You all know how much I like positivity. There are so many great things you can do, lying on a couch all day! I'm not being sarcastic! Everything I wrote in my last blog entry still stands, about my extreme happiness and gratitude to find that after several months of resting, I can now usually walk from the bed to the fridge without fear of collapse. But I'll admit, I do get frustrated at times. I would like to make it beyond the fridge. And sometimes, in the midst of an attack of frustration, you happen upon something so malicious, ignorant and destructive that you gain an instant arch-nemesis and a way to blow off steam at the same time.
My new nemesis is Elaine Showalter, a renowned "feminist" scholar and retired professor of Princeton University, who in 1997 published a book called Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media. I'm afraid you might know where this is going. Without any medical training and willfully ignoring the vast majority of medical research, as well as the CDC and the experiences of millions of people, she declared Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to be a modern form of mass hysteria, created by the media and gullible, self-centered women eager to find an exogenous cause for their angst. For a more in-depth and medically footnoted refutation, see Mary Schweitzer's review. Showalter equated Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (and Gulf War Syndrome) with alien abduction, Satanic rituals, and multiple personality disorder. She then made the talk-show circuit, using her Princeton-backed credentials to argue with patients and doctors, promote herself, and attempt to destroy a patients' rights movement.
Showalter has a lot of power as one of the few well-respected feminist writers in the public eye, and one might think that she would use that power to promote the interests of women. The first lesson of "Feminism 101" might be concisely summed up as: "Listen to women." Instead, she took the self-described experiences of millions of women, women already ill and struggling to make themselves heard, and silenced them in exactly the same way that the patriarchal medical establishment has always silenced women, by calling them crazy, self-victimizing, and hysterical. A little bit ironic, maybe, a little?
CFS affects people of all genders, but the lack of adequate health care and recognition is a feminist issue. Eighty percent of patients are female, and the other 20% share the marginalization of having a "women's disease." CFS affects more women than AIDS, and despite the "statistics" that Showalter fails to cite, does not discriminate by race, location, or socioeconomic status. I have to wonder, if men suffered in similar numbers, would CFS still get less research funding than hay fever? Would millions of men be told that they are hysterical? Would it even be called "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?"
Another disappointing aspect of the publication of this book is the lack of a widespread critical response. Most scholars and readers don't seem to question the right of a literary critic to declare diseases imaginary. I could find only two serious responses, Mary Schweitzer's review and an essay of Peggy Munson's in Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The vast majority of Internet buzz about Showalter is glowingly, gushingly positive. Even user-generated content sites like goodreads.com don't seem to question her. "People are crazy," was the pithy review of a reader who gave the book four stars. Yes, they are!
Hystories came out a while ago, and thankfully, Elaine Showalter has moved on to topics she knows something about, but she has never retracted or apologized for anything she has written about CFS or Gulf War Syndrome. The book is still read, and the impact it has on the dialogue surrounding CFS is still relevant. One of the most tragic aspects of CFS is the skepticism surrounding it. I have known so many people who, in addition to all the myriad difficulties of living with a debilitating disease, have also been abandoned by family and loved ones who are under the false assumption, propagated by Elaine Showalter and others, that CFS is not a legitimate illness.
It's enough to make an otherwise relatively positive sick girl mad. It's enough to make her seek catharsis by writing, "Elaine Showalter Kicks Sick Women in the Teeth!" on every sycophantic Internet forum I can find. It might not be the most adult response, but I'm not a Princeton professor. And when I finally finish my Great American Zombie Novel based on the CFS epidemic, I'm greatly enjoying imagining a scene in which a character remarkably similar to Elaine Showalter is getting her brains eaten, and a character remarkably similar to me coming up and saying, "Oh, stop being so hysterical."
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