DST 500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: The Bell Curve, Erving Goffman, Gender Dysphoria

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Disability Studies
• Course: DST 500
• Professor: Danielle Landry

Document Summary

Dst week 5 - labelling and mental illness. Mental illness/disorder or what is labelled as such is really social deviance form normative behavior. Deviant: one whose behavior differs from the norm. Comes from urgenics and iq testing (the goal of producing an average person/ desirably population. The idea of deviant is not stable, and changes as social norms do. Norms define deviancy, but in the act of identifying deviance, we simultaneously reinforce/create normalcy. Showing your underwear, talking with your mouth full, standing up to adults, not showering, not going to school, being lazy, talking to strangers, stealing, setting things on fire, Deviancy is particular to different cultures relationship between being deviant and the labels people taking on themselves. We work to uphold them but are not necessarily the natural order. Mental illness didn"t exist until humans came up with diagnosis and started applying it to others. Though distress is real, mental illness assigns it negative meaning and medical value.