Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Transcript edited by Hannah “Asher” Sham

Summary: In this episode of Let’s Talk Autism, Amanda Antell and Eliana dive deep into the portrayal of neurodivergent conditions in media, focusing specifically on autism and dissociative disorders. 

Introduction to Let’s Talk

Kylo: You’re listening to Let’s Talk! Let’s Talk! is a digital space for students at PCC experiencing disabilities to share their perspectives, ideas, and worldviews in an inclusive and accessible environment. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Portland Community College, PCC Foundation, or our community partners. We broadcast on our home website, pcc.edu/dca, on Spotify, on X Ray 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Community Radio 90.7 FM. 

Discussing Neurodivergence in Media

Amanda: Welcome to this episode of Let’s Talk! Autism. I am the host and producer of the series, Amanda, and we will once again be focusing on how neurodivergence is depicted in the media. In particular, I had the privilege of discussing the demonization of dissociative disorders with my guest Eliana and how it is reflected in our society. Before listening to this episode, please be aware that serious issues like mental illness and physical and sexual abuse will be discussed. Nothing discussed in this podcast is official medical advice in any capacity, and you should seek help from your provider if relevant. Please consider this your trigger warning and enjoy the episode.

Amanda: Thank you very much for being here with me, Eliana. I’ve been looking forward to this topic for a long time.

Character Analysis: ADHD and Autism

Elianna: Thank you. Yeah, me too. So, I have my Jane Eyre book with me because there’s a character in here who’s not diagnosed, but you have ADHD. I did a quick Google search of characters who have ADHD and it’s a lot of things that I haven’t read.

Amanda: And we can also do that dissociative focus if you wanted in this interview as well.

Elianna: Oh yeah! Well, actually Jane Eyre is such a wonderful transition into that when we discuss, mental illness in the fictional media. Because, it’s also in Jane Eyre, it’s not diagnosed, and I didn’t even know what the diagnosis would be. There’s a character; she’s not mentally functioning like most humans do. It’s like in a hallway and both of you are trying to pass each other but you keep moving in front of each other.

Amanda: Yeah, that happens with me a lot. let’s go ahead and start with introductions. please give your name, your gender and pronouns, your major slash occupation, whether you have autism ADHD or other neurodivergent condition, please.

Elianna: My name is Eliana. I use she, they pronouns. I have ADHD, dissociative disorder and PTSD.

Amanda: My name is Amanda. I use she, her pronouns. I Am currently a full time student and will be applying to vet school next year, and I have autism. Do you want me to start off with the questions, or did you want to kind of just talk about Jane Eyre? I apologize if I didn’t say that name correctly. 

Elianna: Well we can keep the questions in structure. I don’t really know if I have favorite neurodivergent characters. Because, I don’t know if I’ve watched enough media with characters who have blatant ADHD, autism, or anything like that. I know that there’s been much more of a thing where certain characters have been coded for having autism or ADHD like “Entrapta” and “Peridot” from She Ra and Steven Universe. Those characters are coded at the very least, and it’s become a thing to include more neurodivergent characters in modern media. I personally love going and looking at media that were written before diagnoses were a thing, and you can tell. 

Amanda: House MD. I’m gonna probably talk about it this interview too. But, House MD Oh, my god. He was one of the most perfect representations of autism ever. He very clearly has Asperger’s or some kind of higher functioning form of autism. It’s not just him being a genius, it’s just being difficult to work with, it’s his coping mechanisms, just how he takes life. It shows all of the dimensions of living with that condition that I really appreciated about House. I’m not saying he’s a great guy. I’m saying he’s an awesome character though. He was almost a perfectly written character. I hated Cameron. I thought a lot of the characters in House were just so brilliantly written. 

Favorite and Least Favorite Representations

Amanda: On that note, I’ll just go ahead and start the first question. What are your favorite autistic or ADHD characters in media? Do you feel that they represent the autistic or ADHD community? Why or why not?

Elianna: I have characters I like who I think have ADHD. So, I’ve brought this up before. It’s like characters in Game of Thrones who are described as “wolf blooded” in the Stark family. I think is code for ADHD. Whether George RR Martin recognizes it or not. Because, they have the impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, a strong sense of justice. They have certain quirks that I go like, “this reads as ADHD to me.”. Reading “Jane Eyre”, it was fascinating. Just like this moment when we’re with the childhood friend character, and it’s, “Oh, you have ADHD!”, and one of the things with this book is it’s almost autobiographical. Because of how her life was. So, I know that she had a friend who she strongly bases character off of. So, that means, here’s a person in history who probably had ADHD. It’s interesting to go back in time and see these characters who probably have neurodivergence. Jane possibly might be neurodivergent because of her strong sense of justice and other things, but I didn’t have anything that’s strongly read one way or the other for me.

Amanda: That’s interesting. for me, I would say that the best autism representation I’ve ever seen in media; one character I’ve recently discovered is Moss from the IT Crowd. I think he is the best representation of autism on a sitcom. Because, the way he talks, his mannerisms, how he handles social situations is just on point I don’t know if he’s ever officially said he’s autistic, but I definitely recognize the way he’s written and just all the quirks with him. I just really appreciated that, and I think IT Crowd was, I want to say mid 2000s, based on that. And I don’t know if Big Bang Theory was based off of it or not. It’s very similar in style. But, whether it was or wasn’t, it’s like Moss; you want to write an autistic character, you definitely should look to Moss from IT Crowd. seriously, one of the best. Other character I really appreciate in media that I can’t not mention is Luz from Owl House. Owl House is amazing, you should definitely watch it, despite what Disney did to it. I just like the way Luz is represented because her autism reminds me a lot of mine. Where it’s like she has a lot of really strong special interests, and I wouldn’t say she was diagnosed latently, but she discovered she was basically neurodivergent when her mom has this heart to heart with her. Saying that she didn’t want Luz to be different because she was different too. that just really hit home for me because with autism sometimes parents don’t want to admit their kids are autistic because they were. Because, that’s admitting that there’s a problem.

Elianna: Yeah. Diagnosis within families, especially when trying to communicate with older generations who are carrying different stigmas from different cultural norms. It’s a time. It’s certainly a trial.

Amanda: Yeah, and the thing about Luz that I found really heartfelt was the fact that in the episode that I mentioned Her mom has flashbacks where some principal, or some other kind of authority figure, is talking down to her about just how different Luz is and how she had to be fixed. That just really hit home for me. Because, again, it’s like the autism thing where I wasn’t diagnosed as a kid, either. But, I can definitely tell you my mom was told similar things. Like I mentioned there was that weird counselor back when I was four or five who said I’d never learned to read. My mom was fighting all those stigmas and essentially trying to make me “normal”. Because, people were telling her She had to fix me, and Luz’s situation with her mom reminded me a lot of that.

Elianna: Yeah. 

Challenges of Accurate Representation

Elianna: It really is nice seeing people who have diagnoses be in the writer’s chair and create stories that are meaningful to us. There’s things I love and there’s things I don’t love about this new style of writing trends that we see. But, that’s one of the good parts definitely of seeing more people have representation. Since, apparently, there’s a lot of directors who have ADHD and neurodivergences. I know that Greta Gerwig has ADHD, Will Ferrell has ADHD. There’s actually quite a few people in the sphere who have ADHD.

Amanda: You think they would make for better neurodivergent writing in a lot of sitcoms then?

Elianna: I don’t know. It’s whether you’re self aware of it or not, and what your own feelings about yourself are, in terms of neurodivergence. So, it’s possible to be self hating. 

Amanda: Well, also ADHD and autism are different. So, it’s just the fact that I think sometimes characters with ADHD are written fairly well. But, characters with autism can sometimes not be written well. Because, I don’t think autism is talked about as much? Well, I don’t know about that, because autism is kind of weird in media, if you ask me. It’s mentioned a lot with characters that are super smart, which I know is a stereotype that we’ll talk about in this interview. But, I see a lot of characteristics of ADHD in characters, but they’re not flat out diagnosed or said. Would you agree with that or not?

Elianna: I think I’d agree with that. I’m looking at this list of characters who’ve been diagnosed and a lot of these are shows I haven’t seen. But, I know that Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes”, and Bart Simpson are both the boy stereotype of ADHD. I just don’t really think it exists a lot, and even then it’s a stereotype. they’re enjoyable little rascal characters. If they’re at least, boys. But, otherwise, I haven’t really seen these other diagnosed characters enough to know for certain. So, I tend to have more fun with the non officially diagnosed characters, I guess.

Amanda: This actually leads into a less pleasant topic; what are your least favorite autistic or ADHD characters, and why do you feel like they don’t represent autism, ADHD, or the neurodivergent community in general?

Elianna: Just speaking for ADHD, I don’t really feel like I’ve seen a depiction or heard of a depiction that would be offensive or harm causing. It’s just this stereotype or it’s that stereotype. But even then they’re usually the enjoyable rascal character. That’s just speaking for my own wheelhouse of ADHD. I definitely have more issue with the depiction of bipolar disorders, dissociative disorders, schizoaffective disorders. That’s where I start having issues with depictions. But, I have yet to personally run into ADHD where I felt offended or felt like the depiction would cause harm to the community. 

Amanda: Interesting, thank you. So, I definitely have two characters in mind, and I’m sure there are others. But, I’m just going to say the most harmful ones to me. Sheldon Cooper, I’m pretty sure you saw that one coming, and Sean from “The Good Doctor”. 

Elianna: It was a huge meme.

Amanda: Yeah, okay. So, you have heard of Sean from Good doctor, okay. There’s a reason why it was so bad. First of all, Sheldon Cooper, let’s all be honest, represents the absolute worst aspects of autism, specifically high functioning autism, where he’s borderline sociopathic, in my opinion, and he just doesn’t learn? he does learn, academic information, but it’s that stereotype where he can’t learn social interactions. That’s really not true with autism. We actually adapt very well to social situations, we have to or we won’t be able to survive. It’s the fact that he’s just written as a selfish character that doesn’t care about anyone, that really bothers me. autistic people already have the stigma of, we lack empathy. That doesn’t mean actual autistic people do.

Elianna: Yeah, I wonder how much that is just the long running sitcom comedy show structure. Because, the characters might have things change in their lives. But, otherwise the character usually doesn’t have a major development, because that would be a plot arc usually that doesn’t exist in the episodic format of sitcoms. We’d like to see this character grow and change. But, that just is in part and parcel to the genre, or the format. But, I do think “this is a character that should have grown and changed.”.

Amanda: Again, it goes back to autistic people not being able to function, essentially, in society. Sheldon Cooper, to the writer’s credit, he can hold down a job and he’s very successful academically. But, he doesn’t represent anything positive to the autistic community because of all the negative stereotypes he portrays. The Good Doctor, it’s kind of a similar thing. Sean is a very empathetic character, he has empathy for other people, definitely. The problem is he’s very inconsistent with accommodations and how high functioning or low functioning he is. For example, he’s high functioning in a high stress job, like a surgeon position. Obviously there are autistic surgeons, and I think we’re pretty good at it. But, he’s too low functioning to know how to form basic sentences, or full sentences. Just the way he talks, it doesn’t add up to what he can do in a surgery room. I’m not saying that it’s impossible in terms of autism. But, it doesn’t make sense. like they really are hammering in the fact that he can’t function socially. I’m like, “yeah, no. That’s not working.”.

Elianna: Did that show have other autistic people in it?

Amanda: Well, I think his girlfriend Leah has ADHD, At least whenever I force myself to watch the show, she reminds me ADHD issues. She has a lot of fluctuating energy, has trouble committing to specific things for long periods of time, and has trouble connecting to Sean on an emotional level as well. I’m not saying that’s good or bad ADHD representation. But, she kind of reminds me of that. I don’t know if it was flat out said she had ADHD. There’s also a spin off show called “The Good Lawyer”, which is basically a female copycat of Sean. I saw the trailer and I’m like, “No. Not torturing myself. No.”.

Elianna: Not even hate watching.

Amanda: Nope. Don’t wish to do that to myself. I’m not that much of a masochist, Elianna!

Elianna: Oh, yeah! Neither am I! I personally don’t understand the hate watchers. If I am going to be hate watching, I have to do it through a filter of seeing clips of someone else reacting to it or something, or making fun of it. Cause I don’t think I could take it raw.

Amanda: I can’t either. I can think of a couple of other autistic characters I’ve seen in media that had really minor roles. There was one autistic character in Grey’s Anatomy that was there for a short time, and there was another autistic character on Chicago Med But again, it’s that stereotypical “I’m a genius and I only care about my job” Not really anything else. So, that always bugs me about autism. Whereas, “House”, you get the whole picture of what living with autism is actually like.

Elianna: Well, the other thing with House too; he’s dealing with a chronic pain issue because of his leg. So, he is also taking medications and he’s dealing with substance usage and pain. It’s not just the autism, it’s other stuff too. Which I think helps people relate to him more. Because, in terms of characteristics of him, he doesn’t just have autism. He’s also dealing with this other stuff. 

Amanda: That’s a problem with a lot of shows right now. If there’s autism, ADHD, or other neurodivergent characters, it’s like you said, where it’s just a token or a checkbox thing. It’s not genuine in the slightest, and that’s another thing that bothers me about Sheldon Cooper. I thought he was actually a fairly funny character with the other interactions early on in the seasons, early Big Bang. But, as the Big Bang Theory progressed, they made him more and more negative of an autism character. They kept looking up bad symptoms of autism and just kept checking every box with them. 

Elianna: Unofficially, consulting with Autism Speaks.

Amanda: Exactly! Yeah. Yeah. 

Elianna: If you want to have a fully rounded character, you need to not just have them be neurodivergent. They need to have other stuff going on with them. I personally would love to see, not just having the one character with a neurodivergence. Which is why I ask with The Good Doctors, if there’s other people with autism, then they can go autism doesn’t just look like this. It also looks like this. They can then talk about in community stuff. I think that’s one of the other issues with writing characters, Especially, if you don’t belong to the group. You don’t get that in group knowledge of meeting other people with the same diagnoses.

Amanda: Yeah, most definitely. We talked about stereotyping ADHD with Calvin and Bart, where they’re boys. The symptoms are yellow, so I don’t want to say they’re white. I have no idea. But, with Sheldon and Sean, they’re both white males, with Moss from IT Crowd, he’s black, and a couple of characters I also mentioned that were kind of minor in those shows Grey’s Anatomy and Chicago Med. One was a woman and one was black respectively, so that was slightly better with representation. But, it’s still that stereotype. Whereas, Moth, it’s yes, autism doesn’t just come as a white person condition.”.

Elianna: Yeah. That’s something to be talked about. Especially in real world issues with police violence. Cause I remember there was that time in Florida when I don’t know what the term would be. But, there was a autistic black man who had a career and he was just not very aware of his surroundings and the way most folks would be. So, it became an issue with the police and then the police still fired. No one died, thankfully. It could have been a lot worse, but still it was the bias against people of color. Especially if they’re neurodivergent.

Amanda: Yeah, and I’ve talked to a couple of people of color who have neurodivergent conditions too and it’s a struggle. Because, they’re essentially in constant fear they miss the social cues like we do, but it’s scary when you’re black, because if you miss the social cues around a police officer you’re potentially gonna get shot. 

Elianna: There was a clip I saw recently in the UK. There’s a South Asian doctor, someone who’s from Africa, I don’t remember which country or like their family was from Africa at least. And, there was someone else there and they were talking about the stigma in immigrant communities against getting diagnosed and how getting diagnosed is treated. Remember the quote from the teacher that this person from Africa said was, I think it was Nigeria maybe, but it was like the teacher said something about getting a diagnosis done because she wanted to know and, I quote, “if there’s something going on with you or if you’re just stupid.”. I could link it if you’d like. The clip from the podcast there’s certain cultural stigmas in different groups.

Amanda: The best way to put it is I’m aware that autism and ADHD are treated differently throughout the world. I’ve seen that with my mother-in-law’s family and through my wife’s friends who live in different countries. I’ve even seen it with teachers who weren’t born from America, but you know live here. The difference is definitely there where neurodivergence isn’t a thing that’s talked about in their culture. They don’t really know how to talk about it with us and they don’t realize why it’s considered rude to say, “you should know how to do this.”. I’m not saying it’s good. But, yeah, it’s not surprising.

Elianna: And, then the fact that they keep circling back to depiction, they keep doing the same character with the, “I’m really good at my job”, or you have little boy rascal, Anthony Hopkins, has autism. Like, there’s so many people in real life who we know have different diagnoses, but you keep making the same person, just a different name.

Amanda: Yeah, totally.

Elianna: I appreciate it more if writers would look around and see things circling back to, only having the one token character with neurodivergent diagnoses. We tend to flock though, most of the people who I know and interact with have ADHD, autism, or something else going on. We tend to just cluster. So, having a lone, autistic or ADHD character doesn’t make sense. It really does not reflect reality in terms of how we socialize and the friends we make.

Amanda: I agree, and it’s that whole stereotype of we can’t make friends that really pisses me off, too. We have difficulty with social interaction, that doesn’t mean we can’t make friends, and that we don’t want to.

Elianna: I think that might also be why we cluster. It’s just easier for us to understand each other and gel. 

Amanda: We don’t have to explain why we sit, in specific areas of a room, or we have to have, this one chair, or wear sunglasses inside. We don’t have to explain why we have to record conversations sometimes, None of it’s needed, we get it.

Elianna: We make the same noise or a similar noise back. 

Amanda: Or someone has to have a fidget cube or knit while we’re talking and someone else is, not so they have to occupy themselves some other way. No, that’s not offensive, that’s just their way of keeping themselves engaged in the conversation without going crazy.

Elianna: Or being uncomfortable with eye contact. It’s like, “please don’t look at me and don’t expect me to look at you.”.

Amanda: I don’t know if I’ve seen that media representation with autistic characters. At least, I don’t really look for that. I just am watching for entertainment purposes. But, the characters I can think of that have good autism representation or even bad representation. Sean is the only character I’ve seen that explicitly has that issue. Other characters I’ve seen in media, good or bad; I either don’t notice, or they don’t make a big deal out of it, or they don’t have that issue. I don’t think the characters directly make eye contact a lot anyways.

Elianna: That’s interesting. Because, now some studios are using a certain AI to make the actors look like the actors were looking in a specific direction at the other character when they were actually looking up here. it was just like, why? Why are you doing this?

Amanda: I actually didn’t know that. So, maybe that is happening, I just don’t notice. Cause, I’m not very familiar with how media works like you are, Eliana.

Elianna: I remember seeing someone, maybe they did that in The Bear and seeing that it’s like, why are you doing this? The reason that a lot of shows get dropped after the third season or so is because of labor contracts and they don’t wanna pay people. That’s why there’s three seasons or so of a show, and then it gets rebooted as a new show in order to keep the costs down, so they don’t have to pay who work on it. I can understand from an evil capitalism sense of why some decisions are made. But, I don’t know why they’re making this AI decision to make actors look in a specific direction.

Amanda: Maybe it’s a cut down on labor costs like you said. Because, if there’s less takes to do, there’s less hours to pay them. At least that’s my guess.

Elianna: I don’t know. Where a character looks, can convey emotions and certain thoughts. So if you’re looking down or looking up or to the side, it conveys what their state is.

Amanda: I don’t really pay attention to that, to be honest with you. So, I don’t know. I’m not saying I don’t believe you, it’s just I really don’t pay attention to that at all.

Elianna: It’s the whole context of disrespecting the actor’s decision and letting human characters be human and not have direct eye contact the whole time.

Dissociative Disorders in Media

Amanda: Eliana, do you want to go into the dissociative disorder representation now, or do you want me to continue the questions?

Elianna: We can get to any of the questions. 

Amanda: I just want to make sure that you get to talk about what you want to talk about, because I know this was pretty important to you.

Elianna: Conversation of having a tasteful and nuanced depiction of neurodivergence. Because, there are cases where neurodivergent behaviors can be harmful. I had a friend who had a partner with bipolar disorder, who then became very controlling in certain ways where it became scary, and was like, “I’m not going to go pick up my medication from the storage unit unless you come with me”, and refuse to leave the apartment, and was making my friend feel very uncomfortable and nervous to the point of needing to call the police, because of how much this person refused to leave their apartment. So, it can be scary but then bipolar people are not going to do a suicide thing and take you with them, or it’s, like the depiction of disability. I had a classmate whose dad had paranoid schizophrenia would sometimes have an episode where the dad would believe that his kids were conspiring against him and start screaming and accusing them of stuff. That’s not a pleasant thing for those kids to deal with, but it doesn’t mean that the dad was evil or a monster. I don’t want to say that, you can’t have certain portrayals where neurodivergence is a mental illness is an issue or a problem. But, there’s a certain level of demonization that I see continuously happening where it needs to get addressed, of it being treated symbolically instead of a real thing that people have.

Amanda: Thank you for sharing that. I don’t know if saying sorry would be good here or not, but I think people’s mental illness, however they choose to handle it, it’s their business, is the way I see it. 

Elianna: Well, there’s this movie called “Censor” where the character, she’s a censor official for the British broadcasting service. Cause they had a lot of rules about what could be shown in Britain. So, she was a censor, but then she starts having this mental breakdown wondering what’s real and what’s not. And it turns out that she has dissociative disorder because she killed her sister. As a child, so then she drowned out that memory of killing her sister and now she’s going on a violent spree and it’s just this isn’t what dissociative disorders are and I can understand being frustrated about the lack of freedom of speech, especially with how controlling it was back in the day in Britain, but you don’t get to make a demon out of people with a dissociative disorder and then you know, with split and glass where the guy becomes demonic Spider Man one of his alters can make him crawl up a wall and throw a car he wants to kill people and that’s not what this is. it’s very cheaply done where this person dealt with the abuse that’s why they have all these different alters that do these. Tasks where you compartmentalize different parts of yourself, which can be true of dissociative disorders, but then you make them a monster and it’s just not okay, and also another gross thing split is the main girl character was abused by her uncle or something. And, now she has scars on her lower abdomen. The reason that she gets spared is because the demon altar. Sees her scars and then calls her one of the chosen angels or something it’s just a really gross way of talking about scars, and people who are abused because not everyone who is abused is going to have bodily scars on them the fact that she got spared just because she had scars, like if she didn’t would she still have been murdered even though she had been abused? It’s just, so messy and wrong, ew. Then you see this character of Ratchet in the Netflix Ratchet show and it’s Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the avatar of medical abuse. You don’t need to give her a girl boss arc. it’s certainly offensive to me. I don’t know if it constitutes as doing harm, but they also gave her the was abused as a child and now doesn’t remember and has a dissociative issue about it. It’s this form of filmmaking art where we’re making something that’s wrong, and we know it’s wrong. Hopefully the audience will tell it’s wrong. It’s the whole issue with satire; does the audience pick up that we’re making fun of whatever we’re making fun of? I can’t tell if this is tasteless on purpose or not. That’s the frustrating part. And, then when Netflix advertises it with here’s like nine times Nurse Ratched slayed or was a savage, here’s Trixie and Katya reacting to the show. There’s other issues like a nurse in the psych ward who finds it sexually appealing to have sex with mentally ill men because they could snap at any time and kill you and that makes it hot. This is so uncomfortable and this is a severe violation of consent there is actual real sexual abuse that happens in, psychiatric hospitals. It certainly happened back then, but we’re not going to talk about the lack of consent. the issues of having your freedom taken away. of being mentally unwell to the point of needing to be in a psychiatric hospital and then having medical practitioners who genuinely care about their patients and will take care of them properly versus exploiting them. There’s a movie that talked about this really well called Unsane. It’s a thriller about this woman who gets roped into a psychiatric hospital. She’s wondering if her stalker is following her into the psychiatric hospital, or if it’s just delusion. Then it also talks about the exploitative nature of profit, psychiatric hospitals. So, it’s a thriller and it’s uncomfortable to watch but it’s very sympathetic to people who are mentally unwell. In the system itself. So, that’s frustrating when you can see people do it right. there’s just a lot of people who don’t and keep using mentally unwell people like monsters. I keep thinking of that line from the elephant man. I am not an animal. I’m a human being. It’s just hurtful. And so frustrating to keep seeing it over and over again. Sometimes it’s more of a gray area, like with the taking of Deborah Logan, where that’s a horror movie about dealing with the grief of losing your loved one to dementia and sundowning. Sundowning is a real thing where an elderly person who’s starting to lose their mental faculties, become combative once the sun goes down. It varies in how severe it is. it’s a horror movie, so it does go the extra mile in certain ways, which might not be great, but you can still see where it’s about the grief of losing your loved one to a mental breakdown as they get older. I don’t want to be the grand controller of what is a proper thing to write. Especially, since this is something that’s been talked about in queer media where someone might not be allowed to write about something that’s queer. Maybe they are straight, but maybe they’re closeted and don’t want to come out yet so we don’t want to force people before they’re ready. It’s nuanced conversations while also dealing with the fact that mentally ill people are still subjected to police and other kinds of violence like poverty, homelessness, and domestic abuse. It’s just a really rough time.

Personal Experiences and Broader Implications

Amanda: Thank you for sharing that. really thoughtful I’ll be honest. I’ve never really put a lot of thought into how mental illness is portrayed in media. That being said, It definitely contributes to stereotypes that I definitely do carry.  With the homeless situation. In particular, I had to ride the max down to class at OHSU and at Portland State main campus. I always made it a point to stay as far away as possible from someone who was homeless and talking to themselves. Because, I didn’t know if they had a knife, didn’t know what would happen, and it’s just the fear of the unknown for me. What could happen when I’m trapped in this metal box that’s moving on the rails with no security and there’s no guarantee that someone’s going to help me if something happens.

Elianna: Right?

Amanda: I feel bad about that, in terms of that demonization, because I think it might, unconsciously make my prejudices worse, that probably is a certainty. But I’ve also had a genuinely very scary experience with a homeless person down in Corvallis, where I was walking back from a mini mart and I just happened to make eye contact with a guy that was sitting on those cement wall things that hold up dirt. And we made eye contact, he brandished this huge ass hunting knife and I just booked it out. I ran and I was genuinely scared for my life. Don’t know what that guy’s problem was, or what was going on with him, but I was seriously scared for life.

Elianna: With the current homelessness situation, it’s there. So you might have someone who already had mental health issues and was dealing with trauma, abuse, or something. Being homeless is hard. So if they didn’t have a drug addiction issue before, you can develop an addiction issue because of how much it sucks to be homeless. Like there’s the trauma of being subjected to violence as a homeless person. We need better systems of care for people so then they don’t end up homeless, and they can get the psychiatric help they need without ending up in a really bad institution.

Amanda: If they don’t have access to medication, or if they refuse to take medication, that’s when someone could become a danger.

Elianna: And that’s the point of debate, if you’re a danger to yourself or others, that’s when institutionalization might come into play. 

Amanda: Problem is with homeless people who either don’t have access to the medication or refuse to take them, and this doesn’t even have to be a homeless person, it could be someone would be a perfectly functioning person with medication, but if they get well enough, they get to the point where they don’t think they need the medication anymore and become dangerous again. Can we really trust that they’re thinking clearly enough to even make that evaluation where they could actually ask are they a danger to themselves or others? I don’t know if they would have the mental faculties for that at that point.

Elianna: That’s the legal debate. 

Conservatorships and Legal Challenges

Elianna: Conservatorships that’s been in the media recently talking about Britney Spears, famously. With her conservatorship and how it became abusive. Exploitative people, sometimes, who don’t have the mental state to make wise decisions for themselves. So, then it becomes a conversation of, “okay, how are we going to restrict this person’s freedoms to take or not take a substance, whether they’re going to be under house arrest or in an institution, when they no longer need to be in that space, whether they can take care of themselves, or if they’re going to need lifelong care?”.

Managing Mental Disorders: Personal Experiences

Amanda: Well, that’s the problem with mental disorders too. They’re permanent conditions. There’s no cure for them. It’s something that they do have to manage throughout their life. And that is frustrating because I can tell you with my own experience with panic attacks. I am cognitive, normally I am logical, I can logic things out about what’s going on with my body, but I can tell you that when I’m in a panic state, I’m so non functional I can’t even perform a Google search. I would not have the mental faculties to determine if I was a danger to myself or others if I had something like schizophrenia or bipolar. me, that’s why It’s a dangerous situation and a very complicated conversation. Yes, you do want to keep this person to maintain autonomy, but at what cost to others around them?

Elianna: Yeah, so that’s keeping tabs on people with caseworker or something if they don’t have a family unit to keep an eye on them. 

Amanda: But, to me there’s a lot of holes in that too. Because, a caseworker isn’t going to be around 24/7, so they could just be there on good days where the person is basically trying to present themselves as normal as possible. But, then very next day, that night or next morning, they could have an episode.

Portland Street Response and Social Programs

Elianna: Well, that’s the nice thing about the Portland street response. That’s part of putting money into social programs; where if someone is behaving in a certain erratic way, then the person who is dealing with that can call Portland Street response and that can be a part of managing that person’s case and seeing does this person need to be on a tighter leash? Does this person need to be in a community shelter, sort of situation, because of how they continuously have issues with taking their medication and becoming a danger to those around them. 

Cultural Variations in Mental Health

Elianna: it’s also been recorded especially with schizoaffective disorders hallucinations will vary by people and then it also varies culturally. In the west people’s schizophrenia can have very negative audio or visual hallucinations where people are watching them and it’s very antagonistic. It adds to the stress, and then in India, or so, they’ll have hallucinations like kind words from loved ones compliments or other sorts of things. I knew someone who had hallucinations. One time her teacher and a bunch of ducks were in her kitchen. Then if she gets really stressed out, her hallucinations and other paranoid delusions will get worse. It’s a complex situation we’re looking at is this just this person’s main baseline, regardless of what’s going on around them, are they getting worse because they’re under duress? It’s a case of where there needs to be a system of support around this person who’s keeping an eye on things who’s making reasonable decisions about; “is this person who just needs help a little once in a while?” or “is this person who’s going to need to be in a care facility because of how their mental disorder is presenting itself, and maybe their lack of willingness to take steps to take care of themselves and be well around others.”.

The Resource Dilemma in Mental Health Care

Amanda: The problem with that it requires a lot of resources and support for just 1 person. And, we’re talking about a massive [amount of] people. Not just in Portland, but in San Francisco, and really what kind of infrastructure can support that? Because, even with the Portland Street response, I guess they’re already stretched to the limit.

Elianna: Well, part of the issue is funding that’s allowed to be channeled to those groups. 

Amanda: But that’s my point. All the support sounds great, but where is the money for it?

Elianna: Well, the thing is it gets funneled elsewhere. Like the Portuguese system of drug decriminalization worked great and it was working wonderfully. then they got their funding slashed by like 80 percent and then things started to become an issue again. It wasn’t the fault of the program, it was the funding getting slashed.

Amanda: That’s the problem. It’s still lack of money. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s the core issue, there is no money.

Elianna: I wouldn’t say that’s the problem with the system or desire. I would say that’s the problem with capitalism. this idea that we’re going to put all our money into throwing people in for profit prisons. That’s what we’re going to do in our attitudes of what we’re going to decide to fund. We don’t fund medical care, we don’t have universal health care. We have all this money that’s getting continuously funneled up to the 1 percent and other echelons when that money would be much better. Put towards certain programs. 

Amanda: But, again, what’s the immediate solution? Cause I’m not disagreeing with you, Eliana, that’s not the issue. The issue is, is that there’s no immediate solution in the meantime for all those social infrastructure changes to happen.

Elianna: I know that and that’s one of the things to talk about what does happen to these people then what is the solution. If we don’t have this funding and if we don’t do that.

Amanda: Currently, the solution from what I see whenever I go down to Portland is essentially just to let them die out in the streets. In that case, which is better? To have them in an institution where they at least have shelter and food? Or, is it better just to let them rot in the streets where they’re a danger to themselves or others? I’m not saying either solution is good. What I’m saying is that at least the institution does provide a public safety aspect.

Elianna: Well, I’m not anti-institution. A hospital isn’t inherently a bad place, but there can be a certain lack of oversight in the hospital that leads to medical abuse.

Amanda: That’s really common even in normal hospitals. It’s not just psychiatric institutions.

Elianna: I’m not anti-institution at all. I do think there are some people who need that extra support and level of safety and care. So, It’s just making sure it’s done ethically and that they have everything they need to function properly and make sure that everyone is safe.

Amanda: Yeah, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to turn this into a debate. I really do respect your opinion, and I do agree with you that major social shifts should change to actually provide support for these people, and it’s not even that I think people who are mentally ill are bad. It’s just frustrating for me, because I hear debates like this a lot, but in the meantime people are dying. Can we put our political differences aside and actually come up with an immediate solution?

Elianna: Right. 

Historical Cases of Mental Health Mismanagement

Elianna: I think one of the concerning things is we have a lot of people who have the money and power in the St. Mike, they have very eugenicist ideas. Or, they would call it Darwinist. But, it’s really eugenicist ideas of we’re just going to take the people who are not normal and we’re going to put them away.

Amanda: I think the Kennedy family did that to one of the women, didn’t they? 

Elianna: Rosemary Kennedy. 

Amanda: Yeah, okay, I did remember that correctly. 

Elianna: What happened was she didn’t have enough oxygen at birth. There was flu or something going around so the doctor wasn’t present. But, the nurse held baby Rosemary in the vagina to wait for the doctor to get there. We haven’t been giving birth without official doctors for years, so she was denied oxygen at birth and that affected her brain state. It’s not like she was As far as I’m aware, super out of it. She was a little off kilter, but that wasn’t in plan with Papa Kennedy. 

Amanda: It wasn’t the perfect political family at that point, so they had to send her away.

Elianna: Yeah, so they sent her away and they got her lobotomized.

Amanda: That was a common practice with autism, too, for a while.

Elianna: Yeah, and Patriarch Kennedy, he got his money from running and being a gangster, but then he wanted to clean up the family’s image. So, her being mentally unwell does not help the family image. He had her put away and they knew during her lobotomy, content warning for medical abuse and something really horrific, they knew that they were done turning her brain into mush when she couldn’t continue repeating the Lord’s prayer and the, pledge of allegiance until she could not form words anymore. It was just so sad. The mom and I think one of the sisters would visit her once in a while, but it was not a pleasant time. Patriarch Kennedy never visited her. I don’t even think John F. Kennedy knew where she was. He would ask about her, but he had no idea where she was or what happened to her.

Amanda: That’s pretty awful.

Elianna: So yeah, we’re learning new things. We learned something about, I think it was schizoaffective disorders, where it’s like people become catatonic. It turns out it’s a form of autoimmune. They kept trying to treat it with antipsychotics. But, there’s a lot of women in particular who were getting treated with antipsychotics for a psychiatric issue when it turns out it was like lupus. So, we’re learning new things all the time about how mental illness works.

Amanda: They’d have to specifically test for the lupus gene, though, and I think that’s probably why it was missed.

Elianna: Maybe.

Amanda: I think there actually is, a genetic test you can get for lupus. I might be wrong about that, but I do know there was one for Parkinson’s. I would think that there was one for lupus. I know it was a genetic condition.

Elianna: Anyway, it was some kind of autoimmune issue and not just a psychiatric issue. So, hopefully now more people will get help as we understand these different conditions better.

Amanda: That actually can bring us back to the conversation. 

Media’s Portrayal of Dissociative Disorders

Amanda: So, going back to the media, how would you say that the media gets dissociative disorders like this wrong? We’ve talked about this a lot with these movies you brought up, but is there any specific commonalities you’ve seen? You brought up demonization, but is there anything you want to add to what you see in media most commonly with mental disorder demonization?

Elianna: Well, if you have a dissociative disorder, you are going to be most at risk. There’s different levels of a dissociative disorder. You can have alters. I am not aware that I have any alters. I think I almost developed alters because of how stressful my middle school experience was. But, it’s this whole thing of, your brain trying to defend itself. I remember hearing this story of a woman about to go through a C section and the doctor asks her how much of this she wants to remember. The woman says, “I don’t want to remember any of this.”. So, then they just give her a bunch of morphine, so she doesn’t remember it. That’s kind of what your brain does when you have a dissociative disorder is your brain floods itself so you don’t remember what’s happening; it’s a painkiller. But, what happens. when it becomes a disorder is when it starts activating in times when it’s necessary. It becomes an issue where you’re just blanking out, unnecessarily. I have this memory of being in fifth or sixth grade. We’re about to end class, we’re kind of packed up. Then it’s just jump cut to walking down the hallway to my next class with my classmates. I’m like, how the hell did I get here? I don’t even remember and I don’t even know why my brain would want to dissociate during that time. It’s a really scary thought to think that if people know that you’re going to forget things, depending on how stressed out you are, that you will just forget it ever happened. That’s one of the scary things, for me is I have Vague memories and certainly like physical memories of things happening to me that I can’t remember happening chronologically. I couldn’t tell you when it happened. I couldn’t tell you where it happened or who did it. But, there’s certain things with my body that show something that happened, but I can’t remember a thing about it.

Amanda: Basically physical flashbacks?

Elianna: Yeah. Well, one time I had a boss snap and throw a chandelier at me. 

Amanda: Hope you reported them. 

Elianna: I did report them and it was a time, but while I was outside crying. I remember getting gripped by my forearms and throttled, or the feeling of like a shoe tread on my face. There’s certain times where other parts of my body will just be really uncomfortable, content warning sexual abuse, where my breasts will feel really uncomfortable and I went to pelvic PT, there is scar tissue in my body that doesn’t make sense for normal behavior. So, something happened to me and I don’t remember it happening. It’s scary to think that this is definitely a thing of where if someone with nefarious intentions knows that you will forget things, if it’s just stressful enough, that they can just get away with things. I think that’s should be the depiction of this isn’t someone burying their guilt, it’s more so people burying something awful that happened to them. Your brain giving you the peace to go about your life; not have a clear memory of it happening. That’s the relationship with dissociative disorders. It’s not you dealing with guilt, it’s your brain trying to protect you with the tools that it has, so you can hopefully keep moving forward in life with some peace, or a semblance of peace, and not having to live with it.

Amanda: Thank you for sharing, Eliana. Regardless if you remember it happening or not, it wasn’t your fault either way. In my own therapy, with dealing with my own childhood PTSD, there’s one interesting thing about trauma I learned. whatever part of your brain centers around that specific trauma, you don’t age from that. You’re still stuck at that age when it happened. That’s why people still have reactions to that degree when they bring up their specific traumas. you have to delve deep into the inner child part to really resolve that. But, it’s a really intense experience. I’m not saying you should do that, but it’s not surprising to me that; you say you’re an adult and that you should be able to recollect and interact with it. But, the way you process the way you handle it at your own speed, There’s no reason to feel bad about the fact that something from your childhood still traumatizes you to this day. Because your brain buried it to protect you. Now your brain is basically saying, “Why are you trying to resurrect this? It’s dead. It can’t hurt you if it’s dead.”. But, the problem is, with that is, that the brain’s wrong. It’s still hurting you, just in different ways.

Elianna: I understand where you’re coming from and it’s that complication of dealing with the traumatized brain. It’s like being in a haunted house? I love horror and I wish that horror would be more considerate towards people who are different. Because there is something to be said about what is the intended audience of what’s going on. “Rocky Horror Picture Show” is very much an community movie for the queer people. It’s by the gays for the gays. We wouldn’t really want to show this to, someone who isn’t very up to date with queer people considering the content of it and what happens it’s not the most, correct form of presenting queer people, but it’s of the gays, by the gays, for the gays. It’s a very “in community” thing, and that’s the intended audience. There could be something said about the intended audience of horror are people who already know and we’re not trying to be correct in our depiction. We’re just trying to have a heck of a story. But, even then there are horror fans who can tell when something’s being bigoted in a certain way or at least careless with the depiction. There’s the Terrifier series, which is a slasher, blood, guts, gore genre horror series. But, even then the whole thing with Terrifier is it’s by the gore hounds for the gore hounds. It’s still got some side eye from folks in the horror community for being a bit misogynistic in some of the depictions. I think horror allows for some bigotry to happen because it’s all about fear of the unknown and the fear of different and who’s more afraid than a conservative? Who is more afraid of the immigrant, the queer person, disabled person, poor person? So, I think that’s why horror can sometimes still be a space where bigotry persists, because it is a very fear based genre. But, what we’re afraid of and how we depict that is something to keep in mind. It’s like with Ari Aster’s films, Hereditary and Midsommar, there’s people who are physically deformed, someone who’s, disabled and has a presence of their disability. There’s a person with bipolar disorder who kills themselves and takes their parents with them. The disabled person in Hereditary, the Girl; the reason she’s disabled is because she was a failed demonic possession, which isn’t a great way to depict disability. There’s a very heavily, deformed person in Midsommar, who’s the result of a lot of inbreeding and this is supposed to be a showing of how the place is wrong. There’s a use of disability and people with deformed features as a sign of villainy and evil, which we shouldn’t be doing this.

Amanda: Would you say that you’ve seen Media kind of portray dissociative disorders in a positive light? Or at least get the symptoms or what the lifestyle of living with the condition is like.

Elianna: Not as far as I’m aware. I know that there are certain characters that have dissociative disorders or have alters, but it’s wishy washy of whether they’re dipping more into schizophrenia. I know that Moon Knight has a character with a dissociative disorder, but it’s fantastical. So, we’re not the genre of how based in reality we’re gonna be and how we’ll play around with it, because with blind people being given like soothsayer or other kind of powers. But, that’s within the realm of possibility for more fantastical series of Avatar The Last Airbender who can see by feeling the earth or there’s daredevil with his really strong hearing. He’s able to be a superhero even though he’s blind and there’s psychic blind people or something. How blind people would feel about these depictions is not going to be a monolith. They’re going to have different levels per person of what would be acceptable or not. Dissociative disorders are different per person. There’s a general thing depending on what level of dissociative disorder you have. So, I would not personally say at this time that there’s been, as far as I’ve seen, a good dissociative disorder depiction. There’s a lot of content out there, so maybe there is somewhere. But, I’m just personally not aware of it.

Positive Representations and Personal Stories

Amanda: I actually did want to bring up a positive dissociative character that, at least I’ve seen in media. Have you heard of Total Drama Island?

Elianna: Yeah. I remember Total Drama Island.

Amanda: Okay, I forget what season this was, but there was a genuine character with DID, called Mike, where he did have different alters. It wasn’t flat out, called DID, but there were a lot of scenes where you actually went into his mind and met all these different alters, the evil one took over for a while. All the altars worked together to defeat the evil altar. I don’t know if that was a good representation or not, but I will say that it was a really good character. His interactions were pretty solid and no one really treated him any differently except for Duncan who was afraid of the evil altar. But, that’s ’cause he met the altar while they were in juvie together.

Elianna: I think it’s a trope to have the evil altar thing. That’s my own personal nitpicks 

Amanda: Well, I think it might have just been for the plot line, because it was more interesting for the evil altar to take over. At least, that’s my argument. It wasn’t just the evil altar that was represented. It was the main one, I don’t really know what you would call that, and a bunch of others.

Elianna: It’s just a personal nitpick for me that we’re going to have. The evil altar or something like that, and then people with altars. Usually aren’t aware that they have alters. It’s not like there’s some kind of conference in the brain. 

Amanda: Well, actually, people with DID are aware of that. I don’t know, a lot of people with DID I’ve met are pretty aware of their alters. There’s clear communication between the alters.

Elianna: It varies per person. Sometimes you don’t know, and sometimes you do. 

Amanda: At least to me, I’ve seen that’s more common than not. That’s why I thought Mike’s representation on Total Drama Island was pretty solid. To say it wasn’t a good representation based on that one plot, that one decision the writers made, I think that’s kind of unfair, to be honest.

Elianna: Oh, no! The whole thing is my own personal taste. It’s just kind of annoying to see it. I don’t want to say that this is causing harm. It just feels a little tropey to me that we’re going to have the evil altar. but, I don’t want to say that this causes harm or something.

Amanda: Well, the thing of it is, the evil altars do cause harm to the people who have them, though.

Elianna: Then we need to ask the question of how many people with dissociative disorder have an evil alter. 

Amanda: It depends on the DID person. But, I personally know at least two people that do have evil altars, and they are really freakin’ dangerous. That’s absolutely not something made up. That can happen. DID can’t be fixed with drugs, at least as far as I’m aware, because the neural networks are just different for how that’s happening.

Elianna: Yeah, it’s not something you can really take medication for. 

Amanda: I’m not saying whoever listens to this, and if you have DID, go out and get medicated, talk to your psychiatrist or your medical provider. But, as far as I know, with people I’ve met, that doesn’t work. Again, not official medical advice, just disclaimer there. 

Elianna: Yeah, everyone’s going to have different limits of what they personally will sit through or not. I know that there’s quite a number of trans women who really do not vibe with Rocky Horror. There’s going to be so many different people who have disorders. I think the solution is having more depictions, and I would personally like to see someone who has a dissociative disorder that really goes into this is my brain trying to protect itself, kind of depiction. So, I don’t have altars as far as I’m aware. I’m on the lower level of the disorder and then the different ways that your disorders can interact with each other. So, because of my dissociative disorder, in order to process certain things, I’ll need to take an opioid blocker. But, also, the level of opioids that are produced in my brain helps manage my ADHD. I’m tempted to write it myself; writing characters who have disorders and it’s not about them being antagonistic. It’s more focusing on this is my brain trying to protect itself from things and how, going through life, just not remembering things or phasing out and jump cutting and not knowing what happened. Sometimes it’s fine and sometimes needing to have that trust with the people around you.

Advice for Writers on Depicting Mental Health

Amanda: So, what do you want to say to writers of any medium about using dissociative disorders?

Elianna: Even with schizophrenia, it feels like the new acceptable monster to use. This was definitely a thing that was certainly used with trans women in horror or trans adjacent people. There’s been a lot of melding of a dissociative disorder and trans panic. There was a movie with Michael Keene where Michael would have a trans alter who was killing people out of jealousy. I just wish that writers would see people with disorders as people and not just the disorder, which is the issue. This disorder is here because we’ve experienced something, but I don’t want that to be used as a cheap justification for all the villainy that’s done. That’s been one of my general gripes with how villains have been written. They are given an abuse background, but they’re never really allowed to grow from that abuse. I’m really tired of seeing the redemption by death thing. I want to see more thoughtful depictions of like, “here’s a person who dealt with pain, and now this is their brain helping them deal with that”, or being schizophrenic and how it can be scary depending on what your brain is telling you. But, it’s not always scary. Sometimes it’s fine. It’s nice and the medications that you take for schizoaffective disorders can be very hard on the body. I know people with schizoaffective disorders will take up cigarettes or marijuana because that helps them with their side effects. We have so much research now to see what’s going on with people with these various disorders, and we can take a much more compassionate, move with it. Once again, I want to ask these writers to watch Unsane and realize there is a level of not being able to trust yourself and wondering if your perception of what’s happening is real or not. But, it’s also scary to not be able to do things for yourself. Stop making us villains for just a little bit, please. I’m not saying you can’t ever write a villain, but it would be nice if he didn’t 

Amanda: I’d like to say to writers, at least going back to the autism thing just a little bit, that if you’re going to write an autistic character, actually talk to people in the community. Just look to characters like Moss from IBT Crowd, or Luz from Owl House. Just notice how they talk to people and how they focus on specific topics or special interests. See that they’re more than just, like you said, “Their jobs”. They’re more than that. They can actually have relationships with people. Even if they don’t always go well, like with House. He still values those connections. He still values his friendship. He basically killed his entire career, quite literally, to be with Wilson the last few months of his life. That’s how much he values people. I want you to talk to people in the autistic community, not just people who are verbal, talk to people who are non verbal, who have to use a keyboard or sign language to communicate. We’re human. It’s like you said, “we’re more than a condition.”.

Elianna: I am not an animal. I am a human being.

Amanda: To have characters that have our conditions; whether it’s autism, ADHD, or dissociative disorders, it’s pretty superficial, and we can tell immediately what you’re doing. It’s not lost on us. We can tell when a character is genuine and when a character is basically here to say, “hey, we’re inclusive, we’re progressive”, when that tells me you’re not. That’s another thing that’s pretty toxic about woke and progressive writing. You do have these superficial characters for the sake of saying a show is, woke, liberal, whatever you want to call it. I’m like, no, that tells me you have a lot of internal misogyny, transphobia, or whatever it is against this character that you’re horribly misrepresenting. 

Elianna: Like you can tell when a gay character was written by a straight person versus if a gay character was written by a gay person. For non queer people writing queer characters where they need to adhere to normalcy in a certain way. But, then if you watch a show or anything that was made by gay people, there’s a certain “community homophobia”, I can’t really think of any other way to put it. People who live in the community and are annoyed by other people. It’s like, “oh yeah, is this a stereotype? Sure, but it’s an accurate one”, because I’ve been in the community and I know who these people are.

Amanda: A show on FX for a while actually focused on the trans women community in the 80s, this was when the HIV epidemic was most prevalent. It was heartbreaking. I talked to my wife about it and she was like, “yeah, this was real.”. So, that was pretty eye opening. I’m not saying all of it was accurate, but you can tell that the writers are genuinely in the queer community, because they didn’t hold back on the struggles these women went through. They didn’t hold back on the HIV stigma on the fact that a lot of these characters would end up dying from this disease, or I think one of the characters was murdered off screen, I forget which one. 

Elianna: Candy. Yeah.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah. Candy. That was heartbreaking just because of the way it happened.

Elianna: Well, that was based off of, I think, real experiences. But, if you have ever seen Paris is burning, I think her name was Venus, was the real person’s name who was doing sex work and then murdered by John because she’s trans. They’re not going to look into who killed her.

Amanda: Not to mention, I feel like trans, to me, are arguably at the most of risk. Because they’re going to get a lot of misogynistic men who don’t want to admit they’re gay, and they’re seeking out trans women to validate that. Stop pushing your internal homophobia and transphobia on these women. They don’t deserve that. Recently, I was in Fred Meyer and, I don’t know why but, I got into this conversation with this older guy who was hanging out on some display furniture. He brought up this actor that used to play James Bond back in the 60s, I think it was the first one. He said that he was this beautiful man, and I’m like, “I’ll just take your word for it, I’m into women.”. He’s like, “oh, you’re into women? Are you married to a woman?”. I’m like, “yeah.”. He’s like, “well, I don’t judge.”. That’s good, because my marriage is nothing to judge. It’s just comments like that, where it’s that internal misogyny and homophobia. I’m not sure if it’s a heterosexual thing or not, but in what world do you think that’s actually okay to say? Would you say that about a hetero couple?

Elianna: Part of it is they usually don’t see queer people, so they don’t know how to act or it’s not fully normalized to them yet. They’re a little confused, but they have the spirit, I think is how to say it. 

Amanda: No, I did not get that at all from people like that. I think that’s just plain blank internal homophobia. Again, I have no idea why I get involved in these conversations, they just kind of happen. 

Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Amanda: Are there any closing statements you would like to make? 

Elianna: At least for horror writers, I would say, think about if you’re bringing with you any old bigotry. This is even still a thing with Romani people that still gets brought up. So, there’s this game called The Quarry, it’s a horror game. But, they’re still doing old G slur women, has cursed people with something, there’s this paranormal infection that branches from her and from her family, and there’s no cure for it. Like there is for the people they infect. That source of the infection needs to be destroyed. There is no curing it. So, it’s like asking yourself if you’re bringing in with you certain bigotries. I would definitely ask people who are into horror of like, what is being said here? Who is the villain and why?

Amanda: Mine would just be what I said before, where you just talk to people in the autistic community, ADHD community, people with schizophrenia, bipolar, other dissociative disorders; just talk to us. It’s like Eliana said here, “don’t make us our disease, make us real people”. Show us that, and show the wider audience, or the general public, that we’re real people. So, thank you Eliana for this amazing conversation. Thank you for sharing and disclosing your experiences. I really think you should go into filmmaking if you haven’t considered it already. I think you’d be amazing.

Elianna: Thank you.

Amanda: I really hope you join me for another conversation and thank you again for joining me today.

Elianna: Yeah, looking forward to it. Thank you for having me. 

Amanda: Thank you for listening to today’s Let’s Talk Autism episode. I hope you found the topic as eye opening as I did when discussing it with Eliana. It forced me to confront my own prejudices and assumptions I have about the homeless population and how media portrayal of mental illness has contributed to them. Conditions like bipolar and schizophrenia remain widely misunderstood and stigmatized with the media continuously contributing to it. As Eliana mentioned, there are not many positive examples of dissociative disorders, with Split being one of the first examples. I want the audience to walk away with a sense of reflection on their own perception of mental illness and how the media may have influenced it. Like autism, people with dissociative disorders are more than their condition, and their needs will vary between people. Thank you for listening, and I hope you tune in for the next episode. 

Asher: Thank you for listening to Let’s Talk! Portland Community College’s broadcast about disability culture. Find more information and resources concerning this episode and others at pcc.edu/dca. This episode was produced by the Let’s Talk Podcast Collective as a collaborative effort between students, the Accessible Education and Disability Resource Department, and the PCC Multimedia Department. We air new episodes on our home website, our Spotify channel, X Ray 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM and KBOO Radio 90.7 FM.