I was reading a slide show on the psychology of gender basic concepts (prompted by a strange question on IO9 from the guy who thought you should alcohol test rape victims), and I found a couple slides that raised questions (okay, more than a couple, but let's start):

• homophobia is the fear of homosexuality or fear of being labelled as homosexual
• it is one of the most powerful controls of gender role behaviour
• still stronger in controlling male behaviour than in controlling female behaviour but female side increasing

Is it really increasing for women? Am I being naive in thinking/hoping it was actually decreasing for us all, although at different rates?

• in the US - and in most areas of the world - all aspects of the male gender role are more highly valued than those assigned to the female gender role
• true for personality characteristics, skills, and family and workplace roles
• the gender of the person supposed to do the task determines the task's worth-not the task itself

*All* of the aspects and skills? Even in the family? All of them? How come men so rarely get full custody of the kids, then?

Now I want more slides. But first I need to read up on this Bern Sex Role Inventory before I nap.

Huh. I don't think that seems right.

I sometimes miss living in a matriarchal society on the Navajo reservation. There were still gender issues to be sure, but it's ridic that so much of the "civilized" world just thinks culture would fall apart if it weren't patriarchal, and it's just not so.

A bulb has blown in my bathroom and I can't even work out how to separate the bulb from the fixture. I can't believe I'm going to call the apartment manager for this. So...ditzy.

ita ! take a potato, cut it in half, and smoosh the half potato onto the broken bulb. It will absorb all of the fragments and you can turn the potato to get the light bulb out.

It's not broken, Java. Just blown. It's fancy track lighting. I have no idea where the fixture ends and the bulb begins, and either they've changed it for me before, or this is the first time a bathroom bulb has blown since I moved in.

But thanks.

Oh okay, I misunderstood.

Wow. She has actually accused me of being a drugseeker. It's too convenient, she says. I don't look uncomfortable enough.

Please let me stay composed for the attending. Except I'm already crying, of course.

Shit. I barely made it through last week. How am I supposed to do next? Oral dilaudid, she said. It's the same medicine, see.

The attending was very quiet and reasonable, unlike the resident, and he's suggested additional therapies I've never had before (he's a migraine sufferer). You know, as well as pain meds. Jesus. At least I think do. I didn't cry in front of him, but I got really worked up, and my nausea is through the roof. I've already barely eaten in days.

Ah well. I think it ends well. And I'm optimistic about a magnesium IV.

It's too convenient, she says. I don't look uncomfortable enough.

Grrrrrrr.

Hooray for the attending.

I ended up leaving earlier than normal, because this morning I didn't have it in me to fight for my standard second dose--the attending had made it feel like he was doing me a favour (orobably not his fault), and the marathon was gonna mess up my ride.

So I got home earlier than normal, in more pain than normal, but short cab ride, and not getting myself worked up talking again to a new doctor and explaining the nature of everything for him in even more detail.

But I've never had a doctor tell me in such bald, calm terms that she doesn't buy it, and that she's not going to give me anything effective, anything that I can't take at home. Well, why am I in the ER, then? Apparently the visits are too regular. I explained to her the "hanging on by the skin of my teeth" thing, and how this was what made it possible to work Monday, even if from home.

Too tidy, too convenient. I pointed out that I had been in more frequently--regularly in the past, and occasionally now, but that didn't shake her doggedness.

I kept asking her why she wanted to give me something she knew wouldn't work. "It's the same drug," she'd insist. Now, she was being deliberately idiotic. I told her that there was a difference, or they wouldn't let me take one at home and need me to take one here, so why did she want to have me put stuff that doesn't work into my system? Why not nothing?

Which was when she turned around and walked out of me mid-sentence, saying "Well, I'm not going to do it."

My god, ita. I hope the attending told her some things. Sorry you didn't get good care.