Things I struggled with a lot as a queer sex educator part wev.

[commodorified]

... Trying to find gentle, affirming, respectful ways to remind people of all orientations and identities that life is always weirder than we think it's going to be and every sexual orientation and gender identity is valid, but none of them are a form of birth control.

Comments

[recessional]

Otherwise known as "why your doctor kept asking you about birth control even after you said you were a lesbian."

Tho they probably failed at gentle, affirming and respectful.

[commodorified]

Yep. It's also why doctors annoy the Hell out of lesbians who have, for example, missed a period and don't feel so well, or who need an abdominal X-Ray, because the answers to "is there any chance you're pregnant?" are "Absolutely not", "I already said no", "... maybe we could do a test..." JUST often enough that everyone's justifiably but also obnoxiously always gotta ask repeatedly, in case.

[recessional]

I sort of wish I could find that "list of actual stories from doctors", as it was a perfect illustration of WHY it sometimes feels like even good doctors are assuming you're an idiot.

[commodorified]

Yeah. When I was doing workshops with doctors we would stress that patients need something from you, which means they want you to like and approve of them, which means they will pick up your cues and echo back like mad, which is why neutral checklists and an open listening attitude wrt sex is vital. IOW if your patient thinks saying she had PIV sex unprotected will make you less sympathetic and approving, she's far more likely to conceal it.

[recessional]

So extremely true.

Which reminds me of when I went in at 13 to get my first scrip for birth control for my horrible periods, to the doc who'd seen me my whole life from delivery, and he was so flustered that he actually said "and this is just for the menstrual problems right?" and it didn't strike ME as a problem (hello ASD thirteen year old) because clearly yes.

But I later related it to my mother, and mom immediately phoned him to SCOLD HIM SO MUCH. "[FIRSTNAME]! THAT IS NOT HOW YOU TALK TO KIDS ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL! THAT IS BAD PRACTICE!"

[commodorified]

*especially* when you add in the part where the age of consent was - I'm not certain of your age - either 14 or 16.

[sara]

Oh babies ouch, this makes me so sad to read. We have GOT to do better about getting sex ed info to kids.

But I have totally done the "if I can just look straight enough everyone will totally stop asking me these questions" thing, so I know where they're coming from, poor little ducks.

[commodorified]

It's partly info. A lot of it, though, is similar to the problem kids who've done the whole "purity ring" thing run into, such kids also having high pregnancy rates:

If you stop having sex to take precautions, your whole "it just happened" story flies apart.

And as for going out to purchase or get a scrip for birth control...

ETA: with queer kids it's almost a reversal of the purity ring situation: a lot of queer women, especially, are so scarred by the whole "you just haven't met the right man" bs that they don't feel safe admitting to having had sex with a man for whatever reason.

[recessional]

the "haven't met the right man" thing, or the "college lesbian/bisexuals aren't real they're just college girls 'experimenting'" etc etc etc - which is all the same thing, which is that your identity is so under attack that you daren't show anything of yourself that might cause people to erase it and impose their own.

And a lot of times the person you're telling the "it just happened" story to is yourself. =\

[commodorified]

Exactly! (Also this is the one time when having chosen to get your healthcare at the awesome womyn-owned mostly-lesbian collective clinic feels like it's going to bite you in the ass hard, although in fact they're probably just going to sigh a bit and they're going to say "Honey, have you noticed how many lesbian mothers there are in the world? Now, do you want to talk about your options, or should I go straight to discussing iron supplements?"

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you for this.

[wordweaverlynn]

Sharing elsenet. Thanks.