Titania McGrath is a parody account on Twitter written by British comedian Andrew Doyle. Today “Titania’s” tweets stab right into themes seen in the baffling movement to normalize autism, take it out of the “medical model,” and render is a mere neurodiversity. We appreciate the dripping sarcasm and good laugh, Titania!
@TitaniaMcGrath Activist. Healer. Radical intersectionalist poet. Selfless and brave. Buy my books.
Aug. 12, 2020
MEDICAL SCIENCE IS OPPRESSIVE: IT MUST BE BANNED (thread) For too long, so-called “doctors” have bullied and dehumanised those who do not conform to their perceptions of “wellness”. They have tried to “fix” those with non-healthy identities via “treatment”. No more.
[1 of 11] What we call “illness” is a social construct, defined negatively against its antithesis “wellness”. Society, in other words, has created the category of “illness” as a means to impose power on those who do not subscribe to cultural norms of what it means to be “well”.
[2 of 11] “Health” and “wellness” are mere taxonomies of privilege, inculcated by the hegemonic and oppressive discourses of “medical science”. Referring to someone as “well” or “ill”, “healthy” or “unhealthy”, is simply the medicalisation of human diversity.
[3 of 11] The hierarchical dichotomy of “well” and “ill” are co-constituting, each one creating the other through a process of performativity. Moreover, science is an irredeemably white, patriarchal, cisnormative fiction that exists only to disempower marginalised identities.
[4 of 11] Just as heterosexism posits the supremacy of heterosexuality to queerness, healthism situates wellness as the default experience of humanity in order to stigmatise illness as inherently deviant.
[5 of 11] These assumptions deny the performative nature of illness and wellness towards a neoliberal goal: individual autonomy as a means to secure labour (i.e., a “healthy workforce”) for the benefit of the capitalist system.
[6 of 11] In order to dismantle oppressive medical power structures, we must do the following: • Close all hospitals, surgeries, clinics, and any other institutions that perpetuate healthism.• Destroy all medical textbooks and uplift non-scientific ways of knowing.
[7 of 11] • Reject all forms of science as white heteropatriarchal queerantagonistic constructs. • Ban the study of all branches of medicine (anatomy, biochemistry, endocrinology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, pharmacology, etc).
“Rebuke those who claim to be ‘in need of medical attention’ as identity-traitors.”
[8 of 11] • Re-educate children to embrace and celebrate illness rather than seeking a “cure”. If a child is “diagnosed” with a “disease”, this narrative must be countered by teaching them to actively engage in disrupting the cultural norms of “wellness” and “illness”.
[9 of 11] • Rebuke those who claim to be “in need of medical attention” as identity-traitors. (Such internalised healthism is a form of complicity with systemic medicalisation.)
[10 of 11] • Resist the oppression of healthnormativity in everyday language. Criminalise pleasantries such as “How are you?” and “Are you well?” • Stop taking aspirin. FIN.
[11 of 11] You can follow @TitaniaMcGrath. (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1293556090895032322)