Too excited to trust that this will happen and be awesome, because MONTY PYTHON and all my emotions and desires. Also potentially reuniting: Outkast.
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During my days in the exciting, fast-paced world of quantitative hedge funding, an industry whose compensatory excesses made launching this indie feminist nerd site possible, my firm hired John Cleese to entertain and then drink with us (he prepared jokes SPECIFICALLY for a quant-shop audience, because he’s a true professional) and I got to hug him and tell him it was the best moment of my life, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
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Being a woman of color in the FDNY.
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Spike Lee on his remake of Oldboy.
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“You don’t want to be Mrs. Tampon do you?” my mother asked, her eyebrow raised. I stared at the white tile in the middle of the drug store, embarrassed, confused. I shook my head no while gripping the blue box, refusing to take the package of spongy maxi pads she was pushing toward me.
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Cannibal tourism.
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Yes! It’s dumb that we power-wash the outsides of our eggs here. But, since we do, you might as well keep sticking ‘em in the fridge.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
“Tampons would tear your hymen and take your virginity,” she explained, “that’s how sex works.”
I BEG TO DIFFER.
I mean, I’m pretty sure that it was a tampon that broke my hymen.
That said, OMG, all descriptions of abstinence only sex ed makes me itchy and the goats scream in my head.
Oh yeah, I was objecting to the “that’s how sex works” part of the quote! Like, when I say to my boyfriend, “let’s have sex” he does not proceed to tear my hymen with a tampon. OR DOES HE
Although really the mom makes it sound like the tampon is doing the tearing and the taking of its own volition. 🙁 🙁 🙁
The tampon that broke my hymen was not sentient, no. I would never have had sex if it had been.
The stuff this girl’s mom said to her borders on emotional abuse. Right? Or am I alone in thinking this? Ugh, I am just so deeply unsettled after reading that. Especially the bit with the construction paper.
I got that same construction paper example in high school.
Me too. And a chewed piece of gum that had been passed around. My public high school in Maryland (in a swank suburb of DC) had posters that said “Abstinence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder” and “A Baby Costs $737 per month, how much is YOUR allowance?” We had a talk with a guest speaker, her name was Cassie and she said she was a “renewed virgin,” and told us that we could get our virginity back through abstaining and purity. We got pins that said “I’m Worth Waiting For.” We were told to “use protection,” but nobody told us what protection was, and from what, and how. There was no mention of LGBTQ people.
I graduated from high school in 2004. I’m not that old.
I would love to go back to my public high school and ask for funding for therapy.
Ugh I’m still so mad about that bullshit.
I graduated from a public high school in 1999 and had the complete opposite experience. I miss sex ed in the 90s.
That’s MS. Cliffe-Tampon to you.
No, I wouldn’t hyphenate, even for a tampon.
That’s MS. Cliffe married to Mr. Tampon to you.
My guess is that if this tampon is so patriarchal as to believe that you must marry him after having sex with him he will also insist that you take his name.
He can’t talk; we’ll never know.
Thinking about it further, I suppose he’s not completely without meritorious qualities as a husband.
LOVE that piece on the fire fighter. You go, Sophy Medina! A Marine and a fire fighter. My god. What a beast of a woman.
(Is this the right place to say that the JPASS sponsored story was very amusing? I too would dump a sub-par manchild of a boyfriend for a digital library.)
Right place or not, I completely agree on the JPASS story. I keep clicking on it to reread because I found it to be perfect and I just keep on hoping that one day, if I click hard enough, there will be a comments section so that I might be able to share my love of it.
My first interpretation was that the mother was also her agent and was relaying an audition opportunity out of obligation, knowing the daughter would probably not be interested.
I feel like that’s just as reasonable as what was actually happening, though.
Well, I love my menstrual cup, but I’m not IN LOVE with it. I guess we’re living in sin.
I use disposable menstrual cups so I guess I’m some sort of menstrual hussy. Sometimes I even switch to tampons. I just like playing the field, you know? I figure, I’m young; now’s the time to do that sort of thing.
Can we also talk about this? It’s so strange! http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/d…
Virginity always struck me as a crappy kind of gift. “Here, have some awkward, albeit disease-free sex”. I’d rather someone give me drugstore chocolates or even a bunch of carnations.
I liked that FDNY article until I got to the end, and it just kind of petered out in a fizzle of “Oh, she’s a girl, too.” I’m not sure if what bugged me was the perceived lack of writing skill in ending the piece (which oh boy do I identify with – half my public journal entries ended with, “That’s it, I think.”) or if it felt too “nudge, nudge, she’s a girly girl too!” for me.
Yeah, I agree. It seemed like a sloppy way to end. Though I think it’s valid and worth having stories that represent women who are fire fighters or Marines or police officers, but are still “traditionally feminine” … because women can be both! But the way it was written in this story was a little lazy, just sorta slopped on instead of actually incorporated in a meaningful way.
If you like those tampons so much why don’t you marry them!?
None of the other tampons will respect you if you go with that tampon. The only thing all the other tampons will be interested in is getting up in your thing.
“The U.S. is one of the only countries on Earth that keeps chicken eggs in cold storage. But why?”
UGGHHHHH /Canadian
(i know, ONE OF, but like. Come on.)
One of the weirdest things about my high school experience was that though we were in an abstinence-only education district and were never explicitly told anything about sex, we were nonetheless expected to have figured it out by AP English lit. I remember one time we were discussing Prufrock and someone suggested that the line about the peach could be interpreted as a metaphor for oral sex. One of the boys in the class confessed that he didn’t get the connection and I think after some awkwardness another student volunteered to explain after class?
And AP history was the only place we ever discussed birth control.
Take a peach and practice.
OHMYGODYES. And none of the English teachers had figured out why nobody was picking up on the allusions to sex. I remember reading ‘Winesburg Ohio’ and my teacher asking us about a passage, and then accusing the class of not doing the reading. No lady, we did the reading, we just have no fucking clue about the fucking. Looking back, I imagine an entire curriculum of “Coming Of Age” novels was just awful to teach at that school.
My school explained the basics of sex in fifth grade, but in Honors English freshman year, while reading the Natural, my teacher had to close the door and explain what a phallic symbol was. Spoiler: Roy Hobbs’s bat is not just a bat.
That sex ed piece is both hilarious and frustrating. “Kissing leads to spooning, and spooning leads to forking.” WHAT IS FORKING
ETA: “No. Birth control will make you fat.” “You know what, Mom? Getting pregnant will make me fat.” And then hitching a ride to the gynecologists’ office! I cheered. You go, Jessica.
Nicole, I didn’t think I could love you more, but you proved me wrong by being the recipient of a hug from John Cleese, the best Python and my crush since 1997 (when I discovered “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”)
I am sure my intensity creeped him out, but sometimes you only get one chance in your whole life to tell someone how much you love them.
It is also tampon. (Speaking of important things that were omitted in my high school education, at no point in my French class were we taught any vocabulary relating to pads/tampons/menstruation).
He can't talk; we'll never know.
Thinking about it further, I suppose he's not completely without meritorious qualities as a husband.
Yay for Python reunion!!!!!!!
Boo to abstinence only education!
Can I also mention that mom in the abstinence only article is like a lot of Asian mothers, mine included tho less extreme thank goodness.
Can I share my favourite John Cleese story, which is that when Shakespeare’s Globe was being built in the early ’90s they were soliciting donations in exchange for getting your name on a brick in the courtyard, and now there are two bricks next to each other that read “John Cleese” and “Michael Pallin”, because John Cleese said he would buy two and donate £X above that, but they had to misspell Michael Palin’s name on the other one or he wouldn’t contribute anything. (Apparently people misspelled it all the time and MP hated it.)
Yeah, I agree. It seemed like a sloppy way to end. Though I think it's valid and worth having stories that represent women who are fire fighters or Marines or police officers, but are still "traditionally feminine" … because women can be both! But the way it was written in this story was a little lazy, just sorta slopped on instead of actually incorporated in a meaningful way.