Dear Miss Andi...

We're one week into the Roarin' (20)20's so hope y'all have dusted off your exercise machines and are keeping to your resolutions! 💚

This week we're talking about what happens when family go a bit overboard with the “they” pronouns and also how to talk to your doctor about sometimes-embarrassing issues arising from a propensity for butt stuff.

“Is my family trivialising my gender identity by referring to all men using 'they' pronouns?”

Dear Miss Andi

I'm an AMAB non-binary person and since coming out to my mother and sister I've noticed they've started to refer to men as they/them as well as me. I'm a bit concerned that they've just replaced “him” with “they” and still consider me to be male and are only paying lip service to my identity.

How do I approach this? I feel like directly calling it out will just make them defensive!

Thanks xoxoxox

Sigh, it's truly always feast or famine when dealing with The Straights, isn't it? You fight for the ability not to be misgendered by requesting “they” pronouns, but then family starts misgendering all cismen ever-so-slightly by using “they” when “he” is entirely adequate... Oh bother.

That all said, for me it felt like a linguistic door was opened once I started using singular-they consistently. One of the lovely aspects of singular-they is that it isn't gendered, but it's also not specifically agender. Using singular-they to refer to anyone is technically correct, even if that person doesn't specifically use “they” pronouns. So, if you want to ensure you don't misgender the person you're referring to, “they” pronouns are always safest. As such, your mother and sister aren't doing anything specifically wrong, but you also know them well enough to feel like something's not exactly right...

I'd assume good faith at the outset; from what you've told me, it's hard to argue any ill intent, and it seems like it would be a frustrating conversation for everyone involved. When helping people acclimatise to queer terminology, guiding is often better than rebuking as the latter tends to frustrate people and come across as policing language. This might be one of those times where it's better to pick your battles — if they are in fact only paying lip-service to your gender identity, I assure you there will be many other opportunities to call them out on it, ones where you'll have much better footing.

Hope this helps! xx

~Miss Andi.

Piles of woe!

Dear Miss Andi

Just a heads up, this question is a bit lewd so feel free to not publish if you don't want to <3

(Miss Andi's note: “To my readers — the lewdness of a question isn't necessarily something that will put me off writing about it! Please feel to ask away! 💚”)

I've got piles. They're only small little pea sized things right now and I'm thinking of going to the doctors to get them treated but… the story of how I first noticed them would involve talking about my sex life with a (probably) straight person. I'm a bit worried they might have some outdated or just plain wrong ideas about anal play.

Am I just being overly anxious? Or should I just lie and only mention other symptoms?

Talking about butt stuff with your doctor for the first time is always an unnerving experience, especially if you're more straight-identifying or are living in a small town.

Before we start, however, I am not a doctor and none of this should be viewed as medical advice.

First thing to realise is doctors everywhere deal with anal sex-related incidents all the time. Often it's when somebody shows up during an emergency: he/she/they put something up there without a flared base, lost it, and now can't get it out, or improvised with something like a carrot and it broke and yeah — same issue. According to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database, there were over 200 reported cases of people losing things up there in 2018 alone. Proactively talking to your physician about your sex life shows you're comfortable enough about the topic to approach it maturely and likely avoid complications as a result. It's also 2020; anal is pretty vanilla these days anyway — I'm sure your doctor's dealt with much kinkier stuff at some point.

Even still, it might not be easy to broach the topic with a family doctor, particularly one you've been visiting for quite some time. “Piles” (otherwise known as “haemorrhoids,” for our American readers) are a common affliction and affect people regardless of propensity for ass play. Sometimes they're outside the butt, sometimes they're inside. In this survey of roughly a thousand patients from 2011, 39% of people interviewed were afflicted with haemorrhoids but over half (55%) had never encountered any symptoms — agitation to internal piles, whether via a particularly difficult bowel movement or receptive anal sex, can often result in a (frankly, often quite shocking to view) bright red bloody discharge, which is how most people learn they have them. I'm guessing this is how you learned of yours, dear writer...?

Being honest about your anal proclivities might help your doctor suggest a better course of treatment, or even a more accurate diagnosis — blood can also occur due to anal fissures or genital warts, which are treated much differently. If you can't be honest with your doctor, it might be preferable to find a new one at some point. Failing that, another option might be to pursue a course of treatment via someone who isn't your usual doctor — a sexual health or GUM clinic should be able to help out with that, butt stuff for them is a very common and routine thing.

Hope this helps! 💚

~Miss Andi

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That's it for this week! As always, I'm happy to take your questions via Mastodon (@andi@nuklear.family) or anonymously via CuriousCat (nuklearfiziks). I'm also on Instagram (nuklearfiziks) and FetLife (nuklearfiziks).

Until next time!! 😘

~The Reverend Miss Andi N. Fiziks