I’m conflicted about the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).  I understand the need for shared diagnostic criteria across the mental health professions, but I’m extremely critical of the pathologization and medicalization of many of the “conditions” and “disorders” that the manual describes.  In some cases, a diagnosis can allow individuals who are privileged enough to have health insurance the ability to get their mental health care covered by their insurance provider.  That is one of the main arguments I have heard in favor of retaining the diagnosis of “Gender Dysphoria” in the DSM.  In other cases, diagnoses can justify declaring a person unfit to consent or refuse treatment.  The DSM does not just name and describe “disorders.”  It also regulates the hazy border between “normal” and “abnormal,” between “sane” and “crazy.”

Currently, the DSM is undergoing a revision, with the newest version–DSM-5– to be released in May, 2013.  As part of the far-reaching revision, the American Psychiatric Association has opened the DSM-5 up for reader comments on the structure and criteria changes.  Anyone can create an account, log in, and submit comments on the proposed revisions to the criteria and structure of the manual.  In general, the text from the current manual (DSM-IV) for reference with the proposed DSM-5 descriptions and criteria. The current comment period is open until June 15, 2011.

Unfortunately, it probably won’t be too effective to just log on and leave the comment, “This is not a psychiatric disorder.  Take it out of the manual!!!”…. which is my first inclination with things like the “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder.“  However, maybe if enough folks offer thoughtful comments, we can shift the ways that the psych industry defines and thinks about our identities, brains, and bodies.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that May is both Mental Health Month and National Masturbation Month. If you think about it, they’re both about taking care of yourself and your needs… and they can certainly go hand in hand (or, hand in… um. I’ll stop there).

I’m a little skeptical of some of the language around “Mental Health Month.”  I understand the importance of educational campaigns, but the reliance on the talking point that “one in four adults struggles with a treatable mental health condition” makes me a bit uncomfortable because of it’s emphasis on ‘treatment.’ I’m in favor of people seeking treatment if they personally desire it, but our current mental health industry is so focused on pathology and profit that the available “treatments” often don’t support the overall well-being of the individual seeking care. At worst, an individual may enter treatment and lose their right to consent or to leave.

As such, I am cautious about a Mental Health Month that advocates ‘treatment’ without some significant caveats.  As I see it, Mental Health Month should be more about addressing the failures of the psych industry, focusing on self-care (there’s where the connection to National Masturbation Month comes in!) and community wellness… and for that matter, we shouldn’t limit it to the month of May!

I’ve never put much store in pronouns. Trans heresy, I know. Our pronouns are supposed to be near and dear to our hearts, defended with the same fervor as our chosen names.  They can be flags, or weapons, or mirrors to reflect our deeply felt senses of self.  They don’t always fit.

Maybe it was that I was due for my monthly haircut. Maybe it was that I was wearing more tailored clothes. Whatever it was, the cashier looked right at me and called me “she.”  It didn’t feel malicious, there was no gender policing in [pronoun's] tone.  It simply seemed that [pronoun] saw me, and saw me as a person that could be called “she.”

It felt novel, and while it didn’t fit– it also didn’t chafe the way I thought it would, the way “she” did when I was a teenager trying to figure out what the hell I was and what words existed to describe me.  I realized that now– when someone calls me “she”– they’re seeing a different part of the picture.

If someone can look at me–my body, my clothes, my haircut, my mannerisms, my swagger–and fit that into their concept of ‘she,’ well, more power to them.  Ivan Coyote wrote a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece about her own reasons for choosing “she,” and parts of it resonated with me.  I’m not ready to stake a personal claim in “she,” but I’m willing to answer to it.

I can’t name the precise moment that being called ‘he’ stopped feeling like a radical gender moment and started feeling like a social default. I thought of it as shorthand–not any more accurate than ‘she,’ and easy enough to go along with when people assumed.  Now, it feels unusual when someone DOESN’T just call me ‘he.’  It’s been a long time since someone asked me for my preferred gender pronoun.  Mostly, this doesn’t bug me.  Even in our queer and gender-aware communities, people tend to call it like they see it– and really, I don’t care what someone uses for me as long as they’re respectful.  I tend to stammer when someone asks my preference, before mumbling something along the lines of “well, um, I don’t really care, ‘ze’ and ‘hir’ are great but most people just call me ‘he’ and that works too.”

I learned a few days ago that a friend that I am just getting to know  uses gender neutral pronouns for me, every time.  This touched me, more than I (in my general pronoun ambivalence) would have ever expected.  ‘Ze’ and ‘hir’ are my preference, but I rarely hear people use them.  Gender neutral pronouns are a lot of work, and they’re inconvenient.  I don’t bother to correct people when they don’t use them for me.  I just don’t care enough, and it’s so much easier to default to the binary options that we learn in grammar school.  Sometimes, I’m just tired.  Still, a pronoun that even vaguely fits can feel like a gift.  Learning that someone was using mine felt like I’d received one.

Photo by Syd London.

Yesterday, Sassafras Lowrey, Syd London, and I went on an incredible adventure.  Sassafras and I were on a mission to get new publicity photos for PoMo Freakshow, as well as getting new shots for our individual work.  For my individual shoot, we visited a deserted old asylum.

I had envisioned some sort of abandoned hospital building as the location when I was first imagining the shots, but I didn’t think it was realistic.  I thought there would be too many barriers (physical, mental, and emotional) to that sort of space.  I was absolutely thrilled when our photographer, Syd London, told me that she had found an abandoned building outside the city that we could use.

We set out mid-morning to find the building.  Figuring out the location had been a challenge– not surprisingly, Google doesn’t always have the street addresses for buildings that have been deserted for decades.  To pinpoint the location, I used a map of the county from the early 1900s, back when the building was an active asylum.  I checked the nearby cross-streets on the old map, then used those to get directions.  We left Brooklyn with our fingers crossed that my cartographical sleuthing would lead us to the abandoned building of our dreams.

We found the building exactly where the old map had promised, decrepit and dilapidated and begging to be photographed. As we approached the building, a sudden scrambling noise alerted us that we were not alone– several squirrels raced out of one window and into another, disturbed from their privacy and apparently quite displeased with the interruption.  Their scurrying and the rustling of birds nesting in the upper floors echoed throughout the rooms, making an already eerie locale feel absolutely haunted.  I was glad to be there in broad daylight.

Syd London at work. Photo by Sassafras Lowrey.

The door of the building was hanging open, and I didn’t know quite what to expect when we walked in.  We found an utterly abandoned interior, with hospital furniture haphazardly piled and overturned.  Fallen plaster, dry leaves, and other debris covered the floor.  Many of the windows were broken, as were several doors.  Some rooms were charred and burnt, suggesting a fire had once raged down the hallway.  Though my research suggested the building had only been deserted for a few decades, it felt as if it had been empty for much longer.

When I agreed to do the shoot in an abandoned hospital, I knew it would be an intense experience– 348 is all about how we abandon teenagers in the mental health system, so shooting in a former asylum felt particularly evocative.  I had not expected the decaying building to so strongly recall my own experience of being locked up.  The room for solitary confinement, the metal spring bed frames, the group showers.  As we set up the shots, I was rocketing between past and present, reminding myself that I was there on my own terms, now.

For the entire shoot, Syd London was a delight to work with.  She was extremely professional about getting the shots that we wanted, but also playful enough to keep our spirits up when the tension of the eerie location started to heavily weigh in.

Photo by Syd London.

We shot in five different rooms before we decided it was time to head back to the city, leaving the abandoned building to memory and irritated squirrels.

I’ll be posting more of the results of the shoot over the next few days, but I’ve included a few as a teaser for now.  Getting these photos was simultaneously terrifying and liberating.  I never thought that I would willingly walk back into a mental hospital…. and even though it was abandoned, I still felt like I was escaping when we left.

Last week, the PoMo Freakshow Troubled Teen Tour took me back to Portland to perform 348.  It’s sort of a full-circle story: when I was an undergrad student at Lewis & Clark College, I studied theatre and helped plan the Gender Studies Symposium.  Now, years later, I returned as an invited guest of the Symposium, to perform a new piece.  It had been long enough that the only familiar faces were professors, long enough that no one mistook me for a student as I made my way around the campus.

There was a talkback after my performance of 348, and one of the most interesting things that came up was that one audience member–an older gentleman who seemed out of place in the primarily college-aged crowd– had encountered the institution described in 348 decades ago.  He had worked as a psychiatrist for a school district, and had been sent to the facility to evaluate some students there.  He seemed overcome as he thought back, recounting the experience: “they seemed very secretive, never let me see anything other than one room for interviews.  I thought it seemed strange.  I wished there was something I could do.”

A parent with a “challenging” teenager was in the audience as well.  She had considered sending her daughter to a facility.  She announced, during the talk back, that she felt firm in her decision not to.  I was glad to know my performance had such an impact, for at least one individual.  That was the moment that the Troubled Teen Tour felt like a complete success.