(Originally posted on wiqaable.com)
One of the few things I can't handle is people's injury stories. People talk about their injuries and scars as if they would make them more brave or honorable or whatever, but frankly, I think it's disrespectful to talk about painful stories in front of a person who just can't handle it. Is it about masculinity? Do you need to talk about your scars to prove how "dangerous" or "strong" you are? Well, I don't care. So next time you see me, please don't talk about breaking your bones.
This is because I've never had any big injury since I was born. I've never broken my bones, I've never gotten into car accidents, and I've never fallen down the stairs. I've been so fortunate that I don't know how painful it would be to get your bones broken, and I would imagine the most extreme pain possible right before I pass out. That's a painful imagination.
I've never been really sick either, except for occasional skin problems I always had growing up. I've never gotten a flu, I've never had food poisoning, and I've never been hospitalized. I'm not saying that I've always been healthy, but if health is determined, simplistically, by the absence of disease or injury, I've always enjoyed my health.
Perhaps this is part of the reason why I don't like going to a hospital. I'm so unfamiliar with that super clean and slightly sorrowful atmosphere inside the building. I also don't really trust Western medicine because my mother is an acupuncturist. In addition, what I've noticed recently is that sexist American culture associates the acts of being sick and weak, going to the hospital, getting taken care of, and even taking care of someone, with feminine quality. I'm part of it; I believe it's not only me who think somehow recovering from a cold without medical care is something to be proud of, therefore, masculine. Simply put, in American culture, healthy is masculine, sick (and weak) is feminine.
I believe that health means differently to different people. It may entail physical, mental, and emotional health, and it may refer to having a perfectly functioning body or being able to feel empowered and enjoy everyday life. And I think to some people, being healthy also means being able to compromise their health without being afraid of bankruptcy.
I was astounded when I learned that there was no universal health care in the United States. I really thought it was a wrong piece of information. I thought it was a joke. Indeed, it's a ridiculous story that makes nobody laugh but makes everyone angry. When I was in Japan, I had access to health care through my father's Employee's Heath Insurance, just like anyone else. When my father was unemployed, I had access to health care through local government-supported health insurance, just like anyone else. In Japan, I enjoyed being healthy, which I believed was a basic human right. But I guess it's considered a privilege in some countries like the United States of America.
I'm still baffled by this fact--the world's arguable superpower cannot even protect its own citizens (let alone immigrants). What do you do when you get sick and if you don't have health insurance? You don't go to a hospital and just wait for the body to win. What do you do when you're house is on fire? I don't think you wait for your house to be burned down; you call the fire department. What do you do when the environment is polluted and destroyed? I don't think you wait for the rain forests to clean the air, for the ocean to dissolve the pollutant, or the Earth to get cold again; you stop driving, you turn off lights, and you stop buying things. It's as natural as that.
You might be wondering why I'm writing about health care on wiqaable. The reason is simple, health care access is about gender, race and sexuality, as much as it is about class, and immigration status, and so on. And, believe it or not, it's about life and death.
A study reports that 45,000 uninsured people die early deaths every year in the United States. This particular article reports that Dr. Wilper says, “Although blacks and Hispanics are more likely to end up uninsured, racial differences in the percentages of deaths was not statistically significant.” This is clearly a confusing, if not misleading, statement. First, it is true that African Americans and Latin@s are less likely to have health insurance. Second, it is true that people of color are more likely to get injured or sick because they are more likely to work and live in dangerous and polluted environment. It's called environmental racism. If we think of why and how people get sick, as well as whether they're insured or not, health care access obviously has everything to do with race.
Similarly, the issue of health care access speaks directly to Queer communities. How many years did Reagan take to admit and publicly announce that AIDS was a serious epidemic? Many of us remember what it means to be denied access to health care, and, health itself. Imagine what percentage of sex workers, female, male, or trans, have health insurance. Imagine what percentage of undocumented immigrants, from Mexico, China, or the Philippines, have health insurance. And those are the people we live together. Those are the people who support our daily lives. Those are, in fact, us.
How many more years are you willing to wait for universal access to health care? Even without looking at other countries, I frankly think that the United States should be deeply ashamed of its failure to take care of its residents. With its twisted idea of glorified masculinity, I really hope the U.S. will not start boasting about enduring its diseases or bragging about its injuries, without realizing that they are actually deep and fatal.
