#hopefully the combination of at some point using a more neutral or masc name and testosterone will help eventually

[senselessalchemist]

non-major NSFW talk about working in IVF/ART below (... so maybe it's SFW in context? 🤔)

new to the world of helping people have babies thru Science and it strikes me as so fuckin weird that right now despite everything it still takes the same old bullshit to make a new human. tbf there may be technologies that I'm unaware of being developed or whatever but from what I know you still gotta use a pair of gametes to make a new tiny person. cant get around it. have never seen the word "masturbation" on so many medical forms but you need those dang sperm and that's often the easiest way to get them!

I think it's just the juxtaposition of the efficient/professional/reserved medical stuff and the messy realities of biology vis a vis sexual reproduction. come in a cup and bring it in to our lab, we're doing an icsi, make sure all your info is properly written on the label, we need at least two unique identifiers for all samples. (This is probably not unique, similar stuff must happen with like the majority of medical disciplines. you try to make it dry and clinical but the biology is always there, just kinda being nasty and probably goopy. Lots of slime in biology.)

* shrugs * also probably just because it's all new to me. I did microbial ecology in a nonhuman context and this is a very different scene, obviously. humans is all the same, tho, they still don't read the instructions fully even when they are paying out of pocket for incredibly expensive procedures and I'm like you didnt have your signature notarized (like it told you explicitly to do on the form) so I cant accept this consent for something you want done tomorrow. It's just like dealing with students not reading questions fully on exams. Feels like home

... sorry for so much jizz talk. Part of it is that I don't think most medical clinics have a room dedicated to manual pleasure (door closed all the time, please) - which is also just so stupidly funny to me. like I get it, it makes sense, it's probably generally evolutionarily sound to incentivize reproduction with something enjoyable but everything has been recontextualized for me recently and I cant help but just kinda laugh at it sometimes

(I promise I am so professional at work and that I'm not laughing at specific people when I think about this... more just the broad concept of ""Life"" and what it takes to propagate it. Because like in the end we're all just these weird colonies of cooperating bits and pieces, doing all this chemical nonsense that involves a lot of kind of disgusting stuff... and yet we try to pretend that we're beyond or above it. This is not to say anything about, I dunno, some weird concept of like biological absolutism or whatever, I'm not trying to say that we are solely defined by our bodies, but just that there are fundamental biological processes we all share and sometimes it feels silly when those get ignored or euphemized or treated as abhorrent and uncouth)

#just thinking out loud #i really like the new job tho #i actually feel appreciated? #which is weird? #the one thing im a little less jazzed about is how often i get called she but what can you do #they try tho #hopefully the combination of at some point using a more neutral or masc name and testosterone will help eventually #but ehhhhh i deal #also its cool to see the variety of people trying to have kids #and that they have ways of acknowledging people's genders!n #obv in fertility you're gonna get a lot of queer patients and its just noce that it doesnt feel like a Deal #anyway i have had energy for basically nothing because of new job but i know i have a few things somewhere #ill try to find and post them soonish