Dad, don’t read the last line of this post. Ok, fine. I warned you.
So, you know when you go to the doctor, and I mean the lady doctor, although I assume men have some version of this, and you go into the room and you get a PA or someone who comes in and does the preliminary stuff that it costs too much for a doctor to do? And she (always a she in my case) asks you a series of questions about your period and whether you eat well and how often you do crystal meth?
So then she asks you if you’re sexually active. And I say yes. Because I am. And she asks you whether you take birth control, going down a long list of drugs, each of which I must say no to. And I say no, because I don’t. Then she asks if you use condoms, and I say no, cause I don’t. Then she asks if I’m pregnant or trying to become so. And I laugh, cause that’s just silly.
Because OBVIOUSLY, I MUST be having sex with a man. I mean, what other options are there? So at that point, I say, ” No, I’m a lesbian.” and she gets all flustered and says, “oh.” and then we have the rest of the uncomfortable questions about my menstrual cycle and smoking 1 cigarette a month.
But my point is why is there no room on their form for me? How hard is it to ask “are you sexally active with men?” instead? Give me room, and I will come out, no worries. I have been and can continue to be about 3 drag queens shy of a walking Pride Parade all by myself, 6 being the minimum number of queens required for a parade. Or a fight. Scratch that, a fight only takes 3.
This happened during a Planned Parenthood phone survey I took once too. The questions started out all easy and general: cigarettes and beer. Then she started asking me about sex with men.
“Hold on!” I said. “I’m a lesbian. I’ve never had sex with a man. I’ve never taken birth control. You should talk to my girlfriend.”
“No, no, I’ve already started with you. We can totally finish.” She was young and earnest. She proceeded to continue asking me questions, attempting vainly to shoehorn my answers into her heterosexual “often, sometimes, not often, never” world. How hard would it have been to tack “have you ever had sex with a man” onto the beginning of that survey? Easy. Cheap. Save me twenty minutes.
But until things change I’ve decided that my own form of activism will be to reply, “Yes, I do use birth control. I make my girlfriend cum on my chest.”
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