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

[jezunya]

I skimmed through the comments on that page and just… yikes. So much yikes. Your comments were characteristically thoughtful & even-handed, and it kind of seemed like some people – or just one person – were up in arms & looking for a fight from the get-go. I'm sorry you had to deal with that, and especially sorry that what read to me as you trying to explain your position & the reasons behind your reactions instead seemed to be interpreted as blame-throwing or assigning motivations to others, or something. That's always so shitty to deal with >:/

Also sorry about the gross undergrads, lol *shudder* Here's hoping your immune system is still working hard after the last bug! ♥

[sciatrix]

Oh, I'd name two people who were up in arms and... not looking for a fight exactly, but looking for people to validate their trauma (plenty of people happy to do that there) and, more crucially, their preferred blame for that trauma right off the bat. And saying "I hear you, but I need you to listen to me too" just isn't fucking enough for people like that, apparently.

I'm just hoping it's the same one so I don't risk getting infected with whatever terrible ailment he had! I wish sick days were more workable for both instructors and students--we have a drop lab for this reason, of course, but this early in the semester the students worry about not getting a good quiz grade and what if they need the drop later?? It's not a particularly difficult class, honestly, being an elective lab aimed at upperclassmen, but a lot of our students are often pre-med and they develop a habit of being very concerned about GPAs that I can't quite blame them for even as I wish they'd understand that both my instructor and I are more concerned about what they take away from the course than the grade they get assigned--and that's factored into the course design, too.