From the Mind of Trevor Stone

I just posted this on a Burning Man mailing list in response to a document encouraging use of "person-first language" in the context of mental health. It collects some thoughts I've had for awhile, and I think are worth sharing more broadly.


I feel that using a term like "my neighbor who has autism" rather than "my autistic neighbor" creates a sense that autism is a temporary condition—similar to "my neighbor who has a sports car"—or is somehow separate from their identity as a person, similar to "my neighbor who walks with a limp." As someone who may be on the autism spectrum[1], being an aspie is a pretty core piece of my identity. No matter what I do in my life, I'm never not going to be on the autism spectrum[2]; there's no drug or therapy that will cure me of Asperger's syndrome. And for me it's not even a "side trait" like the fact that I have brown hair or am "kinda tall". Autistic traits like spatial-symbolic thought, deep interest in narrow topics, complex language use, and detailed rule systems are some of the things about *me* that I'm likely to emphasize if I'm writing my own biographic blurb.

(Also, autism isn't a mental illness, any more than being left-handed is a physical illness. It's a different way of processing stimuli and thinking about the world. Autistic people's brains work differently, but they're not sick.)

As someone who loves the nuances of language, I share the interest in adopting terminology which uplifts people facing challenges and moving away from insulting language. Unfortunately, I find the position of person-first language to be frequently underwhelming and counterproductive. A couple examples:

The document that D shared encouraged the use of "person who experiences substance abuse challenges" instead of the term "alcoholic." The former is fifteen syllables long and sounds very clinical, even sterile. "Alcoholic" is four syllables long and has a rhythm to it: two syllables end in "L" and the other two have a hard "C". The double hard "C" gives the word punch: hearing someone say "My name is Chris and I'm an alcoholic" has an impact in our auditory pathways in a way that "My name is Chris and I experience substance abuse challenges" does not. And a statement like, "My name is Chris and I have a problem with alcohol" sounds to me like a weasel word that avoids the full impact of what's going on; it suggests that "If I could just solve this one problem, I could drink like a normal person."

At a different event, some friends of mine run a Phoenix Circle for people in recovery. They identify as alcoholics and use that term, because they see it as a key piece of who they are: their brain responds differently to alcohol than typical people do, and they need to keep that awareness in place in order to avoid doing themselves harm by relapsing. And they were able to make significant progress in overcoming this challenge by recognizing their alcoholism and how it's something that's always going to be part of them. They're not going to stop being an alcoholic, but they CAN (and did) stop drinking alcohol. This way of framing things might not be the solution for everybody, but there are a lot of folks that it has worked for.

Perhaps the first time I heard about people-first language was a campaign to use the term "people experiencing homelessness" rather than "homeless people." The former is a mouthful to say (ten syllables versus four), and yet it still "others" the people in question. We don't use the phrase "people experiencing homeownership," we say "homeowners." We don't say "people experiencing wealth", we say "rich people." We don't say "people with high physical strength", we say "strong people." Despite a goal of changing language to remove stigma, this creates a lexicon of phrases which are said out loud only used when referring to marginalized people.

The document starts by saying "We have all heard derogatory terms used to describe
someone who has a mental illness. Here are a few to jog your memory: Cuckoo; Mad as a hatter; Screwy–having a screw loose; Bananas; Loopy; Crackers; Wacko (whacko); Loony; Nuts; Freak; Crazy; Weirdo." In my lexicon, several of those words are descriptive, not derogatory, and they have nuanced meanings. I will often self-identify as a weirdo; I've never thought of the word as being about mental illness and more about having interests and behaviors that are outside the mainstream. (Black Rock City is a place full of weirdos, and that's what makes it so fun.) Likewise, "freak" is often used as a term of self-identity, particularly when prefixed with a classifier like "music freak" or "climbing freak." To my ear, it's only derogatory if the speaker has a negative opinion of the thing the freak is into. I use "loopy" to describe a specific set of cognitive behaviors, which can be brought on by lack of sleep, independent of cognitive ailments. In my family, "crazy" is used as a judgement-free descriptive term for many of our good friends. In our house, "Bob is crazy" isn't a positive or negative sentiment; it's just a non-awkward way of saying "Bob has some significant mental health illnesses." And an interesting note on "Mad as a hatter:" the association between hatters and mental illness stems from the 19th Century use of mercury in hat making; it's a physical neurologic illness that manifests like a mental illness.

The way I think about social language, the goal should be to *change the negative perceptions of mental illness and substance use,* not to change the words we use to describe them. We can keep the psychoacoustic power of a word like "alcoholic" or "crazy" while speaking positively about the person. (My family thinks highly of many of our crazy friends.) The document says "Person-first language separates the individual from the symptoms they experience." This strikes me as striving for a sort of Cartesian dualism, that there's a self which is somehow independent of mental and physical sensations[3]. When I've had physical illnesses, I don't want to separate and compartmentalize those experiences: my body hurts, my body's not working the way I want it to, but by gosh it's happening to *my* body, not some avatar in the metaverse. Some of those physical ailments are temporary, and can be overcome through action, medical intervention, or the passage of time. Others will be with me the rest of my life: I have achalasia (a physical illness) and it's important that I remain in touch with my body when I experience trouble swallowing: the symptom isn't separate from me, it's part of me[4].

It strikes me that mental illness is even more personal in this regard: many physical illnesses are available to our normal senses: we can look at a broken arm or an arthritic joint and understand the physics of how it works, or compare it to other arms and joints to see how it's different. But our mental experiences are in a rich inner world that's not easily accessible to other people, and difficult to measure with our usual sensory apparatuses. A person may be able to overcome a mental illness, but that illness isn't something that's happening separate from the person: it's going on in their mind, in their brain, in their body, and in their daily life. And I want to honor that experience with a word that carries the power of the challenge that they're facing, not a long phrase that sounds like it's from a clinical research paper. The more short syllables with hard consonants the better. If there are words with negative connotations that we want to move away from, let's make sure to pick words that have a similar strength when we hear them out loud. I tend to find words with a germanic root carry more power than polysyllabic words that came from Latin during the Renaissance. And if a word is easy to say and has a good ring to it, people are likely to actually use it in the course of normal conversation.

Acknowledgement: my focus on syllables and phonemes here was inspired in large part by George Carlin's excellent piece on soft language.

[1] By the time I learned what the autism spectrum was I'd learned enough about my own peculiarities and how to interface with the world that I've never pursued a clinical diagnosis. I hear people talk about their experiences with autism and read descriptions of Asperger's syndrome and think "That sounds a lot like the way I think and behave."
[2] Depending on where one draws the edge of the spectrum, I suppose.
[3] The phrase "mental and physical" is also a sort of dualism, and I think we often forget that mental sensations are often closely linked with our physical bodies. One thing we learn as Green Dots is that giving someone water and a snack may help tremendously with what presents as a major mental challenge.
[4] If I disassociate from the sensation in my esophagus, I'm just going to have a worse physical experience in a few minutes.

Dear Senator (Gardner | Bennet),

Thank you for introducing the bipartisan FARMERS FIRST Act to help ensure that agricultural workers have access to mental health care. Farming is both physically and emotionally taxing and the year-to-year risks that agricultural producers face can bring emotional stress to the breaking point.

As Colorado, and the world, grows warmer, the effects of climate change will further compound the physical and mental stresses on farmers in the state. First, heat waves are correlated with an increase in negative mental health events and acts of aggression and violence. Second, we have already experienced more frequent extreme weather events and greater variation in surface water availability due to increased temperatures, reduced snowpack, and less predictable precipitation. These factors are likely to increase the risk of crop failures, putting farms and farmers at risk. Third, the long-term effects of a warmer climate like earlier seasonal onset, warmer diurnal temperatures, and insect infestations (like the pine beetle unchecked by cold winters) will force many farmers to abandon crops they have grown for generations.

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to put the breaks on climate change and keep temperatures from running away faster than we can adapt. Climate change legislation should be one of Congress’s top priorities this year and next, and Colorado’s interests should be represented as bills are crafted. I urge you to take action in at least the following two ways.

First, please ensure programs to address climate change are part of the 2018 Farm Bill. Agriculture is on the front lines of climate change and agricultural producers have some of the best opportunities to make a meaningful difference in greenhouse gasses. Congress should sponsor research, development, and experimentation of ag practices which can sequester carbon, reduce methane, increase yields, and save money on inputs. Congress should also find ways to incentivize expanding America’s great forests: it’s hard to find a more effective way to remove carbon dioxide from the air than trees.

Second, I urge you to cosponsor a bill enacting a market-based climate change solution like carbon fee and dividend. A national program to price the externalities of greenhouse gas emissions is likely the most effective action that we can take to keep the climate stable and avoid major disruption to daily life that we risk with unchecked global warming. A price on carbon would spur American innovation, create clean energy jobs, and improve our quality of life.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter and your dedicated service to Colorado,
Trevor Stone