I See Straight People: Or, How I Learned to Start Worrying and Love Political Science

I promised the wife I'd post today, so she could have a day off. I had one post planned, but it's not happening. (Aw, hell, it's an anonymous blog, right? I've got what we call "the crazies" round our parts. It involves a lot of not going to sleep, which wears on the braincells. The other post takes thought; this one is stream of consciousness)

I'm away in Arizona, participating in a big academic thing (which is going well, despite the crazies). However, this has been an interesting opportunity to ponder my position within the academy, for a lot of reasons: who do I say who my advisor is? What does it mean that I go to such a crazy school? Is my dissertation actually interesting to anyone?

And, more than anything, why the *fuck* is the discipline of political science so full of straight people?

In computer terms, there's something called 'pinging,' where you send off a signal from one computer to another to make sure the connection is there. (This is probably old hat to most of you, but is a relatively recent discovery for me, Mac user since 1996.) In any case, when I get into a group of people of unknown queerness, I start pinging desperately. I talk about my wife. I talk about queer organizing. I talk about gay bars. God help me, I make tedious sexual innuendo where appropriate. *ping* I say. *queersoverherepleaseletmeknowi'mnotalone*. *ping*

I remember this feeling from Model UN in college; traveling with the team, there was always a strangeness about spending so much time in that straight world. I said at the Model UN banquet my senior year that I appreciated the team for giving me my only consistent contact with straight people, and not only was it the laughline of the evening, it was so resoundingly true that it was a little suprising. And now I'm amidst a bunch of poli sci PhD candidates, including, amazingly enough, a fellow alum of that Model UN team. And I'm pinging. I think I've told more people about our plans to have kids in the last week than I did in the two months before hand. *ppingfuturelesbianmomoverhereping* I've said the words 'my wife' and 'our wedding' at least ten times a day. *pingareyououtthereping* I'm dressing as butchly as I can, which is, unfortuately, not that butch. *pingdykeintanktopoverhereping*

And nothing. NOTHING. I'm pinging like a motherfucker and the closest thing I've gotten to a result is a very nice straight boy with a queer girlfriend (he happens to share my taste in bad TV and sushi, so it's not a total wash). I'm seeing butch girls with short hair and nose rings talk about their husbands, effeminate boys using pool cues as proxies to convince me of something I don't really care about. I'm seeing a huge thunderous mountain of straight people. I'm sick of it.

So, yes, I'm happy there's a growing conversation here about having spouses and kids and how to make academia work while still having a family. And I'm happy that I'm here--there's no way I could not be. But I'm tired of pinging. I'm tired of trying. I am tired of straightness. I want to go home.