In March 2020 I was sent to St. Joseph’s Healthcare Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, for a psychiatric evaluation after I threatened a politician who defunded the provincial autism program. The ward was co-ed, it had three hallways, with one hallway reserved for women. However, the person across the hall from me was a man named “Janet” who had been incarcerated for setting cars on fire in a nearby city. He was diagnosed, he told me, with psychosis and psychopathy. The facility was so secure that patients’ rooms were locked and each patient was given a key card for their room. Nurses conducted patient counts every 15 minutes. One night, a nurse asked me to leave my door ajar to make her room checks easier. I said no because there were men on the ward. She countered with “there’s no men in your hallway,” WHEN THERE WAS ONE RIGHT ACROSS THE HALL. Janet routinely talked of his boyhood and the only effort he made to be a woman was to grow his hair long and purchase women’s eyeglass frames.
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