ABSTRACT
This chapter is about movements and feminism – more specifically about feminist initiatives in challenging psychiatric oppression. An operant assumption is that liberation is always contingent on the social movements of the oppressed. As Freire (1970) suggests, emancipation requires that people co-reflect on their experience, name their oppression, and take up tasks to alter the oppressive situation. Coming together on the basis of identity and co-naming experience are crucial, for oppression depends on isolation, and one of the most insidious aspects of oppression is having other people’s names and worlds imposed upon one. At the same time, social change is more complex than this articulation suggests. For one thing, oppressed people need allies – a need which brings with it real possibilities and real dangers. For another, while we cannot play the same roles, simply by virtue of being human beings, we all have a responsibility to alter the social structures by which some people are oppressed, some are privileged, and all are dehumanised. What further complicates praxis is that, given the complexity of location, it is never the case that only one movement has bearing on people’s situations. All this being so, it is no simple matter to write about feminist initiatives in ‘the movement’ against psychiatry.
