Banning Mentality Strikes Again
May. 13th, 2009 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoySo there’s a debate going on right now in the NY Times forum about Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, which is a novel told from the point of view of an anorexic teenager. The question is whether a book describing anorexia will make girls anorexic.
I was rather sorry to see how many people think this is the case, and that the book is bad. The banninators, once again, figure that if you don’t mention the problem, it will go away.
Bullshit.
I’m not arguing that it won’t trigger anorexic behavior in people with an eating disorder. But to say the book is what will make them anorexic is like saying that a movie that triggers a panic attack is creating panic disorders. The problem with mental illness is that everything becomes a minefield. In that state, my panic attacks could be triggered by photos of kittens. The sad truth is that it’s impossible to tiptoe around the possible trigger factors of everyone; if there’s a problem in your head that isn't everyone’s, you will have to watch out for yourself. If your friends know to warn you off from something, that's great, but hiding it from the entirety of society is ridiculous. It’s not the content itself that’s the problem; it’s the filter. We can be sensitive to each person’s possible filter to some extent, but because of the enormous array of things we don’t know about each other, we can only hope to have a fraction of sensitivity.
Furthermore, taking away an intelligent book on the problem is not going to stop people from having the problem.
The book sheds light on a subject, which is always good for society at large. Especially here, since anorexia nervosa isn’t just a mental illness, but a mental illness channeled through a certain society ideal. There’s a lot of interaction here between our culture’s views of women and the brain problems. So for those of us without anorexia, those of us who read the book and, when the main character insists she’s “strong,” wonder, “strong enough to fall down dead?”, Wintergirls tells us that it’s not glamorous and gives us insight into their heads so we can at least understand. We can’t fix it—as is the case with so much mental illness, the sick person has to realize they’re sick before they can get better.* This book may do that for some, and for the rest of us, it will help us understand. And for those who may be triggered, well—sadly, that’s the risk we take with any form of information.
Wintergirls was excellent, painful, smart, and immensely frustrating as you watch the main character try harder and harder to self-destruct. If you think it may trigger you, by all means stay away, but it’s a very good book to have out there to illustrate a problem that won’t just go away if we all pretend it’s not there.
*This can be difficult because of the nature of brain disorders, but it’s not impossible. I know this firsthand.
I was rather sorry to see how many people think this is the case, and that the book is bad. The banninators, once again, figure that if you don’t mention the problem, it will go away.
Bullshit.
I’m not arguing that it won’t trigger anorexic behavior in people with an eating disorder. But to say the book is what will make them anorexic is like saying that a movie that triggers a panic attack is creating panic disorders. The problem with mental illness is that everything becomes a minefield. In that state, my panic attacks could be triggered by photos of kittens. The sad truth is that it’s impossible to tiptoe around the possible trigger factors of everyone; if there’s a problem in your head that isn't everyone’s, you will have to watch out for yourself. If your friends know to warn you off from something, that's great, but hiding it from the entirety of society is ridiculous. It’s not the content itself that’s the problem; it’s the filter. We can be sensitive to each person’s possible filter to some extent, but because of the enormous array of things we don’t know about each other, we can only hope to have a fraction of sensitivity.
Furthermore, taking away an intelligent book on the problem is not going to stop people from having the problem.
The book sheds light on a subject, which is always good for society at large. Especially here, since anorexia nervosa isn’t just a mental illness, but a mental illness channeled through a certain society ideal. There’s a lot of interaction here between our culture’s views of women and the brain problems. So for those of us without anorexia, those of us who read the book and, when the main character insists she’s “strong,” wonder, “strong enough to fall down dead?”, Wintergirls tells us that it’s not glamorous and gives us insight into their heads so we can at least understand. We can’t fix it—as is the case with so much mental illness, the sick person has to realize they’re sick before they can get better.* This book may do that for some, and for the rest of us, it will help us understand. And for those who may be triggered, well—sadly, that’s the risk we take with any form of information.
Wintergirls was excellent, painful, smart, and immensely frustrating as you watch the main character try harder and harder to self-destruct. If you think it may trigger you, by all means stay away, but it’s a very good book to have out there to illustrate a problem that won’t just go away if we all pretend it’s not there.
*This can be difficult because of the nature of brain disorders, but it’s not impossible. I know this firsthand.
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Date: 2009-05-14 04:09 am (UTC)Oh, good lord. By that logic, I should be a Victorian serial killer, a brain surgeon, a gay male, a wizard, autistic, bipolar, even more OCD than I already am (I mean, why just wash my hands excessively when I can actually scrub the skin off?), a prince of Amber and quite a few other things.
In reality, a book like that could cause someone to recognize themself and their problem and get help just as easily as trigger someone.