ju st o u t ▼ d eco m b e r 1 9 , 1 9 9 7 ▼ 31
INTERVIEW
aphne Scholinski has written a book
to fight the mental diagnosis and treat­
ment that she says continues to haunt
her and many others.
D
Scholinski’s The Last Time I Wore
a Dress tells the world about her three-year incar­
ceration in mental institutions after being diag­
nosed with several varieties of so-called mental
illness, among them gender identity disorder. A
diagnosis of GID, she says, has traumatized many
gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans youth; some have
been locked away in mental hospitals and taught
to be more feminine or more masculine in the
name of a “cure.” Often, their sexuality is ig­
nored.
Scholinski uses her writing and her work as an
artist to speak out and work for change on this
issue. She says she won’t stop until people are no
longer held hostage by a GID diagnosis.
Although 13 years and thousands of miles
separate Scholinski from the mental hospital where
she spent almost four years, the psychological
terrain is much closer. Three or four times a week
she is gripped by nightmares, in which her years
in the institutions come to life again.
Scholinski has spent years trying to under­
stand her experience and learning how to express
it. She began by drawing and painting to commu­
nicate the intensity and impact of being institu­
tionalized and labeled with GID. She has created
more than 3,000 paintings and mounted two solo
gallery exhibits. She sees her art as a tool for
drawing attention to the issue and for spurring
change. Several years ago, however, Scholinski
decided the avenue of art activism wasn’t fast-
moving enough and that she needed to do more.
Hence her book.
In 1994 the revised Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual o f Mental Disorders came out. The book
is the reference used by the American Psychiatric
Association to diagnose psychological disorders.
“Not only was gender identity disorder still in
it, but it was elaborated on,” Scholinski says.
The APA had eliminated homosexuality from
its list of mental disorders in 1973, but in 1980 a
new “mental illness”—gender identity disorder—
appeared.
While there may be legitimate instances in
which children are treated for gender identity
disorder, Scholinski says it’s more frequently
used to institutionalize and “cure” tens of thou­
sands of kids. (It is also used to treat adults, most
of whom strongly identify with the opposite sex
and want to change gender or cross-dress.) The
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission; Parents, Families and Friends of
Lesbians and Gays; the National Center for Les­
bian Rights; and the National Youth Advocacy
__
R E V I E W ______
T he L ast T ime
I W ore a D ress
Daphne Scholinski with Jane Meredith Adams
River head Books, 1997; $23.95 cloth.
aphne Scholinski paid a high price for
not being feminine enough.
At age 15, Scholinski was commit­
ted to a mental institution. It was 1981, and
Scholinski’s world became limited to the walls
of a psychiatric hospital and bound by the
narrow thinking of its mental health profes­
sionals. The Last Time / Wore a Dress is
Scholinski’s moving, provocative and chilling
chronicle of her incarceration.
Scholinski and co-author Jane Meredith
Adams, former Boston Globe reporter, man­
G ender H ostage
One young woman relates the nightmare of being
institutionalized because she wasn ’t the right kind of girl
▼
by Mary Ann Stover
THE LAST H M £
i M ore a dress
DAPHNE SCHOLINSKI
V i T K J A H E M E R Ê 0 I 1 H ADAMS
Coalition are among the many organizations work­
ing to depathologize GID.
Scholinski says a GID diagnosis is most often
about homophobia, not the well-being of kids. In
her years of being incarcerated, she says, nobody
ever asked her if she were gay.
“If they had, 1 wouldn’t have told them any­
way,” she says. “But if they could have just put
positive energy out there. If I could have heard
them say, ‘If you think you might be gay, that’s
OK. You can lead a happy, productive life.’ ”
Scholinski came out when she was 19. She
was working in a factory; she and a coworker
were attracted to each other and would hang out
after work. Eventually her coworker asked
Scholinski if she wanted to be more than friends.
“It took me four hours to write the word ‘yes’
on a napkin,” Scholinski says. “It took about a
age the near impossible. They take a poignant,
traumatic experience and weave a story that is
engaging, stirring, sensitive and funny. The
Last Time I Wore a Dress smoothly and effec­
tively moves between the past and present,
using actual medical record transcripts to
ground the story in reality.
For nearly four years, mental health profes­
sionals focused on the superficial: They saw
Scholinski’s torn jeans, loose T-shirts and
short hair and heard her kick-ass attitude,
concluding: “Daphne presents a tomboyish
appearance...and a manner of relating which
is not entirely feminine.”
The diagnosis? Gender identity disorder.
The cure? Lessons on being more “girly-girl.”
By neglecting to look beyond appearances,
these health care professionals missed how
she was acting out her mother’s depression,
her father’s physical violence and post-Viet­
nam War trauma, and sexual abuse. They did
“The more in touch
we are with our
feelings, the more we
can be supportive
and present in
other's lives and can
stop treating each
other so poorly. It
also lets us see that
difference isn }t
something bad that
needs to be
changed ’ ”
Scholinski says ,
adding, “If people
feel any emotion as a
result of reading my
book, then it's been
successful. ”
month and a half for the first kiss. She was pretty
frustrated with me.”
Scholinski says that she didn’t acknowledge
her sexual orientation until much later, when it
finally hit her like a bolt of lightning. She was
driving down a road and had to pull over.
She recalls saying to herself, “Oh my god, I
think I’m gay. And I thought oh, they [the psy­
chiatrists] were right. I’m fucked. I am crazy.”
She quickly exorcised those ghosts, but was
harassed and ridiculed for being lesbian.
“I thought, if this is what it’s like [to be gay],
then I don’t really want it. I was seen as the
‘problem’ at work and with my girlfriend because
I was the more masculine one.”
When she went off to college, however,
Scholinski had a very different experience.
“I wasn’t proud until I went to college...then
not explore Scholinski’s psychological ter­
rain. Rather, they saw a girl who did not
measure up to society’s ideal.
The doctors and staff were hell-bent on a
makeover, and prescribed a treatment plan that
included “spending 15 minutes each morning
with a female peer combing and curling her
hair, experimenting with makeup, looking in
the mirror and saying something positive, and
working on hygiene and appearance.”
Scholinski tried.
For weeks she put on makeup, styled her
hair, swung her hips and paid attention to boys.
Eventually, fed up “with the femininity dis­
cussions," she declared she’d “rather be a drug
addict than walk around with crap on her
face.”
Even though Scholinski develops a wide
range of coping mechanisms and skills for
working the system and surviving, there are
times when it gets the best of her. She is put in
I became firm and strong in who I am,” she says.
Scholinski’s parents accept her. They did not
have her committed for being a tomboy or out of
concerns about her sexuality. In fact, they did not
even know the psychiatrists were treating her for
GID.
“They told my parents they were treating me
for depression but they never said how—and my
parents didn’t ask questions,” Scholinski says. “I
think their not asking questions is partially a class
issue. Being middle-class, they didn’t want to
rock the boat. They believed in the system. They
also didn’t have to look at how the money was
being spent. They didn’t have to worry about
where each dollar was going,” she adds.
Her father’s health insurance paid $1 million
for the treatment.
For a long time Scholinski was angry at her
parents. She now realizes they thought they were
doing the right thing: They saw she was having
problems and thought they were getting her the
help she needed. Today her parents are angry.
“My mom’s pissed off at the hospital system,
at the whole game the psychiatric system plays,”
Scholinski says. “They drive a wedge between
you and your family. They sever any connection
between parents and kids.”
She says that one thing her dad would change
is to have asked more questions— to know that he
had the right to ask for details. Scholinski adds he
also realizes that “you should never loose commu­
nication with a child.”
“The system totally screwed them over as
parents,” she says.
Scholinski tries to let go of the past, but can’t.
Her night terrors and dreams keep her mentally
and emotionally occupied.
“At times it’s rough,” she admits. “There is a
part of me that wants to forget, and there’s a part
that can’t. That’s the part that wins.”
Her art and book are about coming to terms
with what happened to her and about not forget­
ting the other kids who are caught in the system.
Her work also is about feeling. Scholinski be­
lieves that absence of feeling played a big part in
w hat happened to her as a teenager.
“People keep extracting emotion,” she says.
“We also label feelings as good or bad and try to
push them all away. We try not to feel.”
She adds that gay men and lesbians need to feel
the full range of their emotions.
“The more in touch we are with our feelings,
the more we can be supportive and present in
other’s lives and can stop treating each other so
poorly. It also lets us see that difference isn’t
something bad that needs to be changed,”
Scholinski says, adding, “If people feel any emo­
tion as a result of reading my book, then it’s been
successful.”
Mary Ann Stover is a Philadelphia-based writer
whose work has appeared in the Philadelphia
Gay News and the Washington Blade.
seclusion, given medications and threatened
with shock treatment. She is sexually abused
by other patients and physically abused by
staff. It is a testament to her spirit that Scholinski
makes friends with other kids, develops real
connections and, in some ways, manages some
“normal” antics, like the time she and her
friends figure out how to sneak out, buy beer
and liquor and party all night.
The Last Time / Wore a Dress never lets us
forget this is a real person’s life. This snapshot
of Scholinski’s life, however, gives us a gl impse
at a larger picture—the psychological abuse of
gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans kids and the
homophobic behavior of some medical pro­
fessionals.
While it shows how labels can stigmatize
and be divisive, Scholinski's story also offers
up hope and inspiration.
Mary Ann Stover