This Spring issue of Asylum 2022 has a bit of gender theme. With the growing moral panic about trans and gender identity, our managing editor, H. Spandler outlines the common struggle of Mad and Trans liberation and calls for an end to the so-called TERF wars.
We include Chris North’s powerful graphic depiction of his Intersex experience, an experience which is rarely included in debates about gender ideology. This issue also includes Meg Allen’s reflections on the controversy about Alice B. Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree Jnr), a gender non-conforming woman whose life highlights important tensions and solidarities between mad and disabled people’s rights. All three of these pieces are available in full, as our sample articles for Spring 2022.
This issue also aims to deepen understanding of topics we have visited before. For example, we feature Elliott MacGabhann’s fascinating account of how psychosis, through opening up ‘strange new worlds’, provides a glimpse into ‘something more’. This issue includes, too, Fiona McLaren’s troubling history of sexism within some anti-psychiatry survivor groups. That speaks to Alex Dunedin’s piece on the taboo on taking seriously the emotional lives of individuals at the bottom of hierarchies of power. As there is a loosening of restrictions around the Coronavirus we have a timely piece by Rosalind Reynolds-Grey on the feeling of exposure that has arisen from the pandemic. There is plenty more to get your teeth into in this issue, including several short stories, our latest ‘hidden gem’, poetry and three book reviews. We also include a summary of the new International Handbook of Mad Studies and a critique, from India, of the romanticisation of indigenous mental health support.
Contents
Beyond the TERF Wars – H. Spandler ***SAMPLE ARTICLE***
The Well of Silence – Chris North ***SAMPLE ARTICLE***
No More Heroes? The Death of Alice B Sheldon – Meg Allen ***SAMPLE ARTICLE***
Strange New Worlds – Elliott MacGabhan
Anti-Psychiatry, the Survivor Movement and legacies of sexism – Fiona McLare
Emotion as Taboo; Emotion as Dissent – Alex Dunedin
Vulnerability, Visibility and the Coronavirus – Rosalind Reynolds-Grey
Visiting Erica – Naomi Perez Jones
News – Seni’s Law
A Walk Outside – Catherine Vance
The Devil Who Haunts Me – Janelle Molony
Book Review: The Girl on the Bridge – Larry Taylor
Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Revolution: Critical Psychology for Liberation Movements – Nancy Leaver
Book Review: Mirkwood – Bob Sapey
Hidden Gem – The Cobweb
Poetry by Will Griffith, Alex Reed, Fraser Scott, Scott Norman Rosenthal & Ripley Crow
Mad Studies Goes Global
A critique of the romanticisation of pre-psychiatric systems of care in the Global South – Sonia Soans
Forthcoming event
Sample articles
Beyond the TERF Wars – H. Spandler
The Well of Silence – Chris North
No More Heroes? The Death of Alice B Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr.) – Meg Allen
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