How to Save a Life: Rethinking Borderline Personality Disorder from a Disability Justice Perspective
Abstract
Bringing together sources from psychiatry, critical disability studies, gender studies, and cultural/media studies, this research project forges a neuroqueer feminist theoretical framework through which to assert a counter-narrative of borderline personality disorder. This counter-narrative diverges from common misconceptions of BPD to make four significant changes: 1) in place of common misconceptions of BPD as resistant to treatment, I foreground its positive prognosis in more recent psychiatric research; 2) in place of perceptions of people with BPD as being dramatic or hyperbolic in expressing their pain, I present BPD as a multi-faceted chronic pain condition; 3) in place of common misconceptions of people with BPD as dangerous or reckless with people's feelings, I foreground research that demonstrates a high degree of empathy among this population; and 4) in place of feminist rejections of BPD as a case of medical misogyny, I mobilize a framework of feminist psychiatric disability studies to situate BPD and BPD advocacy within the context of disability activism, addressing the political and social needs of people with minoritized genders and BPD diagnoses in ways that do not wholly disavow this diagnostic label. To support this counter-narrative, I will briefly sketch my analysis of two cultural representations of BPD.
Example 1 -- Borderline Episodes: BPD as a Chronic Pain Condition
Using a methodology of ideological television analysis, this presentation demonstrates the fraught nature of BPD representations on television through an interpretation of a particular story arc on the popular hospital melodrama, Grey's Anatomy, where BPD is both featured and submerged in the televisual text. This analysis brings latent neurodivergent content to the surface of ostensibly neurotypical theoretical and fictional texts, making them more readily available for identification by neurodivergent audience members and claiming additional public space for neurodivergent subjects.
Example 2 -- Disability Justice, Neurodiversity, and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Quick Look at Digital Activism
Positioning BPD among scholarly conversations about ableist attitudes toward negative emotions and selected highlights from contemporary U.S. disability history, this presentation asserts that the emotions displayed in video posts by BPD influencers on Instagram and TikTok can be construed as a form of "mutual aid," a concept from the disability justice movement that identifies efforts within a minority culture to support each other in the absence of adequate care provided by the state. My analysis of sample posts from BPD Can't Break Me and similar social media accounts substantiates these claims.
By updating the mainstream cultural profile of this highly stigmatized, heavily researched, wrongly feminized, and poorly understood neurominority population in these ways, this project serves the dual social purposes of valuing psychiatrically disabled people and producing a message about BPD that contributes to anti-ableist social movements—including disability rights, disability justice, and mad rights.
Keywords
Borderline personality disorder, mad rights, media analysis, gender studies
How to Save a Life: Rethinking Borderline Personality Disorder from a Disability Justice Perspective
CASB 108
Bringing together sources from psychiatry, critical disability studies, gender studies, and cultural/media studies, this research project forges a neuroqueer feminist theoretical framework through which to assert a counter-narrative of borderline personality disorder. This counter-narrative diverges from common misconceptions of BPD to make four significant changes: 1) in place of common misconceptions of BPD as resistant to treatment, I foreground its positive prognosis in more recent psychiatric research; 2) in place of perceptions of people with BPD as being dramatic or hyperbolic in expressing their pain, I present BPD as a multi-faceted chronic pain condition; 3) in place of common misconceptions of people with BPD as dangerous or reckless with people's feelings, I foreground research that demonstrates a high degree of empathy among this population; and 4) in place of feminist rejections of BPD as a case of medical misogyny, I mobilize a framework of feminist psychiatric disability studies to situate BPD and BPD advocacy within the context of disability activism, addressing the political and social needs of people with minoritized genders and BPD diagnoses in ways that do not wholly disavow this diagnostic label. To support this counter-narrative, I will briefly sketch my analysis of two cultural representations of BPD.
Example 1 -- Borderline Episodes: BPD as a Chronic Pain Condition
Using a methodology of ideological television analysis, this presentation demonstrates the fraught nature of BPD representations on television through an interpretation of a particular story arc on the popular hospital melodrama, Grey's Anatomy, where BPD is both featured and submerged in the televisual text. This analysis brings latent neurodivergent content to the surface of ostensibly neurotypical theoretical and fictional texts, making them more readily available for identification by neurodivergent audience members and claiming additional public space for neurodivergent subjects.
Example 2 -- Disability Justice, Neurodiversity, and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Quick Look at Digital Activism
Positioning BPD among scholarly conversations about ableist attitudes toward negative emotions and selected highlights from contemporary U.S. disability history, this presentation asserts that the emotions displayed in video posts by BPD influencers on Instagram and TikTok can be construed as a form of "mutual aid," a concept from the disability justice movement that identifies efforts within a minority culture to support each other in the absence of adequate care provided by the state. My analysis of sample posts from BPD Can't Break Me and similar social media accounts substantiates these claims.
By updating the mainstream cultural profile of this highly stigmatized, heavily researched, wrongly feminized, and poorly understood neurominority population in these ways, this project serves the dual social purposes of valuing psychiatrically disabled people and producing a message about BPD that contributes to anti-ableist social movements—including disability rights, disability justice, and mad rights.