(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
When Tinka was 16, I met her in high school in Brumunddal. Over the course of a few years, she acquired black, long hair, nail bracelets, band t-shirts, strap boots and tattoos. She traveled around metal concerts and festivals in Sweden and Germany, and gradually became a central figure in Norwegian black-clad rock. Tinka became the one who often ends up backstage, which foreign bands remember the name of, and everyone in the environment is welcome. When she filled 30, metal bands came from afar to play on her birthday – for free.
I left out one detail about Tinka: She is in a wheelchair. She has a severe nerve disease, which gradually made her body weaker in childhood. Mora took her to India in the hope that religious gurus could fix Western medicine failed. Then, in her mother's year at a folk high school, her daughter was devoted to alternative medicine. Mora took her daughter to Café Blitz and concerts. Tinka was in many ways given a copious and unusual childhood.
Unfortunately, Tinka's strong personality and colorful background often end up in the background of her wheelchair. In our culture, different bodies are still perceived as deviations. People with disabilities are seen as – and treated as – deviants. And deviants are not treated nicely.
The past was Tinka and the man at a concert in Oslo Spectrum. After the concerts, Tinka had to go to the bathroom. Tinka needs some assistance, as many others with disabilities do. Where she was previously dependent on anonymous and random municipal assistance, or personal assistant, she now gets the man's help when they are out. A toilet visit is therefore a very private act for Tinka.
Tinka's husband locked the door, Tinka undressed down and sat down. For different reasons, depending on the injury, a visit to the baptism can take time for people with nerve damage. Control and musculature are impaired. As Tinka sat at her most naked and open, someone began to knock on the door. The watchmen outside demanded that they peel themselves off.
The man called out the watchmen and asked them let her finish. I need more time, she cried. Let me dry myself, she begged. Without warning or warning, the door of the disabled toilet was broken open. The guards came in. Angry uniforms and black boots marched onto the toilet floor. Tinka was naked. The most intimate and naked point in a person's life was penetrated by guards. Because Tinka takes longer than normal. Because they were two people in there, together.
The guards shrugged, before going out again. A few minutes later, Tinka and the man were led by a uniformed follow out of Spectrum. Hard boots followed the wheelchair until the fragile element in the chair was out on the street. No one regretted the incident. Not until Dagsrevyen had become aware of the matter and wanted to cover it, did a representative of Oslo Spektrum lay flat on behalf of the concert venue.
The case of Tinka is a symptom of something bigger. No one had taught the guards about the disabled on the scales. In the guards' normal day work, deviations must be interrupted, and deviations are followed on the street. Or away from the street. That's what the watchmen get paid for. They practice daily on drug addicts.
It is widely accepted that we unleash security guards on the most vulnerable in society. People who are down, out or away. These are met by well-trained men of their best age who have applied for a uniformed position of power, without having to go around training in police, command or prison.
All that ever have met a bunch of Russian or football fans, know how uniformity erases the individual's sense of individual responsibility. The individual's strength goes into, and into something bigger – uniformed is no longer himself. The ability of empathy diminishes the more distinctive the uniformity is. The more distinctive the uniformity is, the more the uniformed are perceived as a uniform mass of those exposed to the gang. The Guardian Field is an ABC in privatized police state.
For Tinka, the situation was bad in every way. Going to the bathroom is a human right. Going to the bathroom is private and vulnerable for everyone. For people with different toilet routines, it is extra vulnerable. The potential for shame and feeling of filth is greater if the toilet routines can be perceived as different. An extra disturbance during the baptismal visit is experienced harder for one who is more vulnerable.
In addition there is another fact at the bottom – the body of the deviant often carries pain.
In the guards' normal day work, deviations must be interrupted, and deviations are followed on the street.
Everyone you ever meet with disabilities has different life stories. These are, of course, just as different as life stories for people without disabilities. But something most people with disabilities have in common: trauma, pain, and travel in emotional landscapes most of us may be happy to get away with. Feeling of otherness, the loneliness of having a different body.
Tinka's position today has cost her inhuman powers. The fact that Tinka goes to concerts with a man she loves has cost a fight others can hardly imagine. Tinka deserves respect – not disgusting overreactions from guards.
Hatterud is a cultural writer and regular columnist in Ny Tid.
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