Yearly Archives: 2010

Portly + Powerchair + Pedestrian = Panic

Ow. My head hurts.

And this is why.

Power chairs: older and fatter Americans are on the move – St. Petersburg Times:

“A man on a moped crashed into a man in an electric wheelchair the other night in the middle of Fourth Street. There on the front page of the paper was a police tape picture of one of those objects we see all over. The wheeled mobility industry calls it a power chair.

A what? A “power chair”? Wow, I’ve never heard of one of those before! Whatever could this “power chair” item be? What is it for? Should I be frightened? It’s something to do with teh fat, right? Cos there’s “fatter” up there in the headline.

They’re everywhere, it seems, dotting the downtown streetscape, a kind of ant trail from the condos to the Publix and back.

The temptation is to declare these are the new symbols of this city. Used to be folks sitting on green benches, God’s waiting room and whatnot, and now it’s folks sitting on … these.

Truth is, though, power chairs and mobility scooters are far from just a Florida phenomenon, and mishaps are not unusual.

WHAT? These … contraptions … are in places OTHER THAN FLORIDA too? SOMEbody really did just discover powered mobility devices for the first time. And they’re not happy.

[…] Electric mobility devices, or EMDs, are everywhere because of trends in geriatrics and bariatrics. Those are the portions of the health care industry that deal with old people and fat people.

This is America, getting bigger and older, fatter and grayer, rolling into the future.

[Snip prolooooooonged agonising – they’re not quite motorised vehicles, they’re not quite bipeds, what do we CALL them? How do we TREAT them? The sky is falling!]

They don’t need to be registered, after all, and they don’t have state plates. And what about the people in them? They don’t need a license. Does that make them pedestrians? They’re clearly not using their feet.

[More agonised whining. Did you know that now and again, old people drink alcohol? Shocking, I know.]

State law also says sidewalks are for pedestrians. No motors.

Hmm.

Reeeeally? Are you sure about that State law? Did you, say, look up what “pedestrian” means? Here’s a clue, from a the 2010 Florida Code, TITLE XXIII MOTOR VEHICLES, Chapter 316 STATE UNIFORM TRAFFIC CONTROL , 316.1995 “Driving upon sidewalk or bicycle path”, which I found with a 60-second Google search:

(1) Except as provided in s. 316.008 or s. 316.212(8), a person may not drive any vehicle other than by human power upon a bicycle path, sidewalk, or sidewalk area, except upon a permanent or duly authorized temporary driveway.

(2) A violation of this section is a noncriminal traffic infraction, punishable as a moving violation as provided in chapter 318.

(3) This section does not apply to motorized wheelchairs.

Section 3 is fairly recently clarified, but it’s clear from other law sites that motorized wheelchairs were considered pedestrians by custom before the clarification.

Now that that’s settled, back to the “older and fatter” article:

Continue reading Portly + Powerchair + Pedestrian = Panic

Recommended Reading for 10 December, 2010

Well, if it isn’t Friday again. I suppose it is for you, readers of the future, but I am writing this from Tuesday, in the past! Such is the power of the blog’s scheduling function.

Gentle reader, be cautioned: comments sections on mainstream media sites tend to not be safe and we here at FWD/Forward don’t necessarily endorse all the opinions in these pieces. Let’s jump right in, shall we?

An Actor Finds Truth & Power Negotiating her Vision Loss by Marilee Talkington guest posting at Brains of Minerva.

So I decided I wouldn’t tell the directors or anyone on the casting end that I was visually impaired. Which always felt like a betrayal. And I would show up as early as I needed to to re-write the entire script by hand in large print.  I hadn’t learned how to vocally advocate for myself yet in a way that didn’t feel angry or demanding, so at times I flat out lied. I remember calling an audition hotline once using a different name and asked if someone who was visually impaired could get the script ahead of time to memorize.  I was told that they couldn’t because it would pose an unfair advantage over the other actors.

Why CART in Government? by Martha Galindo at CCAC In Action:

1. Good government leads the way for all its citizens by setting best standards for equality and inclusion.

2. To reduce discriminatory gaps which now still exclude many able citizens (who happen to be deaf, deafened, or have a hearing loss, or who need quality text for many other good reasons) from regular and important government meetings, workshops, rallies, advisory committees, and public input to city, state, or federal bodies.

Lene Anderson at The Seated View: Disability Time

So there I am, sitting in the waiting room a full hour and half before my appointment and although I had a book, I was annoyed, so instead I started thinking about Disability Time. You don’t find it mentioned much in Google in the way it’s used in the disability world, but maybe some day, it’ll make its way into search engines. Disability Time refers to the way in which most things take much longer when you have a disability. There is personal Disability Time, as in it probably takes me double the time to make a cup of hot water in the microwave that it would you and then there is the Disability Time that’s imposed by others and there are a couple of those.

Donna Jodham: Out of sight out of mind

A few months ago I had a meeting with some officials of a financial institute to discuss making more financial planning services available to blind and sight impaired persons and at that time I raised the issue of making information available in alternate formats such as Braille, large print, and electronic text. To my chagrin but not to my surprise, the officials admitted that they had never thought of doing so. I also had a similar meeting with a major supermarket chain in Toronto to discuss making their weekly specials more available to their blind and sight impaired customers either online or through a phone service and again, I was told that this had not been thought of up until now.

Claudia Dreyfus for the New York Times: A conversation with Julian L. Seifter, Nephrologist and Patient. It’s an interesting interview with a physician, Dr. Julian Seifter, who just cowrote a book on living with chronic illness.

Q. Has being a patient helped you be a doctor?
A. I’ve certainly learned things I’ve brought back to the clinic. I have a retinopathy, for instance, which can be a complication of diabetes. I don’t have good vision in my right eye, as a result. When this first happened, I said to my ophthalmologist, “I can’t lose vision. I need to read.” And he said, “Any vision is better than no vision.”
That was important. I started thinking, “Concentrate on things you still can do and develop some new things.” I’ve since started gardening, which doesn’t require the most acute vision. It’s something I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. I counsel my patients to replace what they’ve lost with something new.

Send your links to recreading[@]disabledfeminists[.]com. Let us know if/how you want to be credited. And have yourself a fabulous weekend.

Howard Hyde Inquiry Ignores Ableism As Cause of Death

Note: This post discusses police violence against people with mental health conditions.

The results of the Hyde Inquiry were released on Wednesday.

Some things about the Hyde Inquiry, since I don’t think it’s been widely covered outside of Nova Scotia. I wrote this summary several months ago:

Howard Hyde had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The treatments he was on were making him sick, so he stopped taking them. He became violent.

His wife called the mobile mental health team – a project in Halifax that will go to you rather than you needing to go to them. She then called 9-1-1.

Two days later, he was dead in police custody, having been tasered.

Various things went horribly wrong. Among them were -and continue to be – the police’s inability to deal with people who have schizophrenia, amongst other mental health related conditions.

What they should have done was taken him to the hospital. Which they did, for a bit, and then left, returning him to lock-up.

His wife had tried to contact them and make sure that he was okay, and that they were aware that he had schizophrenia.

“I really wanted him to be in the hospital and get the treatment he needed for psychosis,” she said.

He had been taken to hospital for assessment, and the hospital staff requested that he be returned to the hospital after his arraignment hearing. He was not.

Parts of the surveillance tape of the tasering itself are “missing”.

“Hyde began struggling when officers tried to cut the string from his shorts. Though images were not caught on tape, surveillance audio recorded sound of the scuffle. Edwards can be heard saying “Howard, sit down.” Fellow Const. Greg McCormack is then argued to have said “You’re going to be doing the f***ing dance next, Howard,” although his voice is muffled.

It was also revealed that more than 30 minutes of footage of Hyde in a cell waiting to be booked has gone missing.”

I’ve since learned that what was actually said to Howard as the police officers approached him with a knife:

A surveillance camera captured the moment when an officer told Hyde a utility knife would be used to remove a knot from the drawstring in Hyde’s shorts, saying: “I just have to cut off one of those balls there.”

Anyway, as I said, the results were back. After 11 months of looking into the death of a man who police were called to help, we’ve all been told that Howard’s murder was an “accident” and it had nothing to do with his mental health condition.

“The only useful approach is to understand that Mr. Hyde died because of physiological changes in his body brought on by an intense struggle involving restraint,” Derrick wrote. “He did not die because he was mentally ill.”

I suppose this is technically correct. Howard’s death was not because he was mentally ill, his death was because the police were ill-equipped to deal with someone having a mental health crisis. I don’t have statistics about the number of men having mental health crises that are murdered by police officers every year, but I do know that I can’t go a whole month without at least one report, and it’s an issue that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada feels needs to be addressed.

I think it is naive to state that Howard wasn’t murdered because of his diagnosis. I think it ignores a frightening history of people with mental health conditions being murdered by police officers. I think it ignores that the criminal justice system is not equipped to effectively deal with people with mental health conditions. I think it ignores that there are limited resources available for people with mental health conditions and their families to get the help they need to cope with crisis situations.

I think it completely ignores the fact that Howard’s wife called the police for help, and two days later he was dead.

So yes, Howard Hyde isn’t dead because he had schizophrenia. He’s dead because ableism kills.

Recommended Reading for Thursday, December 8, 2010

I hate this time of year because I live in the Northern Hemisphere and it’s dark really early. At least we’ve been avoiding the snow-dumps I hear are all over central Canada, but it’s only a matter of time.

Civil Rights Now!: Civil Rights Now! speech at Dec10 CLAS Forum on UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

As my lawyer friends say there’s no right without a remedy; because most BC voters with disabilities cannot afford a good lawyer their rights have very little meaning because they have no way to enforce them. And that’s why our governments, Health Authorities, businesses, School Boards, service providers and unions can do anything to you if you are a voter with a disability.

That’s why Civil Rights Now! believes BC voters with disabilities need:

  • Law which gives the equality provision of the Canadian Charter practical force and effect in their daily lives.
  • Law which gives them truly-portable, sufficiently-funded, consumer-driven Individualized Funding.
  • Law which gives them funding for test cases involving their civil rights.
  • Civil Rights Now! launched a campaign this year to persuade BC politicians to commit that whichever of them wins the next election they will enact such laws. By so doing they will fulfill the intent of the Convention and, more importantly, the equality provision of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, many decades after it became the supreme law of our country.

Urocyon: Disability and UK fuel poverty

I felt pretty bad, because until I started reading about the extent of problems this winter, I hadn’t considered just how bad the situation is. (Bit of a shame this is another thing that it apparently takes larger numbers of middle-class people being affected to draw more news attention.) This is in spite of having dealt with parental disability-related poverty and substandard heating for years, in a colder-winter climate not moderated by the Gulf Stream. This isn’t the coldest month, but it’s supposed to be 10°F/-12°C tonight back home–not unusual. It honestly didn’t seem that cold to me, even though I was aware that last winter was the harshest in 30 years for the UK, and this one is looking to be if anything worse. (Climate change? No…) But, even though it isn’t very cold in absolute terms, if you’re not used to its getting, much less staying, below freezing very often? That’s a pretty big problem.

Then I started thinking about how disabled people just weren’t getting mentioned much.

Anna Racoon: The Orwellian Present – Never Mind the Future.

No, he can’t, he has no access to the Mental Heath Tribunal – Autism isn’t a mental illness. This action isn’t being taken under the Mental Health Act – it is being taken under the Mental Capacity Act. Under the MCA he only has access to a ‘Best Interests Assessor’ – who is appointed on a consultancy basis, and paid, by…..the Local Authority.

He can be deprived of his liberty for up to a year, which period can be renewed indefinitely, for the purpose of ‘assessing’ him – see above – being sent to Wales to ‘assess’ why he is unhappy at being locked up.

Sharon Brennan at Comment is Free: It’s now officially ‘unsustainable’ to support disabled people

Let’s be clear: this increased DLA caseload is not because of fraud. DLA has one of the lowest fraud rates of any benefits. In fact, government figures published by the House of Commons work and pensions committee suggest that benefit fraud for DLA, carer’s and attendance allowance among others has reduced since 2001 from 2.2% to 0.8% between 2008-2009 (the most recent year for which statistics are available).

Diary of an NHS Buff: The Government is implicated in creating negative attitudes to disabled

Clearly there is a negative perception of disabled people in the UK, which can undoubtedly be attributed in part to right-wing media representation of the disabled. The Daily Mail is notorious for this. A recent front page screamed, “75% of claimants are fit to work”, and carried on: “Tough new benefits test weed out the workshy”.

You expect this kind of thing from the Daily Mail. But what shocked me is that the 75% figure came from a press release from the Department of Work and Pensions. And the figure is wrong. So it amounts to blatant Government propaganda.

5 Ridiculous Big Pharma ads

I have an ongoing peeve that relates to medication and social attitudes surrounding it: often, for some people on various sides of the political spectrum, trashing Big Pharma translates into trashing people who use prescription medications at all, for a variety of health conditions — especially for chronic conditions, both of the mental health and physical varieties. As a woman with multiple disabilities — a few of which require me to be on medications manufactured by Big Pharma (OOOOOH, SCARY) — I am not, how shall I put it, too excited about this. It’s really nice that stereotypical Extremely Naive Hippie Liberals and Rugged, Anti-Government Bootstrapping Conservatives can, theoretically, bond over how much they mutually hate those of us who take medications for legitimate medical reasons — but even those of us who, normally, would like and/or encourage all of this talk about “building alliances across the [political] aisle” have limits.

In short, there are a lot of things for which you can take Big Pharma to task without also treating the people who depend on these medications like total shit. One of these things is advertising and direct-to-consumer marketing, at which Big Pharma seems to be really quite good! And by “good,” I mean totally ridiculous. Let’s take a look at five different ad campaigns that should never have left a pitch meeting, much less been made with gargantuan budgets, professional actors, and voice-overs that calmly inform the viewer/listener of possible side effects.

5. Cialis: Yes, the one with the make-out music in the background and the couple sitting side-by-side in the bathtubs out in a meadow or something. Why is it so difficult for these folks to find a tub big enough to fit them both?

4. Uloric: Granted, this one may not be as ridiculous as some of the others on this list, but the visual of a dude carrying around a giant beaker of green liquid (which looks suspiciously like it should be in some sort of fancy alcoholic drink that costs upwards of $7) is pretty bizarre, as is the voice-over that helpfully informs viewers that side-effects may include flare-ups of the very condition that Uloric is used to treat. This might be the entire point of the ad, though; since Uloric is a medication intended to help with Gout symptoms, wouldn’t it be more accurate to have the guy wear shoes to which giant beakers are attached? Perhaps we could see a live-action depiction of the 16th-century drawing included in the Wikipedia article on Gout, instead of a guy with a big beaker of neon-green energy drink? That would be awesome, and might get the Gout-is-horribly-painful-and-this-medication-could-help message across in a way that actually makes sense.

3. Lyrica: Every time I see this one, I want to yell at the TV, particularly when the one featuring the classy middle-aged lady who bakes bread has somehow made its hellish way into my precious rerun of Dirty Jobs or another show that I don’t like to admit to enjoying. The actress in this ad pronounces “Fibromyalgia” like it’s a seasonal root vegetable or something (like “FYE-bro-MY-al-GEE-AH”) and all I can do is give the television my most hateful death glare. Oh, and even better is when she says that “My doctor diagnosed it as FYE-bro-MY-al-GEE-AH muscle pain,” and I want to scream, “Lady, IF YOU KNEW what fibro was actually like, you would not be saying that. You would probably be in too much pain on some days to do very much.” Or baking loaves of crusty bread en masse, for that matter. As someone who’s dealt with fibro for the past few years of my life, I only wish I had enough energy to bake many loaves of bread, like the woman in this commercial. Sweet, delicious carbs might help my pain, or at least give me something to focus on other than constant pain and fatigue.

2. Cymbalta: My personal favorite moment is when a kid runs up to hug the woman (presumably a relative?) and the camera focuses on her face, and she just looks so sad that the explanation just has to be terrible acting (or depression, according to the good folks at Eli Lilly). Depression’s symptoms are much, much more complex than walking around looking like the emoticon for sadface [🙁], but you wouldn’t know it by watching this commercial. I think someone should make a parody of ads like this, except that some other person approaches the woman, tells her to “Snap out of it,” and then the woman gives that person the finger–or, more accurately, gives them the 😐 face, because that is what certain aspects of depression make you feel like doing. You’re not only sad all of the time, but often you feel too hopeless to respond to people’s asshattery when they feel the need to comment on your depression and/or tell you that you Just Need To Buck Up.

1. Viagra (“Viva Viagra” spot): Truly the stuff of nightmares. The first time I saw this ad, I was awake at 3 or 4 AM due to pain (go figure, right?) and thought I was hallucinating when the opening chords of “Viva Las Vegas” started up in the opening seconds of this ad. I was, at first, confused as to what that particular song had to do with a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction. And then four middle-aged dudes–one playing a guitar–appeared on the screen and started to sing “VIVA VIAGRA!” to the tune of a song that most people associate with Elvis Presley, or any buddy comedy that has some sort of drunken Vegas montage. If you’re sure that this one won’t give you nightmares, I urge you to find it on YouTube, because it must be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, it’s been replaced in recent months with 30 seconds of yet another middle-aged white dude driving a car around in the dark. The penis = car association makes more sense than hanging out with your best buds and singing about Viagra, I suppose, particularly if you know anything about psychoanalysis.

Readers, what are your least favorite Big Pharma ads, and why? Short descriptions (and links to videos, if you have them) can be helpful for people who may have not seen the ads; please include them, if possible, so that we may all share in the unintentional hilarity.

Recommended Reading for Wednesday, December 8, 2010

My hearing has finally recovered! Now I know why I was sleeping so much – I couldn’t hear all the construction starting up at 7 a.m. *sigh*

Arbitrary Constant: DLA reform consultation: Great Expectations, Word Apprehensions

The coalition government today published its consultation on the reform of Disability Living Allowance (DLA). The headline is that DLA is going to be replaced by a “Personal Independence Payment” (PIP) from 2013/14.

DLA has been in the news a considerable amount since the emergency budget in June this year, primarily because it has been the main disability-focused benefit the government has looked to cut. I’ve blogged quite a lot on the topic: see here, here and all posts here.

As such, today’s consultation on the reform of DLA is of huge significance and interest because it provides far more detail and intent of what is planned for DLA. Below, I summarise what I think are the key issues. (Via delicious you can keep track of other reactions via my tag DLAreform.)

Where’s the Benefit: DLA Consultation: The Internet Responds

Other disability blogs and websites have already done some great posts on this subject, and I wanted to draw attention to some of what is being said around the interwebz on the reform proposals.

Include Me!

This site has information and ideas on how to include Self Advocates in conferences. There is information for people organising conferences and for Self Advocates going to conferences. The site is written in easy English.

What is a Self Advocate?
A Self Advocate is a person with an intellectual disability or an acquired brain injury who speaks up for themselves and the rights of others.

Bobby Cox at Deaf Echo: Hearing Privilege

I’m sitting down with a close hearing friend. A relative of mine calls my friend and asks her to relay a message to me. My relative had JUST met my friend for the first time the day before, and my relative uses text messaging with me all the time, and there was no reason my relative couldn’t have simply texted me.

So, in the space of one day, my relative was already ‘using’ my new friend to communicate with me. My relative was taking advantage of her hearing status (and advantages) to confer on my hearing friend the privilege of communication while simultaneously weakening me. I was denied the responsibility and control of handling communication.

Victoria Knobloch: The Secret Truth about Depression (via beautyofgrey, via amethystfirefly)

I wish someone had told me.
I wish someone had told me that I had a disease. This disease has no cure. This disease can be fatal. I will fight this disease until the day I die. Some days will feel healthier than others, but this disease will never fully go away. This disease is a disability that very few people will consider to be legitimate. No one ever said these things to me. Instead they told me at 13 years-old that I was depressed and prescribed me medication I do not believe I will ever stop taking.

UK Pushes for Improved Web Accessibility

BS 8878 aims to fill the current gap between site owners and developers by providing a wider scope of information and recommendations, which can be applied before, during, and after the development phase.

This video is subtitled and is presented in ASL. Transcription follows:

Splash: Ontario Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf

Title: It Gets Better….

Hello, my name is Michelle Bourgeois, and I am the Vice President of the Ontario Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf (ORAD).

ORAD would like to share a very important message with you… Yes, life does get better!

Many Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer people have had awful expeirences with bullying and harassment.

Imagine, coming out can be quite an ordeal. Then on top of that, searching for people who share the same language as you do can be quite the challenge.

That’s why ORAD hosts social events – for people to come and be with others who share the same language and not feel alone.

We know life does get better. We want to let those of us who are having a tough time that oh, yes, life actually gets better.

We also want to send a message out to those who bully.

STOP.

This has gone on long enough. We will not go away because of you. We will not stand down because of you. We will perservere and think positive.

Because we KNOW life WILL get better. We need love, support, and unity.

Life. Get. Better.

ORAD is hosting a Halloween social this Friday night at 8 pm at Zelda’s restaurant, 692 Yonge Street, in Toronto.

Come. Join us. Enjoy time amongst friends. Come and see how life can indeed get bteter… 🙂

See you there.

It Gets Better.

Want more info on the Hallowen Social? Go to www.orad.ca or see us on Facebook.

info@orad.ca

QuickPress: The Carnival of Mental Health is Up!

I’ve been so behind in my reading this month that I missed entirely The Blog Carnival of Mental Health Issue 1: Diagnosis

Welcome to the first Blog Carnival of Mental Health. I’m a day late, but I’m going to share with you an interesting if small collection of posts. I must say that it’s rather ironic that I’m hosting a carnival on the theme of diagnosis barely a week after receiving a new diagnosis myself. Anyway, enjoy!

Astrid says that the next Carnival will be hosted at CBTish. You can read the Call for Contributions there. Deadline is December 30!

Recommended Reading for December 7, 2010

Cheryl at Finding my Way: On Privilege, Again

It was after this that the almost imperceptible freak out occurred. What am I going to do when it snows? How am I going to get food this winter? People / the county just don’t shovel sidewalks very well and it’s too far to roll in the street. At least you could get to the old grocery store by cutting through the mall and you’d barely be outside at all. It’s too cold for me to be outside that long in the winter. Cold hurts. Even in the daylight, in a few weeks it will be too cold. It’s 20-25min each way. I don’t want to take paratransit somewhere I could roll (absent snow). I don’t want to pay a cab to get somewhere I could roll. What a waste of money and time and aggravation.

CCA Captioning: WHY CART in Courts/justice

As I am awaiting a verdict in what would normally be an “average” vehicular manslaughter trial, I wanted to share the many interesting stumbling blocks that arose. The defendant in this five-day trial is profoundly hard of hearing. I was called in and hired by the Superior Court as a “realtime interpreter” to provide accessibility for the defendant during his trial. The official reporter proceeded with her duties, as it would be impossible to have done both, which I will explain later. I was fortunate to have a wonderful courthouse staff to work with in this small town of Cochise County in Bisbee, AZ, about 1.5 hours from my home in Tucson.

Gwen at Sociological Images: Regional variation in adults with diabetes, 2004-2008

Here’s a problem: neither the CDCP nor the Slate article specify. They say “adult diabetes,” meaning individuals over the age of 18 who are diagnosed with diabetes (so not necessarily adult onset diabetes). I think that would mean either Type 1 or Type 2.

Katie Zezima for the New York Times: Mental health cuts put police on the front line of care

Despite increased awareness, many officers, mental health workers and advocates for the mentally ill say that with fewer hospital beds and reduced outpatient services — especially at centers that treat the uninsured — many patients’ family members and friends, and even bystanders, are turning to the police as the first choice for help when a crisis occurs. Many states are feeling the brunt of cuts that started years ago but have gotten worse because of the economy.

Christina Fuoco-Karasinski at Soundspike: Charlotte Martin dances past “Needles” to a happy ending

“One day I remember doing a set of push ups, and something just snapped, and it went from numb to pain [in October 2009]. It was a really confusing, painful journey trying to figure out what exactly it was. You’d be surprised. There are a lot of doctors that didn’t know what it was. They really thought it was muscles or tendons. But I’ve got this burning shooting thing happening. It continued to get worse. It was really awful.”

It’s Only Wrong if You’re Sane: Pop Culture And Institutionalisation

Note: This post is going to discuss representations of psychiatric abuse in pop culture.

Have you ever watched a genre-show where the main character is one you know, for certain, is sane, because you’ve been watching them for a season and a half, and yet the episode opens with them being in an asylum, accused of heinous crimes, drugged up, and undergoing treatment they scream their way through? Whether it’s Will Riker of Star Trek: The Next Generation loudly insisting “I may be surrounded by insanity but I am not insane!”, Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgement Day screaming the truth at Dr. Silberman, or Priya Tsetsang/Sierra of Dollhouse describing the asylum as “hell, I’m in hell”, storylines of characters we identify with and know are sane are pretty common. And no matter what the purpose of the particular scene is, there’s one thing all of them have in common: What happens to the character is terrible because we, the audience, know they don’t deserve it. They’re a sane person stuck in an insane asylum, and that’s what makes it creepy.

I hate this plot.

Not because the shows or movies are poorly written: I am still a huge fan of ST:TNG, and Terminator 2 is still one of my favourite movies. I was not a fan of Dollhouse, but can see why many fans of the show were quite taken with Belonging. They’re also typically quite well acted, and even with my dislike of Dollhouse I gotta admit that Dichen Lachman was amazing as Sierra.

No, no, I hate this plot because there’s never any real attempt to discuss that what makes this plot work is the very frightening idea that what happens to these characters would be in someway okay if they were actually diagnosed with the mental health conditions they are accused of having.

Description follows
Image: Will Riker, out of uniform and scruffy looking, walks down the corridors of the Enterprise insisting he’s sane.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Frame of Mind”, the opening teaser is of Commander William T. Riker explaining to an off-screen interrogator that he’s not crazy, that he understands his actions, and that he’d like to now be released from the asylum. This scene is repeated throughout the episode, both as a scene from a play that Riker is performing with Commander Data, and as scenes from the actual asylum that Riker has been forced into by the antagonists of the episode, the hospital administrator on Tilonus IV.

Memory Alpha sums up the episode as “Riker thinks he is losing his mind when reality keeps shifting between an alien hospital and the Enterprise, where he is rehearsing a play.”

Throughout the episode we see scenes of Riker being taunted by the staff at the asylum. We also see a few other inmates, with the implication that these people, unlike Riker, are actually crazy, since one of them uses a spoon to attempt to contact Star Fleet. Finally, we see Riker strapped down, forced to undergo treatment that will permanently alter his personality and change him into a different person. In the end, he’s rescued by his shipmates. There’s some implication that the asylum may be shut down, but it’s not clear by the ending.

ST:TNG was pretty episodic, and only rarely touched directly on previous episodes. (This isn’t a criticism!) My issue isn’t really with the fact that the Enterprise may have warped away from an abusive asylum without a second thought, since that wasn’t really the point of the show. It’s just that this episode is pretty much predictable in how it plays out, and manages to reinforce the idea that yes, what happens to Riker is terrible, because Riker isn’t crazy.

I really enjoyed this episode when I first watched it, and thought it was very powerful. Since then, I’ve become a lot more aware of forceable institutionalization and the practice of forcing people into Electroshock Therapy against their will, and the episode is a lot less enjoyable.

More recently, of course, is Dollhouse and “Belonging”. I was actually asked to watch and review this episode when it first aired. I watched it with a few friends who weren’t familiar at all with Dollhouse and found the entire idea of the show – Wikipedia sums it up as “The show revolves around a corporation running numerous underground establishments (known as “Dollhouses”) across the globe which program individuals referred to as Actives (or Dolls) with temporary personalities and skills. Wealthy clients hire Actives from Dollhouses at great expense for various purposes” – very very creepy. I ultimately ended up not reviewing it because the episode left me so angry and drained that all I wanted to type was “arg arg arg arg I hate you show I hate you”.

I have some distance from that now.

Description follows
Image: Topher and Sierra from Dollhouse. Topher is dressed in “regular” clothes, while Sierra is in a hospital gown, her hair disheveled, and obviously quite distressed.

In this episode, it’s revealed to the audience that Sierra was sent to the Dollhouse to become an active because she was diagnosed with a mental health condition. Topher describes it to another character, Boyd, as “I helped Sierra, you know. She was a paranoid schizophrenic, psychotic. I helped her.” This idea of having “helped” Sierra is very important to Topher’s sense of self. When it’s later revealed that Sierra wasn’t actually psychotic, but had been drugged to the point of appearing that way, that’s when Topher suddenly believes that tying her down to a chair and forcing her to undergo painful treatment that she kicked and fought against might have been a bad idea. Because doing that to an actual crazy person is okay, but doing it to a sane person is wrong.

As I said, I wasn’t a fan of the show, and this was the only episode in Season 2 I watched, but I did follow what else happened in the series. I know that this is a pretty pivotal episode to Topher’s arc, and it’s in realising that he’d forced a sane person to undergo this horrible treatment that he begins to really question what’s going on with the Dollhouse and what his role is in it all. I also think it’s pretty clear from the show that we’re supposed to view the folks in the Dollhouse as being people who are “morally suspect”.

I still hate the episode.

I hate it because there are so many genre-shows that do basically exactly this, and this episode is part of that trope. Despite the fact that the characters are presented as morally ambiguous, they’re still our point of view characters, and they’re still saying “What happened here is wrong” as being directly tied in to Sierra not having been “psychotic” in the first place.[1. I really really really want to find the time to write about the repeated trope of fear of institutionalization in Whedon’s work. It’s on my list of things. My list is long.] They’re also not unique in this view, and it’s a pretty common idea that it’s okay to force people who are “crazy” into treatments that would be considered torture if they were done to anyone else.

What I hate about this trope is that it’s done all the time, it’s very rarely analyzed in a way that discusses the message of “It’s okay to do this to a crazy person, but it’s off-limits if the person is sane” as being problematic, and because it implies that these sorts of things don’t happen in real institutions. Except that, in many (but by no means all), these images are not exaggerations, but understate the amount of abuse and forced treatment.

I think that this trope, like yesterday’s one about Crazy Roommates, comes from an exaggeration of the natural fear of being forced into medical treatments you don’t want because somehow you’ve lost control. The problem with this particular trope is it’s not based on fiction: this is the real experience of thousands of psychiatric patients and survivors. This is frightening to me because it’s true, and I wish that particular truth wasn’t used as fodder for genre shows to add depth to their characters.

Recommended Reading for Monday, December 6, 2010

Today is December 6th, which in Canada is the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre [link opens with sound, CBC]. I wrote about it last year. It’s been a very long year. There are things I said then that I might not say now, but I do wonder, always, about a memorial for our dead.

A Bookish Beemer: Seizures in the News

This also implies that if you do something “bad” then you must be “mad.” It implies that no good, normal person could or would ever do bad or terrible things—so if one could prove one was normal, then they could not possibly be guilty of any crime or wrongdoing. The wolf in sheep’s clothing, if you will, feeds and benefits off this idea.

This line of thinking is intellectually lazy, it is bigoted, and it has dire consequences for society.

K at Feminists with Sexual Dysfunction: Compare & Contrast

Today I’d like to present to you a different kind of feminist response to sexual dysfunction – a response from another woman who is intimately familiar with gender studies, feminism… and vaginismus.

As I noted in the New View book review post, I felt like some elements were missing from the essays – notably, it remains unclear to me whether any of the contributors to the original manifesto or the book actually know what it’s like to live with sexual dysfunction – to be torn between what you “Know” is the “right and proper” feminist response to sexual dysfunction vs. the daily grind of living with and responding to it, sometimes just managing

Little Lambs Eat Ivy: Abby…. normal?

We were talking about the average person’s emotional highs and lows. Think of a piece of string that’s not quite taut. There are a few dips and bumps, but it’s relatively straight. Now try mapping the emotions of a bipolar person, and you’ll see a broken rubber band. The lows are lower, the highs are higher, and it’s entirely possible that something might snap.

My hospitalization came as quite a surprise to many people in my life. “I had no idea things were that bad,” my therapist told me. I almost laughed. I had no idea either. I thought I was normal.

Geimurinn:Facades

The Zyfron system is working on a Facades project, a project about the facades multiple systems have to put up to be safe in this world. I think this is a really good project, and any multiple system who hasn’t heard of it should check it out and any singlet should read it to get an idea of what damage multiphobia does to us.

Dog’s Eye View: Blog Carnival Announcements!!!

I am honored to be your host for the Second Assistance Dog Blog Carnival, which will be happening in January. And as your host, it is my privilege to choose and announce the theme for this Second Assistance Dog Blog Carnival: Decisions