet propped up on the black ottoman. I was sitting on the floor with my legs crossed. My head perked up when I noticed the tv displayed in bold silver letters “ROCKY.” I had always loved watching movies with my Dad, he had this gift where he could choose a movie that really inspired me. I always had trouble connecting with my Dad because we were so different but when we watched movies it was like nothing else mattered. There was one point in the film where Rocky began his montage where he climbs the art museum steps and beats up frozen meat. My Dad said something that struck me:

“That’s a real man. He gets the girl, he’s strong and he never gives up.” I didn’t understand it. Rocky was just a guy who beat up others for entertainment. Then it clicked. A man was someone who liked to be physical with others, in order to show their affection. As the movie continued, Rocky beat up more boxers and appeared to be quite monotone and dulled even at the most hardcore fights. Rocky made me believe that men had to be emotionless and could only care about being the best, and if you weren’t the best you go back to the slums. Emotion meant weakness, and only women were allowed to have emotion, so this created the idea that women had to be weaker than men. Masculinity became this stage of life that numbs a boy.

In my opinion, masculinity is this phase that every boy goes through, where they learn this peculiar lesson that emotions are for girls and all men can do is be violent. It's sort of like a second puberty. And in this time you discover that as a man you must always be in control.  For example, Rocky starts off as a bit of a loser. Until he meets Adrian and sort of forcibly tells her not to leave him. Rocky becomes more controlling of his life and he becomes generally happier. It’s the language and messages in films like this that send these beliefs to impressionable boys. What happens to boys when they get lessons like this?

In a New York Times article, Real Men Get Rejected Too, writer Moises Velasquez-Manoff, talks about how men use sexual abuse as a tool of power over women.  Manoff explains where this behavior comes from. Manoff says in his article,“Little data exists on whether kids actually listen to what their parents say, he concedes, but if you don’t talk to your children, he argues, they’re left to absorb norms from, most likely, pornography. And what boys learn from porn is that men must dominate and that women like it that way — neither of which is necessarily true.” What Manoff is explaining here is that pornography acts as the guiding factor for boys sexually and why men use sex as a tool. Pornography is a tool of manipulation, Manoff shows that parents are not all to blame for boys that grow up to be sexual abusers but the media that turns sex into an act of power and control. It’s not just about the images used in the media that destroys feelings of belonging but the language is just as important.

We constantly see language like “faggot”, “wimp” or “pussy,” being used by men in media. This language becomes a part of societal norms, meaning, we as males feel compelled to use this language to show our dominance over other males. Its like were primal beasts fighting for control of the land. When a man uses words like “faggot” or “pussy,” towards another man it's because they feel inadequate to see someone with enough courage to express themselves. This idea of masculinity only exists because people in the media feel inadequate, and now this culture is so invested in our everyday lives we can’t just forget or ignore it. This type of language promotes not only a craving for control but a demand for violence.

Male characters in films don’t have a very wide range of characters. Most male characters are drug lords, a martial arts expert or have a special set of skills used for revenge. In a documentary called Tough Guise: “Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity”, by Jackson Katz, Katz explores male characters created in films and the influence they have on their audiences. Katz states, “What the media does is help construct violent masculinity as a cultural norm. In other words, violence isn’t so much a deviation, but an accepted part of masculinity,” (1:59-2:08). What Katz is saying here is that the media uses only a few types of men in films in order to make men believe that violence has to be a part of who they are, no matter which man they chose to be. When Katz says “isn’t so much a deviation,” he believes that men have this idea that they can’t be a man without being violent.

Masculinity is a social construct that society has created in order to make one gender believe they have more dominance and power over another group. The type of masculinity that is presented in films and other media outlets, has made me feel compelled to bottle up my emotions which causes me anxiety and harder for me to connect with others. Masculinity has created this mask for me to put on and I can’t take it off.

Work Cited

ChallengingMedia. “Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity.” YouTube, YouTube, 4 Oct. 2006, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI.

Velasquez-Manoff, M.

Opinion | Real Men Get Rejected, Too

In-text: (Velasquez-Manoff, 2018) Your Bibliography: Velasquez-Manoff, M. (2018). Opinion | Real Men Get Rejected, Too. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/24/opinion/sunday/real-men-masculinity-rejected.html [Accessed 8 Mar. 2018].

Mosse, G. (2010). The image of man. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.