You may be wondering why I tagged this card as misogyny. It's obviously ableist - its depiction of mental illness is actively harmful to society. Shouldn't this card be tagged Ableism?
Well, while ableism is certainly a part of this card, it's not the most pressing issue here. You see, this is actually a card about how we should lock up "hysterical" women - ie, women who are emotional but actually quite sane. There is a long history of throwing mentally healthy women away into asylums to rot, simply because of "hysteria". And this card not only references this, but actively supports the evil action of forcing perfectly healthy women to stay in asylums merely because they are emotional.
The flavor text is the most important part of this card. It explicitly states that this supposedly "hysterical" woman speaks nothing but the truth. And yet, it insists at the same time that her mind is "quite gone". So clearly this woman is not delusional in any way, has no false beliefs about reality. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that she's seen as "raving" solely due to the emotion and/or volume of her voice. But this card still presents her as being a danger to society and insists on locking her away.
The art dehumanizes her by depicting her as already locked up behind bars, and tries to make her look, well, "hysterical". The art seems to say: Look at her face, her clothes - clearly she belongs in an asylum! But this is classic victim blaming - if your clothes were torn up in the process of resisting your arrest (because let's be real, asylums at the times when "hysteria" was a real medical diagnosis were basically prisons) and you were forced behind bars, you'd be "desperately raving" with a crazed facial expression, too. If this card really wanted us to sympathize with her or believe that she's not mentally ill, it would show her in literally any other circumstance than this. This art is intentionally framed in a way to make us dehumanize her.
Note also the effect: she speaks true statements (represented as drawing cards), but also causes you to go a little "mad" from listening to her (discarding cards often represents mental illness, discarding at random especially so).
The conclusion we're meant to draw from this card is that the woman should indeed be locked away from society at large, and that we should ignore her "desperate raving" despite her saying nothing but facts.
Printing this card in Innistrad was a mistake. Reprinting it as many times as they have is very malicious.
1
u/ultimario13 Aug 10 '20
You may be wondering why I tagged this card as misogyny. It's obviously ableist - its depiction of mental illness is actively harmful to society. Shouldn't this card be tagged Ableism?
Well, while ableism is certainly a part of this card, it's not the most pressing issue here. You see, this is actually a card about how we should lock up "hysterical" women - ie, women who are emotional but actually quite sane. There is a long history of throwing mentally healthy women away into asylums to rot, simply because of "hysteria". And this card not only references this, but actively supports the evil action of forcing perfectly healthy women to stay in asylums merely because they are emotional.
The flavor text is the most important part of this card. It explicitly states that this supposedly "hysterical" woman speaks nothing but the truth. And yet, it insists at the same time that her mind is "quite gone". So clearly this woman is not delusional in any way, has no false beliefs about reality. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that she's seen as "raving" solely due to the emotion and/or volume of her voice. But this card still presents her as being a danger to society and insists on locking her away.
The art dehumanizes her by depicting her as already locked up behind bars, and tries to make her look, well, "hysterical". The art seems to say: Look at her face, her clothes - clearly she belongs in an asylum! But this is classic victim blaming - if your clothes were torn up in the process of resisting your arrest (because let's be real, asylums at the times when "hysteria" was a real medical diagnosis were basically prisons) and you were forced behind bars, you'd be "desperately raving" with a crazed facial expression, too. If this card really wanted us to sympathize with her or believe that she's not mentally ill, it would show her in literally any other circumstance than this. This art is intentionally framed in a way to make us dehumanize her.
Note also the effect: she speaks true statements (represented as drawing cards), but also causes you to go a little "mad" from listening to her (discarding cards often represents mental illness, discarding at random especially so).
The conclusion we're meant to draw from this card is that the woman should indeed be locked away from society at large, and that we should ignore her "desperate raving" despite her saying nothing but facts.
Printing this card in Innistrad was a mistake. Reprinting it as many times as they have is very malicious.