I’m not one to say difficult choices can’t be made. I’m saying there needs to be better ways, that what’s being done here is unethical

Also, I strongly and unequivably disagree that the standard oppressor/oppressed equation can’t be applied here cuz of the reduction in agency.

If anything, the oppressor/oppressed relationship is even more laced with oppression and control because of that lack of agency. Caretakers have even more power than your given oppressor and can do tons and tons more damage to the oppressed they watch over.

So if anything, a caretaker is in the position of a super oppressor, with a level of power and privilege over the life of the oppressed individual far beyond the norm for kyriarchial systems. Which makes analysis like this all the more important. Recognizing the problem is what lets us find proper solutions.

poiseandpause:

As much as I agree with you on a lot of things genderbitch, i canT agree with you here. Abled caretakers have certain types of privileges but caretakers in facilities and such are in extremely compromising and difficult positions themselves, and must make decisions based on preserving the safety of their clients/loved ones. Sometimes they have to sacrifice dignity so their loved ones wont get hit by a car or wont get hurt. Its a difficult and bad situation for everyone involved, and I figured you woild understand how being in a complicated and tough medical situation requires a compromise on things such as dignity. The painting carpets black and false bus stops are pretty good alternatives to restraining and drugging patience. The typical oppressor/oppressed analysis is difficult to extend in a situation when the oppressed lack agency on an intrinsic level. I dont agree with everything the op has to say, obv they dont know what dementia is like, but I can understand and appreciate the stress they must go through and the diff situations they have to deal with. I had cancer when I was younger and docs routinely manipulated me into taking drugs and into sedation- bc I was a child and lacked real agency or the mental ability to make proper choices. I am sure that no one liked to drag children through rooms kicking and screaming, just as no one likes these fake bus stops, but difficult situations call for harsh choices.

genderbitch:

carnivaloftherandom:

Dementia isn’t a mental illness. It is a degenerative neurological disease, in which the brain is slowly deconstructed by plaques, (at least in the case of Alzheimer’s and most common dementias.) It is not a visual-spatial disorder, visual-spatial disorders are a symptom.

Remarkable how experiencing similar symptoms can give some insight into how such things might affect a person. Remarkable.

I’m addressing this as a specific tool used by institutional carers, for the safety and comfort of persons with dementia.

Inducing anxiety about falling into a hole is a comforting thing? Oh golly.

If you have no first hand experience of a person with dementia, yes - STFU, because you’re co-opting this, and forcing your own perspective on it.

Says the privileged as shit caretaker.

This is about caring for someone with dementia. The alternatives are drugging them into submission, or, putting them in hard restraints. Soft restraints don’t WORK for people who have dementia, but are otherwise ambulatory. Hard restraints can cause injury. Therefore, the safety and comfort of the PERSON WITH DEMENTIA, are better served by measures which are non-confrontational, not physically injurious, and give them boundaries that don’t jar them unnecessarily.

And there needs to be ways to find methods like that that don’t fuck with perceptions in unethical ways.

Who told you dementia is a mental illness?

I never said it was. I included mental illness with mental disability because some MI can have similar symptoms

The use of these techniques, is not about YOU, or the carer, it’s about the PERSON WITH DEMENTIA. Their safety, their ability to navigate the world with as little trauma and injury as possible, that is the point. 

If it was about the person with dementia, you might actually fucking think about how they would feel being fucked with instead of discussing them with passive voice as an external object.

Determining that these techniques might be applied to YOU, rather than talking about the PERSON WITH DEMENTIA, is derailing and dishonest. 

You know what’s dishonest? A caretaker in the oppressor position on the axis pretending she knows shit about what those she’s in the oppressor position over want.

You’ll note, when I spoke about my grandmother - I was talking about HER. Her safety. Not mine, not my mother’s, my GRANDMOTHER. Family caregivers, btw - not privileged.

You have the privileges that come with not having dementia. You have freedoms and validity given to your preferences, opinions, wants and needs.

So excuse me while I scoff at your privilege denying bullshit.

We’re invisible. There aren’t enough resources offered to people who care for family members at home. It can be physically, psychologically, and financially devastating. *I* chose to let my grandmother call me by my cousin’s name for the last three years of her life, because she couldn’t remember *me* and it was devastating for her, to have it explained over and over again. When you care for a person with dementia, you make choices to preserve as much of their sense of well-being and autonomy, and normalcy, for as long as you can. The alternative is chaining them up or sedatives and psychoactives that turn them catatonic. 

None of this changes the fact that you are privileged over them in the Kyriarchal way that oppressor is over oppressed.

Choose. What would you want for your parent/grandparent? If you weren’t capable of distinguishing between the past and present, or knowing your surroundings were where you were supposed to be, would you want someone to confront you repeatedly, making you feel incapable, “crazy,” or, “stupid,” because you couldn’t remember things more than five minutes at a time, would you want them to lock you into a chair, so that you couldn’t cause yourself injury, or wander off and be in danger from predators, traffic, yourself, the lack of medication for other health issues, OR - would you want someone to preserve your dignity and sense of self, as much as possible? 

And you think someone fooling me into thinking the floors have epic cliffs and holes or that there’s buses that never come preserves your fucking dignity and sense of self? Call it what it is.

You are playing mindgames with your charges. That is what it is. Don’t couch it in lovely little descriptive terms that are your intended result of your actions. Say what the actions are. You are playing mindgames with someone who’s grasp on reality is fucked with already.

Try a little honesty for once.

If you haven’t been there, you don’t get to judge this.

YOU haven’t been there. YOU haven’t had dementia. If I have to shut up you damn well have to shut up too.

It’s fucking patronizing.

Like you claiming you know what’s best as the privileged person?

You want to object to using it for patients who have a mental illness such as schizophrenia - go right ahead.

Note that people use your same exact fucking logic to apply it to mental illness, creating a wonderful little connection to take apart your exact same logic. Something I’ve been doing.

But if you haven’t dealt with DEMENTIA, any judgment you make on this, is uninformed, privileged, and erases the rights, safety, and experience of people who HAVE dementia, and those that care for them. 

No. Shut the fuck up. The bolded doesn’t get included. Any judgements you make are uninformed, privileged and erases the rights safety and experience of people who HAVE dementia because you DO NOT HAVE dementia and as a caretaker you STILL DO NOT KNOW what it is like to have dementia.

You are acting like the male chauvinist who thinks being married to a woman means he knows everything there is about being a woman. Or the abled jackass who cares for a schizophrenic lover who thinks they understand what it’s like to have schizophrenia. Or the white person with the poc partner who thinks they understand racism. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You are privilege mongering the fuck out of this convo.

(Source: oversets)