On Ableism & Using Mental Illness as an Insult
Previously published on Medium 7/9/2021
Disclaimer: This is not written by a Trump supporter. Despite being about the language people use to insult him, this post has nothing to do with my personal feelings about the former president. This is about how ableism is never okay, even when the person you’re criticizing is fully deserving of criticism. I am by no means telling anyone they shouldn’t criticize Trump, as I am personally very critical of him myself.
During Trump's presidency, a disturbing and ableist trend became even more politicized. It is not limited to Trump, but he's the best example of it I can give.
When expressing their contempt for Trump, some democrats would choose to use ableist language. Perhaps the most insulting was their insistence that someone as evil as Trump had to be mentally ill. Sometimes "mentally ill" was replaced with words that allude to one’s mental stability or lack thereof such as "deranged" or "unbalanced" or even simply "unstable" - other times it was replaced with words such as "insane" or "crazy." The underlying message is the same: mental illness is associated with evil, with immoral traits, with bigotry. All words that can be associated with anyone and indicate nothing about one’s mental health. Good people are mentally ill, bad people are mentally ill. The same is true for the rest of the population.
But there is one major difference between the rest of the population and the mentally ill: vulnerability to ableism, to stereotypes and negative public perceptions. It is dangerous to associate things like being evil and bigoted with being mentally ill because it just fuels the existing hatred society has for mentally ill people and perpetuates the ableist myth that people without mental illness are morally superior. Being mentally ill does not make you a bad person, just as not being mentally doesn't inherently make you a good person. And someone like Trump can be a bad, evil person without having a mental illness.
The ableism wasn’t just limited to calling Trump mentally ill. Sometimes it was jokes about him using Adderall — something people with ADHD said further stigmatizes a medication many of us need. Other times it was about his weight, insinuating that it made him unhealthy or worthy of ridicule. All of this begs the question: Why do you need to find ways to insult him that throw innocent, undeserving disabled people under the bus? Why isn’t the fact that he’s a cruel, racist, misogynist, ableist president who poorly managed the pandemic and many other issues enough for you?
The truth is, whether or not Trump has a mental illness doesn't really matter much to me. He very well could, but just like the rest of us, I do not know anything about his mental health definitively, nor does it personally matter to me. I also do not care about his feelings - that's not my issue here. My concern lies only with people perpetuating the myth that mental illness is bad or evil or immoral, the myth that someone who is bigoted has to have a mental illness, and the harm that these myths do to vulnerable mentally ill people.
But let's be real - it is not 2017. Trump is not president. Even though people still talk about him, they are not talking about him 24/7 like they were before. Does that mean these kinds of ableist comments don't happen anymore, in other contexts? Nope! I wish that were the case, but it's not. This rhetoric is, and always has been, steeped in our culture as long as ableism has existed. And it comes from anyone - not just democrats who don't support Trump.
Another example that happens both on the left and right whenever a violent crime happens: someone will say that the perpetrator of a violent crime is mentally ill. Someone asks them if they have any proof of that. "Well, sane people don't do that! Mentally stable people don't do that! Normal people don't do that! So they clearly have a mental illness." Again, the myth of the Evil, Violent, Immoral Mentally Ill Person is perpetuated in contrast to the Good, Morally Superior Person Without Mental Illness.
There are countless examples of people using mental illnesses or other disabilities as ways to vilify others and throw disabled people under the bus. Sometimes these people haven't been confirmed to have those disabilities, like the examples I gave above, and other times they do. If someone like Trump had been confirmed to have a mental illness or other disability, it still wouldn't be okay to be ableist towards him and make a big deal about that disability, because a disability (including a mental illness) is not a bad thing or an explanation for their poor character - and by making it out to be one, you are just harming people with their disability and disabled people everywhere.
If you are talking about someone like Trump, and you want words to describe their character and bad personality traits such as their racist, xenophobic, transphobic, ableist, and misogynist words and behavior, words such as "bigoted," "cruel," and even "evil" do the trick. Call that person a monster if you'd like, and pull out a thesaurus if those words aren't enough. But leave anything related to a mental illness or other disability out of it, because I assure you, that has nothing to do with their worst traits.