goddammit this is my blog and I'm gonna say things

[sciatrix]

The anxiety weasels have returned, but I should manage a linkspam this week. It has not been a great mental health week for me, but I think I have identified the issues with my sound chambers for now (need more base-line microphone amps, peering at the chambers I )

Made the mistake of accidentally kicking off my own exclusionist trauma issues on a Metafilter post, and will be taking a break from there (have locked myself out of my account for the rest of the week). I am reminded why I tend to view lesbians with guarded suspicion until they demonstrate that they don't hold with the TERFy and SWERFy corners of queerpolitik, and regret bringing up both that particular article and tensions in queer-female-and-adjacent communities more generally.

No, seriously, the word lesbophobia is a dog whistle, and doubling down on it when I go "are you--are you intending to communicate this?" and insisting I'm speaking in bad faith is, ah. Fun.

Also today, I had a horrifically-ill student attempt to isolate his own DNA with a cheek rinse and fill it with so much phlegm that I couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing wrong when he showed me his sample. I did not, however, find this out before that student helpfully tried to dip a micropipette with no fucking tip into his cup of filthy sick spit-water and draw up a milliliter of fluid, and then get confused when the tip didn't fit on the micropipette afterwards. I think I got it dried out enough not to bleed everywhere, but I'm not sure. I definitely went back and splashed ethanol all over that sucker after he left.

I can only hope he had the same nasty bug I did a few weeks ago, so maybe I can fight it off before he infects everyone else.

Comments

[sciatrix]

It is an interesting article! And some of the discussion is probably helpful; I'm just really upset by the way that one particular participant, uh, keeps insisting that people who don't agree with her take on things should "listen to women," or insists on hauling the conversation around to predatory straight women creeping on lesbians. There's a particularly useful comment in the MeFi thread that points out the Skirt Club in the profile is, uh, a venue specifically run by a bisexual woman to give women who are questioning or want to explore sex with other women a low-pressure way to do that without having to commit to a long-term emotional relationship. Which adds its own interesting framing to the conversation, particularly in terms of what the author is excluding or including in her perception of the venue, and particularly given the absence of discussions of bisexuality in the narrative.

I had to go and clean it in the prep room to stop myself from going "excuse me sir but what the actual fuck." I mean, he did this immediately after an instructional video on how to use micropipettes, in slow and boring detail, and also a pause from me on how you correctly identify which tip goes with which pipette. And then he pulled that within five minutes.

I really hope it's just illness making him brainfoggy and impulsive. I really do. I've definitely done shit like that when I'm sick--I called out sick on a class for the first time in my life for what I suspect is the same bug two weeks ago because I didn't think I could teach like that. And he generally seems like a hardworking and focused guy over the last two weeks. But. Dude~!

[kaberett]

(I mean, I also think it's fascinating because I keep forgetting -- and I really need to write this up, ugh -- that sex is an activity people want to do in and of itself with very limited screening on the other parties, such that my gut reaction to the entire thing is ??????but how???????would that help??????? because Everything About The Setup Is A No for me! Which I think is also relevant to the discussion about perceptions and realities and so on! but yes.)

[sciatrix]

ha whereas for me I think I tend to write off sex as "inexplicable activity some people enjoy but not something I want to do, rather like skydiving" and then get hung up on the social and emotional issues that people hang on it. Aha.

[siderea]

Has anybody in this conversation yet pointed out explicitly that characterizing bisexual women as merely straight women who are covertly predatory on lesbians is, like, the canonical gold-standard example of biphobia?

Because I haven't got the time to trawl through all that, but I do have this here bingo card.

ETA: Whoa, yeah, that comment does really change everything. This was an explicitly bisexual-run event for bisexual women, and the author of the original article, who, I would think it fair to assume understood that, repeatedly called the participants straight and basically characterized them as defective lesbians.

"Bisexual erasure" doesn't just mean failing to mention bisexuals. It means insisting – and acting in ways that demonstrate one believes – that bisexuality isn't a thing, that bisexuality isn't real, no one is actually bisexual, and that if someone tells you they're bi, the most charitable possible interpretation is that they're self-deluded, instead of actively deceitful.

[sciatrix]

yeah, and if I'd understood that at the time I would never have brought the post in.

After I left the conversation, a number of bi posters I like and trust waded in brandishing their own clue bats, at least--including that one. But... yeah. It's like they think bisexuals are fine, just over there, and as long as they never have to personally interact with one or listen to bisexuality-specific issues--wait, what do you mean that's not the definition of inclusivity and tolerance??

[siderea]

It's like they think bisexuals are fine, just over there, and as long as they never have to personally interact with one or listen to bisexuality-specific issues

Self-evidently not! We are discussing their reaction to a big bunch of bi femmes taking their bat and ball and going off to their own playing field to have a bi-only orgy, so no Twu Wesbians get any icky bi-cooties on them, AND EVEN THAT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THEM.

Even when bi women carefully sequester themselves to avoid affronting bi-phobic lesbians' sensibilities, they show up in the thread to take umbrage and concern troll. UGH FAKE LESBIANS/STRAIGHT GIRLS WHO FUCK GIRLS ARE THE WORST, AMIRITE?