Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them

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Jessica Eaton Granted a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts". sateda.org. 26 April 2019. Archived from the original on 10 July 2020 . Retrieved 10 July 2020. Many of us become aware as the years pass that supporting or passively accepting the psychiatric labelling of women and girls will harm them in the long run. They may feel better temporarily, whilst they feel in control, empowered and informed that they have been given a formal diagnosis and prescription which ‘validates’ their ‘mental health’, but what will really happen is that they will be pathologised, judged, stigmatised and treated as though they are going to be mentally ill for the rest of their lives.

The overall argument about the need to have a more trauma-informed approach, and that, in comparison to the medical diagnosis-prone approaches, it is more humanising, ethical, and effective. Diagnoses are shortcuts that might be neither useful, nor efficient. Medications aren’t cure-alls. Whilst vital research into endometriosis receives little to no resource or funding, here were funded academics writing about how sexy women are with a painful disease, and whether men were getting enough sex from women who were struggling with chronic pain from endometriosis.” Is psychiatry really just ‘patriarchy with a prescription pad’? When I started reading Sexy But Psycho I thought this was perhaps a bold claim but Dr Taylor is able, emphatically and decisively, to demonstrate that this is far more than a ‘claim’. It is a distressing, disturbing and uncomfortable read, but a very important and enlightening one nonetheless. On the one hand it might be seen as an alarming exposé and yet, is it anything more than a nudge to alert us to what many of us have known, or at least suspected, for quite some time? There has been a clear path from being castigated as a witch, to being labelled as crazy, to the modern- Here's the thing: the idea that psychiatry as a patriarchal institution that is actively misogynist - and is also andro- and Eurocentric - is not novel. This is a not a new premise and this book offers no new insights. It is, however, presented by the author as somehow revolutionary. Taylor is not the first to put these concepts together, but her writing style is provocative and inflammatory ... and I really enjoy it. Her prose is charged and effective.

Taylor began volunteering with domestic violence victims before deciding to earn her Bachelor of Science Hons degree in psychology from the Open University. [4] Upon receiving her degree, Taylor co-founded The Eaton Foundation, a Male Mental Health and Wellbeing Centre in the UK, with Alex Eaton. [5] She eventually quit her job and founded VictimFocus, which she describes as "a company designed to challenge and change the victim blaming practices in social care, policing, mental health and support services all over the world." [6] In 2017 and 2018, she was shortlisted for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize. [7] [8] Graffius, Catriona; Sun, The (1 June 2021). "Millionaire kills lover over sex video". news.com.au . Retrieved 9 January 2022. I do not believe that all mental diagnoses are claptrap and psychopharmalogical intervention is equivalent to malfeasance. What concerns me are the people who might read this and feel unseen or abandoned by the systems and professionals meant to protect and aid them, and stop taking their medication(s) without supervision. The author displays little to no understanding of pharmacokinetics, and her assertion that these medications are unnecessary (and her denial that they can be life-saving) is alarming.

I gave it three stars not because it was mediocre book, but because it was both horrible and great, at the same time. Let’s to step by step. A more systemic approach, looking at how centuries of history have framed our current psychiatric system, rather than simply blaming the people working in the system. She’s right; they weren’t taught alternatives and they’re oft punished for looking for them. Whether it is women reporting cancer symptoms or raising concerns about botched vaginal mesh surgery that has caused them serious health complications, research shows that they are still much more likely to be ignored, minimised or diagnosed with mental health issues. Partially, this will be due to medicine and much of science being based on men and male bodies, with women and female bodies still being seen as too complicated and too much of a variable to be included in medical trials. In 2022, Taylor published her second book, Sexy But Psycho: Uncovering the Labelling of Women and Girls through Constable. She described it as ”mixture of academic research, history, psychology and real-life stories of women and girls who have been told that they are mentally ill, instead of being listened to”. [19] The book focuses on how mental illness has historically been used to discredit women, focusing especially on the 2000s and pop artist Britney Spears. [20]The overwhelming majority of psychiatrists and certainly GPs have no education to understand they are over-medicating women to levels suited to male bodies and physiological systems. Essentially, we’re still doping women in docility albeit in a different form to what Freud and co. advised for hysteria.