Health, Psychiatric Industry

A sad anniversary

Four years ago at around this time I was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Saint Luc Hospital in downtown Montreal. Every anniversary that comes around involves a lot of mixed feelings in me. The nice part is realizing I’ve spent four years since then outside of any institutional settings, even though I was told that I would probably have to go back there three more times, or once a year for the rest of my life. Since being told to scale back expectations of what I could accomplish in my life, I’ve gone back to school and finished my BFA. I’ve written a feature screenplay. I’ve become involved in the Crazy Community. I’ve curated programs for queer film festivals. I’ve continued giving artist talks. I’ve made more videos which are being screened internationally. I have so often felt like giving up and giving in, but I keep trying. Sometimes I feel like I’m going nowhere, and then sometimes I feel everything is happening as it should.

The anniversary is hard though. It brings up a lot of feelings about how I was treated during my code red level of crazy. I think what has upset me the most about it is people demanding that I be grateful for being put in there. Sometimes when I try to talk about the abuse that happened there people just go “Ehn, I don’t want to hear about it,” and in the next breath will tell me some bizarre thing I did like try to drink hand cream, which I don’t remember at all. It’s embarrassing. I often wonder what it would be like for people to do that about other health issues, like making fun of a Poz person for the time they lost control of their bowels, or ridiculing an epileptic who has tonic clonic seizures.

The creepiest part of the anniversary is the knowledge that I could be forced to go through that again. I asked my Aunt once who was also hospitalized way back when she finally got over her hospitalization. She said it was just in the last year. That’s at least 30 years of healing. It does take a really long time to heal from psych wards, and that’s why I don’t think they are a good idea as they operate today. I think they should be abolished and a more humane system put into place, like one that involves temporary supervised housing in a residential area. They could still have nurses and orderlies, just make it more like a normal living situation. And those pdocs only ever breeze in for an hour of patient to doctor appointments anyway. Compounding someone’s mental health issues with an additional layer of PTSD is fucked up man. Also, if someone is upset ask them why, even if they are in a mental health crisis they can usually still explain what the trouble is.

I’ve written about what it’s like to be in a locked ward before, but I recently found an amazing description of it from Ballastexistenz’s blog which I think says it all.

In the meantime, this anniversary lasts until around about Valentines Day, so I’m going to be taking it easy (read: smoke more pot). I’m going to use this anniversary to contemplate on my feelings around it and try to come up with a way to do some more advanced healing on the subject. I don’t know any other people with diagnosed M.I.’s in Saskatoon except for family, but it’s different talking to someone outside the family about it. I do have a friend who hears things too though, so at least I have someone to chat with who understands where I’m coming from more than most. We can even laugh about weird things we’ve heard, or ask each other if there really is a noise. She’s pretty cool, it’s true it’s true. I just think she’s tremendous.

She’s also the one who gave me a shit load of health supplements to boost my immune system, which has gone to crap during all of 2006. It started with a two week flu where I actually wondered if I would die, and then after that any cold that came along I would get. ANYTHING. I’d be healthy for a week or two and something else would hit. The last year was pretty stressful, with a bad job, the death of my cousin Chris in an industrial accident, the fact that I was living in Saskatchewan after nine years in Vancouver, being in close proximity to family again (which I hate to say, are overly dramatic, we’re the Desperate Cuthands), on and on.

It was, as the Queen would say, Annus Horriblis. Anyway, right, so she gave me all these health supplements and I have to say they’re working. I’m taking vitamin C, oil of oregano, anti-viral liquidy stuff with Clinically Proven echinamide, multivitamins, and cod liver oil. She is probably the only person in the world who could actually compel me to take cod liver oil. She even made me eat a fish egg sushi roll, which if you know how fussy I am is a remarkable feat. She should get a medal, really. I’ve still picked up about three colds in the month I’ve been taking it, but they go away after a couple days and aren’t nearly so severe. So I’d say it’s working. But this morning I woke up with a sore throat again and got frustrated. So now I’ve added Reishi mushrooms to my regimine. Reishi is supposed to be like, the granddaddy of immune boosting supplements. It’s used in people with Lupus, cancer, and HIV, it’s just that good. So we’ll see what happens. I also have to start eating better, I flake when it comes to the fruits and veggies, and I could use some more legumes too. I’m still sort of worried I have an immune system related illness. I should see my doctor about that. I had my HIV test and sadly I haven’t had sex since, so I know it’s not HIV.

If I was still on the West Coast I know a Coast Salish person would probably chase me around trying to get me to eat Oolican grease to fix what ails me. And then I would have to eat it and make yummy faces so as not to offend. I’ve avoided the Oolican issue the entire time I was in BC, so I hope it doesn’t come up. Oolicans are sardine like fish which have a VERY strong taste, anyone who can eat Oolican grease is like, so brave. Even braver than the most hardcore SM bottom.

Oolican grease BDSM. Wow, that would be bizarre.

Aboriginals, Humour

NDN Humour

The CIA has an opening for an assassin.
After all the background checks, interviews & testing were done, there were 3 women finalists…
a Navajo, an Ojibway and a Mohawk.

For the final test, the CIA agent took the Navajo woman & handed her a gun…
“We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room you will find your husband sitting in a chair. Kill him.” The Navajo woman said, “You can’t be serious. I couldnever shoot my husband.” The agent said, “Then you’re not the right woman for this job. Take your husband and go home”

The second woman, an Ojibway, was given the same instruction. She took the gun & went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. Then she came out with tears in her eyes, “I tried, but I can’t kill my husband”. The agent said, “You don’t have what it takes. Take your husband and go home.”

Finally, it was the Mohawk woman’s turn. She was given the same instruction to kill her husband. She took the gun & went into the room. Shots were heard… one shot after the other. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet, the door opened slowly and there stood the Mohawk woman. She wiped the sweat from her brow….
“This gun is loaded with blanks!!” she said, “so I had to beat him to death with the chair.”

*****************

It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets and, when he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be.

To be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. Being a practical leader, he decided to seek advice from experts.

He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?” “It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,” the meteorologist responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again. “Is it still going to be a cold winter?” he asked.

“Yes,” the man again replied, “it’s going to be a very cold winter.

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later he called the National Weather Service again. “Are you absolutely sure that this winter is going to be very cold?” he asked for a third time.

“Absolutely,” the weatherman replied. “In fact, it’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever!”

“How can you be so sure?” the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, “The Indians are gathering wood like crazy.”

*************

The old man was on his deathbed. He had only hours to live when he suddenly smelled the scent of bannock wafting into his room.

Aaahhhh… He loved bannock more than anything else in the world.

With his last bit of energy, he pulled himself out of bed. Down the stairs and into the kitchen he went. There was his beloved wife, kneading the dough for a new batch. As he reached for one, he got smacked across the back of his hand with the wooden spoon his wife was holding.

“Leave them alone!” she said. “They’re for the funeral!”

***************

Indian Heaven

Three Indian women died and were brought before the Great Spirit for judgment. The Great Spirit said,”I will let you into paradise if the beliefs you lived by were proper. Tell me what you believed when you were alive.

“The Cree woman said, “I have always believed in the Grandfathers and the Generations, and that is how I lived my life.” “Fine,” said The Great Spirit. “You may enter paradise and sit beside me.”

What did you believe?” he asked of the Ojibway woman “I have always believed in Goodness, and I have tried to live my life in a good way.”
“Fine! You may also enter paradise and sit beside me.”

Then he turned to the third woman, a Mohawk. “And what do you believe?” The Mohawk woman said, “I believe you’re sitting in my chair!”

*****************************

An eccentric billionaire wanted a mural painted on his library wall, so he called in an artist. Describing what he wanted, the billionaire said, “I am a history buff, and I would like your interpretation of the last thing that went through Custer’s mind before he died. I am going out of town on business for a week, and when I return I expect to see it completed.

Upon his return, the billionaire went to the library to examine the finished work. To his surprise he found a painting of a cow with a halo. Surrounding this there were hundreds of Indians in various stages and different positions of making love. Furious he called the artist in.

“What the h*** is this??” screamed the billionaire.

“Why, that’s exactly what you asked for,” the artist said smugly.

“No! I didn’t ask for a mural of pornographic filth, I asked for a mural of the interpretation of Custer’s last thoughts!”

“And there you have it,” said the artist, “I call it ‘Holy cow, look at all those f***ing Indians.'”

*********************

A friend of mine who lives in Saskatoon called 911 the other day. The voice on the message answering said:

“If you’ve been assaulted by an ndn press 1”

“If you’ve been robbed by an ndn press 2”

“If you’ve been robbed and assaulted & don’t know who did it, PLEASE come down to the station and we will find the ndn that did it & we will have a detailed sketch of that individual!”

Disability Rights

I am not responsible for your discomfort

I am still thinking about the fact that we as a society are still more concerned about protecting the sensibilities of the non-disabled than the rights of the disabled.

Anyone with disabilities will have a whack of stories to tell you about fucked up encounters with the temporarily abled. My friend Preston, who is blind, had some really weird stories from when he went to Germany this summer. In the airport his cane was x-rayed no less than three times, and when he went to board the flight his cane was actually taken away. What did he do to protest? He deliberately walked into a wall. He sees shapes and light, so he knew it was there, but he’s a cheeky guy who isn’t afraid of confronting people with their own weird shit around his disability. When he was in Germany people kept buying him beers because they had never met a blind person before, most of them are kept out of sight of the general public. Sometimes even we forget how different his life is. Over the holidays my cuz and I dropped by his house one evening and all his lights were off. We weren’t sure anyone was home, but he was puttering around in there. None of his roommates were around, so he didn’t need the lights on.

And I also think of friends I’ve had who have been in wheelchairs and how people assume they can push them around without even asking if that’s what they need at that moment. A woman I mentored in video even had someone say “Aren’t you glad you brought your own chair” when she was at an event with limited seating.

Having an invisible disability is weird too, I can pass if I have to, and a lot of people with M.I.’s (mental illnesses) keep it extremely quiet so as not to deal with the stigma that comes along with it, believe me, everyone is always surrounded by people with mental illnesses, we’re a quarter of the population. But I’m not the kind of person who tries to make my life easier because of other’s prejudices. I’ve had so many stigmatized identities already that one more was like, “okay, I’ll take this fight on too, may as well.” If people ask me why I hate Montreal I’ll say because Montreal psych wards suck. If people ask why I was in the psych ward I’ll own up to the fact that I had a major manic psychotic episode. If people tell me I’m not really crazy because I’m too smart or I look normal or whatever I will emphatically assert that I do indeed have this particular disability.

I’m kind of in your face about my disability, because I think the more people see functioning “normal” people with mental illnesses, the less prejudiced they will be. And it’s true, we’re everywhere. CEO’s can have bipolar disorder, along with artists, writers, thinkers, teachers, high level politicians, PhD candidates and filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola.

And even though I’m functioning and can pass in daily life, I also think that people with more obvious M.I.’s should be treated with dignity just as well. Even if someone is having a conversation with you about being the Son of God and they’re blinking constantly doesn’t give you the right to laugh and make fun of them. Nor does it give you the right to permanently institutionalize them because they make others uncomfortable.

When I was first getting diagnosed my state of mind was explained as “excessive happiness” and that my being too happy “made other people uncomfortable.” Having my disability be explained in terms of it’s effect on others was probably why I bucked my diagnosis so much. Had I been told about what the symptoms of mania are and what was going on with my body and how bipolar disorder works, I probably would have had an easier time and I probably wouldn’t have tongued my meds so much. The fact was, however, that my own medical crisis was dramatically extrapolated into the way it was affecting the people around me and how that was my fault. The feelings others were having were worth more than the feelings I was having. I was making people uncomfortable. I was being a huge burden in terms of time people had to invest during my hospitalization. Having a legal aid lawyer to advocate for me so I could get into an english speaking hospital at the very least was considered an insignificant and ridiculous proposition, and a waste of $250.

And then there’s that creepy thing that happens when I out myself to temporarily able people. It’s as if a great relief washes over them because now I’m not a human, and now they assume I am intellectually diminished, and now whatever I have to say can be downplayed as me being “crazy.” It’s called being Othered, and it happens to people with disabilities all the time. There but for the Grace of God go I, how many times have we heard people say this?

Kay Redfield Jameson, a psychiatrist with bipolar disorder herself, has been asked if given the chance she would live without bipolar. I’m paraphrasing, but she said it best. “I would not be able to feel as deeply, to love as passionately.” She goes on to say that the accomplishments of those with mental illnesses have altered and formed our world so much that there may even be a benefit to having something like bipolar disorder, and to get rid of it might be of detriment to the world at large.

Even something as noble as spirituality and religion has been formed by persons with M.I.’s. This doesn’t make these thoughts or concepts less valid, rather it suggests people with M.I.’s may truly be accessing spiritual truths through what is too often pathologized completely as bizarre and meaningless behaviour. I am reminded of what Art Speigleman (creator of Maus) once said about his own psych ward experience and mental health crisis. A friend advised him “I know we’re all the same person, but you’re not supposed to tell anyone.” It’s very much the same for me. When I looked like I was at my craziest, when people assumed my brain was just no longer there, I was on the most profound journey to spiritual awakening than I have ever had before or since. I still carry those truths with me even now.

And what do we know? Ashley might be having the most profound journey to an understanding of the universe than we could ever hope to comprehend. Not all knowledge can be transmitted in terms of language or art or books. Sometimes it really is as simple as seeing a Buddhist teacher demonstrate a zen understanding by turning a flower.

Not only that, but as the technology develops so does the ability for people to communicate who otherwise haven’t been able to. A friend of mine who worked a great deal with special needs people said the first thing and the most important to teach was a no command. And it is important. We can ask Sky was she needs or wants and she’ll shake her head until we get to the real thing she’s been after. We can ask her if she has to go to the bathroom and she can say no. I wonder if Ashley’s parents have taken the time to figure out a no signal for Ashley to use, and even more than that, how they could possibly convey what their intentions were so that she could say no or not. And just because she can’t say no, doesn’t mean it’s okay to go ahead.

Which is really what it comes down to. How can we get to a point where when a disabled person says no, that will be respected? Even my disability involves times when my utterance of No is disregarded. Making sure I’m cared for the way I want involves living wills and Ulysses Clauses, and even then the psychiatric system disregards these.

Disability Rights

Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses

It’s interesting how a step like sterilization on the basis of disability can have so many more repercussions socially. If you start medically interfering with the most vulnerable in society, it opens all kinds of doors. I’m not going to write much myself in this post, but I did want to post some excerpts from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“The forced sterilizations began in January 1934, and altogether an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people were sterilized under the law. A diagnosis of “feeblemindedness” provided the grounds in the majority of cases, followed by schizophrenia and epilepsy. The usual method of sterilization was vasectomy and ligation of ovarian tubes of women. Irradiation (x-rays or radium) was used in a small number of cases. Several thousand people died as a result of the operations, women disproportionately because of the greater risks of tubal ligation.

“Forced sterilization in Germany was the forerunner of the systematic killing of the mentally ill and the handicapped. In October 1939, Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a “mercy death” to “patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health.” The intent of the so called “euthanasia” program, however, was not to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill. The Nazi regime used the term as a euphemism: its aim was to exterminate the mentally ill and the handicapped, thus “cleansing” the “Aryan” race of persons considered genetically defective and a financial burden to society.

“Fearful of public reaction, the Nazi regime never proposed a formal “euthanasia” law. Unlike the forced sterilizations, the killing of patients in mental asylums and other institutions was carried out in secrecy. The code name was “Operation T4,” a reference to Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the Berlin Chancellery offices where the program was headquartered.

“Hitler ordered a halt to Operation T-4 on August 24, 1941. Gas chambers from some of the “euthanasia” killing centers were dismantled and shipped to extermination camps in occupied Poland. In late 1941 and 1942, they were rebuilt and used for the “final solution to the Jewish question.” Similarly redeployed from T-4 were future extermination camp commandants Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl, Franz Reichleitner, the doctor Irmfried Eberl, as well as about 100 others – doctors, male nurses, and clerks, who applied their skills in Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.

“In all, between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally and physically handicapped persons were murdered from 1939 to 1945 under the T-4 and other “euthanasia” programs. The magnitude of these crimes and the extent to which they prefigured the “Final Solution” continue to be studied. Further, in an age of genetic engineering and renewed controversy over mercy killings of the incurably ill, ethical and moral issues of concern to physicians, scientists, and lay persons alike remain vital.”

For further reading check out The Origins Of Nazi Genocide by Henry Friedlander. Here’s the blurb from USSHMM’s site.

“In chilling detail, The Origins of Nazi Genocide traces the mass exterminations of Jews and other victim groups back to the first secretive murder of a handicapped child in a state-run euthanasia clinic. With little popular opposition, the killing of the handicapped evolved into the Final Solution, the methods of euthanasia foreshadowing the extermination of millions. “

***Additional***
I am tired of making newer and newer posts, so I’ll just add this on. At dinner we were talking about the long term ramifications of the “Ashley Treatment” on Ashley X herself. Having investigated the possibility of hormone treatment related to my own trans issues, I know that a large dose of hormones over a period of time has a risk of causing cancer. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly that’s for sure. Not only that, but removing breast tissue is not a guarantee against breast cancer. In fact, not having breast tissue means tumors can grow in places that are very difficult to remove. As much as I think about this, I can not say that any part of this treatment benefits Ashley.

Emily Carr, Ex Girlfriends, Filmmaking

Digital Blehs of the Afternoon

Editing is my favorite part of making films and videos. I even like old school editing with actual strips of 16mm workprint, and destructive linear 3//4″ to 3/4″ editing. But for most of my career we’ve had fancy computer editing programs. I remember when they first came out video art went through an awkward phase of computer editing overload. Every effect possible was used, to the point where a serious look at race or class could be upstaged by a constant fly in transition to another interview subject. I mostly avoided that phase, primarily because I was broke and taking advantage of the fact that the last few linear editing suites were dirt cheap. Generation loss be damned, I was making a 5 minute video for roughly $80.

But I really do like the way editing has changed with technology. When the technology works it’s a pretty intuitive process. There’s a lot more freedom. People compare it to the leap between typewriters and word processors.

That being said, ten hours of editing inevitably involves two hours of troubleshooting and two hours of rendering. If you’re really good it might be a smaller ratio, but you will always always have to spend some of your time tinkering around with settings and so forth. If you want a predictable workhorse, old school editing is where it’s at.

But I kind of like the inevitable problems. It’s like a puzzle.

Unless you have a deadline in four hours and are beginning to suspect a process circle is just an “ahhhh! I don’t know what to do with the program!” circle.

I’m transcoding some video, and when I read the manual for the program I’m using it said something along the lines of “Don’t be surprised for this process to take a day or more depending on your computer.”

It’s like rendering.

Rendering takes a really really really long time. Or it used to, I don’t know if it’s better now. I used to set my video to render and then walk away for an hour and drink coffee and smoke with my film school pals, and the ever suffering intermedia students.

Intermedia students had the shittiest program at Emily Carr. It was a grand idea, but since they never had priority for various media classes they ended up not being able to learn a lot of things, like 16mm film. I remember an ex-girlfriend of mine used to try to compensate for being in crap Intermedia by signing in for twice the allowed number of editing hours by using the name Maya Deren.

She was nervy, that’s for sure. She did it for two years before anyone noticed. How an art school can overlook Maya Deren using the editing suites is beyond me. You practically get assaulted with a print of Meshes of the Afternoon as soon as you walk into the film department. The second film print they whack you with is Un Chien Andalou, which has some creepy misogyny in it and I still get grossed out with the razor and the eye scene.

My friend Elaine and I were having a beer once and talking about film and she said “I know we’re supposed to like Peter Greenaway and oh, he’s so amazing blah blah blah, but he is FUCKED UP about women, it is so creepy! Why do we have to like this guy?” I love Elaine.

It has been two hours and only seven minutes of video have been rendered.

Well, I think I’m nearing the end of this video process, so I should go do other computery things to it. Here’s scenes from Meshes of The Afternoon and other Maya Deren clips set to Aphex Twin care of YouTube.

Humour

1 minute 5 second Respite from Ashley X Debate

If you’re like me you’ve been jumping from comment thread to comment thread defending the integrity of intellectually and physically disabled people against shockingly hateful invectives and ignorant assumptions. It’s wearing me out, but I’m happy to be finding the bloggers I’ve found, obviously I need to update my links. And what the hell!? Some otherwise forward thinking blogs have totally ignored this, like Feministing. Anyway, here’s a little over a minute of respite with my current favorite reimagining of a Disney Film, Mary Poppins.

Scary Mary by Chris Rule, with the premise of Mary Poppins as a horror film. Enjoy.

Bipolar, Psych Service Dog, TLE

An update on Mister

Mister is starting to get over his barking since we got The Collar. He’s doing really well so he doesn’t wear it much, pretty soon he won’t wear it at all. He definitely doesn’t bark for five minutes on end anymore. And not being so barky is improving his social skills, he used to just skuttle under the couch and now he’s actually walking up to visitors and being cute. The trainer said it would probably take a year to get him over his shyness, so that’s the number one thing I’m working on before he goes into more advanced out in the world service dog work.

For people who haven’t heard about Mister, he’s a long haired mini dachshund who I’m training to be a psychiatric service dog. I haven’t trained him to remind me to take medication, but that’s on the list. He’s trained to wake me up in the morning, and he’s really good at it. I have a hard time waking up because of medications and I can often be really crabby too, but being woken up by a happy silly little dog is a pretty decent way to start the day. He helps discern hallucinations in a totally unobtrusive manner, because he is very alert to sudden noises. And most of my hallucinations are random noises more than voices. He also calms me down really well, especially if I’m upset or scared by something. And if he knows something is really really wrong with me he’ll lick my face until I’m responding in a more even way. If I do have TLE like I’m pretty sure I do, then he’ll also be able to alert me to oncoming tonic clonic seizures (grand mals they used to be called). I usually have completely different seizures, but I’ve had a couple tonic clonic seizures in my life and I probably have some more coming.

He’s so smart, but he’s a brat and he knows how to get away with stuff. He’s come out of his shell since we got him, so I’m letting him have a little leeway to get silliness out of his system. Even when he is a fully trained service dog, he’s still going to spend a lot of his time being a regular dog anyway. He might end up being an emotional support animal who can aid in a few ways, but I really am sure he’s smart enough to get more training. The other night I found out he knows the command for roll over! If you’ve never seen a dachshund roll over on command you don’t know what you’re missing. He was raised to be a show dog, so he does take to training and there are a lot of things he knows that he doesn’t tell me.

Even if his training doesn’t advance any farther, he’s still made the biggest difference in my life since my diagnosis, even more than medication. I’m pretty lucky to have him, he’s a good boy.

Disability Rights

Oh now I’m really mad!

I’ve been surfing by some blogs about Ashley X and the ethics around it and holy shit! Some really good stuff from other disability rights folks and similarly educated and aware people (Gimp Parade, Planet of the Blind, Definition – A Feminist Weblog, Did I Miss Something) and a hell of a lot of outright hatred towards the intellectually disabled from a lot of people in surprising places.

I like to pretend for long stretches of time that people don’t hate folks like my sister, but they do. And as much as it hurts, as fucked up and downright evil as it is, there isn’t a lot I feel like I can do. I have been as close as you can be to someone with an IQ of 23 for 28 years, and I know that she is completely and fully human, like all of us. She has feelings, she has memories, she has preferences around movies and clothes and foods. She even has crushes. She went through a horror movie phase when she was fifteen like any other teenager. She has a personality, she’s funny and she will let you know when she thinks you should just fuck off and leave her alone.

But since she can’t communicate like you or I, she can’t jump on the web, start her own blog, and tell people that this case is a malevolent step towards eugenics.

It also says a lot about disability and sexuality.

I also have a brain related disability, I’ve got bipolar disorder. It’s a disability, and I’ve had it forever, and I’ve compensated and found ways to manage it. If my hunch is correct and people still equal mental illness with mental retardation, then I imagine a lot of people would think “Dear god, if I had to live like you I would kill myself!” And yeah, finding out for sure I have manic depression was harsh, and I did think about suicide, but for some really specific reasons, mostly involving the treatment of people with my particular disability. But really, I’ve never known any other way of life. Emotional extremes and voices and a host of other symptoms are just part of my routine, just like taking morning medication and evening medication and having my blood levels checked have become part of my routine.

I think having normalcy as much as possible is important for people with disabilities. I have trouble with large crowds, but I still need to go to grocery stores so I go at hours when the crowd is thinner. I will never be able to go to Superstore for groceries, but then I don’t really think a gargantuan store like Superstore is normal anyway. I know for my sister anything that happened in her life that was a normal part of growing up and aging was really important to her. When she got her period and I was still a teenybopper, she was very smug because finally she had beaten me to one of the milestones of female life. She was very aware of what other people her own age were doing. And like I said in an earlier post, she does very much have a sexuality. And that is completely normal to any person, and something she is completely entitled to. So what if someone else is not going to benefit or participate in her sexuality, it is still valid to her life, and it still has meaning for her.

My own experience with being disabled and still a shamelessly sexual person is from when I was in the hospital. There were a lot of things going on in the interactions between myself and the staff, related to gender, queerness and race, but the creepiest by far was the treatment of my sexuality. Any romantic or sexual feelings I had were fodder for appointments with my pdoc, and being humiliated over and over under the name of psychiatric care for having crushes was pretty demoralizing. I wasn’t running down the halls masturbating, I was just giggling about cute girls.

The impacts of psychiatry on sexuality doesn’t stop there though. Most psych drugs also have a “side effect” of eliminating libido and/or the ability to achieve an orgasm. It’s called a side effect, but some in the anti-psych movement say it’s a deliberately created symptom. One drug I was on wouldn’t let me have an orgasm for about eight months, which was so unbelievably frustrating. Of course going to the doctor to complain about this wouldn’t do anything, because I was making “progress” in other areas, like not uncontrollably crying in a phone booth.

A few decades ago I probably would also have undergone an unwanted hysterectomy. In another time period I could also have been at risk of a clitorectomy in case having sexual sensation was adding to my psychiatric condition. In other times I would be murdered by the government. My aunt went through memory erasing ECT in the 60’s. And in contemporary times if I act in an unusual fashion I’m at risk of having to spend between 72 hours to 30 days in a psych ward under very strict conditions until other people decide that I am normal again. I had a friend in the hospital who was on so many medications he was unable to ejaculate, and it was one of the things that upset him the most.

People don’t like the idea of disabled folks having sexuality. It creeps them out for some reason. I remember one time in Life Drawing class at Emily Carr we had a model who was a quadraplegic come in. The professor chose him so we would be able to draw people with different body types. He was talking to us about his life as a disabled guy and she was fine with that, until he said we could ask him how he has sex, which made her really uncomfortable and she asked him to just be quiet and let us draw him. It was really strange. Anything else about his life was fine for discussion, but having sex was certainly not.

One more thing I’ve been thinking about the Ashley issue is this: all of those surgeries are pretty hardcore. Removing a uterus itself is a major surgery, and takes a year to recover from. From my experience with my sister, I know she has a terrible fear of doctors and hospitals. She gets so upset and even getting her teeth cleaned and fixed involves putting her under general anesthetic. I know there’s a possibility that someday she might have to undergo some kind of surgery, but based on her fear of hospitals and the fact that a major surgery would make her really unhappy and traumatized for a long time while she recovers means our family would only put her through that if medically necessary. I hate to think of what Ashley would have been feeling going through a breast removal, hysterectomy, and appendectomy.

The fact that these surgeries target her sexuality specifically also makes me wonder a few things. They say that they’re afraid of her being raped. Well, rape is a violent act directed towards someone’s sexual self. Given that definition, how can we honestly say that these surgeries are not a form of rape?

One thing Ashley had in her life that was like the rest of us was the ability to grow up into a physically adult woman’s body. And now she doesn’t even have that. And people are celebrating, even though it’s given her an entire new layer of disability to deal with. Her parents have known her for nine years. Who she is today isn’t going to be who she is 10 years from now, and like someone else said somewhere, it horrifies me to think that one day she’ll realize her parents kept her from ever being able to look like an adult.

Art, Same sex Marriage

I heard . . .

I don’t often get good gossip (I lie, I’m quiet and I get good gossip all the time) but I hear a reputable rumour that Annie Sprinkle is getting legally married within the week in a prairie city. I wanted to go see it, but I don’t have a car, or money for a bus ticket, or even the time to leave some work I’m doing. I wanted to actually meet her without running away.

And now the source of the rumour who is probably reading this is kicking my ass and yelling “Shut up Thirza!”

Hey, it isn’t secret after all! Here’s the scoop:

Annie Sprinkle & Elizabeth Stephens • Yellow Wedding #3: Courage & Power

That’s right: It’s a wedding AND a performance. Members of the Harper Cabinet are especially welcome.

Ex-porn star, sexologist and performance artist Annie Sprinkle, and sexy dyke playboy, experimental artist and professor Elizabeth Stephens are madly in love. They have vowed to have a wedding every year for seven years, partly in protest against the anti-gay marriage movement. This, the third wedding in the series, and the first in Canada, takes advantage of our laws to legally bind the two blushing brides. Be a bridesmaid, groomsman, tranny ring bearer or do your special wedding thing. Or just enjoy the show.

Politics

Saddam’s Snuff Film

Okay, I’ve finally gathered my thoughts about this whole turn for the worst which has happened with Iraq. As soon as I found out they were going to execute Saddam, I just thought “Oh fuck, that is a REALLY bad idea.” My other friends concurred, it was really just like watching a car crash in slow motion. Don’t do it, don’t do it, aw fuck, you went and did it! Even my tattoo artist and I talked about what a bad idea it was. I forget where I read it, but someone even said George W. Bush was so incompetent he ended up making Saddam look sympathetic.

Now up here in Canada we’re just looking around at each other blinking and sighing and agreeing that the next year in Iraq is going to make the last four put together look like a cake walk. Not only that but now Bush is instigating a troop surge, which was what happened in Viet Nam to kick off the most massive American death toll and ended up with them losing the war anyway.

Because really, that war is so unwinnable. (Unwinnable isn’t a real word but I’ll use it anyway). Once the fighters change from soldiers to civilians it’s pretty much over.

And besides that, this whole thing smacks very much of the pot calling the kettle black. American and UN sanctions against Iraq killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did, and adding the death toll from the current war seals the deal. Of course a number of Iraqi’s have turned Saddam into a martyr, a hero. He held their country together even when 5000 kids died a month from malnutrition and lack of medicine.

Ever since he came out of that hole and through all the indignities and violations of the Geneva code he was put through by the Americans, he was fuckin’ dignified. I wouldn’t believe it either, but woah, he handled himself really well, he was securing his role as a martyr even as his captors jeered at him. I think he knew he was going to die, any time a judge felt sympathies towards his case they got fired. It was a pretend trial and had nothing to do with an international court of justice.

As soon as I found out they were executing Saddam in a matter of hours, I looked up the Eid holiday. Eid is the celebration after Ramadan, a time for thankfulness, forgiveness, happiness, a lot like Christmas, but without the Christ. It’s a really important holiday to Muslim people and hanging him at the beginning of it was a clear Fuck You to Islam. Shiites were celebrating, but the rest of Iraq was appalled. And now Saddam’s not just a martyr to Iraqis, he’s a martyr to Arabs in a lot of other Middle Eastern countries.

Having his execution posted on YouTube and other assorted online sites was just, oh man, ANOTHER really bad idea. That pushed it over the edge for people. Political snuff films are still snuff films. Even the footage of the twin towers was a snuff film. And the way he died, the floor dropping while he was in mid prayer, that was really affecting stuff. It was like the end of Dancer in the Dark, only it wasn’t Bjork, and Catherine DeNeuve didn’t have a cell phone.

If we had a better, more human Prime Minister who actually reflected the feelings of his people, Canada would be vociferously condemning the execution. I haven’t talked to a single Canadian yet who thinks it was okay.

It’s sad, because 9/11 was the most amazing opportunity for America and the rest of the world to sort out why bad feelings are directed at the US. Internationally people were shocked and saddened as much as Americans, but also with this feeling of “Well, yeah, we do hate you, and we have a lot of reasons.” We sympathized. We understood. America could have completely changed it’s foreign policy, things could have been really amazing, and a lot of nation to nation hostilities could have ended.

But you know, America as we know it was founded on genocide and has stuck to those guiding principles for most of it’s existence.

Canada is also founded on genocide. A lot of countries are. Canada still blatantly practices genocide towards it’s First Nations people, and we still have armed skirmishes, although I’m not sure that comes out in the news often.

Either way, mostly I feel like I’m just watching this fucked up bloody gory horror film that may never end. I know the new spin is that the Iraqi government made the decision to hang him, but all of that process was controlled by the American government and everyone knew it.

Bleh, I feel like writing about something else now. The tattoos are getting all flaky and scaly now, I don’t much like this short phase. I feel itchy and sore and I can’t do anything about it.