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RantFed up at my "non-binary" workplace
Long time reader first time poster. Usually I just lurk and appreciate everyone's insights, but I've become so fed up with my situation at my work that I feel like I need to reach out for some commiseration. I welcome any commiseration at all, because I simply have no one in my life I can complain to about this!
I recently started my dream job (male-dominated STEM field). When I got my first glance at my team of colleagues, I was super psyched to see that they were mostly women. I was excited to skip a lot of the BS that comes with working with men and I was hopeful that I could connect with the other women over our shared experiences and struggles. I was SO PUMPED to be in a high-level environment with other women who were proud of who they were and how far they had come.
...Instead, it turns out that half of the women on my team actually identify as non binary. They/them pronouns, insisting that they aren't female/women, the whole nine yards. One of these poor women is clearly on testosterone, with the end result of her voice being destroyed and her suffering from a myriad of health issues. Another becomes incredibly offended at any hint of being referred to as a woman - god forbid I say "I'm grabbing lunch with the gals" or complement her as a "jill of all trades", and so on. I've actually been chastised by her for my word choices along those lines.
Infuriatingly, there's also a non binary identified male on my team. He's just...a guy. He's just a man. And although he likes to pretend that he's somehow different than any other man, he sure acts like a man when he tries to speak over me or question my judgement on a topic he knows nothing about. And I can't even call him out on it, because he's ~not a man~. I even have tiptoe around and make sure to use his preferred pronouns...or else. I try to rebel silently by just using his name or dancing around using his special pronouns, but honestly I just end up avoiding taking about him at all. (Some additional background: he's terrible at his job and truly I think that if he wasn't a gender special, he would have been fired a long time ago).
These are just a few examples of the bullshittery in my workplace, goodness knows I have more. The pervasive atmosphere of gender and gender expectations in my "proudly queer" team is sapping my energy. For christ's sake, some of my coworkers joke that I am actually a man because I have traditionally "masculine" hobbies. Who even says things like that?? It's like I walk from one reality into another when I cross the door into work every day.
Besides the crushing disappointment about this being the work environment I am stuck in...Holy hell it is so irritating to have work conversations about complex topics, while also having to keep one part of my mind reserved to keep track of everyone's special pronouns. What a waste of brain space!
All this rabid trans/non-binary stuff in my workplace should really should come as no surprise to me, considering my job is academia-adjacent, but my god is it disappointing. My only saving grace is that there are no TIM employees (yet...).
I am mostly irritated and confused. Don't these interesting, powerful, intelligent women want to be proud of themselves for who they are? Don't they want to be a proud role model for little girls, to show them that even though they will face struggles and sexism, they can achieve their dreams? Also, these women all have diverse and cool hobbies and interests! Don't they want to make it clear that they can play with chainsaws, lasso cattle, climb mountains, AND be a woman? It completely baffles me.
Someone stop me from ranting any further lol. I could go on and on, but this post is long enough as it is. I just needed to vent, as I have no one to safely vent to about this IRL and I certainly can't make any waves at work. I'm just looking for some sympathy and similar stories, cause I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes!
I've been an Out adult Lesbian with a registered phone number and health insurance for over 2 decades and never has anyone asked me - not the cops, not a doctor, not a pollster, no one - if I have experienced domestic violence at the hands of another woman.
You'd think, as one bit of the teeny percentage of Out Lesbians, that we would all have been interviewed at some point đ Lesbians are all the rage. Some people can't seem to stop talking about us. But yeah, 20 years, no phone call.
I have, as a matter of fact, experienced domestic partner violence from another woman. But no one has ever asked me about it. When it was happening, not even my friends asked. I was with a woman and therefore safe as houses. Even if a woman did get violent with me, I could fight back. Not like being hit by a man, yanno?
Wearing someone down to the point that you can actually hit em and come back takes a great deal of investment in shock and awe.
There's a lot to be said about how violence begets violence. As a mature adult woman, I can certainly appreciate how my upbringing and early relationships steered me toward intensely emotional, extremely physical people who used those traits to excuse emotional and financial abuse culminating in physical violence.
But that's not the sort of thing you think about when your girlfriend bites you bloody during sex or blacks your eye "accidentally" because "You were trying to be sexy" for a stranger at a bar that you can't even remember being in your sight line.
I tend to agree with itscalculated - this study, these numbers take into account women who get involved with men. It's a small, crappy study. The numbers are bad.
Even with my own experiences, I can't believe that half of lesbian relationships involve violence.
I tended to, I think A LOT of people tend to, have a rosy outlook about women. We are "the gentler sex" after all. But that silly romanticism doesn't take into account another woman's mentality when raised by and influenced by violent, angry people.
This study looks like crap and I wonder about who got interviewed.
I sure didn't.
Stay on your toes.
There are women who hate women, and some of those women are same sex attracted.
Ugh, I feel like the Big Horns Debbie Downer noise applies here.
Before I get maybe Reddit style pile driven I want to say Thanks for letting me feel better. Win or lose for me, this circle is a great idea.
edited for a couple of spelling things
I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm glad you're out of that situation.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sure that's hard to talk about, so thank you for digging that up within yourself to share with us.
Thank you for being here, and thank you for the kind words. <3
That's kind of you to say. I sure didnt have "talk about domestic violence" on my bingo card but I did log in to Ovarit so - out it came.
I suppose I'll have to get used to feeling free to share a personal story without worrying everyone will take it as a position in an argument. Social media and professional settings feel like mine fields.
What a happy relief to be here.
The study is flawed.
The study does not account for who performed the violence, only asked as to who has experienced it. Based on the fact that men are responsible for 99% of rape and domestic violence, the math does not work out for women to be the perpetrators here.
Hardly any lesbians I know started out the gate identifying as lesbians, on average we come out later than our male peers.
This is what I concluded as well. To the unfamiliar or uneducated reader it comes off as lesbians being violent to their partners.
I've always assumed it was because of your second interpretation, violence from men in their past. I also would not be surprised if straight women were less likely to recognize or admit partner violence, being invested in relationships with men.
I donât know if the survey is legit, but I find this SO hard to believe. I have never seen a lesbian acting violently and even less when it comes to her partner. Also never heard of any case of lesbian domestic violence
People see that bi and lesbian women have reported dealing with the most domestic violence and assume the perpetrator is always a lesbian for some reason. Here is a quote from the first reference in that link:
"Men and women both contribute to the prevalence of IPV among sexual minority women. For example, the CDC found that 89.5% of bisexual women reported only male perpetrators of intimate partner physical violence, rape, and/or stalking and that almost a third of lesbian women who have experienced such incidents have had one or more male perpetrators."
Their reference was actually a summary of several studies, I didn't read the whole thing but every study I've read that includes the gender of the perpetrator is the same story. Bisexual victims are almost always abused by men, and for lesbians male perpetrators make up a shocking amount of that percentage. I've seen it stated at 40-50%. People just want an excuse to say gay people are bad. It drives me insane whenever I see people assume bisexual women MUST be being abused by lesbians as if they also don't date other bi women and men. As well as the fact most violence is committed by men but in this case for some reason it would be women? It's ridiculous.
ALSO the data is flawed in itself but other comments have already explained that much better than I could.
Survey size matters. It's also from 11 years ago. As does a reporting error: Straight women are perhaps less prone to report a violent bf or husband to police, esp. if it could alert CPS to children in the home.
Very good point. I guess my take away is we need another survey with an appropriate survey size. Not sure if thatâs possible seeing as so many non lesbians identify as lesbians. Itâs upsetting that a quick google search on the topic can make it seem as if lesbian couples are highly volatile.
Iâve always found it odd but attributed it to the possibility that some of the lesbians may be masculine identified or straight up TIFs. I personally know of a woman who had her nose broken by her TIF girlfriend⊠that testosterone didnât suddenly make her violent she was already abusive but it did worsen it.
Where'd you see 2013? I deleted my first comment because I thought I must have remembered the wrong survey, but the numbers do seem to match up with a CDC survey from 2010.
Anyway, if it was the CDC survey:
In that survey, 33% of the lesbians reported having experienced abuse from at least one male partner.
The survey didn't make a distinction between those who'd experienced abuse exclusively from males, and those who'd been abused by both male and female partners, but you definitely need to consider how previous male partners could be skewing the number.
I've also always found the survey questionable in general. The numbers came from people's self-reports, and they seemed high for every group of people. It had 29% of heterosexual men having experienced violence from an intimate partner.
Speaking from a professional background including research, and evidence-based-practice I have a long history of working with scientific research.
Now that I'm done humble braggingđ...
This study is a review of existing research. It draws data from multiple studies. This is important with the rest of my points and understanding what we're looking at...
Most of the research articles do not differentiate violence that occurred in strictly lesbian relationships from relationships that lesbians were in with men prior to coming out as lesbians, and from bisexual relationships. So, most of the research does not at all speak of specifically lesbian relationships. (this point is huge and destroys most of the claims about specifically female-female relationships)
"or someone [the participant] lived with or dated" (I mean, come the fuck on)
Morris et al (2003) is from a peer reviewed journal.
The overall review of research could practically be used to show men are the overwhelming root source/cause of violence, rather than about violence in LGB relationships or even violence in female-female relationships. (lez-be honest, there is so much research out there proving male violence in relationships already).
The research makes misleading statements like "Men and women both contribute to the prevalence of IPV among sexual minority women" when their data supports a statement like "Mostly men, but also few women contribute to the prevalence of IPV..." (this is a big part of my distrust for this article, along with point #8)
It seems this review of existing research continues to put lesbians in the same column/catagory with bisexuals or "women who have sex with women (WSW)" which skews or blurs data which specifically refers to lesbians and female-female relationships. They are blurring data together and/or referring to two completely different data sets in the same breath.
They get away with blending this data together because the review of research isn't specifically designed to analyze female-female relationships but violence in all GLBT relationships across several articles.
Importantly, and probably most damning, this review of research articles is from a journal (The Williams Institute) that doesn't, in my investigation, plainly, proudly state that it is a peer reviewed journal. Articles that aren't from peer reviewed journals don't go through the rigorous peer review process, and hold much less weight, and deserve much less consideration because there isn't any scrutiny by the peers within the field of study. This is why when a journal has a peer review process they will state loud, and clear that they practice peer review.
Edit:
They don't give a fuck about lesbians, and I get the impression they are trying to soften the data that shows the violence is from males, and it's male violence they are referring to and the entire root cause of this problem is male violence. They are trying to displace the blame on women/lesbians. This feels like DARVO.
In summary, the number you're looking for, and I would argue you could actually trust (though I would like to see more research on the topic) to speak for violence in female-female relationships is 9.2% (Morris et al, 2003).
The web article in "DC Volunteer Lawyers Project" is pulling this data from this study (the study I discussed): https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/IPV-Sexual-Abuse-Among-LGBT-Nov-2015.pdf
10/10
This is why statistical analysis and research literacy needs to be taught in schools before college. And then also especially in college no matter which major
Thank you for such a thorough and thoughtful response! 9.2% still seems high to me, but a much more believable statistic. Itâs frustrating that when you google the topic, the masses are led to believe lesbians are responsible high rates pf IPV. They are definitely trying to soften the data and create a false narrative of the lesbian lifestyle. Peer review is so important and The Williams Institute (from a quick tour) is overflowing with trans âfactsâ. I wouldnât trust any data coming from it. Very helpful, thank you.
I agree 9.2% does still seem high, which is why I said I'd like to see more research on actual female-female relationships.
Also, the review article in question (not the one that the 9.2% came from but the umbrella article) is authored by a man and a devoted TRA, so... yeah.
I am saying not women can't be violent but without a clearer definition of "being physically abused" it does not mean much. Like throwing food at each other while arguing is potentially physical violence.
Great analysis! Very helpful.