queerbychoice | Driving While Gay, or: Queer by Personality Disturbance

When Google News recently made its homepage customizable, my ability to keep up with the news was improved far more than I would have imagined possible. I added sections for local and state news, and sections for lesbian, gay, and bisexual news. I added non-U.S. editions of the world news section, so that more non-U.S. media sources would show up. Now I never have to click the links on the side or use the search bar for anything, because everything I want to read comes up on one page.

However, one of the articles that showed up today was about a 23-year-old queer man in Sicily who had his driver's license revoked for "driving while gay." It seems that the people in charge of issuing driver's licenses in Sicily found records showing that this man had been dismissed from the military for being gay, and they decided that since (as everyone knows) feeling attracted to members of the same sex is a mental illness, and since mental illnesses might theoretically impair people's ability to drive (although I can't say that the vast majority of instances of mental illness that I can think of have any such effect), this man would need to be individually examined and get a doctor to verify whether his mental illness of homosexuality would interfere with his ability to drive or not. And in the meantime, pending such verification, they revoked his driver's license.

However, a judge has now ordered the driver's license authorities to give him his driver's license back. A happy ending! Except not really, because this judge's explanation for why "driving while gay" should not be illegal was, and these are his exact words: "[Homosexuality] cannot be considered a true and proper psychiatric illness, being a mere personality disturbance."

"Personality disturbance"? Are you disturbed? Well, I'm pretty disturbed about this judge, and these driver's-license-revoking authorities.

I would like to point out that although both "personality disturbance" and "psychiatric illness" are distinctly offensive terms, the difference between them appears to me to consist mostly of the fact that "psychiatric illnesses" tend to be suspected of being at least somewhat genetically influenced (which is different from saying that they actually are at least somewhat genetically influenced - I'm speaking here of how mainstream society seems to imagine them to be), whereas "personality disturbances" tend not to be suspected of this. And apparently the one considered less likely to be genetically influenced is deemed more worthy of being permitted to drive - despite the fact that the vast majority of people diagnosed with "psychiatric illnesses" are entirely as capable of driving as anybody else.

However, don't expect to see me calling myself "queer by personality disturbance" anytime soon. :p

The article says that the poor gay man who's had to suffer all this "has lost his hair and is suffering shock." Yeah, I'd probably be losing my hair and suffering shock too. And to get your driver's license reinstated only at the price of having to endure the further insult and depressingness that the judge supposedly "on your side" is only "defending" your rights to the extent of calling your ability to fall in love with who you fall in love with a "personality disturbance" rather than a "true and proper psychiatric illness" - well, when you get treated worse than you had imagined possible in your wildest nightmares once, it can be dismissed as at least a little bit of a fluke. But when this is all the world can supply in reparations? A victory that hollow might be even worse than the original insult. Even despite the money that it appears he probably got for winning his court case - I mean, who wants to have to feel gratitude to a guy who just insulted you like that, just because he gave you money along with the insult?

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In all fairness, many, many people have stated that I have a "personality disturbance." Or, in the usual phrase, a "disturbed personality."

Generally, however, the phrase is not tied to my bisexuality.

I suspect that the generally held belief that insanity is genetic, or at least runs in families ("Well, of course he's psychotic -- his great-uncle talked to canaries) has also led to the belief that homosexuality or bisexuality also runs in families, despite (in my opinion, anyway) extremely limited evidence to prove this in either direction. Thus the assumption that the daughter of two lesbians will naturally be gay -- even if the biological father was completely straight and provided "straight" genes.

oh those world-famous left-wing magistrates of Italy. the UN is still reeling from when they declared that rape had nearly been eradicated as a woman wearing jeans cannot be raped. where do they get off anyway, letting off a gay man for driving!? good thing Berlusconi exposed them for the pinko-commies they are when he was on trial for corruption (acquitted, of course!)

Actually, several psychiatric conditions will impair your ability to drive: Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, panic disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome with flashbacks, severe mental retardation, Tourette's syndrome, bipolar disorder with psychosis, probably even really severe forms of ADD... basically anything that will either impair your ability to adequately discern what's going on or control your motor reflexes.

Psychology and psychiatry do have a category of what in America are called "personality disorders," which are basically what psychologists will say when they think the person is just really maladjusted.

Then again, even when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, it wasn't ever considered a personality disorder, but a "paraphilia", which is in a class of its own. As it turns out, in fact, psychologists don't really take whether or not you can drive into the classification system, so even if nobody thought that homosexuality were a disorder of any kind, those cops could have taken away the man's driver's license if they noticed he stuttered (Axis I (where all the good stuff is)- code 307.0 in the DSM-IV) or took viagra (Also Axis I, code 302.72). In America, by the way, they screen for specific disorders like the ones I mentioned above, and include medical conditions like epilepsy, not the presence of any classifiable psychological or psychiatric disorder.

I agree that in a lot of ways the homophobia angle is the most disturbing. But as a psych person, I really did a HUGE double-take when reading this.

ok you know where i stand on the whole is it choice or not issue. hell thats kinda how we met. er kinda. any ways in either case, choice or no, it shouldnt be considered an illness because if it were an illness it would impair something that would cause you to have a serious problem living. much like phobias. its only a phobia if it seriously interfiers with your life. if you have a phobia for.... lets say.... needles. well you wont be getting your vaccines any time soon and the mear sight of a needle could send you into a major anxiety attack. where as if you are mearly afraid of needles then you wouldnt be too horrified to see one in a doctors office or anything, exspecialy when its not meant for you.

my dad tried to tell me i was mentally ill. i told him that, yes more than likely i have some brain issue like depression, or anxiety or what seems to be more like manic depression, but i feel i can handle it without going to some hospital cause i can avoid things like cutting and drugs and alchol. actually, i jsut thought that much, i really just defended myself got into a fight with him and went to my room to do the first thing i jsut stated i would be avoiding.

at any rate. it all boils down to those people are ignorant fools and will burn in the firey depths of my "i hate you" part of my mind and
that i still have my standing on it can be either a choice or not. like me, why would i -choose- for all this shit to happen to me? yet there are some people who are straight then something happens and they say fuck it ill go be gay. and i respect that too. i also like the theory of testostorone and estrogen. where heterosexuals are attracted to the opposite pheromones being sent out by humans and homosexuals the same, and bi both and a none. and then that would mean for those who choose, they told their brain what to want and after they went after it for a while thier bain (or whatever scence tells you this stuff, i think its a gland) adapts to this and goes with it. i just have a hard time seeing it as easy. maybe its that some are more adaptable than others??

ok but im rambeling now.
so ill stop and jsut leave you with the above for thought and for argueing with as ou will.

-steph

"like me, why would i -choose- for all this shit to happen to me?"

Choosing to be queer does not equal choosing to have shit happen to us. Being queer does not equal having shit happen to us. Being queer equals falling in love with members of the same sex, or being willing and able to do so in the future. People choose this because members of their own sex deserve to be loved, and because to love them, to love anyone who loves us enough to earn our love, to love the worthiest people regardless of what body they inhabit, is the noblest of all possible causes in life and sufficiently noble that no matter how hurt and bruised and rejected by our parents and discriminated against by our bosses and hated by the majority of society we may be for it, and no matter how much pain any of those things may cause us - and they do - the cause of our loving always remains, in the end, worth all that shit.

Amen to that, sistah.

I know I risk all kinds of bigotry by being a bisexual woman. But I love woman. End. Of. Story.

er...love "women". Anyway, I'm sure you got the drift.

yes, but... *sigh* iduno maybe i just miss being daddy's little girl.

fuck it. it doesnt matter the important thing is i didnt wake up and say 'hey i got an idea, lets be gay' i slowly started to realise i was falling for a girl and quickly stoped letting myself have any sort of feelings untill years later when a new lovely gave me a wakeup call.

... so maybe i chose? i mean maybe it -is- my fault. hell maybe its my fault he had his rage induced heart attack. in wich case how noble am i? but i allready did this once when i came out. i have the scars to prove it and i promised myself i wouldnt do that anymore so i hereby drop my arguements and leave it as lil_e_beth out it in her comment "But I love women. End. Of. Story."

i dont know im a confused little girl...

It's not a fault. The choice/no-choice disvussion needs to be understood as a discussion over who should get credit, not blame.

Who you fall in love with is not your father's decision to make. It's your life, not his. He could go around getting enraged to the point of a heart attack over your refusal to suffocate yourself to death on command, or your refusal to wear chartreuse polka dot circle skirts with foot-high high heels every day of your life, and those things would be choices, but they're not his choices to make and his getting enraged to the point of a heart attack is his choice to make. He's making the wrong choice.

"Seen one judge, you've seen 'em all"

If being gay is a personality disturbance, what is being straight?

A personality smugness.

THERE ARE STUPID HOMOPHOBIC PEOPLE IN SICILY TOO?

and I was planning on escaping to Italy...damn the luck

Does the judge have some psychiatric illness which causes him to make legal judgements while stupid and grossly uninformed?

Driving While Gay, or: Queer by Personality Disturbance

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