My Thoughts on Jewel Shuping, The Woman Who Blinded Herself.

Hi everyone.

It's been maybe two days since I first became aware of a story which erupted on to my Twitter timeline, caused a tidal wave of condemnation, then debate, and seems to have divided opinions like the red sea.

Jewel Shuping, a woman who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder, a condition in which able bodied people believe they are meant to be disabled, blinded herself with the aid of a sympathetic psychologist. It was a long, painful process. Nine years later she is telling her story to raise awareness of BIID and encourage people who have this dangerous mental illness to seek proffessional help rather than take desperate steps to disable themselves.

Obviously, to us who have been born blind or have lost our sight in later life, this is a hard story to hear. Someone who had perfectly healthy eyes and the gift of perfect sight threw it all away. How dare she! The nerve, the gall, the downright temerity! The idiot, the sicko, the crazy woman! And the shrink who helped her, he ought to be struck off! Disgusting, terrible, disgraceful isn't it! Oh yeah? Just hold on a second here.

I've heard people say that they'd give anything to have their lost sight back again. That they'd pay their very last penny in the world if they could buy some magic drops that would give them back the thing they lost or were born without, that they would pay for any operation, however risky, would employ any doctor, however much the medical world thought his research was flawed and completely unbased on fact, just for a tiny chance of being able to see their kids' faces again, to be able to read books, mail or fill in forms without small frustrations, play video games with the family, to see what their husband or wife looked like. To see a sunrise, leaves turning colour, a rainbow. I've known people go through months, maybe even years of long and painful surgical procedures to feel right in their own bodies and minds. Exactly what is so different here, and exactly who are we to act as judge and jury as to how anyone lives their lives?

I've done a lot of reading about BIID because I wanted to understand before I wrote anything in here. Somebody just said to me that wanting to be blind is all a matter of attention, and what happens when the attention moves on somewhere else? That isn't it. My little brother went through that phase. When we were small and I was learning how to get about with my cane etc, a certain amount of fuss was made because I was blind and he felt left out, so he would ware dark glasses and pretend to be blind. It was a phase and he soon grew out of it. BIID is a completely different thing from all I've read. It's that mind deep conviction that you are not who or what you ought to be, that you are not comfortable in your own skin. It can cause sufferers to try to injure perfectly healthy limbs so much that they need to be amputated. The point I'm trying to get across here is that Jewel Shuping, as far as I understand it, wanted, needed, craved to be blind, to do the things we as blind people take for granted, as much as anyone I've ever known craves to get their sight back.

And so we come on to the psychologist who helped her. This is a much stickier point. Should he have done it? That's an answer I can't give, the same as I can't say Jewel Shuping was right or wrong to blind herself, I'll never understand the compulsion that would make someone travel to Canada, buy numbing drops for the eyes, then allow someone to pour them in and add drain cleaner. How desperate do you have to be? Oh, and then you have to wait six months while your eyes collapse and implode. Sorry if I'm giving too much information here, but really, was this an easy path to take?

So, back to the psychologist. Yes, much better to have had the eyes safely and surgically removed, but no surgeon in the US would have done that. We know the hospital tried to save the sight against Jewel Shuping's wishes. I've heard people say, that psychologist! What about his hypocratic oath huh? First do no harm! Off with his head! Well, if you condemn him, what about the surgeons who perform surgery on Trans-Gender people? I know, I know, they're doing a great thing and I have nothing but admiration for them, but in removing a perfectly healthy part of the body aren't they, in a literal sense, doing harm? Thirty, even twenty years ago you'd never have got a surgeon to perform an operation like that. Again, we can't know the motivation behind what prompted the psychologist to help, but might things not have been infinitely worse if he hadn't?

These days Jewel Shuping is studying for a digree in education. She's living a full, normal and useful life. As I said at the start, she is trying to raise awareness of BIID and urge people suffering from it to seek proffessional help. The condition is so little known about that it is usually termed as insanity or laughed to scorn.

Meanwhile the debate rages on. Some say: "I'll never support what she did. She had a choice! We never ever did!"" others say: "She's doing it for attention, she doesn't have BIID, there is no such thing as BIID, she's clearly out of her mind. Others say, how would we feel if she were over here in the UK, living on high disability benefits, would that make you feel differently? The issues aren't black or white and there are no easy answers.

As for me, this whole story has left me feeling really sad. Sad for a woman who felt so alienated within herself that she had to pour drain cleaner into her eyes for a cure. Sad for a world that finds it easier to sneer, hate and judge than to try to empathise and understand. Sad that sometimes our own issues and frustrations can make us so savage and cynical. When I read something like this I know I'm going to have a strong reaction, but I always remember something my Grandfather used to say when I was little. He was, as am I, a Christian, but if you're not the substitution of "Fate" or "destiny" makes it work just as well. It's an old saying but it used to make me stop and think when I got old enough to understand it, because I've lived long enough to know it's true. It's just this.

"there, but for the grace of God, go I."