How most people with invisible illnesses are treated by health care “professionals”
The Golden Girls didn’t fuck around
pls watch
honestly i really appreciated this scene when I first saw it bc it took me like two years to get a diagnosis for what’s wrong with me
Dorothy: Dr. Budd?
Dr. Budd: Yes?
Dorothy: You probably don’t remember me, but you told me I wasn’t sick. Do you remember? You told me I was just getting old.
Dr. Budd: I’m sorry, I really don’t–
Dorothy: Remember. Maybe you’re getting old. That’s a little joke. Well, I tell you, Dr. Budd, I really am sick. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. That is a real illness. You can check with the Center for Disease Control.
Dr. Budd: Huh. Well, I’m sorry about that.
Dorothy: Well, I’m glad! At least I know I have something.
Dr. Budd: I’m sure. Well, nice seeing you.
Dorothy: Not so fast. There are some things I have to say. There are a lot of things that I have to say. Words can’t express what I have to say. [tearing up] What I went through, what you put me through—I can’t do this in a restaurant.
Dr. Budd: Good!
Dorothy: But I will!
Dr. Budd’s date: Louis, who is this person?
Dr. Budd: Look, Miss–
Dorothy: Sit. I sat for you long enough. Dr. Budd, I came to you sick—sick and scared—and you dismissed me. You didn’t have the answer, and instead of saying “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” you made me feel crazy, like I had made it all up. You dismissed me! You made me feel like a child, a fool, a neurotic who was wasting your precious time. Is that your caring profession? Is that healing? No one deserves that kind of treatment, Dr. Budd, no one. I suspect had I been a man, I might have been taken a bit more seriously, and not told to go to a hairdresser.
Dr. Budd: Look, I am not going to sit here anymore–
Dr. Budd’s date: Shut up, Louis.
Dorothy: I don’t know where you doctors lose your humanity, but you lose it. You know, if all of you, at the beginning of your careers, could get very sick and very scared for a while, you’d probably learn more from that than anything else. You’d better start listening to your patients. They need to be heard. They need caring. They need compassion. They need attending to. You know, someday, Dr. Budd, you’re gonna be on the other side of the table, and as angry as I am, and as angry as I always will be, I still wish you a better doctor than you were to me.
Reblogging for any of my mutuals who’ve ever dealt with Dr. Budd.
I used to love this show and I don’t remember Dorothy having Cfs. Everything she says rings true
Important. For several reasons, including the perception of chronic pain as it relates to #Race and #Masculinity.
and #Disability,
BTW. I retweeted a photo of Prince with his cane the other day someone had tagged
“Prince and his Mobility Device”, and I got some haters in my replies because HOW DARE I imply Prince had a chronic
illness (newsflash: he had more than 1). Because it’s SO BAD to have disability and chronic pain, right? SMH!
Never feel guilty for reading fan fic at 3am. Everything is fanfic in the end. From fanfic you were made, to fanfic you shall return.
Read that which has been panned by literary snobs. Read novels churned out by the dozen by authors with a dozen pseudonyms.
Read your US and People. Flip through Popular Science just for the gadgets section. Read articles about the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
Read books outside your comfort zone. Don’t finish them if you don’t want. It’s the book’s fault, not yours.
Read in your comfort zone. Read a YA and romance and science if and fantasy.
Skip over the boring bits. Read it because you heard about it from Oprah or because everyone else is reading it.
Giggle yourself silly at something so poorly written and full of author wish fulfillment that you just can’t stop reading it.
Don’t listen to the keepers of taste and culture. Their reward comes every time they pat themselves on the back for their superior taste.
Don’t listen to the academics that bemoan the downfall of society and learning. They have been doing that since Socrates’ time.
Don’t listen to the tv presenters who insist you are not cultured if you haven’t read from this list of books.
Audio books count as reading. Ebooks count as reading. Fanfic of questionable quality counts as reading. Rereading books for the third time counts as reading. Reading to your child counts as reading. Reading from the back of the cereal box (and doing the puzzle) counts as reading.
TL;DR: read what you want. Don’t be ashamed. Never let someone try to make you feel bad for how or what you read and enjoy. Tell them that I, your Friendly Neighborhood Librarian have absolved you from your guilt and have given you special blessings. Go forth and read, my child.
One last post on the subject, and then, I promise, I am done. 8)
One last question.
Imagine a girl. Who loves Captain America 2, even though she never saw the first one. Or who has been watching Battlestar Galactica reruns non-stop for the last couple of months. Or who found that old Orlando Bloom folder and thought about PotC movies for the first time in years.
Imagine that girl, having an idea. How awesome would it be if Peggy time traveled to the present to help Steve? Or if Starbuck was a Cylon? or if Elizabeth’s best friend from childhood showed up and they ran off to be lesbian pirates?
What if.
What if she could find herself, find a place for herself in a world, in a place that she loved? What if between work and school and family and friends and afterschool activities and a thousand other things, what if that girl wrote her story? HER story. One unique to her, even if it was every trope in the entire world, all rolled into one monstrosity on FF.net.
Maybe she wants to be a writer someday. Or a filmmaker. She wants to create comics. Or tv shows. Or run websites. Or maybe not any of that. Maybe she wants an audience. Maybe she just wants to share this one story with a community she loves.
But she writes it and she posts it and someone says, “Mary Sue.”
And if she knows anything about fandom, if she’s been on the internet, she knows that’s bad. She knows that means she’s failed somehow, that this story, this fun thing that she’s thought so much about, is somehow unacceptable.
She’s told that her female characters are unwelcome. Her story is unwelcome. She is unwelcome.
Maybe she shrugs it off and keeps writing. Maybe she conforms, writes fewer ‘Mary Sues,’ and more canon white het males. Maybe she grows up and becomes a screen writer and carries a life time of ‘girls don’t belong’ judgments into everything she creates, perpetuating the cycle.
And maybe she just stops trying to find herself in that world. Maybe she internalizes it. Maybe she keep dreaming, but never posts another word.
I am adult, with experience, and a job, and something of a readership. And let me tell you, the first time that landed in my comments, it hurt. There was a drop of shame in my stomach, a little roll of nausea. That I had created A MARY SUE.
My first thought? How to devalue the character. How to lessen her. How to strip her of the things that made her funny, made her clever, made her loyal and strange and amazing. Because my readership, I thought, didn’t want amazing.
Amazing was a failure, somehow.
I caught myself doing it. I caught that thought before it got too far. I caught myself thinking, “does she really need to be here?” when I never thought that about any of the male characters. I caught myself.
And then I got angry.
I got angry with myself, that I was so easily browbeaten. That I had almost let one anonymous voice, one mocking, disdainful voice, change how I saw this character. That I almost let someone do that to her.
That I had come so close to writing her out. Because she was a Mary Sue.
I don’t care if you use the term as gender neutral. It’s not. It carries connotations in fandom. It carries shame. It carries the unspoken weight of ‘fake geek girl’ and ‘codebabes’ and ‘I like my fangirls like I like my coffee, and I HATE coffee!’ It is another attempt to shame and silence, and I am done with it.
And if my niece grows up in ten years, and gives me her fic, about how Angelica Perfecton gets engaged to Spider-Man and saves Tony Stark by fixing his armor and teaches Steve Rogers how to paint?
Then I will be so overjoyed that she is a fan. That she is a fan who CREATES. Who makes the space safe for herself. Who dreams big. Who wants to be the center of the world she loves so much.
Because it is her right to do that without shame.
“I don’t care if you use the term as gender neutral. It’s not. It carries connotations in fandom. It carries shame. It carries the unspoken weight of ‘fake geek girl’ and ‘codebabes’ and ‘I like my fangirls like I like my coffee, and I HATE coffee!’ It is another attempt to shame and silence, and I am done with it.”
