I was reading this about gender and sexuality. Vince and I regularly talk about gender identity and how he and his friends are thinking about it. I understand from discussions with mothers (my age) with teenage daughters that many girls think a lot about gender identity as they grow up. I think if I was growing up now, I would also think about my gender identity, because I do not strongly lean female. Would I have been confused? I was already so confused then, it hurts me to think that I would have added an extra thing to be confused about. Being a female is not that important to me, I don’t strongly identify with being female or doing “female” or “male” things. I also don’t have body dysmorphia, I like my body for the most part. I wouldn’t, like the writer, above, change my body to be a male to have all the privileges of being male. I sincerely believe (though maybe mistaken) that women have a lot of power. And I am happy to have been able to be pregnant and have babies and nurse them. I honestly, don’t think very much about gender. I don’t think of myself as female first. I think of myself as Doris – the human. I had short hair in college and lots of people misgendered me as a boy, but I didn’t care. I wear my hair more female now only because I feel bad when other people feel bad because they misgender me because they think they’ve super offended me, but really I don’t care. I think I’d still like to buzz cut my hair and wear fun hats. But I understand that this gender thing is important to a lot of people.
On a non-gendered note: I got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday! I was working a shift that day. I did get floated to a non-covid unit that which I happily took because it means by the time I get floated again (perhaps to a covid floor), I will have built up full efficacy of the vaccine. Floating always makes for a tougher shift. Everyone is very nice, but you don’t know who to call for help and you don’t know where alcohol pads are. And my patients seemed to all be a handful. Taking care of patients who have all their mental faculties intact or have none of their mental faculties intact are (relatively) easy to care for. It’s when they mostly have their shit together, but are just ever so slightly removed from reality (like 25% removed) that it gets challenging. They insist on things that can’t be argued with and are not true and often they know they are difficult, so they apologize, but then they forget they apologized and then continue on with peeing in the sink, accidentally dumping the dinner tray into their lap, using the call button every five minutes. I took the day off of my desk job on Tuesday to nap because I felt run down. I had a low-grade fever of 99.8 and I took some Motrin which took care of that and my pain in both arms (one from the shot and the other from my determined rotator cuff injury). I binge watched the Good Place. I have not done that in a long, long time. I went to bed and mumbled to Jeremy that I had such an unproductive day and he said – it’s been the most productive day of the whole pandemic, you are busy making antibodies to protect yourself and bring us a bit closer to ending this unending misery.
Jeremy estimates that he is 280,000,000th in line for the vaccine. He hopes all schoolchildren and college kids get vaccinated before him. Jeremy just shrugs and says, really, I never need to leave the house. So at 1.5 million doses a day, we are looking at late summer. I asked him if I should now, as a vaccinated person, take over the grocery shopping. I don’t actually like grocery shopping very much and since I’m not the cook in the family, it’s not a natural division of labor, but I’m competent at it. It is also Jeremy’s only trip outside the house ever. Once a week, he goes to the grocery store. Last week, he told me that his social interaction skills have atrophied enough that his small-talk interaction with the cashier was awkward. We decided that he gets to keep going grocery shopping.
Gene and Bette got their first shots on last Thursday. Sunday night dinner (via zoom), I tentatively made dinner plans with them in six weeks. I can’t believe it! Something to look forward to.