A Dyke A Broad #30 The May Day Edition
Photos from a train. Thoughts on the communism of germs. Plus I got a vaccine!
Hello from Paris!
Where the birds are chirping, the Covid stats have slightly improved, and the government has decided it’s a great time to begin opening things up.
After all, Paris ICU’s are only at 147% capacity. ICU’s nationwide something like 110%. With no effort at all we can get it up to 175, why not 200% capacity? After all, new variants are popping up every day. And we just had our traditional May Day demo where even the lefty, obstructionist CGT (General Confederation of Labor) is attacked as a bunch of faggot “collabos” (Nazi collaborators), their van spray-painted, windows shattered, members sent bloodied to the hospital for not being commie enough.
Apparently we should all aspire to be like the community-minded fellow on the train who, eschewing all private property, freely shared his germs with everybody for rows and rows, first while eating and drinking, then just leaving his mask around his neck except when the conductor passed. What a hero. What a man of the people.
I’m an egoist, a capitalist pig by comparison. I even took the first step to building my own personal immunological wall by getting a vaccine this weekend in Angers, (Ahn-jay) a mid-sized town in the Loire valley, a couple of hours away from Paris by train where my bro- & mom-in-law live.
It was really weird to visit. I hadn’t seen them for over a year. The Mom recognized me, but couldn’t remember my name even after I briefly lowered my mask to give her a good look at my charming face. There were no hugs. I sat anti-socially on the terrace to eat my lunch, staring across the street at a building which has a roof so decrepit there’s a hole in one corner that you can actually see, and a tree growing out of the gutter.
I think it’s a gutter. I stare at it every time I visit, wondering if the owner knows the hole is there, and has made plans to fix it. Or if the rot is taking hold in secret.
I went to bed early, but couldn’t sleep. The streets were too silent, emptied by the curfew of the usual hordes of shouting laughing students who get so repulsively drunk and loud on the weekends it’s impossible to sleep without earplugs.
Saturday I took the shuttle to the huge Expo Center for my vaccine. When they finally called out, “10 a.m. appointments” the whole thing went blindingly quick. I had to gel my hands about ten times, fill out a form, wait a bit, answer some quick questions from a doc, wait again for just a moment, but then after all these endless, nerve-wracking (have I said endless?) months, the shot itself took just 10 seconds.
“Raise your sleeve.” Jab. Blank expectant stare from me. A puzzled stare back. “That’s it. There’s a waiting room around the corner. You should sit there for fifteen minutes. Goodbye.”
I stood up, gathered my stuff, then wandered into the next giant room with widely spaced chairs where absolutely nothing happened. We each should have gotten a lollipop or a marching band. Something to mark how momentous it was. This miracle of modern science. A government that for all its failings got it to us. A health system that was strained, but held up. Instead, we all stared slightly suspiciously at each other over our masks. Anti-commies one and all. Refusing to share or accept the virus circling us.
Back at the apartment, I resumed my post on the balcony, staring across the street. A cat appeared at the window of the building next to the holey-roofed one, put its front paws on the sill and poked its head through the window grill, then stretching itself to put its paws on top of it, considering whether or not to leap up on it, stretching, peering, in curiosity but also fear, its hind legs anchored in the apartment, but tempted, you could see how tempted it was to leap.
In other news, the Paris dyke march (focused on lesbian visibility but also the right to artificial insemination) was followed by a wave of harassment on social media.
There were plenty of right-wing, anti-dyke nutjobs of the how-dare-you-reproduce-without-a-male variety, trotting out the usual tropes of ugly, man-hating dykes that couldn’t find a man if they tried. There were also some of the increasingly usual “left”-wing anti-dyke nutjobs of the how-dare-you-have-a-separatist march not highlighting the B’s and the T’s and Q’s ilk.
I no longer know how to get my head around the state of the current Dyke Nation in which we in general have more civil rights than we did twenty years ago (less anti-sodomy laws, more same-sex marriage rights worldwide), but in terms of general lesbophobia seemed to have gone backwards, attacked now not just by the usual religious or conservative suspects, but the left as well every time we try to talk about the sex-based discrimination and misogyny at the heart of lesbophobia. Transphobes! TERFS!
Interesting reading…
They Call It a ‘Women’s Disease.’ She Wants to Redefine It.
A really, really interesting article about bioengineer, Linda Griffith who once grew a human ear on the back of a mouse, and is now reframing endometriosis—after almost dying from it— as a key to unlocking some of biology’s greatest secrets.
Worth reading the comments. It’s like a Speak-out on the horror of endometriosis from people who have been gaslighted or misdiagnosed.
Her research highlights what a remarkable organ the uterus truly is — and not just during its signature function, pregnancy.
…
One might well ask why more researchers have not focused on the uterus until recently. Bioengineers in particular have always taken an interest in tissues that regenerate and self-heal.“And yet it took them how many decades to recognize that one of the most regenerative tissues is found inside the uterus?” asked Kathryn Clancy, a biological anthropologist who studies reproduction at the University of Illinois.
The reason, she believes, is simple: “Because none of the researchers had uteruses.”
Really worth a read. It’s fascinating.
The Other May Day
Here’s a recipe in honor of Derby Day this year, which also fell on May 1. But I for once didn’t celebrate.
And last but not least. Something beautiful.
Disgruntedly yours