In 1979-80 I was figuring out my sexual identity / sexual orientation. I was a music major at the time with very little formal sociology or psychology education. I’d read a bit of material about transsexuality, gay rights, feminist theory, and similar material but only as an omnivorous reader until I began seeking it out during this timeframe.
In Spring semester 1980, largely driven by my explorations not my major requirements, I took a biology dept course in human sexuality, an english dept course in creative writing: poetry, and started hanging out at a feminist coffeehouse across the street. I did a lot of writing, much of it at random times in the middle of the night when I’d wake up with an idea. This being an era before personal computers, I wrote in longhand — while people majoring in English probably would have had word processors or at least typewriters, as a music major I did not. I drew diagrams to illustrate some concepts. Then I xeroxed some of this and shared it with some students and some of my professors in hopes of getting some feedback about these ideas I was having. In the poetry class, which was a small class of only 15 people or thereabouts, I wrote some poems that the others pronounced disturbing but powerful, which were chock-full of sexual imagery, anger, hints at otherness and also hints at conjectures and assumptions and what it felt like to be GUESSED at and winked about. They said they found it moving and at the same time were reticent, almost nervous, about talking much about the poems I wrote, in contrast to the way they reviewed and critiqued other material. Like no one wanted to go there.
OUTSIDE the poetry class I was getting similar reactions to the xeroxed stuff with the diagrams and whatnot. They said it was interesting and thought-provoking but they were wary and often said things that implied that what I’d written was somehow dangerous. So I’m thinking it’s like seriously cutting edge, intrinsically controversial, right? You can see how my head could go that way, based on this, and how heady it was to think my ideas were explosive dynamite, change-the-world stuff?
MEANWHILE the poetry class announced a poetry reading at the feminist coffeehouse, feminist poetry by the director of the campus Rape Crisis Center. I went, of course. Lots of stuff about patriarchy and the polarization of male and female and violence towards women. Later, I went by her office with a copy of my material in hopes she would read it, but she was not in, so I asked another person there for a manila envelope and addressed it to her, put my info on the return, and put it in her wire IN basket mailbox. A lot of my writing went into the same territory, talking about male anger and violence and what it has to do with sex role and personality socialization, although I don’t think I knew those terms and instead invented my own or used longer descriptive phrases.
FINALLY, in the months prior to all this self-figuring-out season, I had occasionally been very upset and would go to the emergency room at the campus hospital across the street and say I really needed to talk to someone; they’d always accomodated me, never tried to lock me up or put me on pills, by the way, just listened mostly. But I knew some of them who were still on the MH staff there, and so I chose to take them a copy of my materials also. So here’s what happened:
a) The resident assistnant on my dorm floor was concerned because, having a single room unto myself, I’d pasted fragments of my writing I thought were profound to the outside of my dorm door. My sensibilities were totally 60s hippie-wannabe, but apparently the combo of that plus me being wild-eyed intense and — getting into the whole modality of “I have a head full of radical cutting-edge social ideas that might freak you out” — acting “ominous” when people talked to me in the hallway. He’d alerted the MH folks that he was concerned about me.
b) The Rape Crisis director, who did not know me, freaked out over the materials. Did I mention that I was not trained in socio terminologies? So the things I said were not encoded in buzzwords and politically familiar jargon. My subject matter was, as I said, wrapped up in part with male violence and anger. And men-versus-women issues. She thought it was a threat. She forwarded the materials to the MH folks.
c) Some of the professors that I had buttonholed and asked to read my handwritten materials (some of it originally jotted down impromptu on the back of syllabus sheeets & whatnot and therefore NOT written on college ruled paper or anything) had been wary and evasive about answering my follow-up questions not because they found my ideas so explosively radical that they weren’t willing to say how they felt, but because they didn’t understand it and were unaccustomed to very intense students handing them handwritten treatises. And yeah had forwarded the material to the MH folks.
d) With that much intensity and excitement in my own head, coupled with the reactions that had me believing this material was really HITTING people when they read it (I should mention that some people who read it expressed profound gratitude pertaining to what I’d written about this or that sub-element; so among the folks who acted negatively freaked out by it there were some who seemed quite elated)… it did get blown way out of proportion in my own head. I was starved for someone to talk to about the entirely of what was happening. Well, I got invited to go talk to the doctors across the street at the Univ hosptital; on arrival asked to sign a paper agreeing to receive mental health conseling. (“Oh that’s so funny… it’s like when you go to the regular doctor and you sign a release, yes the doctor is going to operate on my knee and I will perhaps have a scar etc… well these doctors TALK to you and so their release is that you agree that you and the doctor will talk to each other, hee hee”). They acted quite obviously and transparently concerned that I might be freaking crazy, which was OK, I was totally sure I was not and figured the sooner we got to really talking this material out the sooner they’d realize that. But no, as soon as I signed, they took me via van to another site (odd; but I was unworried) then upon arrival locked me up on the violent ward, took my shoelaces and belt, and when I asked WTF said well this is Friday and doctor is gone for the day, you will first see the doctor on Monday. Well fuck that I’ve got other things to do. NO sir, you committed yourself (I did WHAT???) and you aren’t going anywhere except with the doctor’s approval.
It took awhile but the ideas that got me locked up went into print in October 1992, at which point I was a grad student of sociology, having done my BA in Women’s Studies. Got reprinted twice after that, too 
Article itself is available on my own web site.