In Sickness

When I picked “leaving” as the theme for the March Carnival of Aces just a few months back, little did I know that March would become a time of not leaving. This month, Siggy has picked the theme of “quarantine,” and I’m taking that as an opportunity to reflect here on the implications of contagious disease for a geographically-scattered community, as well as some potential directions for ace advocacy in the area of health & medical issues.

[Note: This post has been crossposted to Pillowfort.]

♦

I wonder if kinkyasexuals will ever apologize for giving careless medical advice or for rec’ing Fetlife to kink-curious aces without a hint of warning about the severe policy issues that “most of the users on FL have been aware of for several years now.”

🍂

I just saw someone use “chemophobia” now.  Bury me.

Nonnumerical Cost-Benefit Analysis

Just a while ago, someone linked to a post of mine that talked about cost-benefit analysis, and I realized I haven’t really done a specific explanation of how to do one.  There are plenty of explanations of numerical CBA out there for people doing their econ homework — not so much for someone who might want to do one without involving any math.

So, I threw together this little guide of suggestions, to use if it helps you organize your decision-making.  Note, this kind of thing may not be helpful for everyone.  But in case it is, here you go.

healthy is relative

[cw: health talk, food talk, diet talk, weight-adjacent talk]

People keep using “healthy” to mean “something you (general you) should do,” and so I feel compelled to keep talking about this.

“Healthiness” isn’t some kind of inherent trait, some innate Platonic value, embedded in a thing and applicable to all.  And what I mean by that is, it’s frequently possible that what may be healthy for some may not be healthy for others, and what may not be healthy for some may yet be healthy for others.

Here’s an explanation of what I mean.

the bedroom is a social construct

I saw something again — not linking on purpose because of context — mentioning, secondhand, a claim paraphrased as “if your kink bleeds into your everyday life outside of the bedroom, it’s bad for you.”

And like the responder I found, I take issue with that entire premise.

As far as I can tell, it’s basically a slight rewording of the common kink apologetics catchphrase — that XYZ earn their acceptability by being “only in the bedroom,” i.e. sure XYZ could be a bad thing, but not if it happens “only in the bedroom,”  …which is a line of argument that has multiple, multiple problems, some of them more significant than others.  They’re all so interrelated, though, I don’t know where to start.

So I’ll start here: Why does the locale of “the bedroom” grant some kind of moral/harm-metric exemption status?  As best I can figure, it’s because “in the bedroom” (aka “during sex”) refers to some of the most private moments of the most private room of a private dwelling — supposedly far removed from the “public sphere” and “everyday life.”  And therefore, it doesn’t affect anyone.  And therefore, it doesn’t affect you.

What?

checked

doctor: okay, so we got the rest of your results back, and it looks like this is low, this is low, this ratio is way off, this is high, this is 13 when it should be less than 1, this is low, this is low, and this is low… so, basically, you’re like a nice car with no oil, no gas, and four flat tires.

me: Oh.

It’s… yeah, it’s bad news, but it’s a validating answer to what I keep telling myself (why aren’t you more productive, people are counting on you, you’re counting on you, why aren’t you doing more with your day).

But — here’s something interesting — you know what one of the “too high” things was?  Testosterone.  I’m too high in testosterone.

I think that’s hilarious.

Somebody come tell me to get my hormones checked, I dare you.

Pap Test CBA

[cw: medical talk, genitals talk, etc.]

Found some ace blogs recommending all folks w/ cervices get pap tests.

:/

🏠

It’s been confirmed that I have an inflamed thyroid.  So that’s fun.

I haven’t exactly “gotten my hormones checked,” but given the role a thyroid plays, it’ll be interesting to see how things turn out if we can get this fixed.

AA: Questions on Health/Healthism

Em wrote in:

[cw: brief discussion of abuse, with specific examples]