Ever since she was a little girl, Jewel Shuping dreamed of being blind. The North Carolina resident was born perfectly healthy, but she became gradually obsessed with losing her sight. [3] That rarity and secrecy has additionally made it difficult for her to find any suitable solution to this intense desire. Determined to turn her dream into a reality, Ms Shuping found a psychologist willing to help her become blind and took the necessary steps in 2006. When Jewel Shuping had the psychologist pour drain cleaner in her eyes to blind her, the reason she gave was precisely the same justification given by transgender people who have their genitals surgically removed. “I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth,” the 30-year-old says. [1] Shuping, a sufferer of Body Integrity Disorder, remembers that she fantasized about being blind from the age of 6. “My mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old,” she said. As a child, she would spend hours staring at the sun, watching sunspots and solar storms after her mother told her it would damage her eyes. [2] [4] When she was a teenager she started wearing thick black sunglasses and got her first white cane aged 18 before becoming fully fluent in braille by the age of 20. [2] [4] ‘I was ‘blind-simming’, which is pretending to be blind, but the idea kept coming up in my head and by the time I was 21 it was a non-stop alarm that was going off,’ she said. [2] [4] In 2006, Shuping finally found someone to help her realize her dream, which is when the psychologist poured drain cleaner in her eyes. “It hurt, let me tell you. My eyes were screaming and I had some drain cleaner going down my cheek burning my skin,” Shuping says. “All I could think was, ‘I am going blind, it is going to be okay.’ ” [2]
Medics at a hospital tried to save her vision, against her wishes, but her eyes were permanently damaged. But it took about six months for the damage to fully take effect. Ms Shuping said her delight went to disappointment when she opened her eyes and realised she could still see. ‘When I woke up the following day I was joyful, until I turned on to my back and opened my eyes – I was so enraged when I saw the TV screen.‘ However, over time her eyesight diminished to nothing. Her left eye suffered a ‘corneal meltdown’ – collapsing in on itself and requiring the eye to be removed – while her right eye had glaucoma and cataracts, and a webbing of scars. [2] Shuping has refused to name the psychologist who she says helped her blind herself. [3] Shuping’s decision to blind herself put a strain on her relationship with her family. She initially told them she lost her eyesight in an accident, but upon learning the truth, Shuping’s mother and sister cut off contact with the her, she claims. [4] Ms Shuping’s family have disowned her after learning it wasn’t an accident. [2] Despite the fact that her sister and mother completely cut off contact with her over the incident, Shuping says she has never been happier. [1] She said that she does not regret her decision – although she does not recommend her drastic method to others. [3] The North Carolina woman told Barcroft TV that becoming blind has always been a lifelong wish of hers and she is happy she has now fulfilled it. [17] [27] “I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth,” she said. “When there’s nobody around you who feels the same way, you start to think that you’re crazy. But I don’t think I’m crazy, I just have a disorder.” [5]
It happens when a person’s mind-held picture of their body plan conflicts with reality. This leads to the person developing an aversion to a body part that the brain does not recognize as being legitimately part of the body. Thus, a person suffering from BIID could do bodily harm to themselves in the attempt to remove the offending body part. [6] Dr Michael First, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York, who coined the term BIID, said:
Any major disability can be a focus of BIID, from amputation to paraplegia and blindness. These people are aware that this feeling of theirs is unusual – they know it is coming from within them. They can’t explain it. But because of this level of awareness we don’t consider this to be something that we would consider evidence of psychosis. In the world of psychiatry cures are rare, very often it’s about asking how you make someone’s life fulfilling despite their condition. Now the problem of course if you have a particular individual who wanted amputation or who wants to be blind – how do you know once you have done it that they are going to be satisfied? [4]
Dr. Michael First
“The ethics of whether it is OK to take a normal person and make them disabled….I think you can make an ethical case that if you conceptualize this as treating a condition then it’s OK to do it,” according to Dr. First. According to her friend Alan Chase, the fact that Shuping chose to blind herself with drain cleaner is a “really inspiring story” and she has “contributed a lot to the blind community”. Chase is completely correct. Following in the footsteps of the stunning and brave Caitlyn Jenner, Jewel Shuping could become the next civil rights icon. [1] Just as transgender people were once treated as mentally ill for wanting to slice off their penises, Shuping’s story illustrates how society’s judgment of pouring drain cleaner in your eyes as a negative thing is merely another form of vile discrimination. Based on this premise, people who accuse Shuping of being mentally ill and making the wrong decision are bigoted, intolerant, and hateful. [1] The notion that Body Integrity Identity Disorder is a mental disorder at all is an aberration. What liberals are telling us by labeling this as a mental disorder is this: “Why shouldn’t people be encouraged to pour bleach into their eyes and hack off their limbs if it makes them happy? And why shouldn’t taxpayers be forced to pay for it, as they are in the United Kingdom for sex-reassignment operations?” [1] As Paul Joseph Watson mentioned, the level of lunacy that we have now reached is a complete a total inversion of all values producing a world where the sick are king and the healthy are the problem population:
Until we embrace the fact that pouring drain cleaner in your eyes is merely a different way for a person to express who they truly are, it’s arrogant to pretend that we are building a progressive society. Now that the battle for transgender acceptance has been won, pouring drain cleaner in your eyes should be heralded as the next social justice movement, and anyone who questions the logic behind that should be publicly shamed and outed for the intolerant bigot they are. [1]
Paul Sacca from Brobible said almost the same thing:
Is she crazy? If you think so then maybe you got a fucking problem bro, and need to have your eyesight privilege checked. See you probably can’t spot or don’t understand the struggles of someone who despises being able to see things like the the sunrise, the ocean or a mirror. And before you even say she’s a “blind woman,” she is a trans-sightless individual. Have a little sensitivity goddammit! [26]
As far as she is concerned, Jewel says she can see why people who were born with a disability or who acquired one involuntarily might find it hard to comprehend her actions. She said: “I do understand why some people would be angry about a person giving themselves a disability. “They think it’s a ploy to get social security, or a waste of advocacy that would be better focused on people with an involuntary disability. “But I feel that the way I became disabled doesn’t really matter. “If someone were to say that its fundamentally selfish to blind myself, I would say that it’s selfish to refuse treatment to somebody with a disorder. “This is not a choice, it’s a need based on a disorder of the brain.” [4]
