I first learned of this disorder through a radio commercial for some drug that’s supposed to counteract it. The drug’s name escapes me, but it could well have been NUVIGIL®, whose web site explains SWD as a medical condition that may affect 1 in 4 people out of the “15 million Americans [who] work outside of the traditional 9 to 5 schedule.”
SWD is a medical condition that can be diagnosed and treated by a doctor
SWD occurs when your body’s internal sleep-wake clock is out of sync with your work schedule—your body is telling you to go to sleep when your work schedule needs you to stay awake.
If you work non-traditional hours and struggle to stay awake at work, you may be experiencing excessive sleepiness (ES) due to SWD.
People with ES due to SWD often struggle to stay awake during their waking hours, or have trouble sleeping during their sleeping hours.
And, of course, we then have the side effects that may be worse than the actual “condition”:
What important information should I know about NUVIGIL?
NUVIGIL may cause serious side effects including a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may affect parts of your body such as your liver or blood cells, and may result in hospitalization and be life-threatening. If you develop a skin rash, hives, sores in your mouth, blisters, swelling, peeling, or yellowing of the skin or eyes, trouble swallowing or breathing, dark urine, or fever, stop taking NUVIGIL and call your doctor right away or get emergency help.
NUVIGIL is not approved for children for any condition. It is not known if NUVIGIL is safe or if it works in children under the age of 17.
You should not take NUVIGIL if you have had a rash or allergic reaction to NUVIGIL or PROVIGIL® (modafinil) Tablets [C-IV], or are allergic to any of the following ingredients: modafinil, armodafinil, croscarmellose sodium, lactose monohydrate, magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose, povidone, or pregelatinized starch.
What are possible side effects of NUVIGIL?
Stop taking NUVIGIL and call your doctor or get emergency help if you get any of the following serious side effects:
Mental (psychiatric) symptoms, including: depression, feeling anxious, sensing things that are not really there, extreme increase in activity (mania), thoughts of suicide, aggression, or other mental problems
Symptoms of a heart problem, including: chest pain, abnormal heart beat, and trouble breathing
Common side effects of NUVIGIL are headache, nausea, dizziness, and trouble sleeping. These are not all the side effects of NUVIGIL.
I honestly don’t know which is worse: (A) having white bosses or managers peg you as “lazy” because you have trouble staying alert during rotating or night shifts that fuck with your body’s natural cycles, or (B) having white doctors diagnose you with SWD and prescribe medication that makes you dizzy and nauseous and may give you difficulty breathing. Or (C) just avoiding the whole prescription thing and getting hooked on street methamphetamines. Either way, as I said recently:
UH GUYS IT’S NOT A PATHOLOGY IT’S CALLED WAGE SLAVERY
Next, let’s examine [. . .] Gender Identity Disorder. The diagnostic criteria for adults and adolescents [APA94] are:
A. A strong and persistent cross-gender identification (not merely a desire for any perceived cultural advantages of being the other sex). In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as a stated desire to be the other sex, frequent passing as the other sex, desire to live or be treated as the other sex, or the conviction that he or she has the typical feelings and reactions of the other sex.
B. Persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex. In adolescents and adults, the disturbance is manifested by symptoms such as preoccupation with getting rid of primary and secondary sex characteristics (e.g., request for hormones, surgery, or other procedures to physically alter sexual characteristics to simulate the other sex) or belief that he or she was born the wrong sex.
__
C. The disturbance is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition.
D. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
Specify if (for sexually mature individuals) Sexually Attracted to Males, … Females,… Both, … Neither.
The clinical significant criterion, D, was added to all conditions in the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders section. The definition of “distress or impairment” lies at the heart of the issue of pathologization of gender expression.
If you’ve read or known me for a while, you probably know that I think GID is a bunch of bullshit. Apart from the fact that it conflates sex and gender (people inhabit and express All Kinds of Genders, which certainly don’t map neatly onto a binary sex-assignment system so half-assed that it doesn’t even account for basic and common human biological diversity), GID is all wrapped up in a medical system that *requires* people to conform to this narrow script (“I was born the wrong/opposite gender”; “I’m a man/woman trapped in a woman’s/man’s body”) in order to qualify for medical treatment that ought to be available to whoever wants it. It’s called gender self-determination, people. Or the abolition of gender (someday). Take your pick.
3. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Just to be clear: I’m not saying that the so-called “disorders” in this list don’t cause people a ton of pain. It’s horrible to live on the brink of nodding off while driving trucks all day and night. It’s scary to face a society that questions and/or criminalizes and/or may kill you for failing/refusing to conform to your assigned sex and socialized gender. It’s awful to suffer nightmares, waking terrors, and flashbacks from a traumatic event. All I’m saying is that in a society that equates disorders with shamefulness and even immorality, we would do well to avoid blaming/pathologizing individuals for what are primarily social and structural problems.
Service members who experience PTSD, TBI, MST, and combat stress have the right to exit the traumatic situation and receive immediate support, and compensation. Too often, service members are forced to redeploy back into dangerous combat, or train in situations that re-traumatize them. We say, individuals suffering from trauma have the right to remove themselves from the source of the trauma. Service members who are not physically or mentally healthy shall not be forced to deploy or continue service. Learn more about what Operation Recovery is fighting for here
Rather than acquiescing to dominant narratives positing PTSD as a sign of mental weakness, IVAW reclaims woundedness and a right to heal. Racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist, earth-degrading war is the problem; not individual combatants’ mental fragility. (a.k.a. humanity.)
4. Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS)
__
Lotta people in this world, including medical experts, simply don’t buy that MCS is a real thing.
Many experts and major medical organizations — such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology — have stated that the connection between the patient’s symptoms and environmental exposures are speculative and evidence of disease is lacking. The American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs believes that multiple chemical sensitivity should not be considered a recognized clinical syndrome.
But hold up, Kloncke. I thought you were mad at the medical establishment for over-pathologizing. Now they’re under-pathologizing?? Make up your damn mind, girl!
Fair. But here’s why I include this one: regardless of what Science says, in the world where I live, people get harmed by chemicals. Like the webMD article says:
People who have the symptoms [including headache, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, etc] may blame them on a major event, such as a chemical spill. Or they may point to long-term contact with low levels of chemicals at work, perhaps while working in an office with poor ventilation. Reported triggers include tobacco smoke, auto exhaust, perfume, insecticide, new carpet, chorine, and countless others.
And most of the time, folks who have identified certain chemical triggers that make them feel sick have a helluva time convincing other people and institutions to take that shit seriously. So in effect, people with MCS (whether or not medical associations recognize it as a ‘real thing’) are treated as disordered and irrational, and pushed out of many spaces directly or indirectly.
But as with PTSD, GID, and SWD, the main problem isn’t individual frailty or deviance; it’s systemic oppression. Environmental illness is not an individual person’s problem. Society-wide, there’s a profit motive to manufacture goods at the cheapest rate possible in order to outdo competitors — and often this means adding cheap, unsafe chemicals and preservatives to products; manufacturing commodities in conditions that are super unsafe for workers; or constructing toxic industry in poor neighborhoods — all of which can contribute to chronic environmental illnesses.
__
It’s also true that folks’ MCS can be triggered by high-end products like top-of-the-line essential oils, etc. From what I understand, this is due to an underlying reaction pattern that makes them much more sensitive to highly concentrated manufactured shit in general: even if the stuff being concentrated is sandalwood or lavender. Whatever the particular triggers, the main point is: thanks to an economy driven by profit motives, owned by a ruling class, and utterly unaccountable to regular people, poor and working-class people disproportionately have to put up with ubiquitous toxic externalities and poisons. Are we surprised when people’s bodies show significant signs of damage?
Now, bringing down these hyper-toxified manufacturers and the ruling class that controls them might take a minute. In the meantime, fortunately, there are things we can do to respect and support our friends and comrades with MCS (and probly make our own spaces a little healthier while we’re at it). Check out this recently-crafted Fragrance Free Femme Of Colour Realness guide for tips and resources!
5. Infantile Disorder (LOL)
j/k. Lenin jokes, anyone?
This is just a partial list, drawing together various issues that have been on my mind lately. I’m sure you / we can think of more! And I do want to be really clear: I’m not arguing that all illness is socially constructed -slash- doesn’t exist. Yes, illnesses exist. “Birth, old age, sickness, and death” (as the Buddhist phrase goes). Inevitable, in many respects. What concerns me is that capitalist society blames *our bodies* for struggling to survive under *its torments.*
Eff that noise. Our bodies — in all their beautiful fragility, disability, diversity — are not the problem. You want problems?
Not the most awesome photos, but I was excited to make this salad today, which involved my first pickling experience.
I had heard that quick-pickling onions is an easier task than it sounds, which I found to be true. But I didn’t realize how many delicious components were involved.
Cloves.
Chili.
Bay leaf.
Brown sugar.
And, of course, vinegar. (I used the apple-cider kind.)
So simple. So satisfying. Highly delicious.
I had been looking for a new way of using farro, a grain I adore for its chewy heartiness. Saw a beet, farro and arugula salad on a menu in SF and thought I would try my hand at something similar.
______
Ella observed my experiment from her perch on the grocery tote.
The General Strike worked in Nigeria! Beautiful testament to who really constitutes the foundation of the world economy: not politicians or businesspeople (so-called “innovators”), but workers and ordinary people (who continually innovate new ways of asserting power against bosses, patriarchs, and state oppression).
Thank you, friends in Nigeria, for inspiring the rest of us! May we continue to develop and use our collective material power, worldwide, and discover together how to replace capitalism with a system that promotes freedom, equality, compassion, and positive interdependence among humans, animals, and the earth (and maybe robots; who knows ;) ).
Also, smiled at this seemingly pro-queer shoutout from Femi:
Later in his office, Mr. Kuti shouted at his television as he watched the labor leaders announce the end of the strike. “I told you those people would back down,” he said to his aides, looking up from the screen. As for the government, he said, “They prosecute people for being gay, but there is no law against stealing 14 million.”
So many people have been writing and sharing wonderful views on Oakland’s General Strike — I thought I’d collect a few for my digital memory chest.
Where We Been
Grew up listening to him on KSFM 102.5 — now appreciating Davey D’s take on the day.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash, writer and one of the many dope teachers at East Bay Meditation Center, offers a perspective as a spiritual leader and involved Oakland parent.
Dope commenter, organizer, and now blogger in her own right, Huli breaks it down and offers a delightful new phrase: “peace bullies.”
A 10-year street medic, present for the attempted re-opening of the former Traveler’s Aid Society, supports liberating empty buildings and standing up to cops, but urges us to prioritize inclusive solidarity and sustainability, not spectacle.
Where We Goin
Ryan and I made this flyer a few weeks ago for East Bay Solidarity Network, to pass out at the Occupy/Decolonize Oakland encampment. (Click image to download & read)
Official, institutionalized groups like Causa Justa / Just Cause and ACCE have been doing some anti-foreclosure work since before #OWS. But I think that the movement now lends two vital long-term ingredients: (1) a crucial boost of irreverence for the law, and (2) more people power to defend this wave of “political disobedience.”
Despite some people’s insistence that occupiers are exercising “the right to assembly,” when it comes down to it, Oakland occupiers are maintaining an unpermitted encampment. We are disobeying laws not for the sake of flauting unwanted codes, but for the sake of building new wanted realities. And we have enough support —thousands and thousands of people — to keep on making moves.
The strain of positive lawlessness underlying the movement is, in my opinion, a good thing: especially if it means that we, the 99%, are asserting that the law institutionally favors the 1%, and thus is not a reliable mechanism for real change. And since nonprofits in this country, like big unions, are so bound up with legalism (in order to get grants/contracts, avoid lawsuits, and continue to exist as orgs), it’s important to have strong unofficial wings of mass movement, willing to take that extra step into illegal (but positive, life-affirming) territory.
At the same time, whenever we talk about positive lawlessness, the question arises: arrest risk. Real talk, hella people simply cannot afford to be arrested, cuz they’re already overcriminalized because of racism, transphobia, anti-migrant terrorism, family responsibilities, etc.! So it’s also important to continue having lower-arrest-risk actions, ideally led by people who aren’t trying to get arrested themselves. For instance, this march led by POOR magazine (Prensa Pobre), scheduled for this Thursday. From their web site:
We are asking the powerful Decolonize (Occupy) movements in the Bay Area to decolonize and march with us in solidarity with those of us in severe poverty who struggle to survive, raise our babies and face ongoing racist, classist laws legislations and false borders everyday on both sides of the bay as we present demands to the government offices that continue to racialize, criminalize, harass, evict and abuse us.
We will march and decolonize four govt spaces on both sides of the Bay – ICE, Welfare (DHS), HUD (Housing n Urban Development) & The Po’Lice in one day at the front of each of these buildings – we ARE not trying to endanger ANY poor peoples/migrante peoples with arrests as none of us can risk arrest.
POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork(PNN) is a poor people-led.indigenous peoples led grassroots, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, education, art and advocacy to youth, adults and elders in poverty across Turtle Island.
__
It’s so encouraging to see issues like free education and housing coexisting with labor demands and greater organization of the working class across sectors. In the long-long-term view, as Advance the Struggle reminds us, we — not the politicians and policymakers — will occupy the means of production and begin to build the world we desire.
Yesterday, before my eyes, Oakland turned a corner. A successful general strike (or, as Clarence Thomas of the ILWU Longshoremen’s union put it, “the closest thing this generation has seen,”) shut down capital and commerce around the Town, including the fifth largest port in the nation. (And, as I understand it, the port workers went home with pay!)
Hey folks, sorry for the signal loss! It’s been mad busy around here, partly because of the following little experiment I’m planning, with the help of some good friends. In short, for one afternoon I’m going to try to translate the blog “in real life” (IRL).
The only the IRL ‘blogger’ (or blogger-heavy) gatherings I’ve attended myself have been conferences. Media conferences; technology conferences; things like that. In this type of scene, bloggers from across the country (or among many countries) not only get to expound their theories before a live, half-listening-half-Tweeting audience, but can also lock screen-addled eyes with many writers theretofore befriended — or offended — exclusively online. I’ve seen drama erupt at these idea emporiums, but I’ve also witnessed cyberdenizens leap over tables to greet each other, practically converging midair in an embrace of mutual affection, admiration, and I-can’t-believe-it’s-really-you.
For my own shindig, though, I want to go in a different direction. Very chill, more like a housewarming or offbeat birthday party than a serious networking meet-and-greet. Although there are plentyofonlinewriters and creators I’d love to meet in person someday (and many wonderful ones I’ve already had the fortune to know), most everyone invited to Kloncke IRL are people I’ve known offline for a while. Here’s the email I sent out about it (well, a slightly less colorful version) to my local peeps. Faraway compas, I love you and wish you could be here! My address has been changed for this version because, well, I don’t want it circling around, you feel me? But I’m posting it here because I occasionally meet people in the Bay who’ve read Kloncke but don’t know me personally (yet). If that’s you, shoot me an email, and come on out next Saturday! Love to have you.
dear amazing wonderful human friends.
as most of you know, i make a blog called Kloncke.
i know you know about this blog because many of you have left rad, sweet, insightful, and sometimes hilarious comments there.
i appreciate this a whole lot. i appreciate YOU a whole lot!
and so, as a small means of saying thanks for reading, sharing, linking, and just being your fabulous selves, i want to warmly e-vite you to a gathering in my home, In Real Life (IRL).
what can you expect at such an event?
live incarnates of the cyber version; including:
vegetarian and vegan homemade treats
photographs, available by donation
group meditation
a reading of my recent guest column in make/shift magazine, on buddhism, feminism, and resistance
a “blogroll” table featuring your political, artistic, and spiritual lit to share or display (bring some!)
the colorful walls of our apartment
chillin and building with other lovely folks
Kloncke IRL
Saturday, October 15th 3–5pm (Reading at 4pm) 555 33rd Street, Oakland * * *
this event will be free (of course!) but please bring your own mug or thermos (for tea) and, if you can, a cushion to sit on. (we’ll also have a handful of chairs.) unfortunately our apartment is up one flight of stairs with no elevator or ramp; please let me know if this will be a problem for you, and we can try to work something out.
also, please arrive scent-free so my peeps with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities can come and enjoy themselves without getting sick!
finally, Our place has limited space! Please RSVP so we can have a sense of numbers, and calculate how many walls to knock down.(j/k :) feel free to RSVP-plus-one or two, but don’t roll through with a whole posse. our kitten Eloise will be acting as bouncer, keeping careful track of the guest list.
__
thanks, love, take care, see you soon, be well, and call or e-mail me with any questions,
katie loncke
More to come this week online: the next Newsies post on how the courts are stacked against us, inspired by a frustrating but illuminating experience this morning before a judge. Stay tuned. :)
The owner of this business, which desecrated a 3,500-year-old Ohlone shellmound in order to construct its offices, now wants to build a vacation home on other sacred indigenous land: this time on Rattlesnake Island in Lake County, CA.
Don’t have much time to chat today, friends, but those of you who’ve been following Kloncke for a while will know just how jazzed I am that brownfemipower (a.k.a. bfp) is guest-blogging at Feministe. She’s taking an in-depth material look at her home state of Michigan, or, in her words:
While I’m here, I’ll be working to contextualize all the big words: “post-industrialization,” “nationalism,” “white supremacist heteropatriarchy,” “decay porn,” “borders,” “distribution systems,” etc within a framework that centers Detroit, Michigan, and the US Midwest.
Or I may just wind up posting pretty pictures. Who knows. :D
In her first post offering background on the region, bfp begins with a brief overview of the indigenous peoples from whom the land was stolen.
It’s important to know about Michigan’s history of colonization because indigenous peoples in Michigan are still still struggling with the vestiges of colonization. They are also leaders in the fight against corporate violence against the land and the people. There is often a false idea that the violences of industrialization play out almost exclusively in urban areas. But those serene lakes and beautiful mountains we all like going to for our week vacation are the same places that keep the urban factories up and running.
Yep, primitive accumulation, and capitalists’ access to natural resources, has everything to do with imperialism, colonization, genocide, enslavement, and misogyny and heteropatriarchy. Advance the Struggle had a good post a while back touching on this link between pro-communist struggle and indigenous land defense, using as an illustrative example the recently successful defense of Sogorea Te / Glen Cove, up in Vallejo (photos of the encampment at the end of that post) — in which Ryan, I, and other East Bay Solidarity friends played a very small supportive role.
Now it looks like we and EastBaySol may have another opportunity to support the defense of indigenous sacred land from bourgeois development. (The aggressor’s business, Nady Electronics, has offices in Emeryville, about a mile away from Ryan’s and my apartment, located right on top of an Ohlone sacred shellmound. The guy just won’t let up, apparently.) I received this press release in my email today. The money quote:
Supervisor Comstock, the Lake County Board Supervisor who cast the deciding vote, commented, “I’m a huge proponent of private property rights.” He added, “My family’s been living in Lake County for 150 years- you can’t get more native than that”.
Yet another example of institutional white supremacy and heteropatriarchy supporting the accumulation of capital & resources to the (historically white, patriarchal) ruling class. Time to remind this dude, through direct action and defense, that yes, you can get more native than that. Entire press release after the jump.
Continuing in the vein of plants, pets, and partnership — or the ways in which companions both reflect the quality of our treatment, and express their own nature independent of us — in the past 20 hours since we brought her home, our newly adopted kitten Eloise has proven both delightfully surprising and shockingly predictable.
At the city shelter where we adopted her, the staff warned us that Eloise would probably be extremely shy. She and two siblings were found in a car (not sure whether this makes them stray or semi-feral), terrified of the long human arms reaching down to nab them. Within the cat pound’s contained visiting space, surrounded by cages, she seemed calm enough on our betoweled laps, but didn’t purr or rub her head against us like some of the older cats did. One of the women on staff wore a foreboding face when she advised us to handle the kitten as much as possible once we got her home, so that hopefully she would grow comfortable with humans. Sobered but optimistic, we left her over the weekend to be spayed Monday morning. Following that surgical ordeal, we anticipated a drugged bundle of quasi-hostility retreating to the remotest corners of our bathroom for the first days or weeks.
Sure enough, the minute we lifted her from the vet-issued cardboard carrying case and set her on our bathroom tiles, she fled to the farthest (and dirtiest) corner (straight past the cat bed I so lovingly fashioned for her out of a cardboard box and an accidentally-shrunken cashmere sweater). There she remained, cowering behind the dusty toilet.
On the morning ten years ago when we in Sacramento heard the news, I remember my dad driving me to school. Us listening to the radio. I didn’t really understand what was happening (then again, who did?), but I remember starting to cry when I realized that people in other parts of the world live in fear of bombings every day.
What does it mean to hope and pray for a better society, free from imperialist wars, patriarchy, racism, and class, without rejecting or wishing away the current reality?
To me, it means: now (the present) is the best and only time we have in which to try our hardest. To keep building toward the freedoms we wish for all beings.
We may not live to see it, but we can help create it.
I hear that in Narcotics Anonymous, they advise people starting or re-starting recovery to avoid taking a lover. Human relationships are complicated and fraught. First, start with a plant. If you can keep a plant alive and healthy, then you might be ready to adopt an animal. If you can care for the animal for a good while, then you might open to the possibility of a romantic partner.
In some ways, companions are mirrors for our own behavior. Can we water a plant faithfully? Can we walk a dog consistently, and clean out a cat litter box regularly? Can we respond reliably to the needs of another being?
And in other ways, companions remain true to their own nature. For instance, if a cactus plant needs to be constantly avalanched with sunlight, it might just go ahead and die in our small dark Seattle apartment. No matter how tender our plantly serenades, or how perfectly calibrated our soil-dampening schedule, this thing needs sun, and sun we ain’t got.
____
Last week I brought home three Haworthia plants, of a genus native to Southern Africa. I’m not sure how well they’ll do in our house: one on the kitchen windowsill, one on the dining table, and one in our bedroom, brightening our meditation space (which I’ve temporarily surrendered to a small but persistent faction of the invasive Argentine ant supercolony that has overtaken the West Coast).
__
On Thursday, Ryan and I went to the Berkeley city animal shelter with our friends Kate and Rane, and after hours of tough deliberation (so many cats to love = virtually impossible to select just one), signed the paperwork for a semi-feral black kitten, two months old. She’ll be spayed Monday morning and then come home with us, sequestered in the bathroom until she gets comfortable enough with us, her bed, litter box, etc., to finally roam the apartment. I hope she likes it here.
So yeah, co-adopting an animal. How adult-like. It’s nearly two years that Ryan and I have been together, including nine months in this apartment. He’s lived with a partner before. First time for me. I watch myself adjusting to coupledom.
Kloncke 