One of the benefits (and drawbacks) of being a ravenous knowledge-seeker is the repeated penchant to be wowed by topical happenings across the world which is why the case of Jewel Shuping gave me a brain freeze in the wake of my perusal.
For those who are (still) ignorant about this case seven years after the event, Jewel Shuping’s case was reported by the Dailymail in October 2015.
According to the report, her dreams of being blind were actualized when she arranged to have drain cleaner poured into her eyes to fulfil her wishes.
Jewel Shuping, 30, of North Carolina, suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), which causes able-bodied persons to believe they were born to be crippled.
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Her desire to go blind was so intense that she chose to blind herself by pouring drain cleaner into her eyes with the help of a sympathetic psychologist.
WHAT IS BODY INTEGRITY IDENTITY DISORDER?
According to BIID.org, Body Integrity Identity Disorder is when a person’s idea of how they should look does not match their physical form.
The condition affects a small percentage of the population and is most often manifested by a desire to have an amputation of a specific body part.
Usually, the limb that the person would like to remove is actually in healthy working order and there are no physical problems with it.
The leading thought by psychologists and neurologists is that Body Integrity Identity Disorder, or BIID, occurs when the brain is not able to provide an accurate plan of the body.
The brain sees the offending limb as being foreign and not actually a part of the person, thus the desire to have it removed.
In the most severe cases, a person with BIID may do bodily harm to what that they would like to have removed, to necessitate an operation.
Others manage to cope with the illness by using canes and prosthetic attachments to help them feel complete.
Ms Shuping developed her weird fascination with blindness as a child, according to her horrifying account.
She narrated;
My mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old.
By the time I was six I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable.
She began wearing thick black sunglasses as a teenager and received her first white cane at the age of 18, before becoming fully proficient in braille by the age of 20.
Ms Shuping further revealed;
I was ‘blind-simming’, which is pretending to be blind, but the idea kept coming up in my head and by the time I was 21 it was a non-stop alarm that was going off.
Determined to make her goal a reality, she contacted a psychologist who was willing to assist her in becoming blind and completed the appropriate measures in 2006.
They started with numbing eye drops, which Ms Shuping had brought back from a trip to Canada, and then a couple of drops of drain cleaner in each eye.
Ms Shuping acknowledged that the procedure was excruciatingly unpleasant.
Despite her desires, doctors at a hospital attempted to save her vision, but it was irreversibly destroyed.
Her vision gradually deteriorated to the point where she couldn’t see anything, with her left eye suffering a ‘corneal meltdown. This required a surgical removal after collapsing in on itself, and her right eye had glaucoma, cataracts, and a web of scars.
After finding that it wasn’t an accident, Ms Shuping’s family disowned her.
Mike, her previous fiancé, who is legally blind owing to naturally occurring early-onset macular degeneration, has been supportive.
Ms Shuping, who was pursuing a degree in teaching at the time, said she has no regrets and hopes to one day assist other blind individuals in becoming self-sufficient.
As of this day, the whereabouts of Ms Shuping is unknown and how she is fairing with her blind condition is also unknown.
There is a point where you have to protect someone from themselves, a certain moral obligation when someone is intentionally trying to irreparably harm themselves. Eventually, if they do not relent you may have to let it happen but not without making sure they were mentally sound and aware of the consequences.
Considering the fetishization of victimhood, being part of an oppressed group or having a disability is now seen as a virtue on its own in some circles.
That’s the weird thing about psychology; for the most part, diagnosis is done based on the symptoms, rather than any actual tangible biological defect.
You cannot “test” someone for this disorder, so you just have to take their word for it.
Liberals, who are already steeped in trans activism, might actually consider creating a bunch of “diseases” to describe people who were dealt a hard hand in life; such is their obsession with making everyone blinded to the moral decline within the society.
The worst part about modern society is there are people attempting to legitimize her blatant mental illness.
Blinding yourself isn’t a form of self-expression. It is a severe mental illness to engage in self-harm and it is counter-beneficial to the society to legalise and mainstream these types of notions.
