Manufactured Hysteria
I was told that she had fallen during the graveyard shift (10:00pm - 6:00am) and face-planted into the asphalt. That she refused medical attention despite her face being a bit mangled and that she had been sitting in the Denny’s for several hours. I was also told that she needed to check out of her room in the next hour or she would be evicted unless she paid for another night.
It was also apparent that both Security and the outshift manager had had enough of her.
I see her sitting in a booth, gingerly sipping at a milkshake. She is surrounded by several bags and a large purse. The left side of her face is swollen, her bottom lip is huge and she has a contusion on the bridge of her nose. Both eyes are black.
I introduce myself and ask her if she’s alright and if there’s anything I can do for her before she checks out of her room (my attempt to be kind while still emphasizing that she has to leave or be escorted off the property.) She quietly begins explaining what happened and how insensitive the security staff was, how horrible the Denny’s waitress was, how awful the hotel manager had been to her. She tells me that she is an author and shows me a photo on her phone of her at a book signing. Her husband is an astro-physicist and she is in Las Vegas for business. She has no vehicle and isn’t sure what to do.
“OK. Helen? Let me go and see if we can extend the check out time and if you’d like a meal instead of a milkshake, I’m glad to take care of that for...”
“I’m not feeling very well,” she interrupts. “I have a form of epilepsy and my medication isn’t reacting well to the trauma of the fall. Last year I had a tumble and felt the same way. My husband...” and she continues to softly drone on in a manner that prevents me from exiting the conversation without being rude. I stand up and slowly start to back away because I have work to do and need to see the hotel manager about her potential eviction.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Helen.” I turn to the waitress. “Please take care of anything she needs and I’m happy to comp it.” And I head back to the casino.
✶
In reading an opinion piece about whether black women should go on reality dating shows given the short history of low key bias and prejudice in the presentation post-editing, the following statement stood out:
“But the fact of the matter is, this country was built on the rape, pillaging, and conquest of Black women’s bodies.”
No. No, the country was decidedly not built on rape. Certainly there was rape and pillaging but it’s a huge stretch to boldly state the country was built on it. Statements like these are uttered unironically and are mostly accepted as some sort of fact. Left unchallenged these sorts of hyperbolic nonsense become the big lie that becomes accepted truth like the notion that American police are killing unarmed black men in the thousands or that there is such a thing as toxic masculinity instead of merely toxic behavior across the spectrum.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, women who wanted to have sex but were denied the agency due to both religious and patriarchal control, were diagnosed by doctors as suffering from feminine hysteria. The invention of the vibrator came about as a result.
“Documented complaints of female hysteria date back to the 13th century. Doctors of that era understood that women had libidos and advised them to relieve their sexual frustration with dildos. In the 16th century, physicians told married hysterics to encourage their husbands’ lust. Unfortunately, that probably didn't help too many wives, because modern sexuality research clearly shows that only about 25 percent of women experience orgasm consistently from intercourse.
Three-quarters of women need direct clitoral stimulation, and most intercourse doesn’t supply much. For hysteria unrelieved by husbandly lust, and for widows, and for single and unhappily married women, doctors advised horseback riding, which, for some, provided enough clitoral stimulation to trigger orgasm. But riding provided many women little relief, and by the 17th century, dildos were less of an option, because the arbiters of decency had succeeded in demonizing masturbation as “self-abuse.””
Without a coherent explanation, the medical community made one up. They manufactured a reason that these women suffered and labeled it, diagnosed it, and created archaic machines to alleviate it. It didn’t make a bit of difference if it was true or upheld by any sort of evidence, it was accepted as reality because the most adamant that it be seen as truth were the most persistent. Exaggerate a hyperbolic ‘fact of the matter’ loudly enough and it is inevitable that people will believe it.
✶
By the time I returned to Helen, she had eaten a small meal but was feeling sick. She felt she needed a wheelchair to go to her room to retrieve her belongings before checking out and, while she suddenly felt the need to vomit the food she just ate, she couldn’t walk the twenty feet to the bathroom to do so. She also wanted to be transported to a nearby emergency room.
✶
In the 1980’s there were two of these premises that took hold over the minds of Americans that turned out to be as valid as the bizarre theory of feminine hysteria—multiple personalities and recovered memories. In 1976, Sally Field starred as Sybil and the pseudo-scientific community ran with the ‘fact of the matter’ belief in this syndrome that was quickly debunked. The early 80s had us believe that therapists could draw out evidence of Satanic abuse in pre-schools by assisting children with recovering memories they suppressed. This was also completely repudiated as a thing.
✶
It turns out that in order to help Helen go to a medical facility, it is the strict policy of the casino to call paramedics despite her desire to simply get cab fare. I ask her if that is okay with her and she frets a bit, complains some more about being asked to either pay for another night or leave, and finally agrees.
One of my peers pulls me aside.
“You know she’s pulled this before, right? I mean, we all appreciate you going out of your way to help her but she’s trying to work you to get something.”
“I can’t believe that,” I respond. “She really fell and was really injured and, I don’t know, when I look in her eyes as she’s telling me her story, I believe her. Maybe she’s inflated her grievances as they relate to security and hotel management but I still believe she deserves our assistance in every way.”
The paramedics arrive. As they are talking to her, she is overheard complaining that she had, in fact, been hit by a security van and wanted to press charges against the casino. She tells them that the staff refused her food or water and that she had been ignored for hours.
We don’t have a security van. And it wasn’t her birthday, either.
