Wednesday, October 14, 2009

On doctors and lady parts

Oh oh oh, it's TMI-time, travellers! This post has been brewing and stewing in my brain for a few months now, ever since a fateful day at the walk-in clinic proved to be the third strike against dudely doctors and dudes-who-aspire-to-be-doctors-but-instead-practice-what-is-largely-recognized-as-quacktacular-medicine.

Strike one occurred back in the 1980s when my mom's then-chiropractor responded to her not unreasonable request to examine her 8-year-old daughter's seemingly curved back with "She just has a large behind." Which a) I should be so lucky, b) is creepy and c) is a lazy, gross, patronizing excuse for medical treatment. (For the record, it is not so much the size of behind as the fact that it is constantly parked on the couch that accounts for my still lousy posture. Hey, do I get a pretend medical degree now?)

Strike two was back in the undergrad years, at the university's walk-in clinic:

Me: I'd like to get my pill prescription renewed, please.

Doc: When was your last physical?

Me: I'm a virgin.

Doc: Good for you!

"Good for you!", as if I'd spent the last eight or so years since menstruation fighting off an army of sweaty, shirtless James Masters-lookalikes, instead of being a gangly and self-conscious homebody who spent her spare time reading Stephen King novels and writing terrible poetry about not wanting to be a virgin anymore. "Good for you!" as if virginity was some sort of grand accomplishment and not the inevitable by-product of my particular blend of self-esteem issues, shyness and tendency to dork out to the extreme in front of any boy I liked. "Good for you!" as if 'virginity' is a medical term requiring no follow-up questions and not some sexist and heteronormative social abstract which means different things to different people and exists only in their minds, anyway.

Now that's a rant and a half, but I have saved the rantiest for last! Strike three happened just this summer when I, a grown lady who had spent a good half her life with (to the best of my knowledge) working lady bits, and had yet to cause some sort of international incident or natural disaster with them, went to get my pill prescription renewed yet again. In my mind, I was qualified  to a)make requests as to my reproductive needs, and b)receive medical advice in a professional, objective, and non-douchetastic manner.

BZZZZTTT!!!! WRONG!!! At least according to the douchiest of all dudely doctors, with whom I had an unfortunate encounter at the walk-in clinic I was frequenting while trying to find a family doctor in my new town. (Which I totally have now, and she is also a lady, and she is pretty swell).

This guy was such a douche, he earned his own three strikes within our five-minute appointment, for:

1) Telling me that once every two years wasn't enough for women with multiple partners, after I had just told him that I was in a long-term, monogamous relationship ("Whatever, slut!");

2) Looking so pointedly at my (wedding ring-less) hand the whole time that I finally snapped a "I'm married; we don't wear rings", which I hate because a)marriage is a legal relationship and NOT a medical one and therefore NOT RELEVANT to this particular conversation, dipstick, and b)when I have to pull the marriage card it reminds me just how patriarchal and sucktastic a lot of people want marriage to be and means that I am in the presence of someone who is probably against things like same-sex marriage, women's equality, and kittens. Because he is an asshole.

3) After the marriage admission, writes me a six-month prescription, "Since [you've] been such a good girl."

If ever you needed proof that Angry Floyd still has self-control - I am currently blogging about this instead of serving time for "aggravated assault with various medical implements". So there.

Ladies, gents and every in-between? Any douchestactic doctor experiences?

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Another female athlete still waiting for my title and estate

Dear CBC sports,

"Lady" is the formal equivalent of "Lord" or "gentleman". Unless it's made up entirely of British aristocrats, it is a women's sport/event/competition.

Thanks,

Floyd

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Meet the Stupid

Although the number one spot on the list of movies I hate is clearly, forcefully, undboutedly and angrily taken, it's important to remember that I only saw that particular pile of aardvark vomit within the last year - meaning there was, indeed, a different pile of aardvark vomit in the number one slot (and one before that one, and before that one, and yes my friends it is aardvark vomit all the way down).

Let's see if you can guess what semi-digested mass of termite remains once held the top spot with a simple hint: here's the article that made me think of it in all it's regurgitated glory:


Got it yet?


Here's another hint:


DeNiro makes a deal with the douchebag, OR
Suggest your own caption in the commments section!


I mean speaking, of course, of the totally irredeemable "comedy" Meet the Parents, which I saw on the plane during one of my frequents trips home from school, and by "saw" I mean "watched the first five minutes with interest and then slowly grew angrier and angrier as the plot unfolded before turning it off and trying to avert my eyes from the other screens lest my rage overwhelm me to the point that I must be tackled and restrained while trying to use the emergency exit at 10,000 feet".

Rather than recap the whole film (because, obviously, I didn't see the whole thing) let me present to you the scene in which two anonymous douchebags come up with the story:

DB1: Okay, so, our main guy, he's gotta be funny. How can we make him funny?Hmmm...He could be well-written and the centrepiece of a clever film? [pause] Naw, that's too hard.

DB2: Let's give him a funny name, like 'Weiner'.

DB1: Naw, too obvious...kay, let's get back to that f***ker later.

DB2: Focker! Awesome.

DB1: Awesome! [high-fives]

DB2: Okay, now we need to give him, like, a funny job. Something really embarassing...like, outhouse cleaner or something.

DB1: Hey, you know what's really funny to my emotionally-stunted mind? When men engage in activities considered by our society to be feminine, which, by illustrating the arbitrariness of gender boundaries and calling into question the rigid social structures based upon these boundaries, challenges my own innate sense of privilege based on my manly superiority to women.

DB2: Uh...what?

DB1: It's totally funny when dudes do chick stuff.

DB2: Yeah! Like, I have this cousin, and he and his wife run a ballroom dance school, and charge like $200 bucks for a lesson and he's always, like, dancing around with women and shit, and I'm like, dude - that's so gay.

DB1: Yeah, like, why don't you just go be, like, a male nurse or something!

DB2: [laughs uproariously] MALE NURSE! That's awesome. You can't make that shit up. I love it.

DB1: Yeah! So this Focker, he's a [giggles] male nurse, and he wants to marry this hot chick, but first he needs to get her dad's permission to take ownership of his property, because it's not like a grown woman is capable of making her own decisions, and would be angry rather than bemusedly tolerant of her father's inappropriate and borderline-abusive treatment of the man that she loves!

DB2: Whu-what?

DB1: Chicks know their place, and let the men duke it out because that's just how we roll.

DB2: Oh.

DB1: And the dad will be super-scary ex-CIA guy, but then he'll totally love sissy shit, like flowers and cats.

DB2: MAN WE ARE GONNA BE EFFIN' RICH!

And don't even get me started on the sequel. For the sake of my blood pressure, I try to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Related Posts:

Thursday, January 15, 2009

RIP, Ricardo Montalban

He's been in a lot of stuff, mostly things that I'm too young for (Fantasy Island) or too old for (Spy Kids) but Star Trek II? Just right.

And I still can't watch that ear-weavil scene.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Library Love

As in, love for the library, not love in a library, because then this would be a completely different kind of blog ("Dear Floyd, I never thought this would happen to me but [...] and then the reference librarian chased us out with an oversized atlas of northern Canada's waterways.")

No, this post is all about how much I love the library that I currently use, the ones I've used in the past, and the concept of libraries in general. Maybe I'm just on a library high because no fewer than five (5!) books that I've wanted to read for a very, very long time (like, maybe even, months!) all came in today and I just wanted to throw them on the bed and roll around with them but that would be gross a)for me and b)for everyone after me. So I didn't do that. But I did look at my bag o' books longingly all afternoon, waiting for the work day to end so that I could take them home and we could be alone...

Ahem. Moving on. Now, I'm not a super spendy (why yes, that is a real word, thankyouverymuch) person in general, but books have always been the exception that proved that I was a big liar. Graduate school was probably the worst time for this, because I spent so much time with smarty-pants academics with offices lined with smarty-pants books that I spent hundreds of dollars trying to look smarty-pants myself ("look" being the operative word, as the academics with their book-filled offices had, in fact, written or contributed to or worked with the authors of many of those books, whereas I mostly bought them, held them tight to my chest, and then put them on the shelf and admired them from afar) on a research topic which I eventually abandoned. (In a completely unrelated bit of information, if anyone's looking for some collections on the public sphere, I can totally hook you up.) It was just so convenient - go to Amazon.ca, click a few times, enter your credit card number and blammo! Brand new box of shiny books to be read once (maybe) and then collect dust on my bookshelf. I felt smarter just looking at them.

Now, film buff that I am, I've still never had this problem with movies. I love watching them, but I've never really owned many, mostly because there's maybe a few dozen movies out that I've actually watched more than once (although what I lack in quantity, I make up for in...a different kind of quantity, having seen The Lion King 30+ times back when it was the only kid's movie we owned when my oldest younger brother was...er, younger, not to mention having seen each of the Star Wars trilogy 25+ times). There's even fewer books I've read more than once, and yet I have such a hard time parting with them that I've finally realized the real solution is to just stop buying them.

And now, thanks to the power of the Intertubes, getting books from the library is almost as easy as buying, plus free, so if you include the work I have to do to earn money to buy books (which I do now, because that is how I roll) then the library is easier than a frat boy during rush week. (I actually have no idea what rush week really is, but I think it has something to do with frats, so that's my joke and I'm sticking to it.) Instead of going to Amazon, I go to the library site, look up the books I want, place a hold, and then go pick them up at the library when they're ready. IT IS SO AWESOME I WANT TO BARF, THAT'S HOW AWESOME IT IS. I pick out books, and the magical book fairies find them and email me and I come get them and sign them out and it's all FREE FLOYD AND LIBRARIES BFFFS 4EVA.

Of course I guess that makes me a business-hating, economy-killing, tree-hugging, freeloading socialist. So be it. They can have my library card when they pry it out of my cold, ink-stained fingers. Of course, then I'd just go to the customer service desk during operating hours and get a new one. And maybe browse the magazine racks at the same time, suckas.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Bountiful polygamy charges

It's about freakin' time. I never quite understood why they could be breaking the law so blatantly with no consequences. Time to give up your harem, boys! And by "boys" I mean "dirty old men who abuse their power as religious leaders to coerce young women, who would otherwise be involved with people their own age, into having sex with them, and by "harem" I mean "women and girls who have been raised to believe they are sub-humans whose sole purpose in life is to provide household, sexual and child-rearing services to dirty old men".

Random acts of wingnuttery

Via Pandagon, I found this site which details email forwards that get sent around by in wingnut circles. It's funny and terrifying at the same time (kind of like the movie Jesus Camp, where the Jeebus-fuelled antics of youngsters had me both cackling hysterically and hiding curled up in the fetal position, quaking in fear, under a blanket - sometimes both at the same time, like with adorable Levi with his spectacular rat-tail and precocious charm and public-speaking skills...which he used to preach fire and brimstone to his fellow pre-teens) in the way that only demonstrations of extraordinary ignorance coupled with insane amounts of hate can be.

"I may need a haircut, but you're going to hell!"

I've been on the receiving end of only a couple of these types of wingnutty emails (none that were nearly as bad as the ones on this site, thanks be to the Spaghetti Monster), but the few times it happened it's always a bit awkward. They only come from one family member (and people who know me can probably guess which gun-totin', rural-living', government-distrustin' one that is) who also happens to be someone I love, respect and admire. So what do you do when they display random acts of wingnuttery?

I've mostly taken the same stance with these types of forwards as the ones that tell me to Forward This to 10 Friends and Make a Wish and it Will Come True But If You Don't Your Hair Will Fall Out and You Will Get Scabies (Whatever That Is), or Bill Gates Will Donate $$$ If u Forrward this MessAge, or DANGER! my neigbor's SON/daughter/Goldfish was killed/raped/eaten because of HOT COFFEE EXPLODING IN THE MICROWAVE/Perfume bottels with DATE_RAPE druggs/HE tasted GOOD - ignore them.

This policy has worked pretty well for me in terms of emails, but it's often harder in person. I love me a good argument, but sometimes the time is just wrong, like the very uncomfortable Christmas dinner a few years ago where the host (a lovely man who is wonderful in many many ways) started in on
the rabbi who had requested a menorah be included in the Christmas display at the Seattle airport, and how this was proof of the WAR ON CHRISTMAS!!! and part of the larger WAR ON AFFLUENT, STRAIGHT WHITE PEOPLE (PARTICULARLY MEN)!!!

Unfortunately, we were just about to eat, so I didn't have any delicious turkey on my plate, so I was actually listening to the conversation instead of stuffing my face and thinking "mmmm...tuuuurkey", and as a result I jumped in with "They could have just put up the menorah" at which point the conversation went south very quickly, and ended with the assertion that since Christian soldiers fought in WWII, Jews can never complain about anything, ever again.

Well, I couldn't think of which one of the approximately two hundred million things that are wrong with that statement to address first, then his daughter managed to change the subject, and the turkey was awesome, and we're still close with them, but boy did that memory stick out in my mind when I saw that website.

How about you guys? Any random acts of wingnuttery you've had to deal with?