A BFC Counselor describes her experiences dealing with the health care system that doesn't understand Lesbian health isues. This has inspired her to organize a women's only test site on Saturdays at the BFC.
Nicolas: What's going on with the Women's Clinic and what's the thing that's pushing it to finally happen now?
C: To finally happen now. I just think we hit critical mass. One of the things is, I don't really have any experience starting up a clinic, I was feeling really lost, oh ok, you want to do this, you know technical support thank you but I figured out some of the things that we would need, like female counselors, so, I pushed a whole bunch through our last training, and I asked every single one of them who went through the training, would you be willing to work Saturdays, so getting that.
N: In addition, is that how you're doing it?
C: Uh hm. I mean it wouldn't have to be the same week or but, and I visualize it as being small for a while, so even if everyone can only work one Saturday a month, I think we could pull it off with three counselors or four maybe.
N: Now you're gonna be just testing the women that come in for GYN stuff or
C: No, we're gonna be advertising.
N: Doing an outreach, OK.
C: I want, I want, I've talked to a lot of lesbians who say that they would come in to a woman's only space, they don't want to sit watching male sex stuff, they just don't and they don't want to talk to counselors who don't understand about their sexuality. I want, it sounds like in the Bay Area you would think how could someone be completely clueless about lesbian sex, I had an ulcer, I went to Alta Bates three years ago, four years ago, it was, I took some naperson and just burned a hole in my stomach so I went in and they asked me about birth control, and I said I don't use any. No first off, why are they asking me about birth control when I'm in there for an ulcer? Hello? Is there any possibility that you're pregnant? No there's not. Well you're not using birth control, how do you know you're not pregnant? Well I could be celibate, but I'm a lesbian, I don't sleep with men. Oh, well, what kind of. I don't need birth control, I can't get pregnant, OK? SO then, eighteen months later I'm back in there, I had a tear in my vaginal wall from fisting and so I was all freaked out, I shouldn't have gone it, it cost a hell of a lot of money and it would have been fine, but they're like, how did you get this? First thing they say to me, how did you get this having sex, what kind of birth control do you use? I don't use birth control. Do you know how stupid that is, do you want to get pregnant? I can't get pregnant. Why can't you get pregnant, does your partner have a vasectomy? Now, this was when my hair was bleached and really short. This is what they're asking me. I don't have sex with men, I only have sex with women. Well how can you have a tear, are you sure? THey went back we went through all this, are you sure you're not having a miscarriage? Well.
N: Last time I checked there were no sperm on my girlfriend. HHH.
C: Uhm, I suppose there's a possibility but uhm, I really don't expect to be Jesus's Mom, you know, so then we went around again, well you're not using birth control, I don't sleep with men, well how did you get this, so it was like again, fisting,
N: You used the word fisting?
C: I did use the word fisting, I said actually, actually what I was saying at first was hard penetration
N: Ok,
C: Which they didn't get. Well how can they be having penetration.
N: That sets up for them the red flag of rape, right, like you're trying to deal with a rape thing?
C: Oh, they didn't pull rape up.
N: Ok.
C: But, I opened my folder when the doctor got out of the room, they were actually really great that my friends all come and hang out with me in the ER and then I usually do that, I was so bored, just sitting there bleeding onto a Kotex. Alta Bates of all places. God. So, I bet Highland would be better for that. ANyway. So, I open up my file when the doctor leaves the room and it says, she says fisting with a big question mark, but he never asked me. You know, so, this is the type of, why didn't he ask, he needed to know, he should have known what was going on, if he didn't know what was going on he should have asked, but he couldn't because it wouldn't look good, right, so this is the type of health care that you can get if you have any alternative gender identification because they need to find out this stuff and there was a reason I was going there with this whole thing.
N: Why we need
C: This is why we need the women's clinic, because lesbians like, oh you have sex with a woman, why do you have sex with women, what do you mean you don't use barriers? When I talk to about lesbians who have unprotected oral sex with each other is ok, like, who are you doing it with, how well do you know them,how well do you know their sexual history, are you going down on them while they're bleeding, and are you going down on them, do they ejaculate, because we don't know how much, if any HIV is in female ejaculate, you know, just talk about that.
N: So uhm,what is the main uhm risk factors for the lesbian community, or women who have sex with women?
C: Women who have sex with women?
N: For HIV?
C: Are at a higher risk than women who have sex with men only. For HIV. Because, do you want what people, what they know? Cause they don't know shit. There aren't enough studies done. I mean.
N: No, I want your theory.
C: My theory is that women who have sex with women as opposed to women who have sex with men only, have a more altenative lifestyle, they're open,they're more likely to be exposed to different kinds of sex, sexual behavior, uhm, to SM, to women who have sex with women and men, to, they're more likely to sleep with bisexual or gay men if they're bisexual, they're more likely because they're fringe, they're alternative, and therefore not ok, they're more likely to have problems that are leading to drug abuse, emotional problems and feeling not accepted and more likely to use many different kinds of drugs and how, including intravenous drugs.
N: They're just really poor generally,
C: And they're poor.
N: There's not much hope in terms of like creating a life for themselves that's worth living so they kind of live more in the moment?
C: No I think that, althought that's a big thing is that you, they get shittier health care. Because they are more likely to have less money, and because so many of them who choose alternative lifestyles, who like come here and choose to live a queer life style, uhm, are also stepping outside the culture in other ways, so they don't want mainstream jobs and so they don't have health care and so they get an STD, like clamidia, which makes you at much higher risk for getting HIV if you have an STD, it's a cofactor, so uhm, and also, you're more open, once you admit to yourself oh, I'm not like how everybody is supposed to be, you're more open to doing things that aren't supposed to be ok because you're already an apostate or whatever depending on where you're from, right. So. BUt I don't think it has to do with a lack of hope, I think that a lot of it has to do with exploration, like I've already broken this tabboo, why are these other things tabboo, and people start breaking tabboos. I also think that there's a lot of people who break sexual taboos, who've been molested.
N: Uh hm.
C: And there's all sorts of ways for working them out, but a lot of people aren't working them out and one of the things that they're doing is just getting really fucked up and having sex with whoever.
N: It's kind of a recurring cycle where they keep reliving the trauma through more risky.
C: And they keep proving that they're not worthy. They're dirty. So.
N: Yeah, so do you find that lesbians have a large, strong correlation with abuse history.
C: Uh hm. A lot. I think about it and I think that maybe, this is gonna sound so fucked up to you, HH, I think maybe lesbians just talk about it more. I think most women in our culture are abused, and then I think about it and I think, most men in our culture are abused too. I think that 90% of the families in our culture are dysfunctional and that the reason they're dsyfunctional is that's what our culture needs in order to keep going the way it is. I think that there's some need that that fills in maybe capitalism. I haven't worked it all out in my head yet, but uhm, but yeah, I think that lesbians have really strong abuse history, I know so many women who've been raped, but I know so many straight women who've been raped, and the one pattern that I see is uhm, among my lesbian friends that I don't see as strongly among my straight friends, is the shitty father, like really shitty father, emotionally abusive, almost every single woman that I'm close to who'se a dyke cannot cope with her father.
N: So it's not a checked out father, it's like a tormenting kind of father?
C: Yeah, it doesn't even have to be really out of the norm. You know. Mean and sarcastic and loud, putting them down, why do you think you can do that. You know.
N: So the women's clinic would be really great. How would you do outreach?
C: How to do the outreach for the women's clinic? Well, I would have the outreach section HHH work on that.
N: Which is all gay men. HHHH.
C: But one of the things, I was talking to Jennifer about is, she's good at doing press releases, I would have, get all the women in the section to pass out flyers, to go out in Berkeley and SF to clubs and pass our flyers, try and get Bay Times to run something, Dyke speak icon, put stuff up at Mama Bears, put stuff up at the White Horse, put stuff up at the Benton bars.
N: You're gonna have people lined up.
C: Uh huh, that's what I want. I really think that it's a community that isn't getting enough.
N: Cause it's sad that the Sunday night is just men men men men, cause of men's clinic, it's a men's space.
C: Uh hm. Also lesbians still think that they're not high risk. They don't know. There's a study done in SF recently, they're at three times higher risk, women who sleep with women are at three times higher risk in SF than women who sleep with men only.
N: Yeah. So uhm. And not only lesbian women but straight women will obviously benefit from this clinic.
C: Totally. I want to be, one of the reasons that I want to have a women's clinic, is I want to have a space to show explicit women's health videos and women's sex videos, I don't mean porn, but.
N: You mean like the good vibrations instruction..
C: Like safe sex. Yeah well that would be good too, uhm, women's health, like see your cervix, yeah, this is how you do a breast exam, and showing a fifteen minute one instead of a thirty second one. You know, really important. Have people do maybe have people come in and do little, a whole little thing on how to do a self breast exam, how to really do it.
N: During the waiting room.
C: Yeah, it'd be so good. There's a couple lesbian safe sex films that are great, they're kind of hot and at the same time they're really real. And they gives tons of really good information there. They were done by this collective in England called the Unconscious Collective.
N: And the body model of the actors is it like more realistic too? I think that makes a big difference.
C: They're real.
N: They're not like airbrushed to silicone
C: No there's real like skinny or fat or whatever and we couldn't show those in the waiting room on Sunday night. Breasts on the thing. Can you imagine?
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