The Cutprice Guignol

Obvious trigger warning for self-harm here.

So, a few months ago, I was at the Doctor’s (not that doctor, you fool, the other kind). And I was feeling like shit for reasons I honestly can’t really remember any more-everything in my life was trotting along at a good old clip, but I still desperately wanted to harm myself and I couldn’t figure out why. While in my slightly twisted opinion, there was nothing wrong with that and I should just sit on the floor listening to shitty mid-noughties pop-punk and get it over with, I knew (and still know) that when I cut myself it hurts some of the people I love the most, so I traipsed into the doctor’s, looking to talk over some of the horrible things going through my head and hopefully find some way to start tackling them. I was in and out of the appointment in ten minutes, after the doctor had referred to my “illness-inverted commas…” and handed me over the card for a website which had some helpful hints for people struggling with depression, which is not a problem I’d come to her with. She made some noises about putting me back on anti-depressants, and off I vanished back into the real world again, no better off than when I came in, but a little disgruntled at another pointless encounter about my self-harm from a person who didn’t really seem to want to listen to what I had to say about my own experiences.

Look, I know that some people who suffer from mental health problems refuse to get help from the medical profession, and if that’s their way of dealing with it, bully for them, I’m not going to try and take that away. But me? For the last two years, I’ve been about as keen as I can be in fixing what’s wrong with my brain in whatever way I can- give me pills, give me therapy, give me anything you think might make me not a little bit scary when I’m on a viscous downer. While I’ve mostly managed to get a handle on my depression and anxiety, self-harm hangs out at the back of my head like a bad dream you kind of half-remember, until suddenly it’s the only thing I can think about for two weeks straight and enter into an endless roundabout dialogue with myself about why I should do it, but then I shouldn’t do it, but then it’s my body and no-one else has any say over it, but then…and on and on and on and on. I’ve been pointed towards a bunch of ways to deal with these problems in the past, and what I’ve gleaned from a lot of these coping methods is that it’s okay to what to hurt yourself, provided you don’t inflict the results on anyone else.

If you’ve been on any self-harm advice sites in the last few years, you’ll come across a variety of tips and tricks to keep yourself from harm. Example: wrapping a rubber band around your wrist and snapping it against your skin until the urge to cut yourself goes away, or pushing your arms into a bucket of ice to fulfill the urge to feel pain on your body. Now, I get why both of these would be useful if you were just trying to kick an addiction to a specific kind of self-harm, but for me- and a bunch of people I’ve connected with, online and in real life, about these issues- it’s not about cutting, or burning, or whatever your poison of choice may be (literally poison, sometimes, but I digress). It’s about the pain aspect of it all. I might be a cutter first and foremost (ugh, such a 2006-MCR-fan word), but I will hit things until my hands bruise, scratch until I draw blood, push earrings into my fingertips, because the sensation of the pain gives me relief from feeling angry/upset/frustrated/scared/whatever. A lot of the coping methods advised are not to wean you off using physical pain to salve yourself, and that seems kind of counter-intuitive, a way for people around you to not have to deal with the physical aftermath of what you’ve done while you’re still engaging in destructive behaviour.

And, of course, I only speak for myself here, but my experience with doctors and self-harm has been pretty atrocious across the board. Most have put it down to depression or anxiety, even when I try to explain that no, that’s really, really not what this is and could I please not go back on anti-depressants when the furthest thing from what I’m actually feeling is depressed?

In the chats I’ve had with other people who engage in self-injurious behaviour (would it be too crass to refer to them as my SIBlings? It would. Glad I got that out), one thing has become evidently clear: there is no one reason behind it. It’s simplified in after-school specials as something done for control, or to express an emotion, or to feel less numb, but those are only a tiny sliver of the reasons why people like me do it. I understand why people look for common factors amongst those who self-harm, because it makes the problem easier to treat and understand, but it’s not that easy, as much as I would love it to be. I would love-love-for there to be a pill that made all of it go away, but there’s not. Because sometimes self-harm is a symptom of other problems, and sometimes it’s the problem in itself, sometimes it’s an experiment, sometimes an addiction. Whenever we try and simplify it- by offering one-size-fits-all solutions to the problem, or by not listening to a sufferer’s own personal experiences-we’re skipping out on a chance to address the real issue at the heart of the problem, whatever that may be. Mental health problems are still sitgmatized, and self-harm, as one of the most visible forms of a mental health problem, is not exempt from that list. So we need to talk about it. We need to talk about it a whole bunch, because, judging by most of the resources I’ve encountered over the years, it seems like we don’t have a fucking clue what we’re talking about.

What had been your experiences with self-harm? Is there anywhere you’ve found advice you’d want to share with other sufferers?

Look, I know why this episode exists. I get it. I do. It’s here to break up some of the intense, emotional, high-stakes drama that surrounds it- what, you’d have been happy with the survivor’s guilt and rampaging murder robot of Dalek followed on with the heart-wrenching, gut-punching emotion of Father’s Day? What kind of monster are you? Well, certainly not the Jagrafess, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Just like every week, read another take on the episode over at Red Whine. 

So yes, I understand why The Long Game falls where it does in the series, being one of the lighter, more straightforward romps of the series. It’s also the biggest wobble of the season so far, an episode that never seems quite sure of itself, lurching between body modification horror and campy Simon Pegg without much room in between. But still, this IS the best season of the rebooted Doctor Who (side note: here’s an article I wrote for one of my favourite sites to contribute to about my most-watched episodes of the original run of Doctor Who, for those who seem unable to grasp the concept that WE’RE ONLY RECAPPING THE REBOOT, COME ON NOW), and even it’s weakest episode has a lot to recommend to it.

Well, maybe not a lot, but The Long Game serves at least one important purpose, and that’s laying a lot of ground work for the finale two-parter, and, looking back, it feels more like something they threw in at the last minute to break up the heavier episode and get ahead on the exposition for the very excellent two-parter that ends this series. It just feels kind of bitty, everything from the one-episode companionship of the agonisingly dull and irritating Adam from the last episode to a handful of interesting ideas that seem to trail off into nothingness, like the awesome data cores implanted into people’s brains to allow them to absorb centuries of information in a moment. Christ, I haven’t even got on to the story yet: the Doctor, Rose, and Adam wind up on Satellite Five, a broadcast news station that provides coverage for the human empire (which is a cool concept that I’d love to see more of, because I am a history nerd and nothing you can do or say will ever change that), but it soon becomes clear that something distinctly non-human and rather Jagrafess-like (and something with distinctly dated CGI effects, but let’s not dwell on that) is the one actually running the show.

I wrote a lot last season about how Clara and Capaldi’s Doctor are a million times better as characters when they’re not together, and here it’s kind of the other way around. Rose and this Doctor require someone to bounce off of, someone with real screen presence and camaraderie – someone we’re getting to soon, I promise.

And splitting them up for much of this episode to have them run around with half-sketched in secondary characters was a mistake. But still, at least we get some top-quality Simon Pegg action, as he swans around with icicles dripping off his beard as The Editor, as he just about pulls the episode back from eye-rollingly forgettable. I’ll always dig a good, bureaucratic villain, the kind of person who hides their nastiness behind buttoned-up suits and unnaturally neat hairstyles, and Simon Pegg’s Editor is definitely one of the most entertaining iterations of the trope.

And, as I said earlier, there are a handful of tantalisingly good sci-fi ideas kicking around in the sidelines of this episode, including Annoying Adam’s lust for knowledge and the growing influence of the news media in controlling the populace, even if they do kind of get sidelined so the Doc can shout at a pile of that slimy play-goo you could order out of the back of the Beano when I were a lass.

Look, I know I’m not coming across as too enthusiastic here, but this episode is still worlds better than some of the stuff we’ve seen in the last few years of Who- it’s got something to say, an original villain, some fun cameos (OH HELLO TAMSIN GRIEG, LOVE OF MY LIFE), and a fun twist ending that I will spoil for no-one. It just has the bad luck of being trapped in an amazing run of episodes. But, taken as a singular being and not as part of the whole series, this is for sure one of the more inanely entertaining episodes since the show’s reboot, And inanely entertaining, as we all know, is my middle name.

Next week, we’ll be reviewing the heart-shattering Father’s Day through a haze of tears, before we switch over to covering season nine week-to-week. Join us, bring tissues (and not just because Jackie’s in the next episode).

*hums theme song*

I was reading an article recently- this article, to be precise- which was centred around the fact that the author believed people who’d only dated members of the opposite sex shouldn’t be allowed to identify as “queer”. And it got me thinking, as things like that often do, about straight-passing and bi-erasure (and the erasure of other, non-mono sexualities, though I’ll be discussing my own experiences specifically).

Look, here’s the low-down: I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with a member of the opposite sex for what feels like a staggeringly long time now. There’s no doubt that the majority of people who glance over my life would assume I was straight, especially if I forgot to wear my “I’M BISEXUAL, ASK ME HOW” badge that day, and I can’t blame them for thinking so. But the fact of the matter is that I am not straight, no matter how much various people would like me to believe I am, and when people describe me as such they’re saying something that doesn’t account for an important part of my sexual and romantic life. But does the privilege I get from passing as straight make up for the fact that I regularly get a big part of my personality ignored? That is the question.

Thing is, I totally understand the urge to keep straight-passing people out of LGBTQ+ spaces. When I see posts declaring that bisexual people with opposite-sex partners shouldn’t be allowed at pride, when I see people rolling their eyes at “fake bisexuals” who they believe are wearing queerness as a status symbol, when I hear people brushing off the right of non-monosexual people to engage with queer culture, I get it. I do. Because queer spaces are, in a lot of ways, one of the few places where hetereonormativity isn’t so, well, normal, and having someone prance in with their opposite-sex partner, looking to all the world like a straight couple and benefiting from all the privileges that brings, seems counter-productive. So I understand where this desire to keep straight-passing bisexuals out of these spaces comes from, and in some ways I find it hard to begrudge anyone that desire, even if the B in LGBTQ stands for “bisexual”, not for “bisexual with the appropriate level of gay for my tastes.”

But then, there’s the problem of bi-erasure. Let’s be clear here: bi-erasure is a thing that exists, both in the media and in real life, where bisexual people are simply seen as monosexual (into one gender) depending on the partner they’re with (or greedy, or lying, or slutty, or…you get it). And by slinking away into a corner and trying not to engage with LGBTQ+ spaces because I’m worried I won’t be seen as queer enough, or I’ll be seen as invading somewhere that isn’t for me, I’m contributing to that, in the same that allowing people to think I’m straight (because it doesn’t always feel appropriate to be all “I LIKE GIRLS THO”. And sometimes, believe it or not, my sexuality isn’t relevant to the interaction I’m having) does the same thing. But then, what’s the alternative?

The alternative is being open and willing to talk about my sexuality with people, which is something I’ve been trying to do over the last few months. I’m not straight, and allowing people to think I am is untrue. But part of the problem there stems from the effect bi-erasure has on society- far more often than you would imagine, people who claim to like and have a modicum of respect for me tell me that bisexuality doesn’t exist, as if that’s something that a) makes even a jot of sense or b) isn’t infuriating as fuck. And then had people defend them for saying that, in a way they would never defend homophobia or transphobia or the like. I’ve had people- otherwise decent, liberal people, mind- call me a liar and a slut.

Or, of course, I have to quantify my bisexuality- how many women have you dated? Have you done x arbitrary sexual act with a woman? Funnily, whenever I was dating a woman, I was never asked to prove my hetreo side, because, you know, of COURSE I must want the dick. Christ, sometimes just mentioning the fact that I’ve dated women or what-have-you in a related conversation is enough to play into the stereotype some people have in their heads of bisexuals performing for attention. Either I say nothing and I’m categorised inaccurately, or say something and immediately fall into a bisexual stereotype in the head of the person I’m telling. I can’t win.

As I’ve said before, I’m never going to argue that my status as a straight-passing bisexual is as difficult or problematic as many other members of the non-hetreosexual, non-cis world (especially as a female bisexual, as my sexuality is often written off as performative lesbianism for the male gaze). But the problem remains: either keep my mouth shut, pass as straight, and contribute to a culture where bisexuals exist only as stereotypes, or open my mouth and potentially back up those stereotypes.

Hannibal is love, Hannibal is life. An obituary for one of the best shows on TV.

Nerd-baiting with the Comic-Con 2015 trailers. Suicide Squad looks awful and I’ll hear no different!

I will never not love Lily Tomlin