You Can't Tell Us What To Do (S3 E9)

Listener Notice: we discuss medical practices as part of lobotomizing patients in some detail. 

If you’re ready to trade inherited rules for intentional ones, this conversation will light a path. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What rule are you rewriting this week?

Link to full article "(F)ailing women in psychiatry: lessons from a painful past" HERE

Tone A, Koziol M. (F)ailing women in psychiatry: lessons from a painful past. CMAJ. 2018 May 22;190(20):E624-E625. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.171277. Epub 2018 May 21. PMID: 30991349; PMCID: PMC5962395.

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Feisty Energy
• 0:20 Meet The Hosts And The Premise
• 1:05 Independence And Star Charts
• 2:30 Astrology As Possibility, Not Fate
• 2:50 Autonomy And Self-Made Rules
• 5:01 Breaking Convention In Relationships
• 6:18 History Of Control And Lobotomies
• 8:38 Merch Plug And Comic Relief
• 9:19 Living Against The Grain
• 11:30 Authority, Trends, And Nonconformity
• 12:50 One-Size-Fits-All Advice Doesn’t Fit
• 14:25 Vetting Advice And Hidden Agendas
• 16:40 Co-Creation And Unique Partnerships
• 18:00 Advice Seeking, Scapegoats, And Accountability
• 19:25 Safety Exceptions And Outside Help
• 20:00 Lived History, Context, And Wisdom
• 20:37 Playful Non-CTA Closing And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Wife giving you trouble not being obedient? Come down, give her a lobotomy.

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

We'll give her a nice pick to the frontal lobe. Welcome back to the QCP, the only podcast where you get Corey and Erin in our full fucking glory. No muss, no fuss, and no damn coconuts either. I'm not a big fan personally.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

That's right, QC fam. We're back and we're feeling feisty today. Like maybe even uh you think like maybe a little bit more than usual.

SPEAKER_00: 0:43

Oh, I definitely think for me at least, uh, I'm I'm fucking feisty feisty. And we're here to tell you don't tell us what to fucking do. That's correct. That's right. Don't tell us what to do. And honestly, it wouldn't work anyway. Erin and I are very independent women. And according to Western astrology, I am a Capricorn Sun, Libra moon, and Leo rising.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13

And according to Western astrology, I'm a Virgo sun, Scorpio Moon, and Taurus rising.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19

We have explored our charts from both Vedic as well as Western astrology. Uh personally, I feel like the Vedic astrology has been most helpful for my internal work. Um, and although I don't feel as though I understand it well enough to teach on it, uh I still feel that Western astrology is still obviously applicable.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

Yeah. We could have an entire episode dedicated to our birth charts and what we've noticed and how I thought for the longest time I was born at 10 30 p.m. Yeah, that's swore by it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:55

Whoopsies. Yeah. It does make a difference. It it does. Birth charts aren't gonna tell you everything about what works for you and what doesn't. It's not gonna tell you who your soulmate is. That's not how astrology works. Or does it? Yeah. Well, I don't know, maybe. But I don't think that the stars are gonna tell you the answers. I think that you get to choose. And they I really believe that the stars do speak in possibilities, likelihood potentials, because you are you, and in that you have the option to make choices. Correct.

SPEAKER_01: 2:32

And it does do it does work in possibilities, and that we, if anything, uh we know by uh quantum physics that absolutely everything works in possibilities, right?

SPEAKER_00: 2:41

Absolutely. And if there is potential for it, potential is all that it needs for there to be spark.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

Yeah. Breaking the pressure of shoulds in a love and partnership starts with you. So love who you are in a way that can't be touched by anything else. No one. Not a thing. Just you. There's no right or wrong way to be. There's simply just is in this experience of life. We develop our own internal compass, morals, values, and beliefs. I don't know why I started putting on a New York accent there towards the end of that, but that's okay. Well, from Brooklyn! Because I was I was being very assertive, so I was uh, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 3:21

I get it. My sorry, my apologies. My East Coast Italian comes out real fucking hard, and I've uh I realize whenever I get excited, I just I just get real excited about things.

SPEAKER_01: 3:33

Oh maybe it's uh maybe it's I'm rubbing like you're rubbing off on me, and maybe that's what they that's what it is, is that I'm picking up your dialect. I never thought of that. I always thought maybe it was just like you know, me channeling my inner New Yorker, but apparently no. It's uh it's you. It's always been you.

SPEAKER_00: 3:51

Oh that's correct. There is so much joy in the autonomy of designing your own rules. Honestly, it's delicious. I get to decide what is right for me because that's my job. There is so much fucking joy in the autonomy of designing your own rules. It's just delicious. I get to decide what is right for me because that's my opinion. And I get to decide what feels best for me, and that's my job. I'm the best one for that job, and good thing, because it's my job to do. So I'ma do it to the best of my ability every time.

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

Right, because only you know what's gonna be the best thing for you, even if you uh ask outside sources. Still deep down you know what the best solution is every single time. So uh so uh on that, have you ever broken convention?

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

Absolutely I have. I feel like I, as the oldest among grandchildren, it was my honor, nay, duty, to pave the proverbial way. And I lived with people before I got married. It was a really big deal in the family at first, and I stood on it. I faced all of the outcomes, and I strongly encourage couples to live together and experience togetherness before deepening your commitment to each other. You learn a lot about the person that you're with, simply by observing them in a natural habitat, and bonus points, if it's a neutral and new territory for you both. You mean like us? Yeah. And like whatever you choose to do, I think if you make that choice with your whole chest and you go, no, this is what I'm gonna do regardless, because it's this is this is my opinion, this is what's best for me. You know what I mean? Like you don't get to dictate what is best for me. That is my job. I also chose to get a divorce, and I did not have family members that had been divorced at that time. There were none that I could even recall. My grandparents come from a social time period that really did not and did not know how to advocate for women, their independence, or healthy relationships. And I had to pull out the book that my grandmother wrote again, and I had to look it up just to confirm, but she was born in 1950. Okay? She's young. And let me tell you that they were still lobotomizing women when she was born.

SPEAKER_01: 6:48

Yeesh.

SPEAKER_00: 6:49

Yeah. Isn't that wild?

SPEAKER_01: 6:52

Yeah, that's freaking crazy. It's that's really not that long ago when you think about it.

SPEAKER_00: 6:57

It's really not. And honestly, most lobotomized patients were women. By 1942, 75% of the lobotomies that Freeman and Watts had performed were on women. We'll link the article in the description as well.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

Yeah, absolutely, because this is uh this is hot stuff. But in the article, it says it that in the 1940s, when psychiatric asylums were understaffed and underfunded, overcrowded, uh, the neurophysicist Dr. Walter Freeman popularized psychosurgery to liberate patients from the hopelessness of therapeutic nihilism and the probability of lifelong custodial care. So the most frequently performed lobotomy was the transorbital. And what what they would do is as a physician guided long cannula, that big long, pointy folk like pointy thing. Freeman used to use an ice pick, by the way, through the patient's eye socket and into the brain, and then moved it from left to right. They would take a cannula and boop into the brain, move it left to right. A motion that has been compared with that of a windshield wiper. And it was to sever the patient's lower frontal lobes. Oh, I hate that. Like, ugh, like more time this this is fucked up. And in uh 1930s, and this is history. Like history.

SPEAKER_00: 8:18

This didn't happen that long ago. Right. So you and I are women that would have been lobotomized. Burned at the strike as witches. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01: 8:30

Yeah. And in um 1937, Freeman and surgeon James Watts published on the surgery's benefits based on the case study of six patients with psychiatric symptoms. So they credited the surgery for alleviating patients' symptoms, which was insomnia, nervous tension, apprehension, and anxiety. And they had identified drawbacks too. So they said that the patients were more comfortable but m markedly more docile. Every patient loses something by this operation, they conceded. So by 1952, an estimated of 50,000 patients in the United States and Canada had been lobotomized. So and she was born in 1950, right? Right. Right. So completely different set of uh social norms, if you will. Right. Like staying staying in relationships that uh, you know, because you weren't even allowed to have a fucking bank account until like what, 1972 or some shit?

SPEAKER_00: 9:18

Right. Right. So So it's not far off for women near to my grandmother in relation. Her mother, her aunt, her cousins. You know what I mean? To have at least been considered, if not undergone treatment as such. And all of that simply to say these women were oftentimes viewed as as radical and independent mostly. And that independence was frightening to some. Right. And procedures like a lobotomy, where every patient loses something, you know what I mean? Right. Sometimes they lose that sparkle. Right. Oh, that's the light in their eyes.

SPEAKER_01: 10:11

But yeah, so if you didn't tell if you didn't do what you were told, you were gonna get one of these fucking things. So if you were a complicated woman, you know, so basically, uh, you just uh fell into line because you didn't want one of these fucking things happening to you. I'm just saying. Yeah. It's a it's it's one of those things where uh, you know, it's like ah, wife giving you trouble not being obedient, come down, give her a lobotomy.

SPEAKER_00: 10:33

We'll give her a nice pick to the frontal lobe. Uh Jesus. Anyway, uh you didn't know that you were gonna be learning something today, huh? This is a house of learned doctors who do not gatekeep.

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

Or have doctoral degrees just so we're perfectly clear.

SPEAKER_00: 10:48

Oh yeah, well, you know. You can't have everything. Um, you know what we do have though?

SPEAKER_01: 10:53

March! We got merch, bitch!

SPEAKER_00: 10:55

Let's go! Shameless plug, we have merch. Yeah, you're damn right we got merch. And there is a sale going on right now. So check it out. Yeah. Check it out, get you merch. Yeah. It's not gonna get here by Christmas or anything, so don't get crazy, but uh you you could celebrate the new year with merch.

SPEAKER_01: 11:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 11:17

Woohoo! Yeah. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming, and this episode of Do Not Tell Us What to Do. Erin, have you ever broken convention?

SPEAKER_01: 11:28

Every single fucking day of my life. That's correct, baby. You tell 'em. Are you just living out of spite? I do. I live out of spite. I continue to live out of spite because out of all odds, here I am still. That's my wife. Yeah, what the one of the ones that um I I never followed any. I like I did not follow I was not a follower at all. I did not follow trends, I did not do the cool things that everybody else was doing. As long as I can remember, I was always doing the exact opposite of what everybody else was doing. Always. Uh, one particular thing that I do remember when I was teenager is when I was told I was a distraction to the learning process, and I still kept being me anyways because it bothered them that much. Because I wasn't gonna just fucking what do you want me to do? Dress in fucking like I'm not wearing that fucking shit. I'm not gonna go to fucking. Right. I ain't gonna do that fucking shit. Like, no, I'm gonna keep wearing the clothes that I have that I've you know, that no. Like, are you gonna buy me a whole new fucking wardrobe? Are you gonna switch it over to fucking school uniforms? Because I mean, that's the only way that I'm gonna be changing my clothes is if it's like the law says that I have to, and since you ain't the law, you can go get fucked and get wrecked. So I just continued being me. So that was uh, yeah. But I can I can cite like my whole life, I have always gone against the grain because I don't fucking follow nobody, and I won't ever follow anybody. Period.

SPEAKER_00: 12:54

So yeah. I love you.

SPEAKER_01: 12:56

Yeah. So I uh yeah. If it's if it's a trend, it's not for me.

SPEAKER_00: 13:01

I dig that advice. I dig that advice.

SPEAKER_01: 13:05

If everybody else is doing it, I'm running the opposite direction and I'm not doing any of it.

SPEAKER_00: 13:09

Yeah. So and and I think it's totally okay for us to do things that are against the grain, especially like if the grain that we're measuring against is a group of old white men wearing powdered wigs and tights, um who wrote the Constitution, or you know, whatever other group of old white men, Congress, whatever we have established as forms of quote authority. All I'm saying is you can't tell us what to do.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

No.

SPEAKER_00: 13:47

Marinate on that.

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 13:50

Our experiences and what we have done to break convention in our own lives show that it's totally possible that maybe some relationship advice that you've received just doesn't fit. True. Because relationships are not a one size fit all my dear. They are unique, and they are just as unique as the weirdos that are in those fucking relationships. So, Erin, my darling love, how do you know when advice doesn't fit?

SPEAKER_01: 14:25

Oh, I fucking love this question because I I am a person that you know how analytical I am and how I observe things from every single fucking possible direction before I even make a fucking like comment on it. Uh-huh. And so, like, the what I I what I look at is like it's when the advice doesn't come from a place from seeing all possible angles and it just sides with one particular narrative. And also, you gotta think about where the advice is, who it's coming from, because chances are that this person might have a benefit of giving you the advice that they're giving it to you. So, meaning as in they're gonna tell you advice that makes you do XYZ simply because they're waiting in the fucking you know, shadows to swoop in on your discarded like relationship shit like that, because they're giving bad advice just to benefit for themselves. So that's another thing that you gotta be weary of is that you know you you gotta really uh check the uh people that the advice is coming from and to see if they benefit from the advice that they're giving to you.

SPEAKER_00: 15:32

Yeah, because it's not just about what is said, it's about how it's said and who is saying it. Correct. Because the same information that comes from your mom versus the mailman uh may feel a little bit threatening. You know what I mean? I've got something for you.

SPEAKER_01: 15:48

Oh, do you?

SPEAKER_00: 15:49

Do you? I don't know. That's just uh my point is uh it's gonna be completely independent and based on your own experience and based on what what you want. Yeah. You know? So whatcha, what you what you want. Yeah. I think in a relationship, not only do you get to make it everything that you want it to be, you also get to do it together. And that's beautiful, that's co-creation. Whenever you're co whenever you're creating with another person, it's beautiful. Like I think that our relationship is so different from any relationship I've had with anyone else. And then I realize, of course it is. Aaron, you are in a league all of your own. And I know that I am not who I used to be. So it's like we're just making something for the two of us, and it's like our own little blanket for it. It's our safe place, a place where we can freely exist while we continue to explore and spread our love to the whole world.

SPEAKER_01: 16:58

Absolutely. And I do believe like in doing things together and co-creating together. And I to bring it back to the advice thing, I know that there's a lot of people that will ask other people for advice and whatnot instead of they're they're they're fishing for like sometimes these people that are asking for advice, they're fishing for something else. There's also that I wanted to just tack onto there. Like they're fishing for sympathy or someone to like come in and be the white knight and be like the oh, you know, you deserve so much better, blah, blah. That's they're actually fishing for that instead of trying to resolve the issue because if they were trying to resolve the issue, they wouldn't be seeking outward advice of other people what to do. They would be consoling into their partner saying, How can we tackle this problem? Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a you know, and I understand that there are sometimes like you're gonna need some outside opinion about like, hey, I'm in a situation and you are gonna need that, you know, you're gonna need that advice. I understand that completely. So it all it really all comes down to like the people, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 18:05

Or they might be looking for a scapegoat. Correct. That's another one. That's a real fucking sneaky one. And what do I mean? Oh, well, they're looking for an answer that wasn't, quote, their own. They're looking for something to be like, oh, that's a bad idea and I fucking know it is. Confirmed, check this out. Spam call. That's a bad idea and I know it is, but it wasn't quote, my idea.

SPEAKER_01: 18:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 18:34

Well, so-and-so said it. Or I was just doing my job. Where's your moral compass? Where's your backbone? What do you do?

SPEAKER_01: 18:47

Right. Why aren't you just doing what you know you need to do? Right. Fuck doing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 18:51

Why does there have to be a uh like like an audience? Right. That's performative. Yes, cut it out, just do it for yourself and be happy about being able to do it from a place of uh wholeness, fulfilling, you know, goodness, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 19:12

Yeah. And then I mean that's and like I said, that's not to say that sometimes you are gonna need some outside uh uh outside uh troops, if you know what I mean. Because I mean if you're in if you're in an an abusive relationship, you are gonna need the that outside resource. You know, it's not gonna be something that you're gonna be able to ask your partner to sit down and like you know just level with me. Obviously, that's not how that's gonna work. It's probably in like hit a dangerous situation where you need to get the fuck out of there anyway. So leaving is the best option.

SPEAKER_00: 19:41

Right. They may have already tried to level you.

SPEAKER_01: 19:43

Right, right. So there are, you know, there are always those uh stipulations.

SPEAKER_00: 19:48

So you gotta do do things, uh, you know, look at things uh I think from from a from the high vantage point, being able to see all act. ingredients and participants because like you're saying too Aaron that that a relationship isn't just two people like when you and I met I came with a whole family and a fucking zoo and all of the the lore of my history. Right. You know like I I come with a lot and it's not necessarily heavy or exhausting. It's simply that I have experienced and in those experiences I have things to offer and share. Wisdom. Wisdom well that's all for today's episode folks thanks for being here and if this resonated with you I'm not gonna tell you what to do because I can't tell you what to do just as much as you can't tell us what to do. So I'm not even gonna bother telling you to please like share and subscribe to our content comment send us a message you could follow us on Instagram queerly.committed you can follow us on YouTube at queerly committed you can follow us on blue sky at queerly committed you can follow us on TikTok at gross underscore girls you could send us an email queerlycommitted at gmail.com you can even text the show from a link in the show notes I'm not gonna tell you what to do.

SPEAKER_01: 21:28

Yeah you can do that all on your own if you want to great it if you don't that's great too right you could do it or not yeah or not so uh if you want to you could stay bold yeah and if you want to you could uh stay wild yeah and if you uh are so compelled to do so you could stay quilly committed bye burn on burn burn