gendercast episode 41: interview with Jacks McNamara on a lot of awesome things
Join Jesse and Sean for an interview with Jacks McNamara about their work in radical mental health and with The Icarus Project, their writing and other projects they are involved in. We explore the concept of radical mental health, creating some analyses of the medical industrial complex and corporate psychology’s impact on the mainstream mental health system/pathologizing of people experiencing emotional distress or psychic impairments. Jacks discussed that emotional distress does not happen in a bubble, but rather, it happens within a social context where capitalism, racism, classism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia and many other isms are operating.
Jacks also draws some comparisons between gender nonconformity and mental health/emotional distress as “ a shared inability to fit into boxes” and will discuss how this is something that queer and trans people as well as people experiencing emotional distress have in common. We will talk about the impact of labels (diagnoses) on both gender identity and mental health as a mechanism of access (to medications). We also talk about disability justice and radical mental health. Jacks also talks about collective access, access intimacy and reads some of their poetry!
guest bio
Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer writer, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner living in Santa Fe, NM. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, a radical mental health support network and media project by and for people living with the dangerous gifts that our society commonly labels as "mental illness," and the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty. In 2012 Jacks was selected as a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland, was released by Deviant Type Press in March 2013. You can find out more about Jacks at http://redwingedjacksbird.net.
links
Jacks new poetry book Inbetweenland which you can buy here (Jacks reads Whether or Not You Fly and Lungseed on the podcast)
Icaruses Harm Reduction Guide To Coming off Psychiatric Drugs and Withdrawl (you can download the pdf free)
Icarus reader Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness
Icarus Project blog
Jacks' article on access intimacy
links to other badass projects that jacks talked about
Sins Invalid performance project and The Icarus Project interview with Sins Invalid
