And yet, folks kept saying that esp. on Twitter (and here on some of my reblogs even). Which you know, I am all for expanding what is considered ableist but how do we describe a culture if the behaviors displayed fit the definition of sociopathy?
I wrote a bit more in my reblog, but GEEZ. I’s people who refuse to understand what a psych disability is, as well. You cannot be socialized into depression, schizophrenia, etc.; society can encourage or repress SYMPTOMS, but it is not the CAUSE. Sociopathy is quite literally CAUSED by society—that’s why the fucking root word is the same! Personal brain chemistry can either enhance or repress the symptoms, but it is literally a social disease…
And I think here that people also mistake the use of the term ‘disease’. A disease is a condition that is passed around, caught, contracted. You cannot contract a psych condition. When individuals are referred to as sociopathic, it is based on a collection of discrete psychiatric issues that render the person unable to relate to the human society. When sociopathy is used to discuss societies, the focus is not on the individual, but on the society itself.
Most importantly, both of these usages are common and longstanding. It’s not as if ‘sociopathy’ has recently been introduced as a term of social justice bloggers, for fuck’s sake. There’s even a song in a Broadway show from the 1950s about it! ‘Social disease’ and ‘psych disorder’ are discrete ideas, and always have been. To think otherwise is either to have no comprehension of what psych conditions are, and/or to be willfully obtuse. I’m betting it’s mostly the latter, but I’m also willing to be that there’s a fair bit of the former involved.
Reblogged for added commentary on my previous post.
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