An Adventure in Polygon Discrimination

I am a big fan of intersectionality.

If that doesn't mean anything to you, then don't worry - it didn't to me until quite recently. 'Intersectionality' is feminist jargon for 'all of us - all groups of society - we ALL need to work together to achieve equality'. As somebody who identifies as female, as queer, as crippled and mental, as well as being white, cisgendered and middle class it should be obvious why this simple, (yet oft misinterpreted) idea is so important to me.  Here is an excellent drawing by http://miriamdobson.wordpress.com to aid explanation.

I love analogies, and I love drawings, so I thought I'd take the polygon metaphor from Miriam's blog and develop it to explain another part of feminism, which I initially struggled to grasp - privilege.

You are probably familiar with the basic definition of the word 'privilege'.

A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people.

In feminism, it is used extensively to refer to members of oppressed and liberated social groups. This doesn't just mean wealthy as opposed to poor, but also male as opposed to female, white as opposed to black, and countless others. As explained by the above, one can be a member of a single oppressed group as well as many liberated groups, or of many oppressed groups, or solely of liberated groups.  One might speak of lacking 'straight privilege' when they feel obliged to come out as gay, for example, while acknowledging the privilege they have of being read as the gender with which they identify.

I want to focus on two other well known social groups - the 'oppressed' triangles, and the 'liberated' squares, portrayed here on a 'Scale of Oppression'. Note the variety of colours and sized of shapes, even within the groups. Note also, my awesome paint skills.

The shapes on the right have 'square privilege'; the same privilege that the shapes on the left lack. Squares have more choice in life, are judged as individuals rather than as part of a group, and are in more positions of power. As a result, half of all polygons are limited merely because they have three points instead of four. Triangulars want this to change. Squares don't really realise they have privilege until it is pointed out to them by the triangles who have noticed how unfair it is. Heck, even some triangles don't notice how unfair it is.

At the point where Triangulars tells squares to "check" their "privilege", it's quite normal for squares to feel like they are being a accused of being deliberately oppressive. This isn't the intention of the Triangulars. Triangulars don't want squares to feel guilty or defensive. All triangles want is for squares to acknowledge that an imbalance exists, and to help them address this problem.

Unfortunately, some squares get scared that triangles will take away their privileges, and so set up 'Squarist' groups. It can be hard being a square too, they think. Does that mean squares are equally as oppressed as triangles? Not really. Oppression can only work in one direction - the scales can't be underbalanced on BOTH sides - but the negative effects of  Point-ism are felt by all polygons. What Squarists don't understand is that Triangulars are inevitably working towards the rights of squares as well.

Eventually, Triangulars make enough shapes aware of the Scale of Oppression. More triangles become Triangulars, and  more squares want to support them. Such squares become 'allies'. It's important that both Triangulars and allies continue to "check" their "privilege", even if they use it to the advantage of the triangles, otherwise the picture can look a bit like this.

From left to right: a relatively unprivileged pale blue square has "triangle" used as an insult against it; a yellow triangle isn't given help to ascend the upwards slope against oppression; a privileged green square only cares about triangles who are relatively privileged in being green; a lucky triangle pulls the step ladder away from other triangles as soon as it gets given the chance to mingle with squares; a yellow square decides that all squares are bad and need bringing down; and (if you look really closely) a white triangle masquerades pretends to have four sides in order to get the same privileges as a square.

There are alternatives to these approaches. One is called 'positive-discrimination', in which the ratio of triangles to squares in any environment is made to be representative of the percentages of triangles and squares in the average population.  This ensures that the Scale is always more of less balanced, even if somewhat artificially.

Positive discrimination is by no means an ideal solution. There is no single, ideal solution. But by working together, hopefully one day the many pointed shapes of polygon land can smash the Scale of Oppression once and for all.

Yours point-lessly,

BT

An Adventure in Doublethink

Many of my friends were confused when they learnt the extent of my mental health problems.

It confused them how I can be a well-informed person and not believe half the things I know to be true; how I can give other people sound advice and yet apply none of it to my own life; how I can be so pro-rational thinking and yet think so irrationally at the same time. All of this confuses me as well. How is it possible to be both sane and insane?

There are two terms for this apparently paradoxical state: the first was coined by psychologists and is called ‘cognitive dissonance’; the second I stumbled across while reading 1984, and it is called ‘doublethink’.  That is…

I believe that nobody should be judged by their appearance or eating habits. I believe that weight-watching and calorie-counting are products of capitalism and patriarchy. I believe that ‘low fat’ food is more often harmful than cake, that health cannot be measured by size or BMI and that the best diets should be varied and sufficient.

I also believe, however, that I am fat. I believe that me being fat makes me disgusting, that it makes me undesirable to be around. I believe that I am greedy, and that I don’t deserve the food I eat. I believe that my size is a reflection of my personality, and that I am more worthy if I am hungry. I believe I will be happier if I weigh less.

(Addendum - I believe the children are our future, teach them well... etc.)

One set of beliefs is influenced by fact and consideration, and the other by emotion, but that doesn’t make either less pertinent in my mind. I want the former paragraph to be more true to me than the latter – but if that were true then I would now be eating disorder free, something which I am not.

I hold two contradictory beliefs in my mind simultaneously, and I accept both of them.

I’m not going to use this post to speak about my mental illness, as that is something I have covered considerably (specifically here ). I want to write about how I came to be so reliant on doublethink to begin with. I want to write about religion, and my upbringing. I want to write this while adding a nice little disclaimer about my experiences being subjective, and reassuring my theist friends that nothing I write is a personal attack on them.

Thanks disclaimer dinosaur - it’s like you read my mind.

For sake of non-bias, I will make up a religion. This isn’t too difficult to do. I own a large cross-dressing, chimney dwelling deity named ‘Trevor’. He’ll fit the bill nicely – apt as he is also a rubber duck. He’ll foot the bill too, cos he’s a total babe like that.

My parents told me a lot about Trevor. They said that Trevor was the embodiment of good. They said He had created everything. They said He had he created me, that He had a plan for me, that He guided my every move… but that if I did bad things they were my fault. I was taught that He loved each and every person, but that if you ever questioned 
His presence then He would punish you.

To my adult mind, this sounds like an abusive relationship, but as a child you don’t challenge what you are taught. You accept everything as normal – especially if you are told that questions might result in damnation. Trevor was somebody you should be terrified of, but want to spend eternity with. None of this made sense to me, but I trusted my parents to tell me the truth and so tried my best to believe. Trevor was the epitome of doublethink.

I have always had a very active imagination - as ‘Digger’, my then yellow imaginary excavator friend will tell you. Or at least he would, but he can’t type due to a “broken arm”.

Having an active imagination, and being a natural over-analyser, means that I have always thought too much. Not all of these thoughts are welcome and not all of these thoughts would be pleasing to Trevor. I was a very quiet, very well behaved and very hard working child; yet because I could not differentiate between my actions, my emotions and my thoughts, I believed that I was bad.

I want to leave Trevor out of this now. I am too fond of him.

Around the age of 15, I began to seriously doubt my faith.  It is also when I had my first mental health crisis, which I believe was related. All of this questioning took place in my mind which, as moving through agnosticism is a gradual process, I still shared with an all-powerful deity. This meant that my mind was not a safe place to be. I couldn’t cope with the internal conflict. I was entering a phase of negativethink. I couldn’t believe, yet I couldn’t disbelieve either. I had no place in the world, and no place in my own head.

My decision to firmly identify with atheism was gradual, and drawn out. It was painful. Nonetheless I survived this time, though it feels like a miracle now, (metaphorical, I hasten to add. You can reset your irony counters!). I am now very much an atheist. Trevor is now very much  just a duck, in a fireplace, using lower-case pronouns. And why would I want him to be anything more?

In spite of this, I have never shaken the constant guilt, nor the vague nagging feeling that I am being judged for existing. I may in hindsight perceive my past beliefs as nothing more than a strange delusion, but there is still a long way to go before I am free of all faulty thinking processes.

I will not apologise for sharing this, because none of it is a lie or written with the intent of hurting anybody. I know that faith and religion bring a lot of joy and hope to some people, but I feel that there is little said of the mind-messery-misery it can cause, (or how the truth of either statements has no bearing on the likelihood of there being a ‘higher power’).

With that in mind - if you have any complaints, I ask that you send them to the Disclaimer Dinosaur.

Yours in good faith,

BT x

An Adventure in Open Letters

Dear Graze.com,

First of all I would like to say how much I enjoy my Graze boxes.  My comments within this letter are concerned with the marketing of your products, rather than the food itself.

Initially I was bemused when I received my Pumpkin and Ginger Cake with an Afternoon Infusion. I was bemused because the Nutritional Information Leaflet told me that this box contained 75.7 kcal. It struck me as bizarre. Is it possible to be so accurate about the amount of energy contained in a unique piece of food?

Delving a little deeper, I realised that all Guilt Free High Tea products, alongside a few select others (e.g. Brilliant Black Forest - 91.3 kcal and Fruit Mango Chutney - 80.4 kcal), included calorie information to one decimal place. Not only this, but the contents of non-standardised boxes, (e.g. Pear Tatin and Apricot Torte), were measured so precisely as to be implausible, (143 kcal and 151 kcal, respectively).

As I am sure you are aware, the calories purported to be in food do not correlate with the calories absorbed by the consumer. Ambient temperature, how the food is processed, and a person’s physical state, to name a few, all affect the way nutrients are absorbed by the body. Given that all nutritional information is prone to being up to 30% more or less than the figure stated, anything other than an ‘approximation’ or ‘average’ of calories is misleading.

While I fully support your company aim to “deliver tasty, natural snacks through the post”, I am disappointed by the use of ‘dieting’ language in descriptions of your products. Encouragement of calorie counting is one such example. This seems at odds with your ethos - if it were natural to count calories, surely fruit would grow with this information printed on the skin? Humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years without knowing such details. In this way, the following quote contradicts your ‘natural’ viewpoint,

“All our lowest calorie nibbles. Everything’s between 50 and 150 calories and nothing tastes like diet food. Great if you’re watching your weight.”

Weight almost always takes care of itself when eating a varied diet – its mention here prays more on insecurities about the cosmetic aspects of weight gain. Unfortunately, obsession over calories is not the only example of 'dieting' language present on your website.

On ‘The 80/20 Rule’ page, you state,

“Be good 80% of the time and treat yourself the other 20% of the time.”

This appears at odds with the Graze idea that healthy foods can be treats, and that treats can be healthy. I also take issue with the premise of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ food. Food, by its definition, is either nutritious - or it is not food. We need fats, sugar and salt as well as fruit, veg and fibre. In fact, the ‘Variety, You’re My Hero’ page succinctly relays this.

Vilification of food is a common theme within the diet industry, and I did not have to search for long to find more examples on the Graze.com website.

“It really is amazing the difference you can make to your diet just by swapping something naughty for one of our nutritious nibbles. It’s a heroic double effect giving you healthy benefits (every graze snack has at least one) and the big bonus of avoiding snacks that are a lot more evil.”

I appreciate that the use of the world ‘evil’ here was probably flippant, but that does not excuse the characterisation of those who consume ‘naughty’ nibbles. I suspect that painting certain nutrients as ‘forbidden’ merely makes us desire them more. Worse than this, however, is the implication that your customers should feel ashamed for eating food that is not produced by Graze.

“Guilt-free High Tea”

“Just how guilt-free is my cake? They're so light, we even include them in our lightbox.”

“This means that all our little puds are under 140 calories so you get just enough to remind you of your old favourites (without feeling guilty afterwards).”

“We love brownies but we wanted one that didn’t make us feel rubbish afterwards.”

Graze presents itself as being friendly, and uses a conversational tone in all communications, which makes the emotional language here feel manipulative. It is not unreasonable to expect a food company to speak positively about eating. Brands such as ‘Eat Natural’ manage to market wholesome snacks without pandering to the weight-obsessed philosophy of the diet industry.

Of course Graze is not unique in any of the aforementioned factors. The reason I am writing is because I feel the brand has a chance to stand out from the majority of self-proclaimed ‘healthy’ products - by also encouraging a healthy attitude.

I look forward to hearing your response.

Yours faithfully,

BT

An Adventure in Italics

"What a banana."

"You are cross-stitched."

"I hate it when you're being a total bottom quark."

Being insulted. It's not nice is it? Still, at least comebacks aren't too hard to come-by. You can make anything sound like an insult if you put it in italics.

"You're so gay."

"That's mental."

"Stop being such a girl."

Ah.

See, by comparing being gay to A Thing Worth Insulting, you are saying that all gay people are A Thing Worth Insulting. By labelling A Bad Idea as mental, you are misunderstanding and dismissing the experiences of people with mental health problems. By using 'girl' as a pejorative, you are making 51% of the population feel that they are inferior simply because of their gender.

This might seem petty - and I'll admit that it is more of a consequence of oppression than a cause - but use of language can have a really negative effect on how people from these groups view themselves. This can be hard to explain, so I've enlisted the help of my second favourite imaginary platypus for a little role play. Enjoy.

PLATTYR

"Hey you, what's your name?"

"Cool. It's a shame some people oppose Reason, but you seem like a pretty nice platypus.

On a completely unrelated note - Duck of Optimism, don't you think the Beaver of Half-Truths can be a COMPLETE PlattyR sometimes?"

"Just a bit of banter, Beaver! Urgh, aren't the the tables here totally PlattyRed*?"

"While we're talking about MASSIVE PlattyRs - did you hear about those people who caused the apocolypse!?"

"Oh."

"Oh. But I never meant to insult you. I guess nobody has ever pointed out the effects my words could have. I can see now - if I replace 'PlattyR' with my own name - how it could make you feel like I think being a PlattyR is a bad thing. I'm sorry. I'll try to stop."

Thanks, Platypus of Reason.

More than anything, insults such as 'queer', 'insane', 'retarded', 'spastic' and many more are boring. (See what I did with the italic there?) If you want to be insulting, then at least say what you mean. There are so many words in the English language - be inventive! Arguments and criticisms carry a lot more weight if you use your brain. Or a thesaurus.

Yours fabulously,

(Err, need to stop getting carried away with italics...)

BT x

*At school somebody genuinely referred to the layout of a classroom as 'gay'. I informed them that I thought the it was unlikely tables had a sexuality. I was met with a blank stare.

An Adventure in Pathetic Fallacies

I wanted to blog about what it's like to live with depressive and anxiety disorders. 

Wanting things is never straight forward when you have mental health problems. 'Wants' come with a lot of complications. When I say 'I wanted to' I meant 'I felt obliged to but didn't have the motivation, concentration or inspiration to'.

Fortunately, inspiration eventually came forth in the form of the snow that is currently blanketing the UK. 

I am fully aware that using a blank picture (of snow) as a metaphor for An Idea isn't the traditional way of expressing inspiration, but it works for me. I'm used to my brain buzzing with the force of a thousand bumbling bees, so being able to think clearly and coherently is a gift.

The above isn't why the snow inspired me, however. The snow inspired me by reminding me of 'pathetic fallacy' - a type of personification. Writers often employ pathetic fallacy by reflecting the mood of characters in their environment. One classic example is using rain as a backdrop for a crying session. Here is another example.

Pathetic fallacy is often used when writing about mental illness.

It is quite often said that depression, or indeed any form of chronic mental unease, is like being followed by a cloud. I disagree. Clouds can be nice. If clouds form in a certain way they can sometimes resemble a family of turtles playing volleyball. Mental illness very rarely resembles even a SINGLE turtle playing volleyball. Clouds aren't sufficient. Let's take it one step further - hell, let's climb the entire staircase of hyperbole - having depression/anxiety is akin to living permanently in the midsts of a brewing storm.

It's miserable. It's unpredictable. It's inescapable.

Here is where I drag out this analogy to a tenuous degree: those with no history of mental health problems spend a lot of time in the sun, (if you live in the UK, suspend your disbelief for now please). Some days will be greyer, colder or wetter than others, but you will experience the weather as it happens. You know that soon enough it will be sunny again, and then you'll feel fine. The only exception to this is if you are in the BNP - in which case, anything that isn't a snow day is a bitter disappointment.

Mental illness strips you of the ability to experience the weather as it happens to everybody else. You are trapped in your own micro-climate of damp, dark and static. There are treatments, of course. Anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications are the equivalent of being handed a torch and an electricity resistant suit. Counselling can play the role of a meteorologist, helping you to understand how to storm formed around you and predict lightning. It has to be said, however, that it takes a while to find a psychotherapist who is better at predicting and preventing mood than the average weatherperson is at predicting and preventing weather. 

There is another form of therapy which appeals to the Platypus of Reason and is very popular with the NHS. It is called Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - or CBT. Some motorcycle shops also offer this as an initiative to improve road rage, which I think is wonderful.*

CBT was developed to 'fix' some of the distorted thought processes which can develop due to mental illness. After a while of living with depression/anxiety it can become difficult to believe that other people live life in the sun; these people don’t understand why you are always cold and pale, and you don’t understand why they have a tan. CBT allows you to remember that the sun is out there, but it doesn't necessarily allow you to feel its warmth. As somebody with an already irritatingly vocal Platypus of Reason, (seriously, they need gagging at times), I have not personally felt a huge benefit from CBT but I appreciate its merits.

Another consequence of depressive and anxiety disorders is that you quickly get used to living life in the storm. You become sensitive to any gaps in the cloud - they’re frightening. You wear sunglasses because any light is alien. Sun burns your skin. Happiness hurts, positivity feels like a lie and other people are irritating as they remind you of what you don’t have.

I wanted to end on a positive because I know that's good writing practice, but I'm afraid that's a 'want' that will have to wait for now. So, in lieu of a happy ending, here's a picture of me equipped with anti-depressants and psychotherapy in the middle of my storm.

Yours pathetically,

BT x

*Apparently in this context CBT stands for Compulsory Basic Training and has nothing to do with mental health. Shame.

An Adventure in Queer Semantics

I woke up this morning to an epiphany.

Okay, so it was more of a pondering than an epiphany. A 'ponderiphany', if you will. In fact, there's a chance I may be confusing 'epiphany' with 'hangover', but that's not the point. This morning I woke up with a THOUGHT IN MY HEAD. And alcohol in my system. 

(Yes I went out last night. Yes I downed a pint of beer in a vain attempt  to prove to the resident drag queen that I wasn't a straight girl. Yes I may still be drunk. Enough!)

The thought that I woke up with in my head alongside alcohol in my system was this:

I use the term 'gay marriage' to further illustrate the silliness of these people. I am constantly threatening to marry my non-straight male friend; this would constitute a VERY gay marriage, but one which nobody would forcibly disallow. At the same time, not everybody who is in a committed same-sex relationship identifies as gay. Same-sex marriage is a more accurate term, (although still not as encompassing as it could be).

Anyway, I'm deviating. I would be terrible on 'Just a Minute'. Did I mention I have alcohol in my system?

My favourite argument against legalising same-sex marriage is that it would mean 'Redefining Marriage'***. The logical fallacies of this "argument" have been pointed out many times, with the focus mainly on different historical (and ethically dubious) 'definitions' of marriage. My observation is a little more pedantic than that.

The issue with the 'redefining marriage' argument is that it very silly. I would go as far to say that this argument is almost as silly as the silly people who say such silly nonsense.

My issue with the argument is this - how on EARTH can the minor alteration of a definition be horrifying? And when did THAT overtake terrorism, poverty and environmental crises as the scariest eventuality for life on our planet?

I wonder if these same people become as outraged when other words are reinterpreted.

As is inevitable when dealing with something as silly as this, sooner or later we reach the 'slippery slope' argument. If we allow marriage to be redefined, where do we draw the line about changing the meanings of other words? What if all we know about the English language ceases to be true? WHAT IF WE SPEND THE REST OF ETERNITY AS UNWILLING PARTICIPANTS IN 'THE OPPOSITES GAME'?!

In response, I have this to say: if the spontaneous redefinition of words is the worst we have to worry about as a society, then I'd say we're doing alright. It's a minor risk to take when it comes to achieving equal human rights. And it's not as if we're suddenly going to start sponging all the paper lamps, seven spangle, flump?

Tuna Varnish,

BT x

***'Redefining Marriage' - copyright of Right-Wing Bigots Corp. 

An Adventure in Opening Boxes

I don't know if you are aware of Schrödinger's Cat. As I don't know, I will assume that you - my collective of reader/s - are both aware AND unaware of Schrödinger's Cat.

Schrödinger was a quantum physicist. No wait, come back... That part isn't particularly relevant. But it IS relevant that Schrödinger devised a thought experiment to help him explain an argument in his field of quantum physics. 

There is a cat in a box. The box is concealed and the cat is unobservable. There is a radioactive substance in the box, firing off atoms at random. If an atom hits the detector pad then a vat of poison is released, which the cat drinks and dies. If an atom doesn't hit the detector pad, the vat of poison is not released and the cat does not die. 

Here's the important part: due to the decay of radioactive material being unpredictable, the outcome of the experiment, (and the fate of the cat), is also unpredictable.

Presumably, Schrödinger did not own a cat. Or have experience of being in the company of cats. Or had never met a cat, at all, under any circumstances. If he had been more accustomed to the feline way, he would have known that neither of these conclusions were feasible. First of all, getting a cat in a box is a mission and, even then, it probably would claw it's way out, or 'nap' for a year until it succumbs to radiation sickness. Or else it would catch a baby bird and leave it to die on my doorstep, (because, against all odds, cats ALWAYS seem able to do that). Regardless, the end result would be the same and the cat would ultimately either be dead or alive*.

Schrödinger claimed that, as we cannot possibly guess an outcome, the cat must be considered both dead AND alive. That's not EITHER dead or alive, but actually existing in a living and very-much-not-living state simultaneously. Until you open the box and look inside, the mortal state of poor moggie has infinite possibilities, all of which are true. 

Yes really.

(Don't fret... Schrödinger was aware that this situation is a contradiction, and he devised it in part to illustrate that quantum physics and common sense are arch enemies.)

As a side note, you should know that Schrödinger's first name was Erwin. You should know this not because it is related to the aforementioned palaver, but because I don't feel that there are enough positive role models called Erwin in the world today.

So, what does this have to do with my life? Sadly, the box opening adventure of the title has nothing to do with my recent birthday or the imminent arrival of Christmas.

I was finally discharged from an Eating Disorders' unit last Wednesday. I had been struggling during my extended leave the previous week, and was asked by staff if I was ready for discharge. I said, "I don't know, but I have to try". Perhaps a better response would have been, "I need to listen to Schrödinger, because at the moment my future self is both coping and not coping with discharge, and I won't know if the cat is alive until I open the metaphorical box".

Or, maybe, in the interests of being allowed out of a psychiatric hospital "I don't know, but I have to try" was more appropriate after all.

Yours freely,

BT x

*Not to be confused with the cat being the band Dead or Alive. I don't know any cat who could pull off the Pete Burns look.

An Adventure in Change

I don't do change. 

I do organisation. I do rules. I do plans.

Unknowns are the enemy, and preparation is my friend.

If I don't keep account of every variable in my life, it feels as though anything could happen.

This is what one psychiatrist referred to in my notes as "rigidity of thinking". (Although she may not be the most reliable source of information. In the very same notes, after being treated to a ninety minute interrogation, I was consistently referred to by the wrong name...) Rigidity of thinking is a common trait in those with Anorexia, and associated mental health problems - and it's a nightmare to live with.

Today, I was told that my "weekend" leave from hospital had to be extended for at least another 72 hours, due to infection. This is at least 24 hours after I had hoped to be discharged. This is obviously nobody's fault, but it's completely thrown me. I don't know what is going to happen with my treatment, whether I'll have the chance to say goodbye to staff and patients or, most importantly, when I'll be able to collect my knitting.

Whatever the outcome is now, my carefully placed safety net has been removed and I have to try my best to cope with the consequences. 

Wish me luck.

Yours in uncertainty,

BT x

An Adventure in Neuro-Zoology

Something my therapist said this week made me think of platypuses.

As everybody knows, if you take the platypus out of its native Australian waters for long enough, it can be reduced to two fundamental components – the duck, and the beaver.

The Beaver of Half-Truths is balanced by the Duck of Optimism. Both are at odds with the Platypus of Reason, and all three exist inside my head… Metaphorically speaking. The Beaver of Half-Truths is very much the devil in this dichotomous relationship. The Duck of Optimism, on the other hand, is said to possess the knowledge to end all misery in the multiverse, as well as the recipe for a ruddy good loaf of bread. Unfortunately, it is usually only able to muster a "Quack" out loud, which is of limited use to me in the vast majority of situations.

Anyway, the thing my therapist said this week that made me think of platypuses was this:

“You are very convincing.”

She was referring to the fact that I can easily portray myself as somebody who is not mental. I can blag my way through a therapy session, articulating emotions that I think somebody in my position should be feeling. It's not deliberate. I even convince myself sometimes. It's as if the Platypus of Reason - the logical voice in my head that I know, deep down, to be correct - takes complete control of my speech.

Meanwhile, in the depths of my zoological psyche, the Beaver of Half-Truths remains censored. 

Censoring is problematic, as it's hard to argue with something if it isn't verbalised. Consequently, the Beaver of Half-Truths remains unchallenged, free to roam the Damned Dams of my mind. I went into therapy with the goal of amplifying my rational thoughts, but it's become apparent that listening to the Platypus of Reason is pointless unless I first acknowledge the irrational thoughts I'm attempting to counter. And to accomplish this I need to scour my neuro-streams, find the Beaver of Half-Truths and give it a good telling off.

Incidentally, I mentioned earlier that the Duck of Optimism is useless in the vast majority of situations. There is one obvious exception to this. In a pub quiz where the question is “Complete the name of this well-known illicit substance, pronounced in the style of Jonathon Ross, ‘____ Cocaine’”, the Duck of Optimism becomes very useful indeed. In fact, the Duck of Optimism aces these sorts of situations.

Quack,

BT x

An Exceptional Adventure

Greetings dear reader, it’s been a while!

The last three months have been spent as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital. My life has consisted mostly of putting on weight, working out a healthy way of relating to (and consuming) food, and gaining insight into my mental health problems.

When I was admitted, there were many forms to fill out, and many boxes to tick. Generally speaking, the nursing team are good at dealing with eating disorders – which you would hope, considering that is the specialism of the ward. Some members of staff, however, struggle with the fact that very few people are Just an Eating Disorder.

This what I imagine the secretary was thinking when dealing with my admission:

After explaining for the umpteenth time that, yes, it IS possible to be anorexic AND mental AND crippled AND queer, you begin to feel abnormal in an environment in which abnormality is standard.

Literature on anorexia excludes any mention of gay women or disability, and the majority of medical professionals automatically conclude that I’m heterosexual and healthy. In the context of hospital, my urges to over-exercise aren’t seem as problematic because power-walking for twenty minutes doesn’t constitute ‘excessive exercising’ if you’re otherwise healthy. My digestive symptoms have also been marginalised because it’s not considered possible to find eating challenging due to physical AND psychological reasons. And divulging ethical vegetarianism in an Eating Disorders Ward is tantamount to declaring you only go to gay clubs because you "enjoy the décor", while maintaining that you're straight - everyone doubts your motives.

The attitude of compartmentalising different aspects of a person, at risk of missing the obvious, isn’t unique to mental health services. It’s hard for some doctors to realise that not all difficulties in life can be treated in the same way, even if they impact on one another. This is the experience I had upon visiting my GP, aged 12.

Having a chronic illness, especially one which is often dismissed or trivialised, plays havoc with your mental health. You are constantly primed to defend your experiences as genuine, and to prove that you aren’t to blame for the pain, exhaustion and discomfort. It makes you doubt yourself; your thoughts, your feelings, your perceptions of reality. Combined with separate, but just as problematic, mental illness and it's a struggle to be understood - or even acknowledged.

For these reasons, when I attempt to explain the rationale behind my decisions, I end up in tangled in a ball of thought-wool. Take this example:

Now take the same example, this time with the thought-wool unravelled and knitted it into a scarf of bullet points.

I have been invited to a competitive, all-female, erotic bake-a-thon by a medium close friend. I like friends. I like cakes. I'm also not adverse to all females, competitively erotic. However, there are a multitude of reasons why I might decline the invitation. Here are a select few:

• I might be doing something important in the days prior to or after the bake-a-thon which require me to rest. If the baking is done standing up, or the pornographic batter takes several hours to become firm, cakey buttocks, then my stamina probably won’t be sufficient.
• My pain, fatigue, nausea, brainfog and other levels of discomfort may be too high to tolerate the stimulus and activity. Even if I make it, then my symptoms may worsen as the day goes on and, as everybody knows, competitive bake-a-thons are a little pointless if you’re not able to witness (and eat) the end results.
• I may experience a dip in mood. And by dip, I mean huge nosedive. Imagine a tub of emotion-salsa the size of a Boeing 747 and you’re getting close. Falling into the Guacamole of Depression stops me enjoying every simple pleasure, takes away motivation to contemplate doing anything, leaves me unable to tolerate any forms of merriment (and/or gateaux-based innuendo) and usually ends with me hoping I, or the world, would disappear.
• Being around food is an enormous struggle. I could potentially spend the entire event denying myself penis cake, or continually nibbling on sugar nipples. In turn, I would either get frustrated that I couldn't enjoy the food, or I'd feel awful for allowing myself to eat too much. It is unlikely that food, weight, eating and disgust at my body would leave my mind at any point.
• Social anxiety often leaves me crippled with worry about making conversation, behaving appropriately and potentially embarrassing myself, (the opportunities for which would be reasonably large when faced with edible cream-filled genitalia). I have around four ‘safe’ people in my life that I feel comfortable spending time with and, regardless of how much I enjoy the company of other friends, I find socialising primarily with one person incredibly intense.
• I would far rather bake boobs than six-packs, but most situations only consider those of a heterosexual inclination. If I’m not in the mood to be ‘gay and proud’, then I would end up feeling isolated and obliged to conform. I am yet to put testicles in my mouth, and I’m not keen to start - chocolate sprinkles or no chocolate sprinkles – but I’ll do most things to avoid drawing attention to myself.
• There is too much room for failure in a competition. Even without the explicit competitive nature of the bake-a-thon (explicit in both senses of the word) - and even if I won - I would still feel that my work was terrible compared to other competitors. I have low enough self-confidence as it is, without adding ‘recreating the Karma Sutra in marzipan’ to my ‘things I'm crap at’ list.

If I wake up in a homophobia-free, anxiety-free, depression-free, illness-free world then of course I would go… Acutally, if such a miracle occurred then baking rude desserts would be at least 6^th down on my ‘To Do’ list, but this is of minimal significance. On the day of the bake-a-thon, I would almost certainly experience each of the above elements, and if one issue worsens then everything else is thrown out of balance. I either wouldn't have the mental capacity to push past my physical symptoms, or I wouldn't have the physical capacity to rationalise my psychological symptoms. And prejudice, sexism, ignorance, homophobia… they all need a certain amount of energy to challenge.

It’s hard to explain the above without confusing somebody or making it sound like a list of excuses. It’s also hard to find somebody who realises that I can’t be judged by the same criteria as Ms/Mr Average. I can say with some conviction that my experiences of being treated as Just an Eating Disorder are not unique in this environment. Or any environment, for that matter. Because, if you listen to the Platypus of Reason, you’ll realise that there is no Ms/Mr Average.

Upon consideration, I think I could tolerate being a Box Ticker if it didn't mean constantly being reduced to a single, isolated box. I am rarely seen as a complete sheet of paper, let alone a human exercise book; one full of lists, charts and the occasional diagram (not included in this blog for reasons of personal decency). When the platypus was first discovered, it was thought to be a joke, a melange of animals sewed together. I feel for the poor animal, and I, like the platypus, aim to be seen as more than merely an anomaly.

I want my figurative beak to be recognised alongside my metaphorical beaver’s body, and I don’t want my egg-born young to find life more difficult simply because they don’t fit a preconceived idea of what a mammal should be.

I have another three weeks left in hospital before I am discharged, and when that time comes, I shall demand to be seen as a whole person. I vow to embody the Platypus of Reason - and I hope the world will join me.

Yours without exception,

BT x