To think psychiatry is misogynistic?

[tvde]

I have been reading works of feminist psychologists such as Jess Taylor and critical works of people such as Joanna moncrieff.

the argument is:

• Trauma responses to abuse are normal, rational, and proportionate to what someone has experienced.
• What is often labelled as “mental illness” can actually be understandable reactions to violence and oppression.
• The mental health system has a history of pathologising women’s responses, especially after abuse, instead of addressing the trauma itself.
• This can become a form of victim blaming, where women are judged for their reactions (e.g. being “too emotional,” “unstable,” or “making bad choices”).
• These patterns are shaped by broader systems like patriarchy and racism, which influence how people are diagnosed and treated.
• Common narratives shift responsibility away from perpetrators and subtly place it on victims (e.g. questioning behaviour, choices, or credibility).
• Widespread rape myths reinforce this—such as believing it’s not “real” rape without physical resistance or injuries, or that men “didn’t mean to.”
• theyre given drugs which don’t actually have good success rates (see moncrieff)

I see this countless times working with women and child victims.
Have you experienced this to?

Donald trump springs to mind! Liz truss got kicked out for far less!

Thank you will check it out!

I think if, as you do, you choose to see misogyny, patriarchy, and toxic masculinity everywhere then your arguments make sense.

If you don't then they don't.

Personally i don't.

And antiquated arguments about whether to rename hysterectomy are pointless. Alongside arguing whether we should talk about orchidectomy or castration.

They're labels of a process. The history is irrelevant since medical science no longer considers there to be a link.

All neurodivergence is named as disorders too, instead of normal variations of humanity. The dys is things like dyslexia means bad. Autism spectrum disorder and adhd have the word built in. Yet I don't believe up to 20% of the population are disordered. The reading part of dyslexia couldn't even be a thing before we invented the written word.

bpd is where I disagree on this. These are trauma responses to abuse, the remission rate is high and men are more likely to be diagnosed with cptsd if they display the same behaviours.
meanwhile women get the stigma of a personality disorder for the rest of their lives.
language matters. It clearly bothers women and they want it changed? Why disregard that just because you haven’t been personally effected yet?

I agree! They’re doing it to kids too. Make the curriculum too difficult, inaccessible and inappropriate. Pathologise the kids who don’t conform. Make them the problem. Don’t deal with the actual problem. Repeat.

i agree that there is misogyny in healthcare. However, I would caution from getting all of your information from Jessica Taylor.

She does not hold any clinical qualifications as a psychologist, meaning she is unable to work directly with patients. Her chartered status was obtained through a PhD research project that remains unpublished, making it difficult to evaluate the quality of her work.

She’s received criticism for appearing on a Netflix documentary and claiming she’s a forensic psychologist (which she is not as she can’t work as HCPC registered psychologist). She has claimed people are reporting her to her regulatory body (she doesn’t have one as she is not a practitioner psychologist) and she often frames content to make it seem like she has patients or clients in her capacity as a psychologist which she can’t.

Some of her views I agree with, some I don’t. The main issue is she creates the impression that she is one of the first people to notice and bring attention to these issues. In reality, almost every clinical and forensic psychology training course in the country is encouraging clinicians to think about trauma and to use formulation (how can we understand a persons difficulties in the context of their lived experience).

Ffs

Yes - men get better treatment in that they’re less likely to be sexually abused and live in fear of it on locked wards and facilities - if medics and a medical defence expert of my acquaintance are to be believed.

Mental health facilities would be single sex and all male medics constantly chaperoned by a female with failures being a criminal offence if the state - the NHS - truly cared about the most vulnerable women.

Schools are terrifying places for many children. The noise level, the fact that many children are out of control, pupils throwing chairs, carrying knives. No wonder children are stressed and anxious. My dd is autistic and was absolutely traumatised by the hubbub that was her primary school. She is nearly 30 and still talks about how trapped and terrified she felt every single day. We took her out in year 4. It is awful.

80% of late diagnosed autistic females will have been given a misdiagnosis of emotional unstable personality disorder, bipolar etc before autism is even considered.

I was told I was emotionally, hormonal, attention seeking. I am autistic.

I don't think this is correct. In medical terminology, -ectomy means removing something, as in appendectomy where it's the appendix that's removed. In a hysterectomy it's the womb that's removed. The Latin and medical word for womb is uterus, so we might have expected the word to be uterectomy, but the Ancient Greek word for womb is hystera, and for some reason that was used instead, giving us the word hysterectomy for surgically removing the hystera. Hysteria was indeed thought to be caused by having a wandering womb but hysterectomies have been carried out for a long time for many reasons, not just hysteria.

works of feminist psychologists such as Jess Taylor

She’s not a psychologist, she’s of the same ilk as ‘Dr’ Jack Monroe, she a grifter.

That sounds like the male doctor was rubbish at his job because he brought his whole self and preconceived ideas to work - which were pretty misogynist and certainly lacked any kind of empathy. I doubt that he was trained to think that way by the medical profession - much more likely those were just his opinions.

Where it begins to segue into institutional misogyny is the gaps - the fact that experiences exclusive to women are not considered in training, because the women with those experiences are not around the table.

Poor practice is the tip of the institutional (medical practice) iceberg, but the institution is not the same as the discipline (psychiatry).

Freud initially believed all women and appears to have changed his mind - whether he realised taking the number and types of allegations of sexual abuse seriously would sink his career or he just didn’t believe them any more - well, lots of people don’t seem to believe in grooming gangs or men in sports being a danger to women, so the professional risks in believing women have not gone away.

Certainly a case where an autistic-friendly environment would benefit all students.

Thank you for this. I agree that it’s worth scrutinising any extreme opinions strongly and this is why I encourage open debate about this.

I don’t believe in everything she says - I do believe diagnoses have their places and to remove them entirely would be counterproductive. But she does give a voice to thousands who have gone through this process, fight for them and that I do respect

You notice I haven’t called her a dr once in this. I called her a psychologist.

Well I have worked jn mental health for years and this is exactly what we say. We try and normalise things for people and treat the distress. We operate on trauma informed models of care. We don’t want to medicate people who have had trauma when therapy is the best route but it is the case that many many people don’t want therapy and want medication as they themselves have ideas about mental illness. Also many people who have had trauma can not tolerate therapy as it’s too destabilising and meds ia all they can manage. We do not discriminate against women. Obviously we live jn a patriarchy so that exists as it exists everywhere but nothing more. On every team I have worked in there is a majority of women staff at all levels .

This hasn’t been my experience when patients or children display ‘difficult’ behaviours. The answer tends to be focusing on how the person needs to change.
i always said if a flower isn’t thriving, change the soil not the flower. Obviously in real life you can’t always do this but it would be nice if people knew that it’s not unusual to feel depressed because you can’t pay your bills.
if people are choosing these medicines that is their right. I just wish the side effects were talked about more alongside other options like changing diet, focusing on sleep, gaining social support, etc

Exactly this. All assessment end with a formulation that is done with the person being assessed and all treatment is as holistic as it can be in an underfunded system.

the Crisitsims are outdated and all areas of medicine change and respond to the the clinical evidence that is produced.

Jessica Taylor is dodgy as fuck.

What about people who display ‘difficult’ behaviours? Are violent, non cooperative, have bigoted views from their trauma, think everyone is out to get them?

She certainly makes an impression. It’s good she pisses people off enough to engage and discuss things that normally don’t get enough focus

Dr Jess Taylor is a grifter and a hack and her 'views' are not evidence and not helpful to women.

She pisses people off because she talks a load of dangerous shite. That's not 'good'.