A note on the title: The Chinese internet expression duanshui dashi (端水大师), literally a "master of holding the water level," describes someone who carefully balances everyone's feelings, appearing fair and considerate and offending nobody. Here, putting down that balancing act means finally being able to voice our dissatisfaction without immediately adding "of course, there are good psychiatrists too" whenever we criticize psychiatry or institutional power.

Today I attended the survivor research network's August meeting.

There wasn't a particularly fixed theme. We introduced ourselves and talked about what had been on our minds. Someone was interested in the relationship between ADHD and early experiences of violence, including sexual violence. Others were concerned with the familiar questions of co-option and exploitation. So was I, of course.

I was pleased that people were interested in what I shared about emerging trends in qinlizhe research in China. There wasn't much time, so I only gave a brief account, but people quickly understood what I meant. I said that survivor, user, and consumer have very different meanings and demands behind them, yet in China they are now being lumped together. My sense is that some of the people presenting survivor research as a fashionable new field are, intentionally or otherwise, avoiding the commitments and purposes that distinguish it from other kinds of research. I said I'd come because I wanted to hear with my own ears and see with my own eyes what survivor research could be.

In an age when AI is gradually eroding barriers to information, I don't think we qinlizhe need knowledge middlemen to chew things up and feed them to us. Recently, a prominent podcaster was accused of repackaging and plagiarizing other people's work. I think unpaid translation undertaken to break down inequalities of access deserves respect. Many of us have benefited from volunteer subtitling and translation groups. But taking what other people have done, bringing it over, and treating it as your own glory, turning a field built through their hard work into your own academic authority: that's ridiculous.

We can go and find what matters to us ourselves. So I signed up for this event and actively joined survivor research and Mad Studies networks around the world, bringing these encounters into conversation with Chinese-language "qinlizhe research."

Co-option, exploitation, the erasure and appropriation of grassroots work: none of these are new subjects. After I briefly described what I'd been observing, several members told me that although they'd been walking this road many years before us, they were still fighting similar battles.

Someone described having their labour and ideas taken, without even getting their name on the work. Someone else said institutions and systems have always been good at absorbing this language. You come up with a word; they learn it. You offer a critique; they learn that too. Eventually, those words are beautifully packaged as evidence of how "progressive" they are. I'm not the only person who knows what it feels like to have things taken, used, and repackaged.

An older survivor, also a researcher, joked: "Wonderful, no psychiatrists here today." I found that both lovely and accurate. Finally, a space where we didn't have to look after their feelings first. Finally, no balancing act. So many supposedly "diverse," "participatory," "co-creative" settings still take professional presence for granted, and assume that qinlizhe will trim themselves to fit when they speak. The first thing qinlizhe learn isn't how to express themselves. It's how to appear safe, balanced, easy to work with.

If friends who work in psychiatry read this and feel puzzled or offended, I understand. But try another angle: workers complaining about work don't necessarily want the boss sitting beside them. Feminists talking together don't necessarily want men jumping in every time to say, "I'm not that kind of man." Sometimes people need somewhere they don't immediately have to manage the feelings of those in the more powerful position. And that space shouldn't depend on the generosity of an individual psychiatrist.

Look at me, balancing again.

I also noticed how directly several speakers said they weren't doing well. Someone said it was hard to string a few words together today. Someone else said that with ADHD, the chat messages and everything on screen were too much to keep up with. Immediately, someone replied: that's fine, you don't need to explain.

I don't want to turn these research networks and meetings into another idealized thing, as if they offer something entirely absent from everyday life. Quite a few qinlizhe communities I know in China have spaces like this of their own.

I also thought about other Mad Studies discussions I'd attended a few days before. A participant from North America said she was hesitant to call herself Mad, and even hesitant to identify as disabled. In some English-speaking contexts, disability is a broad category that can encompass mental health. Some people who are reluctant to disclose mental-health difficulties use disability more strategically. That differs somewhat from the Chinese context. This participant was struggling: she said the government was beginning to cut support for disabled people. Publicly identifying as disabled made her nervous; identifying as Mad felt riskier still.

I bring these moments up because the challenges and struggles facing qinlizhe in different places do have much in common with those in the Chinese-speaking world.

These conversations often end up in discouragement. Even people who have worked for decades, who have been involved in survivor movements since the last century, still feel it.

When can some things finally be said? Will saying them hurt the people we've struggled alongside? If compromise is a strategy, how long do we compromise before we can straighten our backs?

There are many questions I still can't answer. But I'll keep exploring.