naamahdarling:

vaelynx:

naamahdarling:

But like at the same time, Christians who have certain jobs need to throttle back at work because for real it gives me hives being told “Have a blessed day!” by someone like a receptionist at a doctor’s office. It happened today and while she was super-sweet and very obviously genuine (in context, I think she was actually trying to make me feel safe) it was still one of those “…welp…” moments.  I’d just told her two minutes before that my girlfriend would be coming to the appointment with me.  My cat was out of the bag, no takesie-backsies.

Christians have a very nasty track record with violence and obstruction against LGBT people like me, so I suddenly am aware that there are people around who might hate people like me, and they have the ability to make my getting medical care difficult or even impossible.

I get that even if they didn’t SAY it, they would still have the same biases, but I don’t have much choice in who I see, so I’d be stuck with them regardless, and I’d rather not have the anxiety of worrying about it.  My other choice is not disclosing that I’m queer if it comes up, and even when not saying anything about it is an option, which it often isn’t, it’s not one I’m willing to take.  I have to choose between being safe and being honest, and that’s shitty.

It can be hard to imagine, I think, for Christian people, what it’s like to be afraid like that, because to Christians, Christianity is a great thing and Christians are great people.

But like the first psych doctor they wanted to send me to for my disability reevaluation worked out of a Christian therapy office (okay) and their clinic policy was “gay people are against God.” (Not okay at all.)

My disability eval was going to be performed by a dude who was comfortable telling children they are wrong to be gay.

I called up the disability office the day I got the letter and got another doctor to do the eval. Thank goodness they were willing to reassign my case after I told them there was “a potential conflict of interest that might threaten the doctor’s impartiality.”  Thank goodness I had the spoons to make the call and the presence of mind to phrase my issue the way I did instead of just yelling “MOVE I’M GAY.”

I mean, y’all understand, I could have gotten my benefits yanked if I’d gone in there and they’d taken a dislike to me based on the fact that I’m not cishet.  Legal protections aside, there is no impartial third party monitoring that appointment, and they have total control over what goes on their paperwork. There is literally nothing keeping them from recommending I be denied.  For disabled people, legal protections are only effective to the extent we can afford to enforce the law with our own money. Money that, if you are on disability, you obviously do not have.

Without my benefits, especially medical coverage, I cannot survive.  So like.

Yeah.

A lot is riding on the goodwill of people who have been shown to historically have very little goodwill for people like me. I don’t like being reminded of it.

Y’all are cool, I love y’all so so so much, but y’all are also really fucking scary in large groups, and when one of y’all has power over me, I never know whether I can trust you and that shit is scary.

Fucking police your own, thanks.

Would you rather not know there’s someone ahead that might be strongly biased against you?

That is actually a really good question!

For the psych eval, yes, absolutely, I need to know, because that was potentially a matter of life and death.  That’s why I looked up the clinic online.

And the answer for the rest is I don’t know.  I can’t decide.  I wrote the above under stressful circumstances and at the time, no, I just wished I didn’t fucking have to deal with it.  I had enough to deal with.

On the one hand, there’s what I said in the original post, “I get that even if they didn’t SAY it, they would still have the same biases, but I don’t have much choice in who I see, so I’d be stuck with them regardless, and I’d rather not have the anxiety of worrying about it.”

On the other, with some distance from the episode, yeah, maybe I would rather know?

Except I can’t always play straight?  There are times when withholding the fact that I am LGBT will compromise the quality of my care.  If I go to get a flu shot, or go to the ear/nose/throat doctor, I really don’t need to bring up my orientation.

But for OB-GYN care, for instance, or for the pelvic floor physical therapy I was doing this summer which is what the original post was about, I actually really do need them to know my orientation so that we can have honest conversations about things like my sex life.  Medical personnel work off assumptions as much as anyone else, maybe more, and unless they know I’m queer those assumptions are liable to be wrong.  My sex life does not look like the typical sex life of a cis woman in a relationship with a cis dude.  I have different priorities and needs, I have different goals, and because I am a grownass human being at 40 years old, I would rather be up front and honest about it all, rather than play fucking head games.  I want good health care.  Sometimes my orientation is irrelevant to that.  Sometimes it is acutely relevant.

So I suppose in that circumstance, I would rather know, provided I could go somewhere else if I didn’t like what I found.  Which isn’t always possible.

Sometimes, though, it’s all I can do to keep my shit together about an appointment, and I don’t need the extra grief.  You know?

For some folks, letting a stranger touch them very personally for like two minutes is something they can deal with – nobody likes it, blah blah blah blah, etc., but they can do it and come away and not feel sick to their stomach or needing to take a boiling hot shower.  (I am told this is the case but I find it baffling.)  That’s fantastic.  But I have past trauma around being touched intimately by non-partners.  I NEED there to be as few reasons as possible to fear that person because a meltdown brings everything to a screeching halt, prolonging the time I have to be there and worsening everything … or possibly getting me thrown out of the office.  Which has happened!

I want to note, the lady who said “Have a blessed day!” didn’t scare me off from going to that clinic. I went, I LOVED my PT, I got great results, I feel better, the experience was super-positive and I would recommend it to anyone with pelvic pain issues, even people with trauma.  I also grilled them over the phone about it before I set foot in there, and I didn’t get any creepy vibes.  And I still almost had a nervous goddamn breakdown in the waiting area because Yay Trauma, and the “have a blessed day” thing just made it that much more unnerving.  You know?

The personal values of the sweet elderly woman who sold me nail polish yesterday and then wished me a blessed day had zero chance, in that situation, of causing a real problem for me.  She had no power over me.  The convenience store is not a major source of institutional violence.  I am free to take her statement as it is meant: as a kindness.

The medical profession?  Absolutely is a source of institutional violence.  A fucking huge one.  And I therefore have to take any statement as a potential red flag.

Trauma is not rare.  I talked to my PT about it, and yeah, trauma is super fucking common in the people she sees.  Being queer isn’t rare either.  Like at all, wow.  And being queer actually means you’re more likely to have trauma in your past.  So honestly, even receptionists need training in making sure all patients feel comfortable, even when that means not openly signaling your personal faith because you acknowledge that it makes some people feel unsafe.

Honestly, even if I were Christian, I think I would feel the exact same way, because this isn’t about me not being Christian, it’s about Christians being generally intolerant of LGBT people.

Enjoy your long and rambling answer to a benign question!