The cheating language of equality

If you write about the mentally ill – people who suffer a short breakdown, maybe, or long periods of crippling stress – or say that those who must cope with autism, depression or schizophrenia all their lives are “handicapped”, you will be hammered. But not by the state and its supporters, or by members of the public with deep and prejudiced fears about mental illness.

You can say the health service is impoverishing care for the mentally ill because its administrators know they are an unpopular minority, who can be hit without a political cost. You can write about how the criminal justice system is imprisoning vast numbers of minor offenders whose sicknesses ought to be treated in hospital. No one in authority will mind as long as writers do not write so strikingly that they stir what public conscience there is. The preposterous truth is that the state and the judiciary do not need to police language.