You're crazy

An unfortunately easy way of silencing feminist speech is to insist that the speaker has some form of mental illness.  This tactic is heavily supported with instititionalized and systemic sexism.  Racial minorities are also disproportionately affected.

Feminist speech can be criticized as being disjointed or disorganized, symptoms of schizophrenia, even if the speech is perfectly coherent and logical.  Framing feminist speech as "insane" can involve using the following tactics:

• Simply refusing to recognize common elements of feminist discourse, such as structural oppression, patriarchy, or post-colonialism.  A person in a position of privilege, such as a male psychiatrist, can get away with being competely ignorant of feminist discourse and marginalize it by simply not acknowledging the themes and patterns that hold an argument together.  The argument then collapses and the speaker is labelled a "conspiracy theorist."
• Associating non-conformity with mental illness.  The memoir-turned-movie Girl, Interrupted touches upon this issue.  The movie protagonist was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.  This is a controversial diagnosis for women as it punishes them for being indecisive, thinking "negatively", or having an inconsistent sense of identity, something which women between two cultures experience, whether it be related to ethnicity or being a minority in geek culture.  (Note: The movie doesn't address these issues, but other themes related to the diagnosis like impulsivity and sexual activity.)
• When a feminist speaks of sexism, racism, or any other -ism, her speech is framed as paranoia or delusions of persecution.  Paranoia is a symptom of a variety of mental illnesses.
• Framing feminist anger as a symptom of a mood disorder.  Tone policing.
• Framing disagreement as argumentative and interpreting that as a necessarily negative trait.  Also tone policing.
• Trying to control when a joke is just a joke and when the speaker is being serious.  A listener that was once tone policing suddenly becomes tone deaf.
  • Dismissing a valid argument with, "You're not really serious, are you?"
  • Taking an obvious joke seriously as an attempt to challenge the speaker's sanity.
  • For example, jokes that rely on geek humour and artistic hobbies, such as having different "muses" or personalities, may be regarded with a high level of suspicion.
  • Making a joke about opening strangers' cupboards when couchsurfing and checking for potions may be seen as "treating life as a video game."
• Dismissing a feminist's criticisms of privilege by ignoring requests for a female psychiatrist or a psychiatrist of colour to replace a white male one.
• Treating feminist victims of cyber-bullying or stalking as overly paranoid and diagnosing them as schizophrenic as a systemic form of re-victimization.
• Framing mere questions, rather than statements, as paranoia, depending on the subject matter.  The feminist is deemed to be "too preoccupied" with certain themes just because she had the audacity to ask.
• Assuming the feminist to be in a state of fear or "hysterical" when she is perfectly calm.  This is deeply sexist, as hysteria was once thought to be the symptoms from a wandering womb.
• Using the feminist's very presence in the psychiatrist's office as an ad hominem to anything she says, even if she was coerced into being there.
  • For example, this may include people in her life dropping hints and veiled threats that she is in some sort of trouble and leaving a trail of clues that lead to a psychiatrist's office.  When she arrives to satisfy her curiosity, she isn't allowed to leave the mental health system and is treated as though she was concerned about her mental health.
• Expanding the definition of psychosis as an ad hominem attack.  This works like No true Scotsman but in reverse.  Each time the feminist states that she doesn't have the classic symptoms, the psychiatrist fishes for more information and tries to associate other things with mental illness.  Each time she debunks it, he fishes for other things, and the pattern continues.
  • She doesn't hear messages sent to her on the radio because she doesn't listen to the radio.
  • She doesn't hear voices in her head.
  • She doesn't see messages sent to her in the newspaper.  She prefers online feminist news instead anyway.
  • She takes great care of her personal appearance.
  • She might be a victim of stalking, cyber-bullying, sexism, and racism, though.  Oh?  Those are symptoms.
• Not allowing the feminist to finish her story.  For example, one psychiatrist comes into the room and the conversation is rushed before she is passed to another one.  They may all diagnose her with the same thing without having spoken to her for every long individually, so it is a situation of being out-numbered without much of a voice.  Naturally, she can't read their writing when they take down notes so she doesn't know what's really in her file.
• There is a cultural bias against inductive reasoning from a woman's perspective and experiences, while men's deductive reasoning is established as being logical and objective through peer review.  Even absurd stereotypes are sometimes defended as "having an element of truth" to them.  A marginalized person's inductive attempts at forming conclusions is shouted down with generalizations under the current power structure.  Cause and effect inferences are part of inductive reasoning, yet researchers have also recently linked cause-and-effect speech patterns to sociopathy.  Sociopaths are also said to be preoccupied with lower-level needs as opposed to higher ones, an association which may have an element of classism based on resources and financial need (See: Maslow's hierarchy of needs).
• Accusations of being a conspiracy theorist may also discourage the woman from speaking about possible attempts to harm her.  She may feel pressure to brush off close calls as accidents.  (This Wiki editor had a close call with a completely flooded scuba diving regulator during a beginner's diving lesson with a licensed PADI professional, and they really aren't supposed to do that according to many Google searches.)

Systemic issues

If a psychiatrist fails to permanently tie a feminist down to a diagnosis, he or she can resort to a few options.  She can be labeled "high-functioning" or "in remission."  The diagnosis is unlikely to be corrected as a misdiagnosis.  Since human beings lack the ability to travel back in time, she cannot challenge an "in remission" label, as a person in remission cannot be differentiated from misdiagnosed one in the present time.

The psychiatrist can also simply say that he believes his patient to have an illness and he just hasn't decided on which one.  When attempting to label has failed, he can simply try to take the high road and imply that he refuses to label someone on moral grounds.  However, a diagnosis of some mental illness must be made so that she can be "helped."  This is circular reasoning.

This also has some serious consequences:

• On paper, she has a history of mental illness that she cannot possibly challenge or revert, and this can be used as an ad hominem attack should she try and engage in activist activities.  This has a permanent silencing effect on any feminist speech she tries to make in the future.
• Many people are unwilling to make the distinction, when they think of mental illness, between the worst possible stereotype, and a political situation where a woman was misdiagnosed for seeing sexism or racism.  She can be easily portrayed as being violent, difficult to reason with, or emotionally unstable in a few sound bytes.
• Some sexual predators specifically target women in this situation because they are seen as less credible in court.  This is more problematic if she is conventionally physically attractive, a women of colour belonging to a fetishized racial group, or a presumed virgin for being asexual in sexual orientation.  (Asexuals are fighting to be recognized as having a sexual orientation rather than a mental illness.  See: Hypoactive sexual desire disorder.)
• A misdiagnosis in the past simply increases the risk of another misdiagnosis in the future.
• If a geek woman is rendered jobless or homeless due to political retaliation in the IT industry, people will look to her mental health history as a neat, succinct explanation and not investigate her career sabotage.
• People can easily plant or erase evidence as desired, and even if she notices, they can chalk it up to memory lapses or hallucinations.

Failure to reduce stigma of mental illness

Systemic oppression in the mental health system encourages misdiagnosed women to look upon the mental health system negatively because they had a negative experience associated with it.  It is only natural. 

Mental health practioners can frame that as denial.  They can also frame it as problematic and a step in the wrong direction when it comes to reducing stigma of mental illness.  This has a similar effect to You're the sexist.  This silences misdiagnosed women who challenge their misdiagnosis, even when they are also allies with people with mental illnesses because they can draw from similar experiences.  They are not saying that mental illness is bad - just the misdiagnosis of it.

A misdiagosed individual in a perceived state of remission may also be used as "proof" to how well the treatment worked, in order to justify repeating the same pattern on other women.

Medical malpractice can actually worsen stigma because it increases the number of people that will view mental illness as negative in a knee-jerk reaction.  It also cultivates a culture of distrust.  In time, incidents of misdiagnosis may be so common that culture shifts with it, and not in the way of being more accepting toward mental illnesses as frequently thought.  (Women are half the population, but sexism still exists.)  People may come to view even a misdiagnosis as a marker of some sort, and blame the victim for being misdiagnosed or too politically active.

Risks to geek women

Certain geek activities or traits can be linked to mental illnesses through an overzealous diagnosis:

• Spending a lot of time on the Internet is associated with depression, even when you're perfectly content doing whatever geeky thing that you're doing on your computer.
• Possessing a personality belonging to the Rationals quadrant of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator can be perceived as unfeminine and subject to inappropriate scrutiny.
• Not neatly fitting a racial stereotype may lead to implicit assumptions that there is something wrong with you.
• Players of violent video games are stereotyped unfairly in the media.  Female players of violent video games may be further scrutinized because they defy stereotypes.
• Geek women that write fanfiction containing violence may be scrutinized.  This may occur even though the series on which the fanfiction is based of contains violence, and the fanfiction is based off the official series.  Originators of violent work in the male-dominated video game and film industries are exempt from this scrutiny.  They would also not be suspected as potential copy-cats since they were the original authors.
• When people have the goal of discrediting them, geek women may be targeted for mental health evaluations if their lifestyles are too healthy or seen as straight-edge, conventionally positive.  Mental health status is a he-said-she-said situation if the psychiatrist is male.
• Geek women may be "night owls" or suffer from insomnia when they're up late passionately doing whatever they like to do, and this can be twisted into a symptom of a mental illness.
• Geek women can be accused of having poor social skills when it's simply harder for them to find other people that share their interests and experiences.  For example, there are a lot more Sensor-Judger personalities in the population than Rationals, and having great social skills should not be defined as being more talkative because there are more people around that you would personally prefer to talk to (See: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator).  A common symptom of mental illness is being withdrawn.
• Geek women of Asian descent can be stereotyped as academic perfectionists ready to "snap" at any moment under too much stress.
• There is an opportunity to interpret a complex personality as having multiple personalities for a Disassociative Personality Disorder diagnosis.  Frequent and annoying questions that test memory may be an indication that this is being tested, particularly if the woman does not pay attention to unimportant details.
• Any lengthy verbal delivery can be framed as a "rant," by virtue of being lengthy, provided that she is allowed to speak and not interrupted when speaking in person.  Being intelligent and passionate, geek women often have a lot to say.
• Consumers of science fiction and fantasy can be accused of "living in their own fantasy worlds" and being disconnected from reality.  It's like the geek version of Hollywood romance movies when women are as a group suspected of being "brainwashed" in an insulting manner.

Denial of Agency

A misdiagnosis of mental illness can restrict a woman's freedom in various ways.

• With the social stigma applied and in effect, the dialog can then be spun to make her solely responsible for her own mental health since she has even less power than before to change the world around her.  This leaves her with just the option of avoiding stressful and oppressive situations, which may not be always possible.  If her health fails for any reason, physical or mental, she is victim-blamed as not taking proper care of herself.
• She may be instructed not to travel abroad with the warning that members of the foreign police force may put her in jail if she has an episode of psychosis.  This would not make sense if all she did to gain the misdiagnosis was to complain about systemic sexism or racism in a deliberately calm voice in the hopes she would be released.
• She may be denied the opportunity to apply for certain jobs or to work in certain industries.
• She may be denied the opportunity to adopt children from certain countries.
• She may find it difficult to officially document incidents of sexism because her credibility is threatened.
• She may find it difficult to act as an ally for people with mental illnesses.

Extrovert forced into extreme introversion situation, or is it?

• For her personal safety, she may be forced to drastically alter her social life from having a few really close local friends to a greater number of friendly strangers spread over a great distance.  (She'll still have a social life but nobody close enough to take advantage of her predicament.  Most sexual assaults involve people you know.)
  • This method of adapting is not completely flawless, as it can be reframed as having "trust issues," another symptom of mental illness.
  • She may also be reframed as being "insane" for feeling safer abroad than in her own country, but there are many areas of the world where even in large cities, single female travellers are safer than in Western countries.  The power dynamic is also somewhat different between the offender and the victim when they are so far from their personal networks, and their behaviour subject to foreign laws.
  • Concern trolls can suggest she be "cured" by entering a sexual heterosexual relationship with a local man, even though she is perfectly capable of finding platonic companionship elsewhere.
  • One positive side effect of this is that she can feel less isolated and more engaged with the global community, and even spread awareness about injustices.
• She may find it difficult to retaliate against any sexual assault that does happen.

Nanotechnology

Culture and politics already make mental illness a complicated topic.  Then there's nanotechnology.  A woman previously diagnosed with a mental illness may find it challenging to approach a medical professional if she notices her body doing strange things.  Women have had a history of finding the medical community downplaying their symptoms, misdiagnosing them, or saying that their health problems are all in their heads.

Here are some examples of things that might make people suspect that something is in their bodies:

• Having far more energy than they should.  Waking up, eating a handful of grapes for breakfast, and going about the entire day on nothing but water.  The day consists of walking almost 14 hours non-stop in a big city they've never been to before, while performing mentally engaged activities such as reading maps, navigating subway systems, and trying to hit certain destinations at certain times.  The brain uses up a lot of energy, normally.
• Suddenly finding it difficult to think at inconvenient moments.  This is particularly bad for women trying to succeed in technical fields.
• Seeing a bloody nose suddenly stop bleeding.
• Noticing one's body giving off anxiety symptoms over things that one knows that don't bother them, ie. Profused sweating, cold feet, and elevated heartbeat over "phobias" they never had.  When you notice this, it all suddenly stops.
• Seeing tans or other signs of sun damage fade faster than they should.
• Sleep deprivation for five nights in a row all of a sudden.  Having insomnia at very inconvenient moments, such as after volunteering on a feminist Wiki.
• Temporary temptations to kiss people they're not attracted to.  This doesn't last, but the experience sure is puzzling.
• Random things you can't possibly refer to without people suspecting that you're insane, due to their associations to themes in science fiction.

The field of nanotechnology is another aspect to mental health that should arouse curiosity and debate in the future.  See also You know secrets.