Fighting with DOR and Gay Men Online
Jan. 15th, 2026 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disappointed_lesbianI spoke to my dor counselor's supervisor this morning, and I'm still recovering from the phone call half an hour later. But this guy apparently didn't even know that listening is an issue for me, because he apparently didn't read my last email. It's a busy time of the year, I was told. Because the supervisor had not responded to my email for a couple of days and because nothing had changed the last three times I'd complained to him, I'd originally asked to speak to his supervisor, but the officer who put me on hold transferred me to his line anyhow, even after I'd explicitly told her that I didn't want to speak to him. According to her, he had told her to transfer me seconds before the transfer, yet his line went straight to voicemail. I hung up, prepared to file a formal complaint. I might still do that. I'm still dealing with shitty voip phone service, so the line wouldn't hang up and I had to unplug the voip adaptor.
He called me back. During the call, he said he was submitting authorization for the computer equipment I requested last fall. He said he would try referring me to the employment placement organization I requested, but that I shouldn't get my hopes up because they usually serve Regional Center clients. The regional centers, which nominally serve developmentally disabled clients, actually serve only the most severely affected autistic people, so I don't qualify for their services. This organization's website says that they do work placements (which was why I requested them); he says that they do not.
If that referral doesn't pan out, or possibly in addition to that referral, he offered to refer me to yet another one of dor's business specialists, or whatever the job title is. I don't expect that to be helpful because it's just more resume advice and job coaching, interview coaching, whatever. None of that stuff can overcome my lack of job history, lack of references, lack of specific marketable skills, and inability to handle most jobs. I simply do not qualify for most remote jobs and can't handle the noise associated with most non-office jobs. I might be able to work full-time if the work environment is close to ideal. I'm standing at my computer typing, studying, reading, and researching for eight if not more hours per day, so I know that full-time work is a possibility; it's just not sustainable if I have to spend the workday doing exhausting tasks, and it's not possible at all if I have to spend more than a little of the workday listening to anything louder than the hum of a refrigerator.
My DOR counselor's supervisor kept repeating that DOR and the employment services specialists do not place people into jobs. I of course had already known that, and I'd never said or implied that they did; in fact, their inability to place me is the reason I asked for the referral. It was a frustrating phone call. Listening to essential information is tiring enough, but having to listen to the same thing over and over again is borderline enraging. People drain my energy with their inefficient ways of speaking. It's like they don't even listen to themselves, don't remember what's been said in the conversation, otherwise, why do they repeat themselves? When listening and speaking cost one nothing, one can afford to be verbose. I cannot afford it. And when people repeat themselves, I'm forced to repeat my acknowledgement of what they've repeated.
Now my whole morning has been thrown off. I haven't studied at all and now I need to get my lifting workout done within half an hour so I can have breakfast on-time.
I can't get warm. It wasn't cold when I got up, but the sky darkened, the sun went away, and now it's cold in here. I took another iron capsule with breakfast. I'm going to have to take several a day because there's only 25 mg per capsule.
I have stomach cramps again. Excellent addition to the morning. I have stomach cramps after every bowel movement now. They aren't strong, they aren't as debilitating as they used to be, but they make everything more difficult. I'm having regular bowel movements now. That's not much of an improvement because I'm paying for the regularity with more stomach cramps, plus I still cannot void fully; I'm still constipated all day, every day.
Gay men get on my nerves sometimes. Just the promiscuous ones, actually. Which is probably most of them. I came across something which suggested that being gay in Singapore might be difficult, so I tried researching life for gay people there and in Hong Kong (as an alternative for grad school), and most of the stuff that came up was about bars, spas, and other hook-up spots for gay men. I ended up on the gayasian sub-reddit, and one of the threads is about community specifically for Asian tops and white bottoms. They are so overly interested in sex, so ridiculously specific about the physical features of people they have want to sex with, it's mental and sickening. Also alien. And it veers into all kinds of -isms: racism, etc.
I know that plenty of straight men are similar. But I don't see their comments that much plus I think gay men take preoccupation with sex to the next level. Maybe there is something about the most vocal or the most online in the community being young, and therefore hornier, I don't know.
It's definitely clear why a word other than "gay" is needed for lesbians; so they can research their issues without being overwhelmed with information about sex venues.
So I've been researching today and I've narrowed my math interest down to applied math. Pure math is cool but studying it at the graduate level requires too much preparation, and I don't want to have to go back and try to make up the upper division undergrad math courses I'd need. Plus I'm not really interested in certain required subjects, like real analysis and abstract algebra. Combinatorics, linear algebra, and differential equations are more up my alley, but I wouldn't be allowed to focus on what I like only.
He called me back. During the call, he said he was submitting authorization for the computer equipment I requested last fall. He said he would try referring me to the employment placement organization I requested, but that I shouldn't get my hopes up because they usually serve Regional Center clients. The regional centers, which nominally serve developmentally disabled clients, actually serve only the most severely affected autistic people, so I don't qualify for their services. This organization's website says that they do work placements (which was why I requested them); he says that they do not.
If that referral doesn't pan out, or possibly in addition to that referral, he offered to refer me to yet another one of dor's business specialists, or whatever the job title is. I don't expect that to be helpful because it's just more resume advice and job coaching, interview coaching, whatever. None of that stuff can overcome my lack of job history, lack of references, lack of specific marketable skills, and inability to handle most jobs. I simply do not qualify for most remote jobs and can't handle the noise associated with most non-office jobs. I might be able to work full-time if the work environment is close to ideal. I'm standing at my computer typing, studying, reading, and researching for eight if not more hours per day, so I know that full-time work is a possibility; it's just not sustainable if I have to spend the workday doing exhausting tasks, and it's not possible at all if I have to spend more than a little of the workday listening to anything louder than the hum of a refrigerator.
My DOR counselor's supervisor kept repeating that DOR and the employment services specialists do not place people into jobs. I of course had already known that, and I'd never said or implied that they did; in fact, their inability to place me is the reason I asked for the referral. It was a frustrating phone call. Listening to essential information is tiring enough, but having to listen to the same thing over and over again is borderline enraging. People drain my energy with their inefficient ways of speaking. It's like they don't even listen to themselves, don't remember what's been said in the conversation, otherwise, why do they repeat themselves? When listening and speaking cost one nothing, one can afford to be verbose. I cannot afford it. And when people repeat themselves, I'm forced to repeat my acknowledgement of what they've repeated.
Now my whole morning has been thrown off. I haven't studied at all and now I need to get my lifting workout done within half an hour so I can have breakfast on-time.
I can't get warm. It wasn't cold when I got up, but the sky darkened, the sun went away, and now it's cold in here. I took another iron capsule with breakfast. I'm going to have to take several a day because there's only 25 mg per capsule.
I have stomach cramps again. Excellent addition to the morning. I have stomach cramps after every bowel movement now. They aren't strong, they aren't as debilitating as they used to be, but they make everything more difficult. I'm having regular bowel movements now. That's not much of an improvement because I'm paying for the regularity with more stomach cramps, plus I still cannot void fully; I'm still constipated all day, every day.
Gay men get on my nerves sometimes. Just the promiscuous ones, actually. Which is probably most of them. I came across something which suggested that being gay in Singapore might be difficult, so I tried researching life for gay people there and in Hong Kong (as an alternative for grad school), and most of the stuff that came up was about bars, spas, and other hook-up spots for gay men. I ended up on the gayasian sub-reddit, and one of the threads is about community specifically for Asian tops and white bottoms. They are so overly interested in sex, so ridiculously specific about the physical features of people they have want to sex with, it's mental and sickening. Also alien. And it veers into all kinds of -isms: racism, etc.
I know that plenty of straight men are similar. But I don't see their comments that much plus I think gay men take preoccupation with sex to the next level. Maybe there is something about the most vocal or the most online in the community being young, and therefore hornier, I don't know.
It's definitely clear why a word other than "gay" is needed for lesbians; so they can research their issues without being overwhelmed with information about sex venues.
So I've been researching today and I've narrowed my math interest down to applied math. Pure math is cool but studying it at the graduate level requires too much preparation, and I don't want to have to go back and try to make up the upper division undergrad math courses I'd need. Plus I'm not really interested in certain required subjects, like real analysis and abstract algebra. Combinatorics, linear algebra, and differential equations are more up my alley, but I wouldn't be allowed to focus on what I like only.
