Men are literally arguing that “brilliant men” have always sexually abused ppl and that somehow this is the price society pays for their brilliance?

No thanks?

— âpihtawikosisân (@apihtawikosisan) November 14, 2017

This drives me into the same kind of rage I feel when people talk about how writers write because they’re depressed, because dark and twisty equals talented, because misery is so so so productive. Maybe YOURS is. My mental illness generally takes the form of either lying in bed catatonic or hyperventilating in my car on the way to wherever I need to be while my brain screams that I am worthless and no one will miss me if I just go away. Not the best environment for creative work.

It gives me the same tweak as did the “but we’ll get some really bitchin’ music out of this” sentiment after Trump’s election, as if the lives of mostly poor people of color are acceptable sacrifices for already wealthy musicians to write a banger protest song or a powerful poem. Is it … like … not possible to put your shoulder into your work without people dying as material?

Is it remotely within the realm of possibility that people create in the darkness not because the darkness is so awesome but because they’re creators and they work no matter their conditions and we don’t KNOW what they would have created in the light?

Stop romanticizing untreated mental illness. Stop rationalizing shitty behavior. Stop justifying terribleness by pointing to the very meagre coping mechanisms people have developed as some kind of … just fucking stop it. No song is worth this. No book is worth this. No poem is worth this. No art is worth perpetuating misery you can stop.

A.