In your Easter basket: advice on “am I queer?” and ADHD diagnoses
Basically chocolate
Helloooo and hope you’re enjoying your Easter slash 4/20!
Hopefully as you read this I won’t be mindlessly scrolling through the holidays but who knows. My media habits these days resemble a crash diet—abstaining from certain social apps/news sites only to binge on them a week later. This media blockade is typically in response to something big (Inauguration); or something smaller (random celebrities *finding themselves* in space).
One of the sinister things about food addiction is that we need food to live, so we can’t ever fully quit. And somehow, that seems to be where we’ve arrived with media, too. What ultimately healed my disordered relationship with food wasn’t cutting out foods entirely—it was changing the way I approached them. I figured out a baseline of healthy foods I enjoyed while leaving room for flexibility when the pizza craving strikes. Instead of banning "junk food" and inevitably spiraling when I caved in, that baseline gave me enough stability to welcome my cravings.
I think the same intuitive approach works with media. Rather than demonizing “media” as a whole, maybe it’s possible to find ways to accept its role in our lives and find a baseline—creators, publications, formats—that makes us feel good, while leaving room to enjoy the occasional White Lotus recap memes when the craving hits. If nothing else, I’m reminded that consumption—whether of food or content—is never just about the thing itself, but the relationship we have with it.
We hope our newsletter is one of those nourishing contributions to your menu (with a little fun chaos as hot sauce), so we’ll be here serving up the good stuff weekly. In this issue, we’ve got some delicate advice for pottery class love affairs, a quick breakdown of a long NYT ADHD article, and some very good memes.
xx
Ciara, Prism founding team member, strategist, media hound, rock hound
Dear Prism,
I thought I was straight, but I fell in love with a girl I met at my pottery class last summer. Our affair has since ended, and I've been really confused about what it means for my sexuality. I'd never been attracted to a woman before her, and I haven't been attracted to one since. I feel like a fraud if I call myself queer, but also a fraud if I don't? Having some identity confusion. (I'm a cis woman).
Signed,
Glazed and Confused
Ah, pottery class, that hotbed—kiln?—of lesbian longing! Remember that famous pot-throwing scene from The L Word? Wait, was that Ghost? Ah well. Anyway, Glazed, I’m sorry to hear your affair ended with your heart breaking like a piece of, well, pottery.
Much like the boundaries in a lesbian affair, my advice to you is unlikely to be simple or clear. I’d actually like to start by asking you a question: to whom are you “calling yourself” queer? And why is that audience, real or imagined, making you feel like a fraud?
Perhaps your imposter syndrome is informed by the online discourse around bisexuality, which I know can include some condescension or gatekeeping. If so, ignore the algorithm. In real life, I think you’ll find queer women, a group whose most enduring stereotype might just be vegetarianism, somewhat more relaxed.
Appropriating queer identity can be problematic, of course, but mostly if you’re selling something. If you’re a straight person plotting to make your millions off Live Laugh Lesbian mugs, I guess that’s… kind of annoying. And if you’re a straight person in charge of both designing Target’s Pride Month merch and axing the company’s DEI policies, that’s pretty reprehensible. But the real stakes of calling yourself queer, Glazed, are less that anyone will think you’re a fraud and more that “someone” will ban your books, cancel your drag shows, and/or surveil you based only on your sexuality, to name just a few community benefits. So, from one queer woman to another (oops! I answered your question!): come on in! The water’s boiling!
Less apocalyptically, I also wonder if it’s possible that you’re thinking about “attraction” in ways that need some updating. Maybe that clay you thought you’d use to make a mug turned into more of a vase. Maybe that vase is actually an abstract sculpture. Maybe the ways the cishetpatriarcho-industrial complex conceptualizes “attraction” just aren’t big enough to hold your desire right now. The woman I’m currently seeing, who used to be married to a man, calls me her boyfriend. When I dated a cisguy in grad school, I still identified as a lesbian. A caterpillar doesn’t just grow wings inside its chrysalis; it melts down into a soup of imaginal cells from which it builds its new butterfly body. Imaginal cells!!! And didn’t Demi Moore kind of look like a lesbian in Ghost, with that adorable haircut??
What I’m getting at, Glazed, is maybe you’re just discovering that the old categories don’t fit you as well as they once did. And that can be confusing, but also freeing. So mend your heart. Throw your pots. Be honest with yourself and others, and the pieces will fall into place.
- Ali “Knows from experience” Shapiro, Relationship Chaos Expert and Prism contributor
Got a question for Ali? Send *us* a postcard at hello@yourprism.com
Our team’s Monday standup this week was derailed by our version of water cooler gossip: Debate over a comprehensive NYT Sunday Magazine article about ADHD. The TLDR (it’s long, and actually might make you question whether you have ADHD trying to get through it…) is essentially: We’ve maybe been diagnosing and treating ADHD wrong, as evidenced by multiple studies that show that students are more obedient when on medications like Adderall or Ritalin, but not actually learning better (i.e. retaining lessons, thinking critically, etc.), and that ADHD symptoms often disappear when those same students end up in jobs that they actually find interesting (i.e. the call is coming from inside the… classroom).
We have thoughts (as always), but we’re curious about your take, so we made a two minute ADHD(ebate) poll for you. If you have ADHD, are close with someone who does, or are just an ADHD(abbler), now’s your time to add(erall) your perspective, and we’ll include results in a future Postcard.
Thanks for reading! Hope the rest of your Sunday is more springtime flowers than springtime showers.
- The Prism Team
Most illuminating video of the year on the ADHD subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cialLfVZqm4