The last few months have been marked by an unprecedented intensity of
trans struggles in France, in the face of a deeply transphobic bill. A
struggle marked by broad support from the social movement, but also by
an oversight: the radical critique of psychiatry as a tool for social
control of bodies and people. ---- What a summer! While the general
mobilization began for many with Macron's unexpected legislative
elections and his surprise dissolution, offering a parliamentary path to
the far right, activists had already been on a war footing for over a
month. Macron ruined a well-deserved vacation for many people,
especially those fighting against an anti-trans bill brought by Les
Républicains, announced at the end of April and due to be voted on May
28, 2024 in the Senate.
May of Trans Struggles
In May, thousands of people opposed the Eustache-Brinio bill, which
aimed to ban minors from medically transitioning. Although fewer in
number than during the June rallies, this struggle will go down in
history as the largest trans mobilization in France, with more than
25,000 people in the streets at its peak.
Virulent slogans against the psychiatric system were chanted in the
Existransinter marches.
(anonymous source) - AL 356
The law consisted of three articles: the ban on prescribing puberty
blockers and hormones to minors for transition, the criminalization of
this prescription for caregivers, and the creation of a national plan
for child psychiatry. This law was intended to be a "protection of
children," although many studies show that puberty blockers and access
to transition are essential for trans people, reducing suicide and
depression rates.
Many organizations opposed the law, particularly against the ban on
treatment for minors. This was the first time that the CGT had taken a
position on trans struggles. However, few of them addressed the third
article, which is just as threatening as the ban on transition. Only a
few specialized organizations, such as the Trans Solidarity Organization
(OST), have put forward a discourse that dissociates transidentity and
psychiatry, which remains difficult for most organizations in the social
movement.
Indeed, few left-wing organizations criticize psychiatry or include the
fight against this institution in their demands. They prefer to talk
about reforming it or improving the conditions of caregivers, without
ever listening to the demands of patients. In the same way, judges and
guards always talk, never the prisoners; teachers, never the students.
It is therefore logical that no mass political organization challenges
psychiatrization, although it is a historic fight for trans struggles,
guaranteeing bodily autonomy for trans people as well as for all workers.
Psychiatry, a tool for controlling trans people
The logic of this bill is part of an old strategy of the State, which
uses disciplinary institutions to control bodies outside of social
norms. Psychiatry, far from being a tool for care, is a mechanism for
controlling and normalizing individuals to ensure their usefulness in
the capitalist system.
The trans question in particular is linked to the pathologization of
marginal identities, a practice born in the 17th century. Let us not
forget that transidentity has long been seen as a "mental illness".
Recent reforms do not erase the responsibility of psychiatry, which
continues to mistreat and lock up marginalized people.
Psychiatric hospitals are prisons where patients are pumped full of
drugs instead of alternatives. Psychiatry classifies individuals as
deviant and justifies the treatment and normalization of bodies
according to social norms, particularly for trans minors, whose bodies
are perceived as needing to be disciplined to protect the
cis-hetero-patriarchal social order.
By placing gender minorities under its tutelage, the state seeks to
deprive them of their bodily autonomy. The state seeks to subject the
bodies of proletarians to its needs: workers who can produce, workers
who can reproduce, and cannon fodder to colonize and maintain
imperialism. And trans people are incapable of all that, or at least the
assimilation of their identities has not yet arrived there.
And this is not a desirable horizon: it would be disastrous if the
partial or total integration of trans people into society were to
involve their active and recognized participation in imperialism. The
antipsychiatric struggle offers an essential reading grid to understand
and combat the social control exercised by psychiatry, a tool of power
and domination.
Antipsychiatry is a class struggle
Reforming the psychiatric institution will not be enough: only its
abolition will allow us to build true bodily autonomy. It is about
putting an end to a system of alienation, forced hospitalizations and
imposed treatments. Resisting this biopolitics means questioning the
hierarchy of bodies and freeing medical practices from social dictates.
By defending self-determination, antipsychiatry denounces the power of
health professionals and proposes alternatives to pathologizing models.
It invites us to rethink the management of psychological suffering by
placing the individual at the center.
To be credible, the radical left must integrate the antipsychiatric
struggle into its critique of systems of confinement and power. Ignoring
the confinement of the "crazy" while denouncing prisons and police
violence is inconsistent. This is all the more the case since the
pathologies that we attribute and assign are often the consequence of
difficult living conditions: poverty, precariousness, police violence,
over-representation in prisons, racial oppression, etc.
In summary, it must be reaffirmed that the anti-psychiatric struggle is
inseparable from the class struggle and the values that the radical left
claims to defend: human dignity, solidarity and collective emancipation.
Not integrating this struggle amounts to accepting a hierarchy of
suffering, legitimizing forms of social repression and obscuring part of
the oppressed in the name of an ableist vision of social relations. If
we want to embody a viable alternative to the capitalist and patriarchal
world, we cannot ignore the issue of mental health and psychiatric
practices. The fight against psychiatry must be, unequivocally, a
component of the fight for a society free from all forms of oppression.
Lizzie and Archie
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Luttes-trans-reinvestir-l-antipsychiatrie
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
trans struggles in France, in the face of a deeply transphobic bill. A
struggle marked by broad support from the social movement, but also by
an oversight: the radical critique of psychiatry as a tool for social
control of bodies and people. ---- What a summer! While the general
mobilization began for many with Macron's unexpected legislative
elections and his surprise dissolution, offering a parliamentary path to
the far right, activists had already been on a war footing for over a
month. Macron ruined a well-deserved vacation for many people,
especially those fighting against an anti-trans bill brought by Les
Républicains, announced at the end of April and due to be voted on May
28, 2024 in the Senate.
May of Trans Struggles
In May, thousands of people opposed the Eustache-Brinio bill, which
aimed to ban minors from medically transitioning. Although fewer in
number than during the June rallies, this struggle will go down in
history as the largest trans mobilization in France, with more than
25,000 people in the streets at its peak.
Virulent slogans against the psychiatric system were chanted in the
Existransinter marches.
(anonymous source) - AL 356
The law consisted of three articles: the ban on prescribing puberty
blockers and hormones to minors for transition, the criminalization of
this prescription for caregivers, and the creation of a national plan
for child psychiatry. This law was intended to be a "protection of
children," although many studies show that puberty blockers and access
to transition are essential for trans people, reducing suicide and
depression rates.
Many organizations opposed the law, particularly against the ban on
treatment for minors. This was the first time that the CGT had taken a
position on trans struggles. However, few of them addressed the third
article, which is just as threatening as the ban on transition. Only a
few specialized organizations, such as the Trans Solidarity Organization
(OST), have put forward a discourse that dissociates transidentity and
psychiatry, which remains difficult for most organizations in the social
movement.
Indeed, few left-wing organizations criticize psychiatry or include the
fight against this institution in their demands. They prefer to talk
about reforming it or improving the conditions of caregivers, without
ever listening to the demands of patients. In the same way, judges and
guards always talk, never the prisoners; teachers, never the students.
It is therefore logical that no mass political organization challenges
psychiatrization, although it is a historic fight for trans struggles,
guaranteeing bodily autonomy for trans people as well as for all workers.
Psychiatry, a tool for controlling trans people
The logic of this bill is part of an old strategy of the State, which
uses disciplinary institutions to control bodies outside of social
norms. Psychiatry, far from being a tool for care, is a mechanism for
controlling and normalizing individuals to ensure their usefulness in
the capitalist system.
The trans question in particular is linked to the pathologization of
marginal identities, a practice born in the 17th century. Let us not
forget that transidentity has long been seen as a "mental illness".
Recent reforms do not erase the responsibility of psychiatry, which
continues to mistreat and lock up marginalized people.
Psychiatric hospitals are prisons where patients are pumped full of
drugs instead of alternatives. Psychiatry classifies individuals as
deviant and justifies the treatment and normalization of bodies
according to social norms, particularly for trans minors, whose bodies
are perceived as needing to be disciplined to protect the
cis-hetero-patriarchal social order.
By placing gender minorities under its tutelage, the state seeks to
deprive them of their bodily autonomy. The state seeks to subject the
bodies of proletarians to its needs: workers who can produce, workers
who can reproduce, and cannon fodder to colonize and maintain
imperialism. And trans people are incapable of all that, or at least the
assimilation of their identities has not yet arrived there.
And this is not a desirable horizon: it would be disastrous if the
partial or total integration of trans people into society were to
involve their active and recognized participation in imperialism. The
antipsychiatric struggle offers an essential reading grid to understand
and combat the social control exercised by psychiatry, a tool of power
and domination.
Antipsychiatry is a class struggle
Reforming the psychiatric institution will not be enough: only its
abolition will allow us to build true bodily autonomy. It is about
putting an end to a system of alienation, forced hospitalizations and
imposed treatments. Resisting this biopolitics means questioning the
hierarchy of bodies and freeing medical practices from social dictates.
By defending self-determination, antipsychiatry denounces the power of
health professionals and proposes alternatives to pathologizing models.
It invites us to rethink the management of psychological suffering by
placing the individual at the center.
To be credible, the radical left must integrate the antipsychiatric
struggle into its critique of systems of confinement and power. Ignoring
the confinement of the "crazy" while denouncing prisons and police
violence is inconsistent. This is all the more the case since the
pathologies that we attribute and assign are often the consequence of
difficult living conditions: poverty, precariousness, police violence,
over-representation in prisons, racial oppression, etc.
In summary, it must be reaffirmed that the anti-psychiatric struggle is
inseparable from the class struggle and the values that the radical left
claims to defend: human dignity, solidarity and collective emancipation.
Not integrating this struggle amounts to accepting a hierarchy of
suffering, legitimizing forms of social repression and obscuring part of
the oppressed in the name of an ableist vision of social relations. If
we want to embody a viable alternative to the capitalist and patriarchal
world, we cannot ignore the issue of mental health and psychiatric
practices. The fight against psychiatry must be, unequivocally, a
component of the fight for a society free from all forms of oppression.
Lizzie and Archie
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Luttes-trans-reinvestir-l-antipsychiatrie
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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