The Charleston shooting was an act of terrorism, driven by white supremacist ideology and profound racism, and it did not occur in a vacuum. If you didn’t read Carvell’s very beautiful and difficult letter to his late mother on the subject, please do. Jelani Cobb wrote brilliantly about the tragedy in The New Yorker. If you would like to know more about Emanuel AME, this is excellent. Also in the Washington Post (the Post has done a good job covering Charleston, in general), portraits of those who lost their lives. Jamil Smith on the illusion of safe spaces. And, again, if you wish to donate, here’s the link.
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I am not From Here, so I am sure there are complexities that escape me, but in a country THIS OBSESSED with patriotism, how on earth do public buildings/state flags continue to include the Confederate flag, which is not just a symbol of racism but also a symbol of treason? Not to mention that there are schools named after Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest. And the North is super racist, EVERYWHERE is super racist, Canada is racist too, I get it, but how do we expect POC to send their children to PUBLIC SCHOOLS named after people who hated them and believed them to be less than people? This country is fucked up.
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I think this would be an ideal time for everyone to re-read David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which is one of the finest books ever written on US history.
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Steve Doocy is a piece of shit.
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It started on October 3, 2012, when Lauren says she felt a little off—almost like she was coming down with the flu. She was also on her period, and ran down to a nearby Ralph’s to stock up on her go-to brand of tampons, Kotex Natural Balance. The errand felt completely unrelated to the vague malady permeating her body. After all, Lauren had been dealing with the logistics of her period for 11 years at that point, and Kotex was just part of the ritual. Like most girls, her mom had walked her through the ins and outs of tampon usage when she was 13, showing her how to use the applicator, warning her to change the tampon every three to four hours. The rule was a no-brainer; on that day, Lauren says she replaced her tampon in the morning, afternoon, and again in the evening.
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A Dairy Queen like no other:
DeLeon builds the ice cream cakes himself. “Corporate-made cakes have a six month shelf life and you don’t know—how long does it sit at the manufacturer? Then it gets shipped to the warehouse, and then it gets shipped here. We rotate our stuff constantly. People say our cakes taste different, and that’s because we make them all the time.”
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
That’s it. I’m going to pitch that article I’ve been working on about school names and their place in communities. That’s my new weekend project.
Also, ice cream cakes are frequently fucking disgusting. I worked at an independent ice cream shop in high school and the owner made all his cakes in the winter when it was slow. Anyone who bought a cake in August was eating months-old ice cream having sat in a freezer for God knows how long. If you get an ice cream cake, order an weird flavor or insist on seeing it made fresh. So gross.
1) omg yes i would LOVE to read about place names please please please write this
2) MAYBE I WANT DISGUSTING IN MY COOKIE PUSS
MY TASTES ARE [SOMETHING SOMETHING 50 SHADES]
oh dear god what is that thing??
’tis a carvel brand COOKIE PUSS
some friends and i got one for a friend’s 30th birthday last year and eating its giant cookie eye was a terrible delight. the cookie was chocolate chip!!
Cookie… puss… I thought that was something disgusting you made up and that someone else would yell at you for.
“To the death!”
“No. To the cake.”
“…I don’t think I’m quite familiar with that phrase.”
🙂 thanks for catching my reference! (although it was also just an honest response to the cake….)
Am I alone in always having believed that ice cream cakes were layers of ice cream with layers of ACTUAL CAKE? I was sooo disappointed when I had ice cream cake in my adult years and realized it was just ice cream. Dude, I can have ice cream any time, and you’re charging me extra for putting it in the shape of a slab/round!
Some times / flavors / purveyors are layers of cake and layers of ice cream! Sometimes there is or isn’t frosting (which is weird frozen, tbh) or whipped cream, or terrifying cookie and sprinkle decorations as above. I often got Baskin Robbins grasshopper pie for my birthday, which was mint chocolate chip in a nice thick chocolate cookie crust, with chocolate on top…
If it’s round they’ve just cut a slice from the carton. BR makes theirs with cake and they are tasty
The Dairy Queen in my hometown’s ice cream cakes used to be like this. Or if not layers of actual cake, at least something other than straight-up ice cream. They were so delicious. In high school we would occasionally walk there after dismissal and just devour one as a group.
Ah, memories. And better metabolisms.
uhm whoever left out the cake is CHEAP and RUINING DREAMS
we got ice cream cake for very special birthdays when I was a kid, and it was always layers of cake with ice cream! i didn’t like it much (I didn’t like the way the ice cream made the cake layers prematurely soggy OR everything was super frozen to avoid that and ew?), but to hear of ice cream cake that’s simply ice cream. it’s a travesty is what it is.
I have never really known what they are (not a huge thing here in the UK), but I assumed cake was involved somehow.
Ooh, really good idea!!! The school names pitch.
Danielle Evans has written a wonderful short story called “Robert E. Lee is Dead” which takes place at a school of that name and surrounds the friendship between two very different black students. The name is not a major focus in the story, but it’s thematically crucial. You might be interested to read it.
I would love to read this article! I shouldn’t be, because I knew about other shitty school names, but I am honestly shocked that schools are still named after Forrest.
Am I the only one who was pretty much completely traumatized by the “IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU” articles about girls who got TSS in the various teen magazines back in the early 00’s? Because they basically scared me off tampons for life, which is absurd, but THE FEAR IS REAL.
I spent a huge chunk of my teenage years traumatized by every single IT HAPPENED TO ME story in every stupid magazine I read.
It is probably best that teenaged-you did not have access to xojane.
I don’t remember where I learned about TSS, but I always knew sleeping with a tampon in is a big no no. I only learned why you should use the lowest absorbency possible recently though
Meh, the “it could happen to you articles” didn’t freak me out about TSS, but they did give me extremely helpful tips on how to be bulimic, so there’s that.
I have been getting periods for over a decade now and am still as terrified of TSS as I was when I was 12. From internet researching it really sounds like the risk is mainly with synthetic and ultra-absorbent tampons, but there isn’t good information out there.
Why can’t we have nice things? All I want is to be able to wear one at night and not freak out whenever my temperature rises slightly.
I found that you can get away with wearing one at night when you know for sure you’re not getting enough sleep. 6 hours till alarm goes off? The only upside is sleeping with a tampon. Treat yo self.
If I sleep with a pad, I inevitably wake up 2 hours before my alarm, terrified of a leak, and rush to the bathroom to put in a tampon. If I sleep with a tampon, I wake up 2 hours before my alarm, terrified of TSS, and rush to the bathroom to change. So it typically works out either way, but if science can correct bad eyesight with lasers they can certainly figure out a way for me to get a full night’s sleep while menstruating.
I am sorry to be THAT person in this discussion, but the solution to that is a menstrual cup. You can safely leave that baby in for a glorious 12 hours.
…if you’re lucky enough not to fill it in 45 minutes on an average heavy day. That was an expensive lesson learned.
Or longer! It may leak eventually, but the point is, it won’t POISON YOU. I’ve always resented that one of the two forms of stain-protection women could choose between (and by far the more discreet one, plus the only choice for swimming and such) carried a risk of serious illness or DEATH if you didn’t take it out after a few hours.
Shoutout to my sea sponge “tampons,” which I love and sleep in and don’t even have to worry about at all!! If you’re cool with manually placing and removing things from your vag, then I highly recommend them.
Yeah, and they are also great for having sex during your period. Second the recommendation!
Ooh, I’ve heard of those! I currently use OB tampons so I’m super comfy with manual placement, sounds like the sponge is worth another look!
I’ve been having more problems with tampons absorbing TOO much moisture and it’s been causing me more cramps and pain, so I’ve been quitting tampons lately. Managing lowest absorbency possible is so frustrating when my period can be different every time. I miss them for the convenience and the less mess, but oh man. My body is so much happier.
My mother instilled in me a deep terror of tampons. First she told me that it would tear my hymen, and Princess Diana (I was born in 1986, so.) never wore a tampon so she was still indisputably a virgin when she married Prince Charles. Ah the halcyon days before THAT marriage went to hell.
And then she also told me she got a mild form of TSS when she was a teenager, or something, just to make sure the terror settled in correctly. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t (she’s not the most reliable source), but I’ve always preferred pads and only use tampons when I’m swimming or on super-heavy days when I need back-up.
My mom got TSS when she was a teenager, and thus never taught my sisters or me how to use tampons. It’s a miracle that none of US got TSS.
First she told me that it would tear my hymen, and Princess Diana (I was born in 1986, so.) never wore a tampon so she was still indisputably a virgin when she married Prince Charles.
Considering the (frankly disturbing) “I want to be your tampon” thing from Charles to Camilla, maybe he would have preferred it if she had.
Thank God I’m not the only person who remembers this, lo these many years later…
By the time I got to teen magazines I had been well-traumatized by the post-nuclear war completely age-inappropriate novels I had read and the periodic articles in the newspaper about how my city would fare if a nuclear bomb was dropped in various cities (die immediately! die pretty quickly but painfully! die quite slowly but painfully!) which I also probably should not have been allowed to read, and all the horrifying Holocaust books, so I was immune to those kinds of stories.
I read that article yesterday and then spent a significant portion of my afternoon thinking, “yeah, maybe it would be reasonable to start ordering organic cotton tampons from Amazon.”
me too, i got as far as browsing amazon for them but then thought “how reliable are these sellers?”
reading that tampon instruction thing that they have in every tampax box (Me: I’m supposed to do what?! oh god)
But wait there’s more! You can also DIE.
Nope, not the only one. I always feel like a weirdo for using maxis in a world full of tampon users, but there is no way I am sticking a wad of cotton up my hoohaw for hours a time.
I’ve always found tampons uncomfortable and pads comfy and absorbant. I only wear tampons if there literally is nothing else available at the moment.
Same here! (awkward high five)
agreed!
plus pads can be kind of uncomfortable or gross, but tampons actually hurt, so no thank you. (and are also gross when removed, and the first time i successfully wore it, I was unprepared for it to swing by the string and that was messy)
also i finally figured out how to wear one with minimal discomfort because i was going on vacation dammit and i was NOT going to lose pool time and let’s just say that even minimal discomfort while in the pool was nothing compared to the realization that it was leaking after only an hour or two, as i stood in the shallows. i really hope no one else noticed. (I should say: at least I can tell when my pad is full or has shifted position and might leak, i couldn’t tell a difference at all with the tampon)
calling it TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME is no help to terrified teens either. yikes.
I was terrified of TSS as a kid, but had to start using tampons pretty quickly because I was on a swim team. That was middle school. In high school, I was on a different team and I remember one day the female assistant coach took all the girls aside to have the “you can’t use pads in the pool” convo and I was like “do…do people not know this?”
vividly remember reading a TSS article in either Teen Vogue or Seventeen while in 6th grade homeroom and being h o r r i f i e d. I couldn’t regularly wear tampons (like, would only wear them if I was going swimming) until I was a senior in high school.
yes me too
Reading the Bisexual OK Cupid article first thing was a terrible choice.
(I am bi and I am going to die alone)
Haaah I feel you. That article messed with my head. I am not at all secure in my bisexuality and I am thinking if my current relationship doesn’t work out, spinsterdom is a pretty good option rather than brave the cluster described.
Is anyone secure in their bisexuality? I only vocalised it for the first time (to myself and my partner a year ago) and still find myself saying, “I’m bi, I think?” or, “I’m probably-bisexual”. I am not good at this.
A friend of mine likes to say that the great* thing about being bisexual is that every new person you’re attracted to can make you question the very foundation of your sexuality.
*it’s not actually great, it’s mostly just awful
UGH it’s part of the reason i hate the term “bisexual” (and like the linked piece so much). So, yes, I hate that it implies two genders and that’s not a thing I’m down with. But I *also* have a whole lot of baggage about how i feel like it implies that I’m looking for roughly the same range of things with all people or I’m not legit, which is, admittedly, my issue, and not actually something I’ve experienced.
But I feel like “queer” is a better home for me, because it seems like it’s more of an invitation to start a conversation, rather than a clear-cut box. There are all sorts of complications and footnotes and parentheticals to my sexuality. Now, that probably would still be the case if I were straight, but it starts to explain my strong preference for “queer” over “pansexual”, in any case.
It really doesn’t imply two genders, any more than heterosexual or homosexual implies only one gender exists. And it is widely used in the sense of “my own gender and others” anyway.
You may not wish to call yourself bisexual but announcing you hate the word an oppressed group uses for themselves is not actually cool.
Some people really feel it does imply two genders. Whether or not they are right is a different kettle of fish, but some of those people who DO feel that it implies two genders are a. not people who identify with “male” or “female” and b. people i would potentially like to have sex with. So even if I loved the word, it might be self defeating for me to use it.
POC have debated which words they want to use for a very long time, and different generations/groups/etc have very different ideas about what is acceptable to use to describe themselves, and what is not as good. I choose to listen carefully to that discussion, and then try very very hard to refer to people as they refer to themselves, even if it’s not what I’d probably choose for myself. And even if I disagree, I’m sure as hell not going to tell an 80 year old woman that she shouldn’t refer to herself as “colored”, or tell a 20 year old woman that the 80 year old had it right.
I identified as bisexual for roughly a decade before I moved to the word “queer”. Under certain circumstances, I still refer to myself as bisexual. I don’t think I’m better or more progressive than people who continue to use the word “bisexual”. It’s just not a word I’ve ever really loved, and I see no reason to avoid saying that when involved in a discussion, mostly with other non-straight people, about which words we use and how we feel about them.
God, no. One of the commenters on the Hairpin said something about how she felt, among her bi and queer groups, that she was the “bad kind” of bi, and I was like
1) you have bi social groups?
and
2) there’s a kind of bi that ISN’T seen as a “bad kind” of bi?
Because I have not yet experienced either of these things.
(It is Pride weekend in my town, and I have VERY conflicting feelings about this.)
I gotta say, Toastie Twitter is definitely a bi social group.
Case in point: http://the-toast.net/2015/06/18/if-gillian-anders…
I read it and it’s really too early in the day to relate so much to an article.
Also, I am bi too, and I am going to die alone. 😐
Yup. I’m potentially attracted to everyone, but everyone is THE WORST.
I’m bi/pan, identify as queer (because it encompasses the poly and kink aspects too), and have a male primary partner. That article felt really really judgy and icky to me in all kinds of ways, and I’m not caffeinated enough and have too horrible of cramps to really deal with right now.
I’d try reading it again when you’re in a better mood. You and I tick all of the same boxes you mentioned (including caffeine deprived), and when I started reading it, I instantly had my hackles up. This is one of the areas where it’s not that difficult to get me wicked defensive (Actually, I started reading yesterday’s “flaky friend” thing in the same emotional space, which is why it took me so long to get the joke).
But it is written by a woman who identifies as queer, and who is clearly some form of nonmonog. So once I got over seeing the entire piece as a not-so-subtle attack on me regarding whether I was doing bisexuality wrong, and merely a piece about the really sort of strange landscape where there are a large group of women on the site who have been long forced to choose the “bisexual” box even though they hate the word, and then a bunch of couples who have chosen to check the “bisexual” box in an attempt to find a unicorn, and the fact that there really aren’t many people who, as a single human being, really comfortably identify as bisexual………. I ended up really enjoying the piece.
But, yes, it really took caffeine, and it took being willing to argue to myself “wait, this was linked to via The Toast, I probably don’t need to be quite as defensive, right?”
I think the part that really pissed me off is that she seemed to really be denigrating people who felt they needed to add a footnote to the “bi” checky box because identifying as “queer” or “pan” or “bi but” was silly or extravagant or too complicated. I think that’s shitty and gross.
While I had the same initial reaction, I’m not sure that’s exactly what she’s trying to do, given that she included her own footnote from her profile about how she identifies as queer.
She doesn’t seem to say that footnoting that way is bad. She talks about how people are doing it (including her), how they’re doing it, and the fact that other people are not doing it. She points to a hypothesis about why people might be doing it (distinguishing themselves as different from other people identifying as bisexual, especially the ones who are actually couples).
But, I too started reading the piece really pissed off.
So I’m thinking it’s a couple things, at least for me. Primarily, it’s that I think I’m so used to seeing attacks on bisexuality that I see them there when they’re not there. I have known issues about not feeling like I’m queer enough, not poly enough, etc. So when I see someone *commenting* on how people identify, I often see *policing* on how people identify, because I’m used to commentary being thinly veiled policing. So I (apparently) now just jump to being offended by the policing, even if it doesn’t materialize.
And second, the author didn’t really make much of an effort to stop my fairly-normal-for-my-demo reaction. Why? That part I’m not really sure. Clicks? Engagement? Poor writing? Deliberate choice? I’m not sure. But I don’t think there was an actual attack there, just that she didn’t make much of an effort to treat her fellow queer-identified women with kid gloves.
Some days I am so tired of being policed that I just don’t want to identify at all.
/mild digression
I’m bi/pan, identify as queer (because it encompasses the poly and kink aspects too), and have a male primary partner. That article felt really really judgy and icky to me in all kinds of ways, and I’m not caffeinated enough and have too horrible of cramps to really deal with right now.
EXACTLY THE FEELS I’M HAVING (except for the cramps. that sucks. feel better soon, k?).
i’m tired of seeing straight male / queer female open kinky LTRs shit on as nothing but Unicorn Hunters. there was a lot of discussion and negotiation and soul searching that went in to settling on the sort of relationship we wanted and are comfortable having. it chaps my ass to have that all of that summarily dismissed by people who don’t even know us.
also: Unicorns are beautiful, magical creatures that have fascinated me since childhood. it makes me sad that it’s been made a dirty word.
Ugh yeah that too. I really hated (as I said above) the way the author crapped all over women wanting to identify as “queer” too. I guess it’s whatever, an examination of A Problematic Thing, but it just felt like I was getting shit on from all sides, you know?
right?!
i don’t identify as pan/queer because i don’t want to identify as bi. i identify as pan/queer because that’s what i am.
there was a lot of discussion and negotiation and soul searching that went in to settling on the sort of relationship we wanted and are comfortable having.
This is probably going to come out wrong, and I don’t mean to do so, so please assume there is at least some level of toast-love in my comments rather than an attack or criticism—
Okay, so you’ve thought about what sort of relationship the two of you are comfortable with— But what if that’s fundamentally opposed to the sort of healthy relationships that the proposed third person would be interested in?
Most of the offers I’ve been given have been pretty long on “inviting couple has figured out what they’re comfortable with” and very short on “inviting couple has thought about what the proposed third would be getting/expected to do and whether it’s an actual attractive offer”. I have a friend-of-a-friend, where she and her husband make offers I can’t believe anyone takes them up on, and then the situations end up increasingly heartbreaking for all involved, and they don’t see the connection. They seem to me to treat people as things, and that behavior is deeply concerning to me.
(please note, I’m not saying you’re engaging in this sort of behavior, just identifying the sort of alarm bells that people like me may have when encountering couples looking for a third, so that you could, perhaps, be able to phrase things such that you wouldn’t be as likely to be summarily dismissed?)
I have a friend-of-a-friend, where she and her husband make offers I can’t believe anyone takes them up on, and then the situations end up increasingly heartbreaking for all involved, and they don’t see the connection. They seem to me to treat people as things, and that behavior is deeply concerning to me.
ugh. this is why we can’t have nice things.
and/or nice people 😉
ahaha! i didn’t even think of the word interplay when i said that *headdesk*
I thought you were generously setting up a good joke for me! : D
But… the author herself identifies as queer (in her OKC profile and in ‘real life’) and discusses her numerous relationships with men and women, including those with ‘unicorns’ (which I don’t think is being used as a dirty word at all, but as either a sarcastic term used in relationship to oblivious male/female threesome-seekers or as a proud self-identifier)? Where do you see people getting shit upon or being dismissed in the article? I was on OKC myself for a long time, and I identified as ‘bi’ not ‘queer’ (and still do). (That doesn’t mean I look down on those who identify as queer, incidentally.) Basically, I liked the article and thought it was really even-handed.
“unicorn” has become a very tainted word among the open/poly/kinky set. it once simply meant a bi female who would join a couple. it now carries the very negative connotation of a human female sex toy who is used and tossed aside with no regard.
Err, respectfully, no. It has *always* poked fun at the idea at the whole concept. It’s a “unicorn” because the bi female interested in this sort of thing is so rare as to be nearly imaginary. Now, yes, sometimes it’s a good-natured fun-poking, and sometimes it’s a very negative thing. But the term doesn’t really make any sense as a truly value-neutral term.
But there are still people who self-identify as unicorns. There are still people who self-identify as unicorn hunters. And the people who really dislike being called unicorns probably shouldn’t be having sex with the people who self-identify as unicorn hunters ANYWAY.
This makes me sad. I was in a triad relationship for a while and the third person who joined the already-established couple was really reassured at the existence of “unicorn” as a term. She was glad to know there was a term at all, and she liked how it described the almost magical rareness of a third person who can fit well, relationship-wise, with two others. I definitely didn’t know then that the word had developed negative connotations.
Cosigned to all of that, Ethylbenzene. Maybe I should try reading it again later too? But the article just felt like a big heap of judgy “you’re doing sexuality wrong, HIPSTER”
I mean, everyone dies alone, so maybe it’s not so bad?
(Hello, fellow bi person!)
I’m pan, don’t have the trial sexualities available, and have 2 separate profiles: a bi one named after a Whitman quote, and a gay one named after a Sappho quote. There are so many dykes terrified of dating a bi/pan person that I needed to diversify to get any matches. We can die alone together.
LET’S DIE ALONE TOGETHER.
That article was my entire life until last fall, when a friend convinced me to make a FetLife profile. I’m not super kink-oriented, but the kinky scene is the one place in Dallas where you can be bi/pan/queer/something else and you won’t get constantly pursued by creepy husbands who want a third. (Because it was never the wife who contacted me, it was always the husband, and half the time when I asked to talk to the wife, the line went dead.)
I spent one miserable year lying about my sexuality to try and socialize with lesbian women, and I had absolutely no success. So many wonderful women completely flipped out at the idea of dating a bi/pan lady (and it always, ALWAYS boiled down to bi stereotypes like promiscuity/what if you wake up one day and just stop liking women/you’re just confused/etc), and in the end I just gave up and tried my luck with the swingers.
I have no regrets about leaving Bi OKC. None.
Ok, recently joined fetlife here and kind of intimidated about joining the “scene.” I’ve got no friends on there yet, is it lame to ask if you’ll be my friend (invite goes out to any other toasties that see this as well)? I’m klicks.
I checked out FetLife briefly and bailed at the hideousness of all the shitheel creepy domly doms. I’m interested to hear that there’s better aspects to it. Frankly I’ve never had any desire to get involved in the organized kink scene because so many dudes are so awful about it. I was sexually assaulted in a kink-specific way in college by a big guy in the local scene, too, so that hasn’t helped. I would definitely be interested in hearing from other Fet toasties.
I think a bigger issue is that OKC is THE WORST
I just wanted to chime in for The Toast bisexual roll call. I could write pages on bisexual identity and dating, but after reading that article, I’m mostly considering taking to my bed for the rest of the day.
I am stuck in that weird double-bind place where, whenever i log onto OKC, I am glad I’m not regularly getting messaged by super creepers….. but then I am convinced that not even the super creepers/unicorn hunters want me, and I won’t die alone because i have my lovely primary/anchor/life partner creature, but I would still *like* to have other connections, and then my “not poly enough” shame spiral starts…………..
*cough*
ugh.
*raised arms emoji* SAME THO
Yeah, I read that yesterday when it popped up on Facebook. I still can’t decide how I feel about it – I kept coming back to it all day because it unsettled me.
Many of those quotes in that piece piss me off.
Don’t these OK Cupid peeps know bisexual orgs have been defining bisexuality as “attraction to same and different genders” (direct implication that gender isn’t binary RIGHT THERE) and/or “attraction to at least two genders” for years? Have they not read Robin Ochs’ definition of bisexual? Do they know that genderqueer and non-binary bisexuals exist?
I mean, identify as you wish, but seriously. It does read like they’ve got some serious anti bi bigotry going on.
(and yes, there are very secure bisexuals out there.)
Don’t these OK Cupid peeps know bisexual orgs have been defining bisexuality as “attraction to same and different genders” (direct implication that gender isn’t binary RIGHT THERE) and/or “attraction to at least two genders” for years? Have they not read Robin Ochs’ definition of bisexual?
As someone who would have pissed you off, I can answer: probably not. Probably they’re going by the colloquial definition used by the people around them. (And, given that the end goal is communicating with other people, using the commonly used definitions doesn’t seem like a ridiculous idea, to me. And bisexual= attracted to “both genders” is a very common definition.)
I’m basing this off the fact that I haven’t looked up the official definitions from bisexual organizations or the one by Robin Och, either. I didn’t know, without google, who Robin Och is, or why her definition is the one to use. I was raised on the kind of umbrella LGBTQ organizations that come with hella bi-erasure, enough so that I only realized *recently* that there ARE bisexual specific organizations. With erasure, it’s easy to think that there’s no need for a bisexual specific organization when bi people are just “sorta one and sorta the other.” It wouldn’t have occurred to me to look for one.
I’m someone who didn’t start exploring and coming to terms with her sexuality until well into adulthood. A lot of my own education was from online, not from meatspace, due to circumstance. (Only safe space for me.)
I didn’t say Robin Ochs’ definition was the one, only that it existed. The fact there are those who’ve not heard that she, and various bi orgs, exist is very telling.
It just has me seeing red that there’s still so much ignorance out there.
The fact there are those who’ve not heard that she, and various bi orgs, exist is very telling.
It just has me seeing red that there’s still so much ignorance out there
Telling of what? And where is your anger directed?
Because I think there are systems in place that encourage that kind of ignorance. And as someone who is only still learning about that, who a month or two ago, had only heard the colloquial definition of bisexual, I’m totally on board with being pissed at the system. But it sounds to me like you’re pissed at the people, which sucks to hear. Especially since one of the reasons for that ignorance is that I distanced myself from queer spaces is because I didn’t feel welcome there.
It’s telling that the bi community, even with strides made, even though we make up circa half the acronym, still have a loooooong ways toward acceptance, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community. It’s telling of the fact that there are still many bi people who are ignorant to our history, to the existence of those who’ve been involved in bi activism for years. Decades, even. (Even I’m still learning stuff.) Much of that due to the fact our history has been erased by the L and the G. (Not to mention whitewashed and ciswashed, but I digress.)
I hate that what should be our community (read: LGBTQ+ community en masse) pushed you out. That sucks. I don’t feel a part of it myself, because there is so much hatred toward us. Because you have gay and lesbian people telling us to, or implying that we should, “pick a side”, policing whom we should be with (only with someone of our own gender, obviously). Because you have people policing bi peoples’ identities, especially when said bi people are attracted to more than two genders. Because bi history has been erased, and gay and lesbian people have contributed to that erasure.
My anger is at the system, definitely. That said, I am also angry at the bigots.
My anger is at the system, definitely. That said, I am also angry at the bigots.
It seems to be a bit strange to be angry at both the system that has turned a bunch of young women away from the word “bisexual” because they didn’t really feel welcome—— and then be angry at those women, potentially making them feel even less welcome in bisexuality.
Actually, that’s not exactly true. I understand *feeling* the anger. I myself am still self-righteously pissed at the kids in my high school who didn’t come out even though it was pretty obvious they weren’t straight, and let me and a couple friends take the brunt of the abuse. But that doesn’t mean my anger is directed at the right people. I know intellectually that the anger I feel is way more appropriate to direct at the people who made my life worse, and made them feel that coming out was unsafe.
Thanks, yeah, that was what was troubling me. I felt like I was hearing Yet Another Way I’m Doing My Sexuality Wrong, because I haven’t read the right things or done the right research, and this apparently pisses people off. Which is one more reason it’s easier to hide among straight people, because there’s no test I need to pass for that.
Agreed. Non-straight Non-gay people get enough bullshit from straight people and gay people about our sexualities/identities/etc. It gets messy in the middle, so it’s no surprise to me that different people will find different words to be more or less appropriate for them. And sometimes those words become fraught, political, complicated…..
And I certainly respect people who explain or defend their OWN word choice. I’m even often grateful for links, book recs, etc for points of view I’m unfamiliar with.
But I’m really rather tired of the inter-bi/pan/queer/etc policing. I’m picking the word that’s best for me, for right now, and everyone who wants to lecture me about how, as someone who identified as bisexual, I am somehow oppressing the other bisexuals for saying I don’t like the word bisexual? Or suggest I must be uneducated and thus I am deserving of anger?
Hrm. I think that perhaps your comment could be read to suggest that identifying as “bisexual” is somehow more appropriate/better/preferable than other identifications, like “queer” or “pansexual”.
Is that what you’re saying?
Not at all. My anger comes from the fact the OK Cupid people cited in the piece have some internalized bigotry toward bisexuality in general. Not to mention their complete ignorance to the fact genderqueer and non-binary bisexuals exist, and that many bi people are attracted to more than two genders (and I imagine would end up having their identities policed by others because “bi- means ‘two'”). Hell, that one woman Frankie went on a date with threw out an egregious stereotype (“Bisexual makes me think of straight girls who make out at bars for male attention.”; emphasis in original).
It’s nothing to do with how they identify for themselves.
The Confederate flag thing… I often hear people try to justify it by saying stuff like, “It’s part of Southern culture!” But in my personal experience that is not the people who are flying the stars and bars. My grandmother is a Southern Lady and lived in Columbia, SC until recently. Whenever I’d visit, she’d point out a restaurant owned by a guy who had the flag painted on his truck, and say she thought it was utterly distasteful and that we shouldn’t eat there. On the other hand, way up in Wisconsin, I parked next to a (white, in case it wasn’t obvious) kid in high school who also had Confederate flag truck accessories, and he wasn’t the only born and bred northerner to glorify that thing, let me tell you.
Tl;dr: “Southern culture” is not an excuse to keep the flag around, because it’s not Southerners who fly it, it’s racists.
Yeah, I mean — for one thing, it’s not even the flag of the Confederacy, it’s the battle flag of the army of Virginia, so what is it even doing in South Carolina in the first place?
For another, they didn’t start flying it until 1954, when they were mad about all those black people wanting rights.
So, yeah, it’s pretty inescapably the flag of racists.
(I live in Pennsylvania — Pennsylvania! A state founded to give a haven for religious refugees! An enormous part of the underground railroad, with a thriving black community that helped educate slaves! We made the first abolitinist societies, we organized the AME Church that this motherfucker just shot up! We fought and WON the only battle of the Civil War in Union Territory! — and there are Confederate god-damn flags everywhere, and let me tell you, it is not because those guys care about their Southern Heritage.)
Pennsylvania, dude. Dude. I live in NJ and we go to a suburb way way way outside of Philly to visit friends (corporate headquarters land, really) and I consistently marvel at the amount of confederate flags on cars.
The thing about PA is that the state’s proud heritage is in kicking Confederate ass- thousands of kids take field trips to Gettysburg every year- but the thousands of racist rednecks in Pennsyltuckey ain’t learnd their histry so good.
Yeah, despite our history of rebel ass-kicking, I think a lot of PA schools give short-shrift to the moral discussions of the civil war. I mean, I went to a school with a population where the black kids were the largest plurality (40-something percent, compared to 30-something white kids), and even there we STILL wouldn’t say, “Oh, right, it was very good that the South got its ass kicked.”
I have seen it more than a dozen times in the Canadian suburb I live in. I think it would be a difficult stretch for them to claim heritage.
Yeah, I’m from Southern Ontario, and there was a house along the route I used to take to work that flew the stars and bars out front. YOU’RE NOT EVEN AMERICAN. WE NEVER HAD A CIVIL WAR. TAKE THAT SHIT DOWN.
(I also see a lot of Confederate license plates on motorcycles, but I comfort myself with the thought that they’re probably from across the border.)
I saw it once in Yorkshire. From a car that had “Dixieland” as its car horn. I’m going to assume that they’re Dukes of Hazzard fans who don’t really get why it’s all a problem, but wtf?
YES! I see it all the time in BC/Alberta, and I’m like, ok, there is no possible reason for that other than being a racist jerk.
I need to educate myself a little bit more so I can calmly take them down with the facts.
Yep, there’s a guy who drives around my northern Canadian town with one on his truck. We’re not even in the Canadian south!
I’ll see your Pennsyltucky and raise you Illinois, aka the Land of Lincoln. It’s enough to make me want to take up necromancy so that Zombie Lincoln will smash his way out of his huge-ass tomb in Springfield and choke out peckerwoods until they get the message.
Californian here! I saw it a lot on cars growing up, almost surely to indicate the owner’s racism considering California still belonged to Mexico at the time.
(I first read this to mean you were growing up back when California was still part of Mexico and had a very puzzled couple of moments.)
Here’s an item for sale in the gift shop in Mackinaw City, MI. 254 miles NORTHwest of Windsor, ON, CA.
Very well said.
I’ve seen it on the back of a truck in Ely, Minnesota, which is close to as far north as you can get in the continuous 48 states.
I live in northern MN, and I 100% agree that the trucks-n-guns-n-racism thing exists here.
I always laughed at the ones who flew the flag where I grew up – East TN and western NC were heavily pro-Union, yet these ignorant good ol’ boys think they’re honoring their ancestors? They’d be rolling in their graves.
Yep. I grew up in West Virginia, a state that LITERALLY EXISTS BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T WANT TO SECEDE FROM THE UNION, and that shit is everywhere. It’s embarrassing.
You know how everybody has, at a minimum, That One Racist Uncle? For many years my own Racist Uncle was heavily involved with a Civil War reenactment group in which he personally played Robert E. Lee.
What is it with border states? I saw these people when I lived in Missouri, which was literally at war with itself during the conflict. I was up north, in a town that had been a union stronghold. But you can just guess how much these types know about Bleeding Kansas. Heritage my ass.
My ex-boss is a huge Civil War buff. Now that he’s no longer around, the paintings of Stonewall Jackson and the surrender at Appomatox have been replaced by my other, non-douchebag boss, and I feel so much better.
Also “people think it symbolizes hate but it doesn’t!” Maybe not to you, but you know damn well what it means to everyone else who sees it.
“It doesn’t symbolize hate! It just symbolizes me not giving a shit about you!”
Growing up in western New York I saw my fair share of them every time I went to see my mom’s family out in farm country, which I (kind of depressingly) expected. The worst, though, was when I saw confederate flag memorabilia FOR SALE at the New York State Fair. I’ve always wanted to ask people that own things with That Flag on it if they remember which side our state fought on.
I don’t want to come across as apologizing for the Confederate flag — I think it’s horrible — but my husband’s ex grew up in Texas and genuinely did not know it was a symbol of hatred or anything but a symbol of Southern heritage until her new college friends (also raised in Texas) were telling her not to wear her Confederate headband when they went out because they were embarrassed.
It’s like its own form of Southern strategy — the racism becomes subliminal, people can be genuinely unaware of what it means, they don’t realize they’re representing anything but what they’ve been told, and that makes me more upset than anything else.
okay, so I get that people can not have a good history education, and I get that people can do things without thinking about them, but did she now know that it was a symbol of the Confederacy? Or had she just not given any thought to what that meant?
I don’t want to pile on to this woman, but I still have to side-eye. For most Americans, their first introduction to the Confederacy is in direct conjunction with learning about slavery. It would take some aggressive blind-eye turning to forget that correlation, even if she didn’t know about its more recent history and connection to hate crimes. It would be like wearing a headband that said “Hiroshima” and being like, “What? It’s a city in Japan!”
I mean, I did say “raised in Texas”, where American history education surrounding the Civil War doesn’t delve into the primary sources about how they were seceding to preserve slavery, and where it’s replaced with a lot of “states’ rights!” rhetoric and “southern way of life” euphemisms, and where people are taught “yes, slavery was a cause, but it couldn’t have been THE cause, because the majority of white people didn’t own slaves!” (Though, to be fair, the people telling her that it was racist and she needed to stop wearing it — I think it was actually a bandanna, not a headband — were also raised and educated in Texas, and this went down at a Texas public university.)
I wouldn’t say she’s completely undeserving of side-eye, or that even after this incident that she was completely free of racism — but for her, wearing the bandanna wasn’t a conscious act of racism, because she genuinely didn’t have the same association with the Confederate flag that other people did. And that’s something that’s really hard to explain without just screaming, “BUT IT’S RACIST!” Because the response is, “NO IT’S NOT, YOU’RE THE REAL RACIST FOR SEEING RACE IN IT!” — and for them, it’s actually true, because it’s so coded and abstract that it doesn’t register as racist anymore. It’s like Atwater on the Southern Strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Southern_Strategy). How do you actually educate people about this without delving into two different parallel conversations? My husband’s ex stopped wearing the Confederate bandanna because people she trusted who were well-versed in her culture were able to sit her down and explain its history to her, but that takes a lot of time and effort.
Yeah, I don’t buy it. I also grew up in Texas and got my own shitty education at unaccredited schools (which includes, in Texas, a year of Texas history, which is mostly focused on the Texan war of independence from Mexico, and brief time as a Republic before the state was absorbed by the U.S. — with much relief, because they weren’t doing so great as their own country), but it didn’t escape my notice that the South had slaves and the North didn’t. I learned about the Mason-Dixon line, what went down in Missouri, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Restoration (including the 40-acres-and-a-mule thing).
Sure, it’s possible that she never looked at her Confederate bandanna with the mindset of celebrating racism. But she knew it was tied to the Confederacy, and thus to the Civil War, and also the Confederacy was the side that wanted to keep their slaves. That ought to be enough.
I dunno if there’s a universal way to deal with it — it’s really a case-by-case basis, and I’m afraid a lot of people are too thick-headed or, more likely, KNOW WHAT THE HELL THEY’RE CELEBRATING to listen to anything like reason. But the best way is to hear it from people close to the person, like happened with your husband’s ex. Those were good friends.
But even setting aside the slavery aspect (because I guess we can pretend that’s possible), it’s still a symbol of treason. It’s a symbol of people being willing to kill their fellow Americans because they didn’t like the decisions made by their democratically-elected leaders.
Co-sign! I grew up in Texas (as the daughter of New England Yankees) and didn’t consider the Confederate flag as a symbol of racist oppression until someone pointed that out to me because HEY one of the most insidious aspects of white privilege is the ease with which institutional racism can fly under one’s radar, even when it should be glaringly obvious.
That also means that some people are persuadable on this issue. Some people, though probably not most of the people who own and proudly fly the flag, are susceptible to simple instruction and argument and plain ol’ thinking about it for a dang minute.
That matters, because the people who aren’t ardent about the flag but sorta-kinda don’t see the big deal — people who just shrug over it, people who accept it as a banner of a region’s history without considering what that history represents, people like I used to be — help normalize that symbol of institutionalized, legalized, mythologized racism and oppression as a part of daily life.
Survey time! What do Toasties use to ride their crimson wave? I use a weird little product called the SoftCup, which is like a disposable Diva Cup? It seems to work okay and so far I still have both my legs. I stopped using tampons after I realized they were drying me right out, and also, not even working all that well.
But honestly, by the fourth day, I’m just wearing dark pants and black panties and being That Girl.
I use pads, and reading that TSS article made me so, so grateful I do. I tried tampons, but insertion kinda hurt (a burning sensation?) and I just kept being aware of it being there. I wonder if it’s related to the fact that I can’t stand contacts or ear buds either. That’s also why I’m not that eager to try the Diva Cup, though I have a friend who loves it.
BTW: such victim blaming in the comments! And not one word against the tampon manufacturers. Depressing.
I also have never been able to wear tampons because they were really uncomfortable to put in. I’m relieved to find I’m not the only one!
I mentioned this above just now, but I have always preferred pads. Insertion when I was younger (before I started having sex or using penetrative toys) was uncomfortable, and while the discomfort’s not there anymore I still just prefer pads.
I find my cup way more comfortable and ignorable than tampons (since tampons dry me out and are fairly low, where as my cup sits way higher most of the time). The disliking earbuds honestly seems more relevant to me (although I sometimes dislike earbuds myself). I guess it’s all that I find pads way MORE unpleasant than any of the other alternatives…..
If you weren’t thrilled with your current options, you could always try something disposable, like the Insteads, see how annoying that is for you, and then regroup with the additional data?
I use panty liners. My period is very light, so I normally don’t need anything more than that. I’ve never used tampons–I tried once, and I just thought they were uncomfortable and hard to insert, and I’d rather just use pads.
Tampons and/or pads, total traditionalist. And my workplace actually provides them for free in the bathroom, which is a pretty rad thing I gotta say. (Maybe the only benefit to working in a massively gender-imbalanced field.) On the other hand, the work bathrooms are multi-stall, so even though I’ve been weighing a cup, I wouldn’t be able to properly (and discreetly) clean it out.
For what it is worth, if you are interested in a cup, most allow you to go easily 12 hrs without having to deal with it, so there is very rarely an instance of need-to-deal-with-in-a-public-restroom. I had the same reservations initially, but made the switch a few months ago, and WILL NEVER GO BACK now!
I clean mine out at work all the time. I just dump it in the toilet and wipe it off, then wash it more thoroughly at home. On the first couple of days I have to empty it pretty much every hour or two, but it’s never been a problem.
Before I was on the pill I used tampons, and occasionally pads at the same time, but I always slept in a pad, I didn’t know that women slept with tampons in! These days, if I have a period, I just use a pad since its usually pretty light
I…didn’t realize that people didn’t sleep with tampons in. I slept with them in for years.
But the box says never wear it for more than 8 hours at most, and I sleep for more than 8 hours, so I always assumed it was something you shouldn’t do!
i honestly just never put that together. also, i think the warning text (or possibly my mom?) says something like “TSS is most commonly associated with a brand of tampons that has not been on the market in decades, but…” which made me sort of disregard it as a real issue.
I also thought it was associated more with the super-duper heavy flow tampons – the extra absorbent? I never use those (and I also rarely sleep for as long as 8 hours at a stretch, alas) so I never thought to worry much about it.
A Keeper and I love it, although I try to keep the evangelizing only to those who ask. I could never get a tampon to fit right and kind of hated wearing pads, plus all the waste that comes along with it. I spent the first few years praising the cup audibly whenever I was on my period.
I’ve been using the Diva cup for a few years now. It’s great! I don’t feel it at all when it’s in, and I’ve never needed to empty it out more than twice a day (morning & night) even on heavy flow days. I just got my period back after having my son, and even though it’s been a nice year and a half respite, I don’t mind too much because a menstrual cup takes a lot of annoyances out of the equation.
Tampons for the first two days while it’s heavy (OB non-applicator), and I go through them like nuts those two days. Then I basically bleed myself out and I switch to pads. I always use pads when I sleep though.
I used a DivaCup and loved it, and then I got a Mirena and all I need is a pantiliner for, like, a day and a half a month. I don’t evangelize but this seems like the thread to say BEST DECISION EVER.
SAME. Before I got my Mirena I’d use a combination of pads and tampons, whatever I felt like or required at the time, but now that I have an IUD I don’t really menstruate? (This is a common and known side effect, so it’s not weird!) and if I do it’s like, one day. Tops. I don’t even need a pantiliner half the time.
Tampons day and night for the first couple of days, then tampons during the day and pads at night for the next couple of days, then panty liners for the last day or two.
Does anyone else have crazy brand loyalty to their feminine hygiene products?
Tampax and Always all the way. I don’t think I could ever change.
Yup! I always use the same pads. Once, back when I was still living at home, I made the mistake of just telling my mom the brand and she came back with pads with wings, which are just the worst. Mostly, I like the kind I use because they have a specific wrapper that you can then use to neatly roll up the used one.
I’m just the opposite. PADS WITH WINGS all the way.
I wouldn’t actually call it brand loyalty, but I hate buying different products, even within the same brand. Who knows what it will look like and how it will feel!
Yep – Bodyform pads with wings for me!
I do! I do! I was a tampax pearl (compact)/always pad loyalist for years until I finally decided to give OB another shot. I will never go back. I thought it was normal to have to wear a pad as backup with a tampon, but nope, it was just because my beloved pearls were not getting the job done. On my heaviest day, I might use a liner as backup, but that’s pretty much it. I’m thinking of trying the diva cup sometime soon, and if it works out, I’m sure I’ll be just as crazy loyal to that!
OH yes. Always ultra-thin with wings (regular/everyday and long/overnight). Every other brand I’ve tried has had something that just didn’t feel right – wings were scratchy or not adhesive enough, not long enough, made of weird synthetic-feeling material… And when I do use tampons, it’s the Tampax with the “pearl” applicator. A few months ago I had to borrow one from a friend, and she uses the cardboard applicator, and I’m not even sure I was able to insert it.
Cardboard applicators are THE WORST. I am a Playtex Sport loyalist, but I’ve used Tampax Pearl before and they’re not bad (but not good enough to make me switch, so).
and why is it that they only ever put cardboard applicators in bathroom vending machines? so NOT ONLY do you have a vagina blood emergency but you now have to pay a full dollar for one single tampon AND it’s in cardboard. bastards.
I just recently had to buy a new kind of pad because it was the only thing my neighborhood mom & pop pharmacy had. They were RIDICULOUS. The wrapper looked like Lisa Frank threw up all over the place, the absorbent material was some kind of space age material, and they were scented to smell like fucking candy! Those fuckers gave me a rash on my vag and made me feel like a pre-teen. NEVER AGAIN.
Kotex Click. they’re super tiny and the wrappers are bold, dark colors instead of fucking pastels.
I employ the tried and true strategy of skipping the placebos and stacking pack after pack of active birth control pills until I start getting random spotting, at which point I finally give my confused womb a week off and then start the whole mess over again.
I really should just be a responsible adult and talk to my doctor about switching to that pill where you only get 4 periods a year, but.. ¯(°_o)/¯
I take three strips in a row*, meaning I get a period every 10th week, i.e. about 5 times a year. It’s pretty great. I’ve only gotten spotting once, so I think it’s probably okay – and my periods are much less painful since I started doing it.
*fun fact! Most pills in Europe don’t have the placebos!
My pharmacist gave me the choice of getting the pack with placebos and the pack without. I went for the placebos because I’m a bit scatterbrained and I figured they would help me keep track of when I was supposed to start the next round of active pills. Of course, given that I later decided to just keep on taking the actives indefinitely, that ended up being moot.
Honestly, I’ve always thought the placebo’s were a good idea: I always stress about remembering to start up again, and that’s the riskiest period to forget it (in terms of getting pregnant)
Pads. Paaaads. I also have a problem with drying out. I wish it was less messy, but oh well. Even with tampons I had to wear panty liners.
A mix of Diva Cup and being That Girl, because the HBC I’m on makes my period light super light and, well, dried up by the time it exits.
Diva Cup! Never again will I misjudge and remove a dry tampon! (This is a helpful and creative curse for your enemies, fyi).
Yes! Instead SoftCups! I use them doubled up with overnight pads when I need to be out and away from bathrooms for a long day (like 10-12 hours in the field), and I actually wash and reuse them for a single period. On days when I am near a bathroom, I just use overnight pads. I like the overnight ones because when I’m a-flowing, it’s really heavy, plus you get a lot of coverage. The Always Infinity are the best pads I’ve used ever, except they have a weird smell 🙂
I also stopped using tampons for that reason,as they were causing yeast infections, ugh.
I used Instead for quite a while and loved them. Then they stopped selling them at Target and I cried a little bit inside. So I buckled down and got a mooncup. That with pantyliners works pretty awesome for me.
I have found them pretty reliably at Rite Aid if you have those.
I use a Diva cup and PIMP panty liners. The first day or two of my period, I’m emptying my cup every one to two hours. Those people in an earlier post’s thread about this topic were talking about putting in their cup before work and then emptying it when they got home and I was like WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. So jealous. So, so jealous.
I’m thinking of trying a different cup–maybe a shorter/wider one–because sometimes I can feel my Diva cup sort of pressing on my pelvic bone area from the inside and it feels like cramping, even after I’m over the worst of the cramps. Has anyone else had this problem?
Oh my god, those panty liners are SO CUTE. Massive wannnnnt.
And they last forever! I need to replace mine, but I’ve been using them for three years (I have a set of eight, so I can wear them for a full week and still have one left over for laundry day). Pretty and they wear like (comfy) iron. I do have to pin them to my undies with a safety pin, though. Nothing’s perfect?
i have been waffling about switching to a cup. now that i know about these pads, i feel like i really am Doing It Wrong. my apologies to my lady bits.
note to self: buy cup and PIMPs.
Yes, I had that problem with my Divacup! Also, it’s very narrow at the base and my cervix tended to take up space IN the cup so I was really using like, half the capacity for its intended purpose, which meant emptying it all the damn time. I switched to a large Fleurcup, which is very similar to the small Divacup in terms of length and width, but it’s softer and less stabby and wider at the bottom. Would recommend!
Oh wow, thanks for commenting! I’m gonna order a Fleurcup right now!
i find pads unwieldy, and don’t know if i could be brave enough to venture out in a cup, just stick to tampons. which i change whenever i pee, and i drink a lot of water, so, i feel pretty good with that decision. and sometimes, on light end of flow days, I am also just That Girl.
i had no idea that tampon material hadn’t shifted considerably at all. how is this not a problem that should be addressed directly with manufacturing changes?
Doubled-up tampons of the highest absorbency and overnight pads all day in case of leaks.
You poor, poor soul. No wonder you’re grumbly!
Wait. Like, two tampons in at once? That sounds like it would be massively unpleasant.
Let’s just say both halves of the GIF apply, with a side of anemia. On the worst days, it can be 8 super-extra-plus tampons in 24 hours, so I had to figure something out. And since I’ve got birthing hips, two tampons don’t feel any worse than one.
D:
I’m so, so sorry.
It’s not that bad, honest! I insert them without applicators, and the worst part is only 2-3 days, and I haven’t fainted in years… okay, it sucks a little.
I use pads, and only 55% because my mom yelled “NEVER USE TAMPONS YOU WILL DIE!!!1!!!” when I got my period. My period is only heavy the first day or first two days, then peters off into nothing (I like it, it’s efficient) so progressively lighter pads/liners suit my needs just fine.
The Always Infinity pads are the best damn pads EVER though, no one can convince me otherwise & will have to rip them from my cold dead hands.
Mainly pads, with the odd tampon (if things are particularly heavy and I’m worried about leaks, or if I’m going swimming). I’m not keen on tampons because I don’t trust them enough to wear them without a pad as a backup, which seems like a waste, and they always get dislodged when I go to the toilet and have to be removed.
Mostly pads. Tampons if I am going swimming or occasionally in the intermediate phase when it’s not too heavy/crampy and not too light. At the end, I too am That Girl.
I tried cups but I am too crampy at the beginning to manage them.
Also a Softcup user! I love it because I can generally control position and dumping without using my hands (as long as I’ve kept up on the kegels). I use 1 cup per period and go through a box per year. I could never get the hang of my Diva Cup and this is much easier for me.
Reusable cloth pads, because I am that kind of hippie. They’re soft and flannelly, too, which feels delightful.
Another hippie fistbump! They don’t chafe and they breathe, unlike disposables. My only regret is that I didn’t discover them earlier in my life.
Reusables are the best.
I LOVE MY FLANNEL PADS. Sometimes paired with a Diva Cup, which is a bit leaky for me on its own.
I keep disposable pads on hand for guests and for traveling, but I’m probably down to one box a year of them now.
I got the implanon arm insert and stopped menstruating in 2011, AMA.
Aw man. My nexplanon has given me crazy spotting 🙁 Jealous of your non-menstruation.
I have the same problem. Hoping to replace with with a mirena (possible horned uterus, which is my favorite medical condition). I also found that the ring basically felt like having an IUD (in terms of having-to-think-about-it-ness) and could be worn back to back to totally knock out the period.
Diva cup with Lunapad panty liners! I could never remember to change my tampon every four hours, so the twelve hours the Diva cup allows is GLORIOUS.
Downside of cloth panty liners is that my dog goes hamper diving and eats them.
I use a thing called the FemmyCycle, which has literally the stupidest name of all time, but works on a different method of suction to stay in place than the DC/sckoon/most other cups, and it has a ring at the bottom that makes it easy to remove. It’s made of silicone, it’s got a tucked- in lid to prevent leaking, and I LOVE IT. On really bad days, I have a pad under it, but I rarely need it.
This looks awesome and I think I might try it. I am excited they have a low cervix option, since I think I have that; I’ve always seen pictures of Diva cups and etc and couldn’t figure out how they would work with my particular anatomy.
You are correct that the name is terrible, though! What a shame!
Diva Cup as my primary method, but if my period comes when I’m not prepared (like last month when I failed to pack my cup while on vacation) I will use tampons. I really dislike pads, but I will use them if nothing else is an option, or if I feel like I need a back-up. On days where it’s just a little light spotting I will sometimes say “fuck it” and just go for dark or already stained underpants.
I use a combination of sea sponges, tampons, and pads, depending on where I am in the world/what my day’s activities will be. I’ve never been able to get the hang of the Diva Cup and related items, although I desperately wish I could!
I had the same Diva Cup for 7 years, and it was glorious, and then I set it to boil on the stove and forgot about it. As penance, I’ve been using OB tampons since. If one must use tampons, those are good ones, I guess. RIP Diva Cup.
Oh my stars, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who accidentally boiled a Diva Cup dry! *cringe* I had mine ten years. RIP, old girl.
Buuuut it prompted me to “upgrade” to the “Model 2” because I am now An Old, so it fits even better now?? Getting your period is penance enough, imho. Treat yourself to a spanking new Diva Cup if you prefer it to OB (also my tampon of choice, kept in my purse and office drawers for emergencies), but either way, give yourself to whatever makes the misery endurable, I say.
Tampons, the non-applicator kind (so mostly OB or the Walgreens brand version (except they don’t make the really heavy-duty ones, though luckily since starting HBC I only need those for maybe a day rather than nearly my whole period)). I tried the disposable cups at one point, but they were messy and made my cramps worse. I used to used pads or folded up pieces of old flannel sheets overnight, but since I don’t bleed as heavily (and rarely sleep a full 8 hours), I either sleep with a tampon in, use some toilet paper, or just don’t use anything at this point. I did use pads exclusively for a very long time, because tampons hurt. I don’t remember when I switched, but it was before I started having sex, so that wasn’t the reason they stopped being uncomfortable.
(I am not terrifically worried about TSS because I do change my tampons and also because I’ve never been able to culture S. aureus from my skin, though to be fair I have never swabbed my crotchal area.)
Usually just pads, but I’ve got some tampons for when I feel like just wearing underwear, goddammit. Now I’m worried about them (my period just started after a week of worrying about MAYBE I HAVE AN ULCER and I was going to the doctor and now I’m like ALL MY SYMPTOMS WERE LIES and I’ve been having a high anxiety week so I probably shouldn’t have read that TSS article).
I’m a tampon girl, with panty liners in case I can’t get to the bathroom in time at work. I’ve got short periods (used to be 48 hours on the dot, now more like 56) I used to use Pearl but last year they started falling out? I tried a few brands until I found one that fits me better and isn’t too expensive, so Kotex Click now. I only use about a dozen every month, so it’s not too expensive. I use them for the first 48 hours then switch to just liners for the rest.
OB non-applicators exclusively here. I read that TSS is only a danger if the thing that causes it is actually already in your system? And that only 25% of the population have that thing? (Hello, my name is emlorark and I am clearly not a scientist). Anyways, I’ve always only used tampons and never had a problem. On low flow days I’ll leave them in 8-10 hours at a time.
I tried the diva cup, but it was too much trouble. I have a very small set of parts and it just felt a wee bit too big (although I’m sure it empirically was not too big) and just kind of a hassle.
Diva Cup plus a small panty liner. Oh and I use Softcups for sexing whilst on my period.
I use OB, which have the built-in TSS prevention of needing to be changed every 2-4 hours depending on what day of my cycle I’m at (I don’t like using the SUPER EXTRA HUGE ones). I’ve seriously thought about getting a cup but I’m going to be getting an IUD soon and I’ve heard…things…about IUDs and the natural-suction-y-ness of cups so haven’t pursued it. (Though ideally after 6 months of of the IUD I won’t need much of anything!)
They’ve done a study, and you can safely use cups with an iud! I’ve had my IUD since 2006 (I have the copper one, so I still get my period) and have used cups the whole time.
Diva Cup! Also, this feels like a safe space to admit that I then pour that Crimson Residue into a big jar of water and pour it on my tomatoes.
A blogger I used to follow in college used a sponge and squeezed it out onto her houseplants, IIRC. I remember being completely fascinated by that.
I’ve yet to have a tomato harvest that isn’t eaten by insects, but the plants themselves grow amazingly well. And I figure this is cheaper and easier than buying blood meal and mixing that with water to pour on my tomatoes.
*ponders whether the cactus would like this*
Human blood to appease the tomato gods.
Happy diva cup user here. I might buy a new one soon, just because this one has been going strong for 10 years. It’s the only way I can sleep through the night on my period (I always managed to leak through/around pads)
Also: LUBE. For anyone using insertables (tampons or cups) and finding it uncomfortable, I strongly recommend trying again with a little bit of lube, if you haven’t.
A cup, but even after trying another kind I find them leaky. I might go back to softcups. Or sponges.
I’m amazed by the number of women here who just use pads. By the end of my very first period I was begging my mom to use tampons (she was weirded out by fifteen-year-old me sticking something in her vagina, which is…..lol-inducing). I hate hate HATE that gushy feeling when I stand up after sitting. I hate feeling wet. And the blood always manages to get into my ass-crack!
Hell, once I started using tampons, I started using them at night before I knew you weren’t supposed to, because I was tired of having blood in my ass crack and leaking everywhere. Fuck pads forever except as backup.
I should probably have waited a few days until my period finished before reading that TSS article. I should have, but I didn’t. Guess I’ll be spending the next couple of days being extra-paranoid!
Same D:
When Governor Nikki Haley was asked about the Confederate flag’s dubious official presence in 2014, she answered, “What I can tell you is over the last three and a half years, I spent a lot of my days on the phones with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state. I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.”
I don’t think I can fathom the amount of willful ignorance and deeply imbedded racism that must be her birthright, for her – the LEADER OF THE STATE – to spout such insane bullshit.
Also, while reading the New Yorker article, I was struck with the notion that we are going to have more race riots on our hands soon. It won’t be violence for its own sake – it will be well-deserved, long-brewing, and – I hope – what finally brings some change.
Why, why, WHY can’t we get our shit together? This has been going on too long.
Funny, I wonder how many of those CEOs she was talking to were old white men who would never even think about the fact that her state is flying that piece of racist bullshit trash. I’m going to go with probably all of them.
CEOs are mostly older white men. They don’t care that your state is racist if they can make money there.
CEOs are hired to make money and are poor judges of moral righteousness.
“As governor, literally the only thing I care about in the world is what CEOs think.”
And she just won another term. :(((((((((
Well she certainly doesn’t care about race … or education … or any other public-welfare issues… I spent half of my teens and half of my 20s in North Carolina, which was bad enough, and SC is just so much worse.
That statement is so nonsensical that I would just shrug it off as performance art if it weren’t so deeply harmful.
Are we supposed to infer that she actually asked these CEOs “Hey, we’re flying the Confederate flag on the statehouse, is this something that would bother you or make you hesitate to open a branch of your business here” because – there’s like 0 chance she did that.
Imagine all the scenarios in which you could use that tactic:
“Hey, winterbymorning, I thought you were really rude to the waiter last night, and it bothered me.”
“What I can tell you is over the last three and a half years, I spent a lot of my days on the phones with librarians and arranging for interlibrary loans. I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single librarian about how to treat restaurant staff.”
“…..k”
The possibilities are endless!
Also, hypothetically, let’s say a CEO called her up and said “I wanted to bring a 10,000 good paying jobs to your state, but you need to take down the confederate flag and ban it from public display” … Would she agree? Probably not.
That kind of is the tactic businesses were using with Indiana’s anti-LBGT law a few months ago, though, and it changed the public discourse for sure.
Yeah, like… don’t put this on the CEOs! If I were a CEO I would probably assume government officials didn’t prominently display racist tokens, and anyways, I’m too busy looking at tax laws and relocation costs to deal with that bullshit.
“As a public servant, the only people I listen to are wealthy men who do not live in my state.”
I mean, she also can’t figure out the connection between spouting white supremacist rhetoric and murdering black people, so…
A good point about that traitors’ flag — man, there was a really good article I read a while back, and I can’t find it now (of course). The premise was essentially this: actually, the Confederacy won the Civil War. We thought they’d lost because up until the 1970s, we only understood war one way: your capitol is seized, your army surrenders, &c. But this article makes the case that the Confederate army simply turned into an entrenched insurgency (see everywhere the US has tried to occupy since Vietnam), that consistently fought for the same goals as the Confederate army, and that the bungling of Reconstruction (especially by Andrew fucking Johnson, that garbage shithead president), meant that the Confederacy achieved them: they lost slavery, but essentially preserved the social order that they’d been fighting for.
So, it’s a good question, why would any side in a war put up monuments and name schools and fly the flags of the losers in a war of treason?
Well. They wouldn’t.
This isn’t the one that I was thinking of, but it’s salient nevertheless: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/powell.php?articleid=…
Also, please see the historical effort in the 20th century to smear Ulysses S. Grant as an incompetent drunk, despite his being a fucking hero and, in the 1870s, probably the most popular man in the world.
US Grant gives me hearteyes, oh man.
Grant can Get It.
VOTE AS YOU SHOT MOTHERFUCKERS
TNC on USG:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-literary-heroism-of-us-grant/69978/
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/06/how-did-ulysses-grant-become-a-caricature/57485/
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/05/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-us-grant/57209/
I love this bit from a commenter in the second link:
I think at the core of the caricature of Grant is the difference between the Southern and Northern conception of leadership. To the Lost Causers, the general is in the same category as the plantation holder. He is a person close to godhood. And they had these leaders who were beautiful, beautiful men. The Northern leaders had their dash and pluck, but they seemed more like factory managers, or mill operators. No romance.
Later on, TNC compares the Lost Causer version of Lee to King Arthur.
Was in Rapid City, SD last year and dragged my friend across town to the U.S. Grant statue because damn that smear campaign, the man deserves respect.
Also let’s never elect a president named Andrew again, at least not an Andrew J. We’ve got a really terrible track record there.
When I was failing out of college my dad, in true Dad fashion, gave me a very long and emotional speech about Ulysses S Grant and the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
Ulysses S. Grant is the hero of the dads of the North.
That’s adorable.
US Grant is the one historical figure in whose name I am a horrific and shameless “BUT ACTUALLY” sort of pedant. I don’t care. Dude was great.
Wow, that’s really interesting. Because I got my shitty Texas education (literally from private, unaccredited schools), and thinking back to what I know of Grant, I would have told you “won the Civil War, but was a much better general than president. Had alcohol problems.” And I don’t even know why yet everyone’s raving about him here. 🙁 Besides how he won the Civil War, I mean.
I love Grant and I love Sherman, and I love that Grant and Sherman were hella buds.
“Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.” -William Tecumseh Sherman
Sherman’s another guy who gets a bad rap. They marched through the South taking lightly-defended military targets, and disrupting the supply chains for the army! The Confederacy set their OWN fucking town on fire because they couldn’t stand the idea of seeing Atlanta in the hands of the Union!
Dang.
Hooooly shit, I was definitely taught that Sherman was a demon on earth who burned every town within reach as he marched across the South. O.O It’s really unnerving to find out how biased your education was, years after you left school. Despite knowing how shitty Texas education is.
ETA: Hmmm, Wikipedia (I know, very authoritative) still says that Sherman gave orders to burn Atlanta’s government buildings, though some shops and homes were also burned. But it casts dispute on the burning of Columbia, SC, where it says Confederates may have burned cotton bales as they retreated.
Well, I shouldn’t say that; the start of the fire in Atlanta is contentious, historically. Sherman claims he never ordered it, and didn’t want it (though for tactical reasons he almost certainly DID want it), and there’s a lot of theories that the fires were at least *started* by the Confederacy.
And Sherman’s army did torch a bunch of plantations, but this is that weird thing we get into sometimes, where for some reason casualties are normal side effect of war, but for some reason property damage is horrific. Sherman’s goal with the march to the sea was to essentially show the prime motivators of the Civil War — the planter class of the Old South, who didn’t have to fight and never would, and who’d been untouched enough by that point that they could argue that they were actually winning — that no matter WHAT Lee did, the Union could march through the heart of the Confederacy with impunity.
Sherman was trying to end the war by torching plantations (which, if you ask me, deserved to burn anyway), but even if we concede that significant property damage is outside the normal course of war, the physical damage he did was probably less than the humiliation he inflicted on a white aristocracy that had thought itself pretty much untouchable.
Yeah, I suffer no pangs for burnt plantations. I think the one distinction about casualties are soldiers vs. civilians — the first group is acceptable, but the second is definitely not good. As much as we like fictional stories where the tide’s turned on the slaveowners, I can’t say I’m a fan of extrajudicial justice. But as far as setting plantations alight, that doesn’t bother me.
Is this the article? http://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-a-tea-party-…
Yeah, that’s the one! I was trying to google it, but it turns out there are a lot of counterfactual essays about why the South SHOULD have won the Civil War, and I wasn’t having much luck.
Wait — they SHOULD have won because they somehow were militarily superior, or because they were morally right (because, of course, “states’ rights”)?
Oh, both, you can easily find both.
Better generals (like, seriously you guys, the South had these amazing generals, totally better than their stupid Northern counterparts, who were gentlemen and scholars and absolute military geniuses, you don’t even know), apparently, who only lost their noble and well-planned campaigns because the North was selfishly hoarding all the manufacturing centers and steel.
Also the treacherous Northerners tricked the South into getting outnumbered two to one AND wouldn’t play fair by letting them conduct sea trade with Europe during the war.
So sneaky, so unfair.
When I was reading Battle Cry of Freedom, I got to a page of maps showing crop distribution in the South during the war, and saw that a bunch of food crops had been plowed up to make room for cotton and tobacco. “But wait,” I thought– “didn’t McPherson say not 20 pages ago that the South already had the vast majority of the market in cotton? Holy shit, they’re going to starve themselves in order to grow commodities for which there isn’t significantly more demand than they’re already supplying. This seems bad.” Cue widespread food shortage in the region.
I came away from that book thinking that, for all I’d heard about how brilliant Southern generals were, the people who were in a position to make decisions were only marginally less shitty to poor while people than they were to enslaved people.
Yeah, the CSA was really dedicated to fighting for an unsustainable lifestyle and a country that wouldn’t last very long.
You seem like the kind of person who would enjoy this piece quite a bit. I know I did.
http://pando.com/2014/11/20/the-war-nerd-why-sher…
Oh, wow, that’s really great.
Sherman, dang.
Oh, thank you. That article looks amazing. Looking forward to reading it in full later today.
that’s fascinating, i’m going to go looking for that article.
also, GRANT is one of my favorites, interesting to look at 20th century treatment from that light.
If you find that article I would love to read it. But I would say it seems more like the Confederacy spent a hundred years slowly losing a war. For too long stretches of time they managed to hold off changes (and to this day have managed to hold off some stuff, look at medicaid and which states refuse to expand it). The Confederacy wanted a slavery empire from the South through Central America and they instead lost all their slaves. It’s no accident that flag came back as they lost the fight over integration, 90 years later.
You make a good point that the end of the Civil War wasn’t like the end of WWII, where one side decisively lost and didn’t keep fighting.
Well, and Ellen Fremedon found it (see below); this guy’s argument is that they won in 1877, when Reconstruction ended. I think you could make a case that they won then, and have been slowly losing power since, but in my opinion TOO slowly.
Holy shit, that’s depressing. And puts a whole new light on public officials’ refusal to take down those flags and change the names. WHO DO YOU SERVE?
In Lies Across America by James Loewen, he talks a lot about that idea. Essentially that the South, largely through the United Daughters of the Confederacy waged an incredibly successful PR obscuring the truth/idealizing the south campaign. Most of the historical markers in the south still in place today were originally put up between 1890 and 1920, and were funded by the UDC and other pro-Confederate groups with the goal of whitewashing Reconstruction and slavery. The majority of the statues and memorials that the UDC erected were not even in Confederate states (they even managed to put up a Confederate memorial in freaking Montana, which was a territory until 1864 and so had no involvement in the war), they were mostly in border states. Border states which actually had been largely been more Union than Confederate during the war. By placing the memorials in these states or putting up historical markers that lie about history (which most people don’t realize, they assume they’re legit), the collective popular memory has absorbed these ideas to think that the south had more support than they did, and over time it’s led to some of these states identifying more as sympathetic to the “Lost Cause.”
Yeah, that explains why West Virginians think they’re southerners, when actually the only reason West Virginia exists as a state at all is because they didn’t want to join the Confederacy.
The one thing I can’t get out of my head about the (extremely fucked-up, blatantly terrorist) shooting in Charleston is that we already know the shooter’s reasoning, and it’s an old line of white bullshit. While murdering innocent men and women he said that he “had to do this,” that black people were “raping our women and murdering our children.” The idea of black rape of a white woman has been used to justify white-on-black violence for years. That’s the bullshit they used to explain beating Emmett Till to death in the 40s. That’s the nonsense they used to explain castrating men who were enslaved in house positions. If you wanted any black man dead up until the 70s, all you had to do was accuse him of raping a white woman, and then you had a lynch mob on your hands.
And no white feminists are talking about this, about how the delicacy of Southern women that they try so hard to cast off is at expense of black men getting brutalized and black children growing up too fast. Nobody’s quoting Langston Hughes, nobody’s taken the cultural context. I worry they never will.
The fact that, being a white woman, this fucked-up racist would claim me as one of “our women” is profoundly horrifying to me. It’s such a perfect storm of racism and sexism: the supposed purity of white women, the supposed sexual aggression of black men, the feelings of superiority towards both wherein one is seen as property, the other as the enemy…
But no, sure, this was totally an attack on religion. Nothing to do with racism. Nu-uh.
I also hate that it’s immediately attributed to mental illness. As if mentally ill people are dangerous per se. And as if something cannot be a product of both a sick mind AND a sick society.
The right-wing response to this is, to me, extremely fascinating, because they keep saying 1) that it’s mental illness, and 2) that if more people had been armed it wouldn’t have happened.
So, like, the argument here is that racism is a form of mental illness? And if you have a bunch of racist flags and make a bunch of racists jokes, you should be committed? And also we should be universally arming all black churches?
Is that — wait, are you guys sure that’s what you mean?
*slow clap* A+ reasoning
The same damn lines they drum out after every shooting (by a white male). Strange how many ‘isolated incidents’ there have been.
And the fact that most of the people killed in Charleston were Black women. And people don’t treat black women as delicate.
Yeah, the “raping our women” thing really bothers me. A) white women are not the exclusive property of white men b) we can have consensual relationships with Black men and c) it’s not actually about us, it’s about your issues regarding masculinity and power, so STFU about the “honor” of white women
And d) the biggest threat to white women is, statistically, white men. Black men aren’t the ones doing perpetrating the majority of violent attacks against women. The same white men who are holding up my lily-white purity as a banner of race hatred are the ones who claim that women lie about being raped, that false rape accusations are an epidemic ruining the lives of good men, that positive consent is the reason there are no more gentlemen, etc.
This is the thought that has been lodged in my brain all goddamn day. OK, racist shitbag with a gun. You want to eliminate threats to white women? First place you should look is the mirror.
Like, I’m not going to say that misogyny and white supremacy always go hand-in-hand, or that misogyny and racism are equivalent, but there’s a strong overlap between those sets of prejudices and the people who hold them.
This is something that I wish I understood better, in case you have any reading recommendations. Because sometimes I hear dudes being like “Oh yeah, ladies make false rape claims all the time, because of feminism.” But the most prominent false rape claims I’m aware of were the ones that were used to justify lynchings, in which case both men and women were making these claims in the context of white supremacy/ general racial anxiety/ weird patriarchal sexual politics. It’s so complex.
And it was mostly BLACK WOMEN that he shot. Church ladies.
For some reason the thing that gets to me most about this is the fact that one of the victims was an 87-year-old grandmother. 87 years old! Somebody who was born in the “nadir of race relations,” who lived to see all of the upheaval and progress of the 20th century, who got to see a black man elected president in her lifetime, all to be shot in cold blood in an attack not much different than the one that killed those little girls in Alabama 50 years ago.
Except six of his nine victims were BLACK WOMEN, which renders his justification completely invalid. That said, it does become a reproductive justice issue.
As a white woman in South Carolina, I’ve been reluctant to complain about how demeaning his ‘reasoning’ is because, look, what did he do to me? Insult me as a frail, delicate creature who needs to be defended from black men? And then look at what he did to those nine people–he KILLED them. I am not the victim here. So I’m not going to raise my voice except to join with everyone who mourns the dead.
Oh my god, the Dairy Queen thing! I have to send that to my husband. He worked at his small town eastern Montana DQ in high school, and I have heard for YEARS about how they made everything from scratch and didn’t buy the frozen pre-made vendor stuff. That particular DQ is no more, I believe, but he’ll be happy to know the tradition is being carried on elsewhere (Moorhead is actually where one of his sisters went to college- the Midwest runs deep with that clan!)
I’m from nothern Minnesota, and also went to college in Moorhead (Concordia College, go Cobbers!) And seriously, this Dairy Queen is the best. I lived only blocks from there, and we went at least once a week. What the article didn’t mention is the insane low prices of their treats, and the fact that they also are extremely generous with their sizing. For example, their “small” size blizzards come is what most DQs call “medium” sized. They really do have a cult following.
I’ve only been to Moorhead once, and probably won’t have an excuse to go back, which makes me sad that I didn’t know about this place during my visit.
Oh my god tampon fear mongering. Listen up: http://www.stuffmomnevertoldyou.com/podcasts/do-t…
There are limits to how much help donating money is and I realize this, but it is something. If anyone sees anything about a fund for the Charleston Public Library in the name of Cynthia Hurd, I would love to know. All of the deaths are tragic, but as a librarian at a branch library, she could have easily been my manager/ co worker, especially given how many of my co workers go to Black churches. A way to try to honor her life and passion.
You can donate to the library here: https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/CharlestonFriend…
There’s no specific fund in her name (at least that I found), but you can make a donation in her memory.
thank you
Yes. Yes.
My house was built on George Washington’s old estate, across the street from his overseer’s house. You know, the man who supervised the slaves. To get to Alexandria, we drive on the Jefferson Davis Highway. There is also a Lee Highway, and almost every street in town is named after a prominent white man who owned slaves.
Near here, there is a neighborhood called Gum Springs, which was settled by Washington’s freed slaves. It is still a mostly black neighborhood. The effects of slavery are everywhere around us.
On MLK’s Birthday they also celebrate Stonewall Jackson’s and Robert E Lee’s Birthday. Shamelessly.
These are the same people who passed anti poor and anti woman legislation the minute they got control of the legislature.
You can’t tell me that the Civil War was not about slavery. It is still going on. It never stopped
And for some reason, when people say “nope, totally not about slavery, no racism here,” despite the fact that they’re being openly, blatantly, flagrantly racist, everybody’s like “yup, sure, they said they weren’t being racist, so that thing that looks like it might be racist? Totally not racist,” because we’re all part of the conspiracy that labels racism as “anything but racism” and expects everyone to accept that. It’s fucking Orwellian.
And what do you know, I just got an email from the Fredericksburg Stone Center, located on Jefferson Davis Hwy.
I lived in NoVa until I was 12 (a little further down I-95) and I don’t stop to think about how I grew up in with all those reminders of the Confederacy. Now I live in Canada, but I remember going to visit my dad in 2009, a few weeks after Obama’s inauguration, and it was so exciting to get a Metro ticket in DC with the new president’s face on it – but it was astonishing how racially divided the city was, to me. Segregation DOES exist. Even if I grew up with the idea that “the real South” doesn’t start until Fredericksburg, VA (which is about the farthest away you can live from DC or the military bases in northern Virginia and not spend your entire life commuting) but I feel like North and South don’t actually matter as much as some would like to pretend – as you said, the echoes of slavery and the realities of racism are all over the US.
Nicole and other David Blight fans, you may also enjoy his open course on the Civil War: http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119
(You can just listen/watch/read along at your own pace — it’s not like coursera with assignments and shit.)
This movie sounds sufficiently mind-bending that I might go to the theater to see it, Pixar’s new animated movie “Inside Out”, with a little girl at the center of it … :
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/…
My mom, who is from Mississippi and 78, soooo… you know, grew up under segregation, wants to visit Jefferson Davis’s home with my daughter this summer. I had suggested Mount Vernon, because she recently did a project on Martha Washington, but my mom throws it in there like it’s no big deal. It’s a big deal to me, mom. I don’t think my mom’s able to give my daughter the context needed, but then my mom says I can’t give her the context needed either. My mom’s not a huge racist, comparatively? God. But, just this narrative she grew up with is so effed up that she doesn’t even realize it. There was a recent study about how anti-semitism is still super rampant with elderly Germans and they trace it back to how extremely effective the brainwashing was in the elementary schools. My mom and dad were taught to loathe Lincoln and to distrust all Northerners and well, to believe that they should’ve won. This was 80 years after the goddamned war had ended. I like thinking of them as traitors. That helps. Also my daughter’s not going to Jefferson Davis’s house. I’m ready to throw down, actually.
I don’t want to pretend the North was some bastion of equality and goodness, that there isn’t racism here, that we didn’t profit from the institutions of slavery, too; and I don’t want to pretend that finally throwing down about how the South deserved to lose that war is going to end racism. But, frankly, I think it’s a pretty good start.
I went there as part of a college course on the Peninsula Campaign that went down to the actual battlefields in Virginia. While in Richmond we stopped at both the house and the Museum of the Confederacy. Do it for the wtf-ery points. And to see how utterly and completely they can manage to side step around slavery. There are some seriously impressive historical contortions going on.
Also. They sell slingshots shaped like Robert E Lee that make it look like he’s raising his hands and surrendering. https://kevinimpellizeri.files.wordpress.com/2011…
The problem is that it’s a Grandma/granddaughter trip, so I really won’t be there to supply any amount of wtf-ery. My daughter’s a champ in that, while being pressured (unnecessarily) by my mom about redecorating her bedroom, my daughter kept saying, “Yes, but this is where my Mom likes the chest of drawers, and I think she’s right.” Said it about all sorts of things. My mom is in a constant battle for my daughter’s affections/loyalty. It’s very annoying. Yup. Not gonna happen with the Davis house.
Also, I would be a good candidate for that nightmare in-law message board for new moms that Nicole talks about. My mom is that kind of grandmother. I would be a good candidate, but dammit if it isn’t too close to my every day reality and therefore stresses me out further.
I love that slingshot, though!
A friend was writing a paper on the Museum of the Confederacy (about whether it was a museum or a shrine), and he and his wife got me a black lace parasol and a book on 19th-century mourning customs from the gift shop for my birthday.
I mean, my daughter would eat that kind of thing up. Lace parasol? Yes, please. It’s just the big picture of it. The contortions, the lack of the African-American perspective, the many omissions, the dismissal of the domestic terrorist campaign that was the Jim Crow era, the slander of people like Grant, who, btw, I had no idea was a good guy – I totally bought the drunk thing from my parents. War is hell, yes, probably many Confederate soldiers didn’t have slaves themselves, but just to not even address things just sucks. I had a hard time at Monticello with their so-called “Slavery Tour” that happened every hour on the hour, just meet at the bottom of the lawn. But at least they’re addressing it now, you know? Kind of? IDK. I’d feel better walking her through it than my mom, that’s for damn sure.
Yeah, it’s important to have a voice explaining the horror to her, not just the “romance” of the Old South. Also, the Old South can just go fall in a well any time now.
The gift shop was the best part of that museum.
The parasol’s really tiny, though, so it’s not actually much use in the blazing VA sun, which is disappointing.
The most well-balanced part too.
If your daughter is old enough, Confederates in the Attic might be a good “immunization” for that sort of attitude.
I went to the Jefferson Davis home (and Presidential library, which is a weird thing all in and of itself!) last summer with my aunt and uncle while I was MS for a job interview. I did go as an adult and as a museum professional who has a history with/interest in historic house museums though, not as a child, so I was able to put it all into the correct context. I will say, it was much more focused on the post-war period and not so much on Davis himself or really the war at all (since it was his retirement home). The video in the visitor center did touch on the war a bit, but it was mostly about the use of the house as a Confederate veterans home after Davis’ death. So if you’re worried about the glorification of the Civil War that’s not really its main story. It is operated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans though, so admission fees do support that. As far as it goes as a house museum I actually thought it wasn’t anything special. The house is super small and it’s not doing anything to address how the house would have been run (slave labor, etc). Mount Vernon does have a reproduction slave cabin, and does to a better extent address that part of history. If your mom insists on going to a Mississippi museum, there are lots of better ones in Jackson (I enjoyed the Eudora Welty House, but she’s a bit more modern than Washington or Davis!) For Civil War history, places like Gettysburg are even better. Of course, any historical site could be skewed depending on what additional information your mom tells your daughter while there.
ETA: I’m not trying to defend the Jefferson Davis home at all, as far as museums go it’s pretty unnecessary, I’m 100% certain that if Davis hadn’t lived there at some point no one would have cared enough about it to make it into a museum.
I’m all for teaching her to consider all sides, not to judge historical figures too much, be a critical thinker. I don’t want to shelter her away from things, I just imagine some of the garbage that will come out of my mom’s mouth and am actually trying to maintain the illusion that my mom (her grandmother) isn’t horrible. That’s a fairly hard illusion to maintain, I tell you!
Also, they’re going to the Jefferson Davis home in Richmond, Virginia because I can’t let her be more than a five or six hour car drive from me. (I sound like a crazy mom now, but my own mom isn’t the most reliable caretaker, speaking from personal experience.)
I need to look into this more, I guess. I know that one day, I’ll go to Mississippi with my kids (my daughter wants to go now, so she can meet second cousins) but I’m not ready for that trip yet.
Side note: How do you ETA? I’ve submitted so many comments with mistakes and I have no idea how to do that!
I didn’t realize there was one in Virginia too! I’m not surprised though, that one is probably all about the Civil War then. I’m sure that your daughter will grow up to be a fantastic critical thinker, there are definitely different ages/different environments that are better for some parts of history than others though, so I don’t think it’s weird at all that you would want to be there to help put things in context for her.
As far as the ETA goes, usually after I hit submit there will be links that say “Edit, Delete, Report” on the bottom right corner of my post. The option to edit disappears after maybe 30 minutes, but if you catch your typos quick you can get in there and fix them!
“(and Presidential library, which is a weird thing all in and of itself!)”
My general feeling: if you lose a war, you don’t get to have a presidential library. Sucks to be you, Jeff!
I dunno, I think I’d be more inclined to say that if you ran a country whose only notable achievements were 1) treason against the United States and 2) fighting to own people as property, that’s what gets you disqualified from having a presidential library.
Well, that too, yeah.
Yeah, it’s definitely not an official presidential library run by the US or anything, it was set up by the Sons of Confederate Veterans too. But the fact that they felt that he deserved a “presidential library” at all is pretty bizarre! I thought that was more inappropriate than the Jefferson Davis House museum.
Between the misinformation regarding menstrual care products and the discussions about racism, I can tell today’s gonna be one of those Practice Your Calming Breath days.
The civil war is over and
we’re still paying the cost
because every day it’s obvious
that everybody lost
The war that wasn’t civil
only put a coat of paint
on a nation still obsessed
with race as if it was a taint
So you fly the ‘blood-stained banner’
because you feel put upon
and pretend that it’s not racial
and hope we won’t catch on
But offending all the citizens
with some color in their skin
doesn’t seem so civilized
you ought to feel chagrined
And when people have been murdered
I think we ought to show
some sympathy and empathy
and leave the flags at home.
I wish I had something funnier to write about!
I love this series that you’ve been doing.
God, the comments on that TSS article are unfreakingreal – especially the ones from men saying “but what about the poor circumcised babies who contributed foreskin grafts!!!” as though that’s the appropriate takeaway here.
I mean, personal feelings on circumcision aside, that’s like the purest example of “but what about the MENZ!!” I’ve ever seen.
Hey hey, studying/teaching about the U.S. South and racism is literally my day job, it’s like someone turned on the Batsignal!
Nicole’s David Blight rec is an excellent one (he’s got a prominent place on my shelf too). There are two more historical points important to understanding the politicization of the Confederate battle flag. The first spans roughly 1880-1920, which were the prime years for Confederate memorial efforts — this is when we see the emergence of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and (most vitally) the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who would have been a really badass group of ladies if they weren’t so damn racist. In addition to lobbying states to create homes for indigent veterans (I used to live down the road from the one in Oxford, Mississippi) and doing the early history work (collecting relics, conducting oral histories) that led to the creation of state historical archives departments, UDC ladies also were responsible for:
— putting pictures of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in elementary schools to teach children why they were important
— writing and getting their local schools to adopt historical curricula about how slavery was pretty great and the South was totally a victim here
— organizing a group called the Children of the Confederacy (my grandmother had me enrolled at birth :||||||) that did early pageantry with Confederate themes and also had a literal catechism
— fundraising the hell out of everybody for monuments to the Confederate dead, including the ubiquitous Confederate soldier that you find on town squares and courthouse lawns throughout the South, as well as the big one in Arlington Cemetery
Among lots of other stuff! (Karen Cox’s Dixie’s Daughters is the one that gets into all this; I can also recommend Charles Reagan Wilson’s Baptized in Blood and Gaines Foster’s Ghosts of the Confederacy.) So that’s the first reason the flag stuck around: Confederate efforts to memorialize and venerate the Lost Cause led to entrenchment in various state apparatuses, from education to state archives. W. Fitzhugh Brundage’s The Southern Past has an amazing chapter on why state archives in the South are pretty awful for doing research on African Americans — it all goes back to the collecting and preservation priorities of the UDC ladies.
The second historical period that’s important begins with the election of 1948 — that’s the one where the Dixiecrats showed up, with Strom Thurmond as their fearless leader. The Dixiecrats used the battle flag to symbolize their anti-integrationist, white supremacist political policies. And as the fight to end Jim Crow laws/de jure segregation heated up, anti-integrationists waved the flag more and more. (Check out ESPN’s 30 for 30: Ghosts of Ole Miss on Netflix — it’s the tip of the iceberg and only one moment, but readily accessible for internet denizens, as opposed to a bunch of these history books.) The flip side of this lengthy history of the evolution of the meaning of the Confederate battle flag is that the civil rights movement is just as long. For that I recommend — link goes to PDF — Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past”.
The fight against Jim Crow existed long before the “classical phase” of the African American civil rights movement. Plessy v. Ferguson (1892) was a concerted effort by civil rights organizers in New Orleans to desegregate transportation. Ida B. Wells was also trying to desegregate transportation around the same time. And, conversely, the flag is used — and has been used since the 1860s — to mark people who support racist, white supremacist policies.
(And thanks for having such a well moderated comments section, y’all — that’s why I feel comfortable writing this out.)
Really good stuff, I will be reading that pdf when I have the time. Also, I second the 30 for 30 Ghosts of Ole Miss. Really well done.
Very good, thank you.
Children of the Confederacy (my grandmother had me enrolled at birth :||||||)
Oh, wow. That’s amazing you can even do that to a kid, and I love how you made your feelings about it clear.
So much info, thank you!
Thank you for sharing all this, it was really worth reading/learning from, and now I have more things to read/learn from!
So this link is a bit of a tangent, but the Toronto Star has a piece up about why Conrad Black is no longer supporting the Tories.
Is he suddenly in favour of regulations? you might ask. Perhaps he’s decided that taxes aren’t inherently bad? Or maybe the TRC report has convinced him that there are serious problems with how we treat Aboriginal people in this country?
No, of course not. In classic rich white dude fashion, he is upset only with things that affect him personally, which in his case is the government’s tough on crime stance and the awful state of our prison system.
Conrad Black needs to go back to polishing his baronetcy and shut the fuck up.
I would like to recommend a long walk off the edge of Newfoundland, personally.
He will always be a Death Eater at heart.
The TSS article – it’s not clear to me if, when Lauren started “feeling a little off” that was the toxic shock syndrome already setting in, or if she just had the flu or something, and she developed TSS after spending several days passed out with a tampon inside her. I’m not trying to argue that the second scenario would diminish Kotex’s responsibility to inform customers about the risk of TSS or anything like that, just wondering if I missed something while reading?
I wasn’t clear on that either, so it’s not just you.
Going with what I know about staph infections/TSS, it sounds very likely that what happened is that she came down with something else, and that illness is what led to her keeping a tampon in for excess time, which is what led to the TSS. The amputation, quite frankly, given the (actually rather minimal) information about her treatment from the piece, seems like it was the result of improper diagnosis and treatment, despite the fact that she would have been sceptic by the time she was in the hospital and should have been getting heavy-duty antibiotics.
I grew up in the South. My high school wasn’t named after a Confederate general, but it was named after a giant tobacco company which is amusing in its own way. My impression was always that encouraging nostalgia-racism regarding the Confederacy was a strategy to placate poor Southern white dudes who were having their racist emotionals about the progress of civil rights. A sort of “sure the South will rise again – you tell ’em, Earl” kind of thing.
I also never got the impression that schools in the south, at least the part I grew up in, gave one tiny infinitesimal fuck what it was like for people of color to live in the racist environment they helped perpetuate.
I have seen this a lot doing political work in the midwest– so I’m not necessarily talking about southern racism but the more general “what’s the matter with Kansas?” thing. There are a lot of people in rural America who are not necessarily old enough to have personal memories of segregation or civil rights action. But over the course of their lifetime they have seen small-town factories close down, agricultural jobs drying up, educated people fleeing to wealthier urban or suburban areas. And at the same time they are seeing a cultural shift where blue-collar white people are no longer at the center of the national imagination. Our schools are terrible at teaching the real history of racism; they’re also terrible at critiquing the capitalist and technological systems that have wiped out rural economies. So if you’re dirt poor and screwed, it’s easier to turn on your TV and see people who don’t look like you and think “that’s what’s wrong with America!” than to think about how NAFTA and Reaganomics and Silicon Valley have made the kind of jobs your parents had obsolete.
*edit– meant as a reply to wheelofthyme
I have immensely mixed feelings about this kind of thing, because these are suffering people. On the other hand, these are suffering people who voted for Reagan, and who have continued to support the dismantling of the social safety net for decades now, on the EXPLICIT grounds that it’s the unworthy (inflected with all kinds of nasty race/gender/ethnicity undertones) who use it. They were perfectly happy to squeeze those greedy welfare queens to save a dime or two for themselves. Well, now, it turns out they need the social safety net, too. What a surprise. Sorry your betrayal of your neighbors and members of your community didn’t turn out better for you, buddy. Sorry now that patriarchy doesn’t need you anymore it’s no longer willing to give you free rein to trample on women/minorities/the rest of the world in exchange for your complicity in its evil ways. Maybe if you hadn’t been so eager to sell out in the first place there might be something left for you in the society you’ve cooperated in destroying.
I know this is not a compassionate view but where was these people’s compassion for the last thirty-five years?
I get that, and I don’t mean to suggest that those votes are about anything more virtuous than resentment and tribal affiliation. But then that’s kind of the point– if you have limited information and live in a community with a shitty infrastructure and a toxic social atmosphere, it’s really hard to see even the most basic links between who you vote for and what kind of policies are implemented in your community. You vaguely remember hearing about a highway funding bill, but the roads around here are still terrible. Or there was some kind of complicated-sounding economic reform that was supposed to make more jobs (either by raising taxes or cutting them, who fucking knows) but you still work at Wal-Mart, what gives? And if your life just plain sucks and has sucked through a wide variety of political administrations, why not just vote for the guy who tells you that you are the most worthy and special of all Americans and everybody else is scum?
Human decency?
Well, yes. But I’m inclined to believe that the real lack of decency exists on the part of wealthier republicans (who, to be clear, are far more common than poor republicans), who understand exactly how these policies affect people and still don’t give a shit. I think there are still a lot of low-information people out there who vaguely believe that trickle-down economics actually works, because if they’ve heard people saying it bunch of times it must be true. But the more knowledgeable people who are actually at the front of these efforts? Oh, they sure as hell know that they’re robbing the poor. And I would rather point the finger squarely at those people than at the people who have turned bitter and mean after years of personal disappointment.
It’s things like this that make me think that the arguments about the differences between Republican and Democratic personalities are true, and it really does come down to who you’re inclined to blame. Some people want to blame the person at the top, and some people want to blame…I’m trying to come up with a more charitable way to put this. People trying to undermine the person at the top? (How you define those categories is where the tribal affiliation/dog-whistling comes in, but I for one have given up on some forms of conversation when it becomes clear that the person I’m talking to and I will never agree on holding the guy in charge of the thing accountable, whether that’s presidents or CEOs or just people with privilege in general.)
Heh, the reason I’m kind of belaboring the point is because I work in politics and I have to keep that conversation going if I want to get paid. But sometimes (a lot of the time) I think changing people’s minds may be a completely futile task, and that we can only try our best to make policies that do right by everybody, and hope that people like what happens. But of course nobody does politics that way in actual practice.
Oh, I absolutely don’t mean that the overall conversation should be abandoned! Inclinations can be changed, after all. Only that I personally am very bad at getting past things like my fundamental belief that being at the top of a hierarchy means you have to take responsibility for it.
okc in general is terrible. That “heteroflexible” option is not good imo. I’ve only seen one guy use it so far, and on that question about same-sex occurrences he literally said that he hated it and would never do anything with another dude again, ever. THEN UR NOT FLEXIBLE AT ALL U DIPSHIT
I like to id as bi even though it’s not 100% accurate because I feel like bisexuals get such a bad rap and it’s my civic duty to try and undo this? But also maybe it’s becoming/will become an outdated term because of it’s lack of inclusivity? But ALSO the onus of “upholding the gender binary” is never put on lesbian women identifying as lesbian or gay men identifying as gay and it makes me mad as heck!!!!
Bisexuality IS an inclusive term. It is pansexuals and polysexuals who are policing bisexuals’ identities, IMLTHO. Personally, I believe bisexuals will always exist.
Non-binary bisexuals exist. Genderqueer bisexuals exist. Bisexual orgs’ definitions of bisexuality reflect that gender isn’t binary (“attracted to the same and different genders”, “attracted to two or more genders”). Bisexual activist Robin Ochs says: “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”
Bisexuality also has a history that pansexuality and polysexuality don’t. The “mother of Pride”, Brenda Howard, was a bisexual woman. Sylvia Rivera was a bisexual transgender Latina. Marsha P. Johnson didn’t identify as gay. Bi people are a huge part of LGBTQ+ history, and yet their part of it is constantly erased. That is wrong.
I totally agree. I’d actually written “supposed” lack of inclusivity but then I was afraid it sounded too passive-aggressive, so I edited. (Now I realize I should’ve left it in and damn the man) But yes, you and I are like 100% on the same page, which is part of why I still hang onto this identity while people, even/especially friends, deride it
Soooo apparently Dylann Storm Roof told the police that he almost didn’t go through with the shooting because everyone was so nice to him, but he decided he “had to go through with his mission”. http://gawker.com/report-dylann-roof-told-cops-he…
We’re all friends here, so be straight with me: Am I the only person who has unknowingly lost a tampon inside myself for days? It’s happened three times in the 23 years I’ve been having periods, and I am alerted only by–I’m so sorry about this–the smell. Once it must have been more than a week, because I couldn’t quite remember when I’d last had my period.
And yet, NO TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME!!!!! WHAT GIVES?!??!?! It’s SO TERRIFYING!
To get TSS you need to have introduced Staphylococcus aureus (or occasional some other bacterium, like a Streptylococcus) into your vaginal and it needs to have been able to grow on the tampon/your blood, and be a strain that causes TSS. Not everybody even carries those bacteria on their skin.
That said I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten about a tampon for even a full 24 hours, so…*shrug*
*OVERSHARE ALERT* I think it’s that I forgot I hadn’t taken the first one out when I put in a second one.
But good to know about the bacteria! The rest of my day will be spent in a wikipedia/Web MD spiral.
I’ve forgotten about my DivaCup more than once, towards the tail end of my period when there was no danger of leaking.
Naive question: do any of these sites have a separate section for MW couples looking for a threesome? Wouldn’t that be more efficient for everyone involved? My only 2 forays into online dating both involved me going on dates with women who didn’t tell me they had boyfriends until we went back to their apartments, which turned me off the whole process, but I also think that if this is a common enough desire, they ought to get their own section…
I bet they were completely lovely to him. The sweetest, most welcoming people in the world are members of a socially progressive yet historically one-race church when a visitor of a different color walks in.
I went to a historically black church with friends when I was in high school (I am white). They were so, so nice to me. I mean church ladies are always sweet, but I was kind of nervous and everybody was so welcoming. When I think about that experience and then how he acted it just… and now I’m crying.
ETA: I was nervous because I did not grow up religious and church makes me nervous.
Okay, serious question about the TSS thing: The linked article says it’s not enough to just leave your tampon in too long, you have to have the Staph bacteria in your body already, and about 20% of people have it. Is there any way to test for this, so you can know whether or not you’re one of that 20% and therefore at higher risk? And if not, why not?
Staph is actually pretty easy to grow in the on the right medium, we did it in general microbiology lab. However, I don’t know if swabbing around your nose is a good indication of whether it lives on other parts of your skin. I’m also not sure if anyone actually offers this as just, like, a walk-in test, despite the ease of it. (It may also be that it needs to be specific strains to cause TSS, which would mean further testing.)
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I was under the impression that it would have to be a part of your normal vaginal flora for you to be susceptible to TSS. Maybe something that could be part of routine gyno exams though, if it is a specific strain?
Basically everyone has some type of staph on their skin, though not necessarily S. aureus (I was only able to isolateS. epidermidis from my own skin). Not all species of staph have the same virulence when they cause infection, and even within the same species, strains differ. I think the overall risk of TSS with proper tampon use, especially since most of the worst materials have been removed from tampons since the 80s, is low enough that routine testing for the more dangerous microbes probably fails a cost-benefit analysis (despite not actually being terribly expensive). I think doctors probably do need to be re-trained in recognizing the symptoms of TSS, but I also think we would see more cases of the risk were that high. Every box of tampons I’ve ever bought says “if you have these TSS symptoms (high fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, etc.), hie thee to the ER”. In regards to the article, I think she lost her leg because of incorrect/late treatment (tampon use is also not the only way to contract TSS).
“hie thee to the ER”
I wish they actually printed that on the box.
If you’re told you’ve got the Bad Staph, you probably still won’t get TSS, but you might freak the fuck out. If you’re told you don’t have the Bad Staph, you might still develop the Bad Staph, but you might behave in ways that increase your TSS risk.
*shrug*.
Can we just say that Fox News has entered post-Jesus Christianity and call it a day. I guess they’re all in with this Joel 3:10 shit, but I bet if I told them that they’d have no clue what I was taking about.
This one: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/chris…
Some really disturbing stuff in there, if I remember correctly.
I just wanted to post a link to this article on the massacre at Mother Emanuel in Charleston. It’s by a young scholar in my field, and he did a marvelous job contextualizing this horrific attack in American religious history. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/h…
I just wanted to post a link to this article on the massacre at Mother Emanuel in Charleston. It's by a young scholar in my field, and he did a marvelous job contextualizing this horrific attack in American religious history. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/h…
Do you really think that was her sole motivation? Have you seen the naked-in-the-forest pics? I think there has to be some element of identity driving her
Would love to read those pieces from WOC, but I can't find the links?
Tweets, not pieces (I tend not to embed tweets from POC without permission a bunch, just because it sometimes sends crap their way.)
But if you read TNC’s timeline you’ll see what I’m talking about.