Your editor is a fool, a true true fool, but as she sat in her bed on Friday morning, the thought came to her: would it be so unthinkable to fly to New York for PRECISELY 24 hours to have one meal with her dearest friends and then see Hamilton that night and fly out of JFK the night morning?
And the still small voice in her heart said: “Nicole, this is what you must do with your one wild and precious life and a whole bunch of money that you will be happy you spent once you are lying wanly on your deathbed.”
So, NYC Toasties, I will not see you, but know that I am in your city the night of the 27th to see THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, APPARENTLY and I will think of you lovingly as I drag my butt off my friend’s air mattress to go back to JFK the next morning.
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Melissa Gira Grant on Amnesty International and the decriminalization of sex work:
Using the criminal law to control sex work means police are pitted against sex workers, and sex workers can pay the price with their lives. Sex workers who are also migrants, transgender, and/or people of color or ethnic minorities are intensely subject to this kind of criminalization and exclusion, as has also been documented by Amnesty—and others, like Human Rights Watch, UNAIDS, and the World Health Organization, all of whom support the decriminalization of sex work, a stance also backed by recent research in the medical journal The Lancet. Sex workers’ own rights groups, such as the 237 organizations in 71 countries under the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, report the same from their own experience: Criminal laws only add to the challenges—poverty, marginalization, access to health care—that many sex workers already face.
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I would definitely considering buying these! Anyone who tries to talk about the DivaCup will be banned. I have to wear a pad with the DivaCup so I’m not coming out ahead (yes, I know there are different sizes.) You only need to accidentally dump a shot glass of blood on your jeans while in a public bathroom once.
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Doctor Who has cast a trans woman in a cis role! LET THERE BE CELEBRATIONS.
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Choire returns to the age-old question: wait, how tall are these people?
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Jacqui Shine on the mixed legacy of Andrew Carnegie:
The occasion, however, was also something of a victory lap for Carnegie. Less than two years earlier, he had successfully forced the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (AAISW) from the Braddock steel mill, and reverted the facility back to a twelve-hour workday—from the hard-won eight-hour workday for which the AAISW had fought. He referred to this event only elliptically, as “a memorable occasion, when we had a little unpleasantness, which is happily forgotten and forgiven on both sides.” Nonetheless, Carnegie used his speech to make his stance clear: “The fatal enemy of labor is labor, not capital.”
That the library was meant to be a peace offering was not lost on those in attendance. “There seemed to a sort of ‘grin and bear it’ feeling prevailing,” the Homestead Local News reported. “As if the library and good advice tendered was counting for one for the people and a half dozen for Mr. Carnegie.” From the first, Carnegie’s munificence was closely tied to his ruthlessness.
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I’ve written before about the incredible heroics of Dr Frances Kelsey, who we lost last week. A great Canadian, a great patriot, a great everything, who saved so many people from a drug that should never have been approved for use in pregnant women ANYWHERE.
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The darkest Who Would You Rather has GOT to be Joey v Ross:
Tyler: The only trick in my heart, obviously. I would go with the lovably stupid Joey, played by the lovably smart (because I maintain it takes a genius to play that dumb) Matt LeBlanc. I mean, Joey has the best catchphrase (“How you doin’?”), the best job (soap opera semi-star!), and the best hair. Seriously, that is some ASPIRATIONAL ‘90s floppy hair. I am assuming, considering the archives of this column, that you’re going to live up to your full monstrous potential and pick Ross.
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Deleted comments of the weekend:
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
“Not to discredit your theory”
Pack it up, y’all, The Toast is done. They’ve discredited our theory. The game is up.
They didn’t discredit it, they just said they didn’t. Ronbledore is safe forever,
That commenter’s spelling of “interview” has also been tampered with. CONSPIRACY!
I love enterviews. I google images of French villas and beaches with turquoise water and walk right in.
You know, I did that when I was 22, brand new at a job (had no vacation time accrued yet) in NC, to see a live show of the kids in the hall in NYC and it was totally worth it. No regrets! Considering that I now live an hour train ride from the city, I should just get my butt to Hamilton. You’ve inspired me!
Last April, a friend and I drove from Columbus, Ohio to Brooklyn/Long Island to go to a hockey game. We went to a game in Columbus on Friday night, left at 5am to drive to Brooklyn and pick up a friend, went to the game, and then turned around and drove back to Ohio on Sunday. It was exhausting but TOTALLY WORTH IT, since we got to watch our Jackets kick the Islanders’ butt, PLUS got to see the last regular season game in Nassau Coliseum.
SO GOOD, highly recommended, live your dreams and spend 20 hours in a car to watch a single hockey game.
A couple months ago, I called in sick to work, flew to Montreal from NYC that morning, went to the USA v Germany Womens World Cup semi-final that night, flew back very early the next morning, and went directly from the airport to work. No one at my job has any idea this happened, which is sort of a miracle because we are a tiny, very social company.
Best decision ever.
I know I’m a day late, but I just wanted to say I also did that for Kids in the Hall! Just this past May, I flew to Boston on the day of the show, crashed at my friend’s house, and flew home the next morning as my friend was heading into work. I had to use one vacation day, and it was a crazy whirlwind trip, but it was worth it!
Jo may not have said anything about Ronbledore directly in the enterview but I think we can all agree it was strongly implied.
Not to discredit your comment, but I’d say it was more emplied, if anything.
Her lips said “blah, blah, blah”, but her eyes said “Ronbledore”.
Those Thinx underwear sound great – I checked the site, and available sizes go up to 3X! It’s a Christmas miracle!
The agency where I work has done business with Thinx in the past. From what I can understand, they are PRETTY AWESOME.
reading that article was the closest i’ve come to going full-on veruca salt in a while.
But I would like them to have more styles! The only ones I would even think about wearing are the hiphuggers, but even those look like the waistband is a little lower than I prefer it.
I thought that too – make these in a boxer short style and I am THERE. (But I also hoped for some acknowledgement that more people than women would have a use for these – baby steps!)
I am a bit confused by Thinx because this is a thing that already exists via lunapads and many an etsy shop….what makes them so revolutionary?
Yes! The reusable cloth pad revolution has been happening for a long time — I have some 18-inch Homestead Emporium pads which are way out ahead of these Thinx things (and prettier and less expensive). Why do these get all the attention?
I will read, with interest and in full, about any product that disrupts the “periods are gross” narrative in popular culture. I can’t say I love my period, but I love women, and giving us choices about our bodies, and destigmatizing those bodies and their functions, and reframing periods as a basic function of biology—like crying, growing hair, or having arms—is just rad.
Friends, I have got to say that I have been following the Bernie Sanders/ Black Lives Matter incidents with some interest and I am extremely pissed off at the Sanders campaign. Just now they put up a page about racial justice — now! And they’re all reasonable things (the BLM protesters want pretty exclusively just some reasonable things) that Sanders would have supported anyway! Where the shit was this page when his website first went up? Why wasn’t this page there after the FIRST protest? This was an EASY FUCKING WIN, “Black people want social and economic justice and you are the candidate that cares about social and economic justice”. I mean, I am not surprised that he handled the protests badly, one of the things I like about him is that he is an obstreperous old crank, but he shouldn’t have handled them THIS badly AND there’s no way he should have handled it this badly TWICE.
And now my facebook feed is filled with self-righteous white people and that is the fucking worst, there ‘s only enough room on my facebook feed for one self-righteous white person and that is ME.
The thing is, I’m sure Sanders has great ideas and is sympathetic etc.. But there’s something reeeeeally suspicious about how enthusiastic (white, mostly male) people seem to be about having a white dude they can support while still thinking of themselves as progressive and leftist and generally “good people”, and it feels like it’s out of proportion – because indeed, it doesn’t really seem like black lives are very high on the list of priorities.
I’m not sure…I guess I’m not sure about the suspicious part? Can you elaborate what this makes you suspicious about?
Well, from some people it almost feels like relief? That there’s a guy they can root for, who’s not, y’know, Hillary?
It’s just a vague sense I get, but especially all the memes going around about how he was supporting gay marriage in the seventies already (when that wasn’t even part of the conversation yet – he supported the decriminalization of gay sex, which is great!, but not as visionary as it’s now made out to me) are reinforcing this great dudely savior feel.
Hm, I guess that could be true, but I think at an abstract level, it’s also a relief to not have to try to guess whether or not a candidate is *really* interested in, like, Wall Street reform or something. I mean, I am sure there probably are a lot of people who are voting for sexist reasons (or any other kind of gross reason); I’m just not sure how you’d sort out the difference, maybe. Though I guess a lot of people — liberals especially — have this idea that all we have to worry about is presidential elections, that if we just get the right president then things will turn around for us, I agree that that’s some kind of foolishness.
Oh, absolutely. And just to be clear: I’m side-eying some of his supporters, not Sanders himself, who mostly seems like a good guy.
Yeah a lot of his supporters have been pretty disappointing to me. Why can’t they all be like my mom?
I guess to me comparing Hillary and Bernie on BLM and racial justice, Bernie remains way way in front of the two.
I’ve read snippets on twitter that his campaign came up with a counter-protest chant in case BLM activists come to an event again? Its something like “We’re all united!” which is just a variation of “All Lives Matter”, which ::sideeye::
So, these things are concerning! Its disappointing to find someone who seems to genuinely care about social and economic justice but not… necessarily… for you… or the lives of those that look like you.
Well, and he’s got the new racial justice page up, and I think he actually DOES care about it — it’s a fallacy to point out credentials as evidence of it, I know, but the guy does have a pretty long history of supporting racial justice. I think that the two problems are 1) his campaign was specifically designed to elide questions of race, because the main problem with socialism in America is all of our racists, and so it’s laser-focused on economic concerns in the hopes of cleaving off the white working classes from other blocs, and 2) it worked; he ended up with a lot of white people who only want to talk about economics and not have to think about race.
Well, too, let’s not forget that Sanders is trying to get elected President as a self-described socialist in a country that’s still got quite a lot of Red Scare mentality, mostly housed in the brains of those who consider racism to be a thing of the past. As much as I hate to say this, his campaign probably DID start with the of racism being something of a third rail–Sanders is on thin enough ice in terms of widespread support that he can talk about economic inequality without too much danger to the campaign, but talking Real Talk about race relations and BLM runs a pretty damn strong risk of alienating a lot of potential supporters.
Yeah, my feeling is that it was probably a strategic choice to downplay issues of race, but I also think it was an incorrect strategic choice, because the fact of the matter is, if you can’t build a coalition of socialists who aren’t racists, then you’re not going to be able to get socialism going in America; Pulling racist working-class whites might (MIGHT) get you elected, but the job doesn’t stop there, and frankly I don’t care how much paid paternity leave I get, I’m not interested in being a part of an (even more) racist-ass state.
Oh, I’m in NO WAY saying it was or is the right tack, just that it’s what I see as a likely choice for his campaign to have made.
Well, I agree, on both counts.
I have mixed feelings about the counter-protest chant if only because the staffer (Symone Sanders) who came up with is a black woman who was/is involved with BLM and he hired her after she talked to him about why BLM was challenging him.
The frustration that some white Sanders supporters have with why the BLM protesters are challenging him is frustrating me. I think that Symone summed it up best with “economic inequality is important, but Sandra Bland had just gotten a job with her alma mater and she got killed anyway.” One of the big points about BLM is the frustration that being one of the “good ones” who does “what they’re supposed to do means” shit in the face of a police force (and government system and society) unwilling to confront its own unconscious biases and the actions that come from them. I still struggle with why and how that’s hard for folks–some white Sanders supporters, everybody who says or writes #AllLivesMatter–have a hard time grasping that.
Sorry, I got a lot of feelings about that this morning. Hopefully I’m not ranting too much at the choir.
P.S. T & I were chatting about this briefly last night–he finds some of the responses from white Sanders supporters frustrating too, and has been avoiding them–and he brought up this interesting question: why does it seem like BLM is focusing on Sanders vs any of the other Dem nominees, specifically Clinton? I’d appreciate any thoughts on that question. My mind goes to conspiracy theories, which is incredibly silly and does not reflect well on me, but I do wonder if other folks have thought/looked into that.
Gawker has an article on this Q as well. I havent been out picketing Bernie MYSELF, but in my mind at least Bernie is getting the most flack because he “SHOULD BE” the natural champion of BLM issues, given who’s in the field at the moment. And he hasn’t been. And in at least one instance, seemed antagonistic towards it. I dont think many black people expect ANY support from Trump / Walker / Carson et. al., but you would think the man so liberal he considers himself a socialist would be a natural place for issues of institutional racism to be discussed.
I agree with you and everyone else who’s responded. I just saw this post from Son of Baldwin (Twitter/FB page) which I think encapsulates the perception of Sanders’ reaction to BLM and why they’re pushing back on him:
““I am disappointed that two people disrupted a rally attended by thousands at which I was invited to speak about fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare. I was especially disappointed because on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.” – Bernie Sanders on Black Lives Matter
“I’ve always been good to you people! I’ve always been good to coloreds!” – Miss Millie on Black Lives, The Color Purple “
I got a suspicion that they’re focusing on Sanders because 1) it’s easier to get access to him, and 2) it seems like he’d be more receptive to it — it’s sort of the most disappointing that he already wasn’t out in front of it.
one of the issues here is that I think this is exposing a big problem that white people who care about economic justice have, where we sort of insist that all of our problems are rooted in material inequality — i.e., “it’s about class, not about race.” I think it’s important that we have this reckoning, though, where we understand that capitalism and racism are two separate but self-reinforcing systems — a lot of our problems with racism are exacerbated (and even sometimes caused by) material inequality, but also a lot of our material inequality is exacerbated and caused by racism, and it’s a mistake to pretend that we can solve one without solving the other.
I feel like it reminds me when Barack Obama “doubled” the deficit because he started counting all the money we were spending on wars. Yeah, it’s a lot more shit to deal with, but we’ve got to deal with it sometime; might as well start now.
please keep ranting, I’m trying to put my feelings on this into coherent words & angry Toasties are the best at doing that <3
I just read a piece suggesting Sanders is the target at least partly because Clinton has much higher security (Secret Service, big venues w/heavy security, etc). And I’m kind of guessing here, but I bet the interruptions are the result of frustration with trying to get through to Sanders’s campaign via “legitimate, respectful” means – I’ve read that Clinton’s campaign staff have met with some BLM folks and addressed the movement a little more actively. So – again, I don’t KNOW, just inferring from the news I’ve read – it sounds like Sanders has shown he needs to be pushed harder.
Yeah, a while ago a “progressive” white guy on my FB posted an article about how it doesn’t matter how Bernie Sanders is on race, because economic inequality is at the center of his campaign and racism is really just a poverty problem. And then in the comments he said people should really just be worried about global warming and that “in-fighting” over racism was just distracting from the real problems. Thank you white guy for telling all of us what we should really be worried about!
From a strategic perspective, going after Bernie rather than Hillary or the GOP does make a lot of sense to me – when I remember that it’s August of 2015. The first primaries are six months away, far enough for the absent-minded media to have forgotten all about this many times over.
Now, if there are Democratic candidates who are getting disrupted by BLM in January, that’s going to be a problem for them. So this serves as a shot across the bow for both Sanders and Clinton.
omg, I got into an argument on this sort of stuff last night, and i just posted a bunch of links, and then SuperBro’s response was “posting links isn’t discourse”— this was the second topic of the day he’d been wrong about and I hasn’t bothered to, like, break down in small personalized words for him why he was *personally* wrong.
And I wrote this several paragraph long thing about how posting links IS discourse, and then I got into how I didn’t have time to massage his ego every god damned time he’s wrong…………. at which point I stopped, realized that he was looking for unpaid emotional labor, and realized that:
a. in typing that rant i was giving him more unpaid emotional labor
b. that i should link to the Jess Zimmerman piece
c. that i really had to delete my entire rant and JUST link to the JZ piece or I would be undermining my own point.
d. also, it’s just funnier to respond to someone bitching about people just contributing links with a link
so, i mean, i did it, but I STILL MOURN THE LOSS OF THOSE PARAGRAPHS WORTH OF RANT.
Well, that is fair, I shouldn’t expect labor if I don’t mean to provide compensation, and fair compensation for labor is very important to me, that is why I am in a union.
(oh whoah, what if there was a union for emotional labor?)
I think this union needs tshirts.
Agreed. With a symbol like…like a heart with a chain around it, maybe?
There should be a The Toast merch shop. It would be way too much work for our Benevolent Overlords to keep that sort of thing going on their own, but perhaps something along the lines of a http://www.topatoco.com/ or a http://store.dftba.com/ could be a good match? And then when we have Really Good Ideas like this, we could, as a community, have people come up with design ideas, and then Mallory and the Nicoles (please read that like the band name it ought to be) can pick something, see how much interest there is, and put it up for pre-order if we like it.
…………. I did some back-reading. I believe there used to be tshirts in those dark first days around here, back when I was either someone who was Not Aware or someone who read reasonably regularly but did not yet comment (and was, thus, yet unsaved). But I’d like a tshirt now. Or a tote bag. I think we’re probably more tote bag kinds of people on average…..
yeah, I am *of the opinion* that there’s a way to make community-organized merchandising around websites like The Toast work, I think it is possible, I got a lot of good ideas that I believe someone else should make into reality.
I would buy Toastie merch. I want others of my ilk to be able to spot me in the wild.
I am trying not to be completely emotionally drained by the 2016 campaign before it’s, you know, 2016, so I haven’t been paying the best of attention. But I just spent a few minutes trying to find a piece of Jess Zimmerman on this topic and had no luck. Could I get a link?
I think it’s referring to this piece: Where’s My Cut?.
Hey, thanks!
Protocoach is right, especially this bit:
“Imagine a menu of emotional labor: Acknowledge your thirsty posturing, $50. Pretend to find you fascinating, $100. Soothe your ego so you don’t get angry, $150. Smile hollowly while you make a worse version of their joke, $200. Explain 101-level feminism to you like you’re five years old, $300. Listen to your rant about “bitches,” $infinity.”
In my head, I added: “Explain to you in my own words why “politically correct” is a made up thing in the early afternoon, $25. Explain to you why “reverse racism” is a made up thing after midnight, $75″.
Hot Taek: $infinity was a missed opportunity for $Texas.
I love Bernie, and I think he’s really growing on this issue, and his white supporters (I am white) need to SHUT THE FUCK UP. Gonna tell Elon James White/Bree Newsome/Ta Nehisi Coates about how wrongwrongwrong they are about Sanders and they should just give him a chaaaaance? No. Be quiet, sit down, and listen. You are ruining Sanders’ campaign for him, and it’s not like he’s running out to save it super successfully.
The unending centering of white feelings is so exhausting, and I’m sure it’s worse for people of color. These Sanders supporters are acting like someone assaulted their mothers, rather than that some folks calmly made space for another (incredibly important) perspective. The discourse I’m seeing on social media makes me feel like this image is not over:
Yeah, I think Sanders’ campaign would be doing better here if all of his followers were Bernies Sanders also, but I guess that’s going to happen; in a world of mostly shitheads, every major political movement, no matter how well-intentioned, is probably going to be mostly shitheads.
I’m guessing they were going to put up that page along with (but why, why wait, I agree) announcing his new young female african-american press secretary – who was with him in Seattle, clearly everything was in place. Were they holding the announcement for today’s news cycle? Bad luck to them, if so.
Yeah, at the very least, we could have done with a press release announcing that he was going to be doing it. But I guess they’d have had to write that before the new press secretary started, so.
I have been FUMING about this! Did you see what he posted on his website about the Seattle demonstration? “I am disappointed that two people disrupted a rally attended by thousands at which I was invited to speak about fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare. I was especially disappointed because on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.”
So, so, so disappointing.
Ugh blugh this was such a fucking easy win, this was a…a pitch right over the…the home plate or whatever a good sports metaphor is for something that is both easy to do and has a spectacularly good result.
“this transcript of the enterview has been tampered with”
It has? OMG THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
“Tampered with”, eh? But how? Maybe…maybe by some kind of wizard? A wizard that had the power to travel back in time in order to change events to suit his needs? TAMPERED WITH BY RONBLEDORE HIMSELF
My great-great(great? I always forget how these things work) aunt worked with Frances Kelsey and it never fails to make me happy that these bad-ass women are in my family lore as well as, you know, in the world! Hurray for regulation of drugs!
Enterview? Like, with an ent? Because I would be totally interested in seeing/reading that!
So would I, although it would inevitably take all day to read.
I really appreciate enterviews and it’s really very important that they are not tampered with because ents are hard to find and they have important opinions on tree herding.
YOU GUYS, THIS VANITY FAIR ARTICLE ABOUT TINDER
And what about unsolicited dick pics? “They want to see your dick,” insists Adam, 23, a male model in New York. “They get excited from it. They’re like, ‘Oh my God, you’re huge.’ ”
No woman I talked to said she had ever asked for one. And yet, “If you’re a girl who’s trying to date, it’s normal to get dick pics all the time,” said Olivia, 24, a Brandeis graduate. “It’s like we have dicks flying at us.”
It’s funny reading an article about the young people these days, who are my age, and not have it match at all in any way with my life or my friends/ acquaintances lives. That is not a reason to question this article, but it is odd.
However, this line does make me question the entire piece, if this is the expert being quoted. “There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” Really???
Yeah, same. It also, irrationally, makes me question what’s so different about me that I don’t get most of this weird dating experience that so many other women talk about. It’s not like I haven’t run into my share of thoughtlessness and outright offensiveness, but man. I’m lucky.
Also, OKC doesn’t let you send photos? I don’t give out my number a ton, so there haven’t been many opportunities to get at me.
ALSO maybe “I don’t get lots of dick pics, actually haven’t gotten one unsolicited yet” is just not interesting to listen to.
I haven’t experienced any of this either, but I also don’t use Tinder. Which I’m pretty sure does have a picture option once you move to chat? I have gotten weird/gross messages on OKC, but not nearly as many as a lot of people seem to report.
I use Tinder, but … barely? And I have zero idea what’s a normal rate to match with other people. I literally have only gotten two messages ever on Tinder, so idk
There’s guys on Tinder that put dick pics as their profile pic, so you see them even if you aren’t chatting with the person in question (and I presume no one chats with them because who swipes right to a disembodied dick?)
I have never met anyone who lives this life. Are they rich people? Is that it? I feel like a simple peasant lass, living a simple peasant life when I read these things.
“Unlike those who languish in the city, where they suffer the rampant hazard of wild dicks, flying at them every which way with hostility and aggression, the simple, peasant life outside the city is gentle and slow, and free. One may gather one’s skirts and go into a field of dicks, swaying in a warm wind, but they will not fly, only be plucked and gathered, and lay docile and sweet in the lap of your apron until called upon otherwise.”
– Dick Farmers’ Almanac: Ladies’ Edition, introduction, 1897.
I would like to subscribe to this version of the Almanac please.
Yeah, that and the paragraph that’s like “There’s research saying that millennials have less sex and fewer partners than Gen-X… but This Author talked to the researchers who did that study and it turns out they used STATISTICAL MODELS. So, it’s basically a meaningless claim.” Dear Author, that’s not how science works.
That was my favorite part. The author was so horrified by the prospect of estimation. You mean they didn’t find two PERFECTLY equivalent samples to interview two generations apart, the way social scientists usually do, all the time, because it is so feasible?
It’s funny reading an article about the young people these days, who are my age, and not have it match at all in any way with my life or my friends/ acquaintances lives. That is not a reason to question this article, but it is odd.
Likewise (I am one of the most boring twenty-somethings ever, and reading about Tinder and drugs and partying and stuff just makes me feel very old).
As someone who’s been out of the game for near a decade, and juuuuust missed the online dating onslaught, is this article real? Is this how people feel? DO WOMEN HAVE DICK PICS FLYING AT THEM?!
I think it’s a pretty specific subset of like young people in NYC who are in the finance/fashion/whatever little chunk of the world (so, the people we write trend pieces about).
I’m on assorted sundry online dating sites, as is one of my significantly-prettier-than-me friends, but neither of us are receiving a barrage of dick pics. So I think it may be regional? I would think it was just me except the same is true of her.
Yes! I think the “male model” part really has a lot to do with it.
I don’t do Tinder (obviously…) but I have a few different friends who do, and I think it really varies. The person I know who gets the highest number of dick pics/gross messages (on everything, not just Tinder) is the girl with big boobs. It’s really just…there’s no other difference, but my other friends actually talk to people and go on dates, and she has NEVER gotten a message that didn’t devolve into sex talk within like 4 chats. It’s really sad.
Oh how interesting (and awful for your friend, obviously). I’m better-endowed than the friend I was talking about, but I don’t know that that’s readily apparent in the images I was using. Perhaps that is it.
Online dating is the actual worst thing.
While I don’t participate in the online dating game, all I need to do is look at the Straight White Boys Texting tumblr (which isn’t restricted to the straight, white, or male) to know that it’s 100% accurate & not only in North America.
I actually got one by email, when I was not on any dating sites nor giving out my email to men. I don’t know how it got in my inbox, but it was pretty unsettling. I just deleted it.
I have been out of the game for three years, but I did get a fair bit if dick pics back in the day. Of course I say I’m bisexual in my profile which always brings out the grossest in men.
It is AMAZING to me how many men really think that women want dick pics, despite so many of us saying, no, no we do not, or at the very least, please wait until we ask for them. I volunteer with a BDSM group and a dude sent me a dick pic to a “professional” email there, and when I tried to gently suggest that he should not do that, he basically doubled down on saying that women like it.
(There are, I know, some women who do like them, but I think they are vastly outnumbered by the women who don’t, and certainly dick pics should not be your opening move).
Getting dick pics is like a cat giving you a dead mouse
“I can see you’re proud, but I’m going to throw that away without ever touching it”
– a Tweet I enjoyed
that’s totally brilliant.
I met some lovely people through OKCupid in the mid-oughts, but I’m more and more glad I met my current boyfriend the old-fashioned way–playing Cards Against Humanity after a Doctor Who trivia night.
I mean obviously anybody who chooses Ross over literally any male character on Friends is not to be trusted, but I am very disappointed in Joel for dismissing Chandler as a simple homophobe when everybody knows the entire ten seasons of Friends were the tragic story of a neurotic closeted bisexual office drone trying to deny that he has been in a monogamous homoromantic relationship with his roommate for years because he associates same-sex relationships with his traumatic childhood in a broken home.
Right?! And Joey was the LEAST misogynist of the three, for what it’s worth.
Oh man, that actually makes me a little sad for Chandler.
Oh, you just made me sad for Chandler 🙁
This is one of the best comments I’ve ever read about anything (and DEFINITELY the best comment I’ve ever read about anything Friends-related).
Ohhhhh my god.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY TIME ANYMORE, NICOLE TAKE ME BACK
I SECOND THIS MOTION
I just returned from the market with garam masala and fresh ricotta, so your service is still paying dividends.
I just needed something nice to be distracted by, so David Lebovitz’s round-up of his Cape Cod vacation, replete with photos of fresh seafood and a few snippets about his French husband (CUTE), fit for me:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2015/08/cape-cod-new…
Now dreaming about a spouse addicted to Triscuits and fuming in his Frenchy sweary way.
Those salty oat cookies are really good, btw.
THOSE LOBSTER ROLLS.
Damn, sometimes I miss living in Maine.
Sometimes impulsive ridiculous choices are THE BEST CHOICES and they’re definitely the ones you remember most! Enjoy yourself and see your best friends and eat the best food and see the best show!
The big question is, will Thinx users evangelize with the same fervor as Diva Cup users? I love how incredibly enthusiastic Diva Cup person are about sharing their good news.
Also Joey vs Ross is no choice at all. At least Phoebe was granted the freedom to date outside their incestuous little group. Which is fitting as she was vastly superior to all of them.
…and she ended up with Paul Rudd, so that’s a HUGE WIN.
(Not that she wasn’t awesome as an individual, mind you.)
The super period underwear look awesome! I just hope that the fans/users don’t do what some Diva Cup users do and suggest that anyone who wants to use a pad/tampon is afraid of their own “icky” body. There is literally nothing wrong with preferring not to do the Diva Cup thing because you’d rather not dump out your blood in the work toilet. Or for any other reason. It’s a great option for many people, but not everyone! Saying that women are just uncomfortable getting up close and personal with their vaginas and blood, or throw a gazillion tampons in the landfill throughout a lifetime, seems to me like just another way to shame women for Doing It Wrong. But, still, the undies could be great for people without access to other products, and it would be great if the cup were more widely available for people who want it or want to learn about it. I would still like to see improved tampons and pads in my lifetime though! More eco-friendly would be a great start.
Does it get more eco-friendly, in an industrial fossil fuel-based system anyway, than organic tampons sans applicator?
(Full disclosure: this is my method of choice for comfort and convenience. I have a light flow–mainly because of the pill. I can tuck the string up and it’s like there’s nothing there! Honestly, I change them like twice a day. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I never worry about TSS wi th organic 100% cotton. I don’t think it’s ever happened? But I’ve never looked into it… Cups shifted on me and always felt too big, also I’m clumsy so extracting and pouring without spilling is a bit stressful; sponges wrung themselves out INSIDE of me. Pads are just uncomfortable for me–I have enough trouble just getting underwear to stay symmetrical and not ride up on my bum–especially as my job is somewhat physical–without any added complications. Plus the mess on me.)
Not shaming menstruating people for whatever method they choose is an excellent point.
I believe TSS is less likely with cotton than rayon, but you should still do the whole lowest absorbency/shortest time thing. TSS is mysterious and I think you can get it with anything — cups (no reported cases though), dildos, life in general! Just go to the hospital if you feel sick.
Interesting that you tried the sponges — they look so dubious to me! And you have to put them in wet, so they can leak water too I think? (I’m a cloth pad fan and a cup user — never the diva though that thing is huge, and always with lube)
A trip to the dentist (that’s how Clive Barker got it).
Shudders… I didn’t know that. Though in my teenage years a friend was diagnosed with TSS (or maybe just some kind of tampon-related blood infection) and she was totally fine once cured. It’s rare enough not to bother me.
One of my college friends gave himself terrible blood poisoning cutting blue-veined cheese. He accidentally cut his hand with the cheesy knife, thought nothing of it, and ended up spending multiple days in hospital (over Christmas too). Life is trying to kill us!
I’ve seen people write that sponges work well for them, so there’s that.
I forgot that you do actually dampen them first. It’s not actually wet enough to squeeze out liquid though. Like you wouldn’t drip just that, I don’t think.
Someone on one of the RUMPs Facebook groups I’m on uses sponges *every single day*. She loves them. I thought she said she can just drip water sometimes? But I fear sponges because getting things lost in my vagina would be an awful nightmare — my cervix is always low when I want to get a cup in but seems to go up and down the rest of the time like a yo-yo. Literally a wandering womb. I think I read that the-hairpin piece about a DivaCup suctioning to some poor person’s cervix, at an impressionable time in my life (before I joined the revolution), and have been scared of losing things in my vagina ever since.
It would also be cool not to suggest that those who prefer applicator tampons think the cleanliness of their hands is more important than the environment. Not all of us can get the tampon all the way in without an applicator.
Oof, yeah, getting ones without applicators in place is really difficult (plus my flow is mad heavy and I don’t mind getting a *bit* of blood on my hands but I’m not coming out of a public toilet stall with blood ALL OVER MY HAND, okay? That’s what happened when I tried the ob tampon and that was just not a sanitary experience). Obviously they work really well for some people but it was a HORRIBLE solution for me.
SAME. I don’t need anyone in a public setting thinking I committed murder in the stall. I mean, unless I did. But you know what I mean.
Even then I’d kinda prefer to keep it under wraps.
Totally fair! I can’t get tampons in properly with an applicator, but it seems obvious that kind is popular for a reason.
The article quotes the founder as saying “Women are afraid to touch themselves, or that they will get blood under their fingernails” about women who use tampons with applicators, so. :/
🙁 I just find it more difficult to get them in the right place when not using an applicator! Fear of blood is not the issue.
So seriously y’all my wife, at Disney’s EPCOT, comes out of the ladies’ room after multiple attempts to insert a Diva Cup and says: ‘Your green ideas are great, but the problem is that the stall looks like I gutted and cleaned a chicken. So no, this is not a go.’
I am not making any detail of this up. Including the part where she expanded, and again I quote, ‘Given the size of this plastic thing relative to the size of your hand, that may seem impossible, but I’m telling you, poultry processing plants are shut down by the USDA if the floor looks like that.’
HOLY CRAP did she try it for the first time at Disney World? That’s amazingly gutsy! I freaked out a bit when I realized that my planning mistakes meant that I was going to be at Pearson for my second cycle with my cup [my flow is heavy enough that I have to empty it every 1-2 hours on the first day, so yay for the family bathrooms at Pearson!].
So last week I waited all week for the open thread and then missed it. Also I’ve typed this comment twice and my laptop ate it. So I’m hoping the lovely Toastitas won’t mind my non-link round up comment, since I can’t wait another week,
BERLIN WAS AMAZING. I was only there for 2 1/2 days, but I’m definitely going back. I rented a bike on the Saturday and spent the rest of my time cycling around in 30′ sunshine and a cloud of cheap THC. If you’re ever in Berlin I highly recommend doing this (renting a bike, not the THC if that’s not your thing)
Thank you to neoromanticism (Lord I hope I got that right) who gave me a list of things to see and a hostel recommendation. I saw all the things and stayed in the Three Little Pigs hostel and it was brilliant (E30 for a single room per night). I spent Friday with my friend, Saturday cycling around seeing the things (Check point charlie, Brandenburg Tor, Holocaust Memorial, East Side Gallery, all the things!) and Sunday I went from one side of the city to the other, first to Mauerpark for the Sunday market, then to Templehofer Feld to cycle around the old runways, and then I discovered the magic of Volkspark where there were people practicing tight-rope walking and a jazz session going on!
Berliners are so very cool, and so practical! Everyone uses their bikes to go everywhere, and they have little trailers and portable BBQs and games to play in the park. I wanted to be friends with them all but I will never be cool enough.
For deliberately over fantastic highlights of my trip, check my insta https://instagram.com/selmapage/ (I feel dirty with this self promotion…)
Ohh, that Vicktoriapark waterfall shot is making me feel all wistful. Damn Mondays!
My Friend lives right there! We walked up to the top after breakfast on the Sunday, she likes to go swimming in the pool at the top, but I’m not cool enough for that
Wow that sounds like an awesome vacation!
That’s me! I’m glad you found my tips helpful! Berlin is awesome 🙂
Ugh. Great article by Shine, but damn, it’s depressing. The fact that we’re even talking about Andrew Carnegie’s “mixed legacy” rather than his “murderous criminal history and minimal attempts at whitewashing it through scraps of philanthropy” is a sign that it basically worked. Debs’ quote from the piece was entirely correct, as was Twain’s.
This kind of whitewashing is terrifyingly effective. How many people know of Henry Clay Frick as anything but a benefactor of the arts? (After the Homestead slaughter, he was nearly assassinated by an anarchist named Alexander Berkman, notable as lover of Emma Goldman.)
I know that, because I wrote a play about Emma Goldman!
Yeah, Frick was the guy that Carnegie left in charge after he retired to a castle in Scotland, and is the one who called out the Pinkertons to shoot at striking steelworkers.
Berkman wrote a book after his release from jail called “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist” that I found affecting in my teens–imagine a high-strung foreign idealist plunging into the rough-and-tumble life of an American prison.
That sounds amazing.
“How many people know of Henry Clay Frick as anything but a benefactor of the arts?”
Until I read this comment, I sure as heck didn’t. O.o
Courtesy of Guy Noir on Prairie Home Companion: “Henry Frick cheated the steelworkers left and right, but at least he gave us the Frick museum!”
Sigh.
I’ve visited his house museum in Pittsburgh, and it was kind of hilarious (though totally understandable and unsurprising) how vehemently everyone there STILL hates him to this day.
It’s like Thomas Jefferson’s “complex” views on slavery.
gee, thanks.
I went to Hamilton this weekend -the Ontario city – so I have a but if cognitive dissonance about going to NYC to see Hamilton, and I Googled “Hamilton in NYC” and just got stuff about a college so I’m just going to leave it there and be confused, since that seems like a normal state of mind on Monday morning.
The third and fourth search results for “hamilton in nyc” are the ones relevant here.
But in case your search results are different, it’s the new musical that just opened on Broadway, so if you search “Hamilton musical” you’ll get the info you’re looking for 🙂
Hamilton is one of the very few things (only thing??!) in this world that not only lived up to its hype, but surpassed it. Seeing once was not nearly enough. One of my friends saw it literally 6 times while it was at the Public and still couldn’t get enough. Clear your schedule for 48 hours after the show, because you’ll need that much processing time.
Chicago Toasties! We were talking Violet Hour Toast-Up on Open Thread, and I said I’d go to the facebook group & organize a thing. But Facebook is very good at hiding useful things like the Chicago Toast group from me. If someone in the group is reading this, can you drop a direct link here? Thanks 🙂
I’m torn between being thrilled at the thought that there will be a horde of Toasts at the Violet Hour and whining “I can’t gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo….” for infinity.
Screw Boston.
I did not know either of these could be a thing! Am v. excited now.
Sense8 season 2 is coming!!!
Taste the happy!
Ooh, I think you just cemented my commitment to rewatch Season One since I missed several small chunks along the way. The wind is blowing Nomi’s hair around up there and I’m going to cry it’s so beautiful. Argh. Nomi.
yessssssss
THAT HAPPY BIRTHDAY VINE WAS SO CUTTTTEEEEEEEEE I just wanna kiss all of their precious faces.
Hey Toasties! I haven’t been around much, and on Friday I was kind of ill and also preparing for my wife to return from a month in Italy so I missed the Open Thread, but I just need to leave this here.
Recordings: State rep asked aide to hide relationship
This is the story of how two State Representatives from Michigan were caught in an affair together, and so concocted a cover-up that involved having a staffer anonymously release a rumor of one of them being caught engaged in a sexual act with a male prostitute behind a bar so as to “inoculate the herd” against any future revelations about him.
I… just… what… how? I read the story when I was 1) barely awake and 2) sick, as previously mentioned, so I was pretty sure I was hallucinating it all. But no. It’s true. And so far it doesn’t look like either is planning to resign.
And it should come as no surprise to anyone anywhere ever that these two were two of the most outspoken opponents of marriage equality (and supporters of “traditional marriage”), and who also were vocal supporter’s of Michigan’s recent legislation which allowed adoption agencies to deny services based on “religious beliefs” under the guise of “protecting children.” One of the involved Representatives has three children, and the other has four. Traditional marriage and protecting the children, you say?
What a mess.
Such a weird thing. Apparently there’s a blackmail allegation floating around in all of this, too? I have no idea. Like, the thread of the story made so little sense upon first reading that I ended up re-reading it about three times to make sure I was getting it.
It was doubly weird for me personally because I dated a state legislator, years and years ago, and definitely made out with him on a fire escape behind a downtown Lansing bar after saying “I want to kiss you, but maybe not in public, because you’re a public figure?”, so I have this bizarre sense of being able to precisely place the MADE-UP STORY.
Yeah, I think the one rep’s defense is that he was being blackmailed. Maybe even that he’s saying he was being blackmailed by the “establishment”? I don’t know. It’s all a little too much for me to keep paying attention to it. Apparently this has been a fairly open secret in that world for a while, and there are actually twitter accounts going back two months talking about the rumors, so it wouldn’t surprise me if someone was threatening to leak it. But in the end, I think it’s pretty obvious that there’d be nothing to blackmail them about if they hadn’t been having an affair/misusing taxpayer money/government resources.
Also, I can see how that would be super weird for you. As if this story needed to be any weirder!
Oooh, he apparently thinks he was being spied on?
I’ve definitely heard that it was not a particularly well-kept “secret” at any point. I’m still in touch with aforementioned former date person and now I’m tempted to text him about all of this.
Man, I miss Jon Stewart already.
My hope is that John Oliver, Larry Wilmore, or some of the other late night hosts will do something with the story. Somebody has to, right? We can’t let this bizarro story go that easily.
If no one does, they have all failed us. Shun them, send them packing, hire a new set of late-night TV hosts who will serve us better.
In other height related ambiguity: how tall is Jake Gyllenhaal?
I LOVE THAT PODCAST SO MUCH.
That episode was pretty good, but not quite the level of awesome of the Britney and the belt buckle episodes.
IT IS A DELIGHT AND A WONDER. The belt buckle episode was incredible — like the odds of all that happening? Staggering.
I feel like it’s a good time to bring up how they make RDJ taller: http://hedgehog-goulash7.tumblr.com/post/37654971…
I love how those shoes affect his posture, too.
Mystery Show = the greatest. The Hairpin post did include it, because of course they did.
HAMILTON THO.
I’ve been a fan of Lin Manuel Miranda since he did the This American Life musical 21 Chump Street.
WHATTHAHECK I GOTTA DOOOO TO BE WITH YOU
(whatthaheckigottado)
Oh man, that little 15 minute show ripped out my heart and stomped on it. But I am so pleased that Justin from 21 Chump Street plays Hamilton’s son in Hamilton. He’s like a mini Lin Manuel Miranda!
ALSO I know a girl that had Lin Manuel Miranda as a substitute teacher in high school. She exclusively refers to him as “Mr. Miranda” and it’s so cute I want to die.
Justin with his little mop of hair and his sweet dance moves ah I love his face off.
(My puberty is showing but I dont care he is ADORABLE)
I’m totally excited to try those period panties! I think they’d be great for a day of running errands near home or just lounging around. Does anyone have any thoughts on Lola, the new tampon delivery service? Apparently the tampons are 100% cotton, which is different than normal drugstore ones. Ever since that TSS article I’ve been feeling like maybe I should switch.
If you live in the right place you may be able to buy 100% cotton tampons at your drugstore — Natracare is a big brand (I’ve never tried them, I use cups) and the website says you can buy them from Amazon, Whole Foods etc. Unless the delivery services are cheaper, I wouldn’t bother. TSS is I think still possible with cotton tampons, but less likely. Make sure you still do lowest absorbency/least time, and take yourself to the hospital if you get ill — and remember TSS is very rare.
I am still KICKING MYSELF for not seeing Hamilton back when it was at the Public and tickets weren’t a frillion dollars. (Same thing with Fun Home.) I guess I could take my chances with the ticket lottery on my way home from work every day, but that could take potentially forever.
It could! But it would be worth it, I swear.
Think of all the versions of Ham4Ham you’d see!
““If I can own the vagina and butthole, I win,” says Agrawal”
I LOVE HER
Best part of the article, imo 🙂
Here’s Ursula Le Guin making an interviewer cry probably
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/books/review/ur…
Thanks for the link! I’ll be dreaming of a Philip Glass opera of any of Le Guin’s Hainish books now.
That would be amazing.
Oh my god, that’s fantastic.
Is the interviewer the literary equivalent of a fuckboy? Serious question here.
Shout out here for her mention of her less-read works – Lavinia, Searoad, Voices. Read if you haven’t already!
I LOVE SEAROAD okay I just had to say that
The “enterview” was tampered with?! Mallory, how could you do this to us?? I trusted you!
I saw a disturbing ad for something called a “Butterfly Body Liner” in this Sunday’s paper. I’m sure THIS must be the product that one must be completely comfortable with one’s body to use?
Why are so many people still commenting on an article from February 2014? What purpose could this possibly have?
Back then, yes, Ronbledore was a reasonable theory in its infancy. But the past year has uncovered a deluge of supporting information that has transformed Ronbledore into irrefutable, verifiable fact. Ronbledore deniers are now in the minority (as they should be).
Why don’t these commenters leave their criticism in more recent articles on Ronbledore? Because they know that any words they could muster would pale in comparison to the knowledge that accredited Ronbledologists have provided.
Let them cling to the past, when fools thought that the Earth was flat and Albus Dumbledore wasn’t a time-traveling Ron Weasley. I will be here in the present, and they shall have naught but my pity.
When I see old things like that pop up in the sidebar, I wonder who linked to them. Like, the Living Abundantly thing was recently linked to by boingboing and kottke, so, that makes sense. But who’s linking to Ronbledore????
I actually found myself becoming weirdly attracted to Joey in later seasons. It was disturbing.
I think it was because when he fell for Rachel they started to make him slightly less stupid. And I am definitely of the opinion that he and Rachel were made for each other and the fact that they cut off their love story in a lame-ass way so she could get back with Ross was ABOMINABLE.
I would really like other ciswomen’s thoughts on shifting from viewing menstruation as a “woman thing” to a thing experienced by people of different gender identities who happen to have a certain biological makeup (and not always the conventional XX arrangement). It’s actually been a real struggle for me–as in experiencing repeated personal resistance, reflexive irritation and denial–to alter my thinking this way. Because (says my conscious thought) culturally and in the social and psychological experience of ciswomen, for thousands of years, menstruation has been such a part of “being a woman.” This thought is not taking into account, of course, the thousands of years of social and psychological experience of trans, nonbinary-gendered, and intersex people, and the varied ways so many human cultures probably viewed and treated these experiences.
And because menstruation is a part of how I experience womanhood, psychologically.
I think of myself as progressive in political and social beliefs, and I don’t think in my life I have ever come across any I didn’t already hold or easily accept into active awareness. Realizing my own honestly reactionary, um, reaction to this “idea”–which of course is not just an idea, it is real people’s real and important experience–has been surprising and uncomfortable. Eye-opening as to the reactive intolerance and blindness I am capable of when I am not already primed to believe something progressive.
It is important to recognize that the experience of menstruation (on all the levels, cultural etc.) is not exclusively a ciswoman thing, and that denying that importance is an aspect of real and unexamined privilege. Which is such a non-intuitive thought for this ciswoman. I found myself interrupting the first sentence of this paragraph, as I was writing it, to point out that most–almost all–the vast majority–of people who have experienced menstruation are and have been ciswomen. Which is true. (And it still makes me uncomfortable not to explicitly point this out! I feel threatened . When I am really not the party being threatened and harmed. (Also want to say here that non-ciswomen who do and have experienced menstruation it are probably undercounted, I don’t know to what extent.)
My point is, damn, have I been defensive about this. And I have been an example of I think a major obstacle to social recognition and understanding of non-ciswomen’s experiences. Which is not okay.
Thanks for this comment. I think as our collective discussion begins to encompass broader understanding of what gender is and isn’t, the ideas about who menstruates will be included in that flow (yes, pun intended because it’s so goddamned hard to discuss). One of the reasons I’ll check the “cis female” box is because I menstruate. The other two are that I have visible breasts, and there isn’t really a box that holds a more complete answer (I’m mistaken for male a lot, but not in a way that privileges me at all if that makes sense, and I only “feel” somewhat female, so, what? Agender? No idea). So for me, the energy expended in duct-taping my own identity together frequently blinds me to things that wouldn’t naturally spring to mind, e.g. lots of folks on the trans-identified spectrum may well revel in monthly visitation as well! And it’s worth paying attention to, because anyone might benefit from an emergency tampon share on a day when they’re caught short. It’s definitely still psychologically tied to female identity for me, but that’s something I’m happy to chip away at.
Thanks for this.
Demigender/demigirl may be a concept you’d like to explore, if you’re actively questioning.
Oh, thank you! I think if I was coming of age now instead of an ancient grain, having a name to put to it would be more important, but at this point I’m just grateful to know that the extent to which I grew up feeling abnormal has roots in something common to many. (But I do really like the word demigirl!)
I feel so much the same way. I always felt very tenuously connected to gender, and finding out it’s not too uncommon has been a really wonderful thing. I’m comfortable using genderqueer and agender for myself, but I can’t imagine how it would have been to have words like that when I was younger – at 30, I’m getting the chance to feel comfortable. What an odd thing. Anyway. I’m glad you are, too!
<3.
Would it help to keep in mind that many of the uterus-having among us who don’t identify as women quite possibly agree with you? It’s not like they’re menstruating at you. I imagine it could be a major source of dysphoria to have your body reminding you regularly in a messy, expensive way that its composition doesn’t match up with your psyche.
That’s definitely on my mind–the effect on dysphoria I imagine it has for many. Which sucks, I’m sure! (Again, cis privilege…) However, I’m mainly thinking here about the physical fact, aside from the varied psychological experiences. That “not just women menstruate,” which many trans, nonbinary, and intersex folks, and allies, have to say over and over. Because erasure.
I’m not sure what you are referring to that noncis uterus-having folks might agree with me about?
I did not mean to say that I am holding onto the idea that ciswomen’s experiences of menstruation are more important. Or that menstruation is an inherently feminine experience. That’s what I’m trying to get through my head, anyway.
Sure, I get that! When I said they might agree with you, I meant that many might also come from a background of seeing menstruation as part of the experience of being a woman, which is where the dysphoria would come in. Some might have to actively work – in exactly the way you say you have – at seeing it any other way.
Oh yeah, sure! I get it now.
Okay, sure, most of the people who menstruate are probably ciswomen, but there are also LOTS of ciswomen who don’t menstruate, for any number of reasons, and there are and always have been people who menstruate who aren’t ciswomen.
Yes, we tend to associate menstruation with womanhood, and yes, it certainly plays a big part in the lives of a great many women, but it is no more the determinate of someone’s womanhood than any other biological process.
Geez, yeah! I totally should have thought and mentioned that not all ciswomen menstruate. Sorry, that was a bad error.
And I definitely don’t mean it’s determinate of womanhood?
You said I would really like other ciswomen’s thoughts on shifting from viewing menstruation as a “woman thing” to a thing experienced by people of different gender identities who happen to have a certain biological makeup (and not always the conventional XX arrangement).
One way to interpret what you said is that menstruation makes you a woman (physically, culturally, whatever). But as you acknowledge, there are plenty of women who DON’T menstruate, but who are, nonetheless, women. Therefore it stands to reason that there may also be plenty of people who DO menstruate but who are not women. Remembering the former may help you cling less to the idea that menstruation is something that is special about or exclusive to women.
I think sometimes ciswomen have an experience of talking about periods and other female-bodied things as a way of bonding with other ciswomen, and centering our own experience and making the male experience the “other”. And so perhaps you are reacting to people who are having the same physical experience but not identifying as a member of the group that you have used that experience to define. But it’s not a zero-sum thing. Like, your first period and the experience of talking about it with your friends and that bonding moment when you ask a stranger in the restroom for a tampon and she hooks you up, all of that stuff can still be a key part of YOUR experience and identity as a woman, without menstruation being a woman-only thing.
Yeah, I agree with all that. It’s like, I totally believe–ever since I have been educated to be aware of other experiences–that menstruation is not universally, intrinsically, or inherently feminine, and that varied personal conceptions of it as it relates to identity are equally valid.
What I was surprised and challeged by was my own emotional resistance to that understanding, so I’m just working through that. Putting my money where my mouth is as a privileged person.
Also
it’s not a zero-sum thing
So I’m looking at this and I’m thinking “of course I don’t think that!” But then I’m thinking “I’m having this emotional reaction exactly as if I think that.” Ahhhh.
And I have bitched about straight people and white people and economically secure people acting as if any laws or policies in favor of justice for people who are not those things somehow takes something away from their privileged asses. When such things do nothing of the sort, and in fact exactly the opposite.
Geesh! Thanks for helping me see my own thoughts more clearly.
Separating biological organs and gender identity in your brain is probably the first step. A certain physical bodily thing does not mean anything about a person’s gender. Also I think limiting your responses to ‘cis women only’ is kind of weird.
Separating, yeah, that is what it’s all about.
I asked cis women because I want to share and learn from experiences others who identify as that have with this. Others’ experiences are definitely valued here as well, by me. However, I do also really want to hear how other ciswomen have experienced and worked on this, for my personal help and to improve treatment of others. It’s just… a conversation it seems some of us could really use.
ETA: Yeah, it was wrong of me to only ask ciswomen. There was no good reason for that. Sorry to others for excluding you. I hope anyone who wants to will share their thoughts and experiences. Wish I could ETA that to my original comment.
My switch came when my younger sister’s periods never came — she has PCOS and doesn’t get periods naturally. It is fairly alienating for her, and was especially bad when she was a teenager, because these huge ‘bonding’ thing isn’t there for her. I love reusable cloth pads and am a member of lots of Facebook groups about pads etc, and a part of the culture is pretty….hmmm…. well it’s not unanimous of course, but there are people in these groups who call it ‘mama cloth’ and address every post ‘hey mamas’ and ‘hey ladies’ and ‘hey girlies’ (I am neither a lady nor a mama and I am definitely not a girl) — so I love it when some groups have rules like ‘don’t say hey ladies b/c not everyone here who menstruates is a ciswoman’. Every time those rules come up I think of her — she is one of the girls even if she doesn’t have a period, and not everyone who wants to talk about menstruation is ladies. And so I like and say ‘hell yeah’ and hopefully the culture shifts a bit away from that.
It’s really interesting to me to view menstruation and womanhood as something completely intertwined because I am one of those women who doesn’t menstruate, so it’s never been part of my experience (or, when it was, it was medically-induced and extremely strange). Gender is a complex beast and we have it bashed into our head that gender = sex from such a young age that it can be difficult to separate the two.
What I have learned that’s been helpful for me in bringing these issues around in my brain is that my first reaction to something is what society has taught me I should think, and my second reaction is what I actually believe – so when I have two reactions to something, or I really react emotionally to something that I feel like I don’t truly believe, I cling hard to the second part and work my way through it over and over again. So often my mental process is something like this:
Gut reaction – conscious thoughts – analysis of gut reaction – smooshing it down – reassuring myself that conscious thoughts are true – smoosh gut reaction more
I don’t want to get banned and I don’t like the DivaCup itself, but if anyone owns a cup, is meh about it, etc — try lube. Sweet, sweet, water-based lube (Sliquid Organics is my preference) makes inserting anything into one’s vagina more comfy.
Basically I don’t care about converting people to cups, but I do care about converting people to lube. I don’t know what that says about me.
Lube! A friend converted me to using it on my inner thighs when wearing a dress/skirt, to prevent chafing. It feels phenomenal. (I also use body oil now.)
Bathe in it! Maybe that barrel of lube that people mocked on Prime day was not such a bad idea…
You have changed my world (in a good way)
Hahah why is that dude calling it an “enterview” DID J.K. ROWLING GET INTERVIEWED BY LITERAL ENTS.
This was so interesting , thank you!
This is amazing! I just got home from work and am going to study these texts now. I vote for a period thread in the next open thread. But seriously, thank you for taking the time to type all of that out. Toastie love.
Aww, thanks! When you ask someone to talk about their specialist subject, they *will talk*. Especially when it's something you're generally not allowed to talk about.
I'm so glad it was interesting to you!
No really, I totally appreciate it!
I pulled the trigger. I'm in Canada, and decided to support some of the local BC businesses, taking your advice to get a few different types from different companies. I'm concerned that the quilting cotton ones might be stiff, so I chose a shirting and a flannel in addition to a cotton. I also wasn't keen on getting one with inserts, but I decided to try it for fun – yes, fun. I ordered 4 in all. I'll keep you posted (if you want, that might be weird for you!). I'm still voting for a menstrual thread in the FOT.
I hope they come before next month.
Thank you again for the advice. I even made a word document out of your comment. 🙂
Yay! Hooray! I really hope you like them. Those all sound lovely, and a nice thing about insert ones is that they dry quickly, so you can reuse them within the same cycle more easily. I would *love* to hear how it goes, and what you find you do and don't like. If I'm not in meetings during the open thread today, I will try to start a menstrual thread.
From BC I think I only have Mama Kloth pads (on Etsy) — I don't really like her fleece-backed pads, and while I love her wool-backed pads they are more of an effort (can't be put in peroxide).
One final piece of advice is to wear them with underwear that is full-coverage but tight. Something that sags around the bottom won't hold the pad in place as well.
🙂
HOLY CRAP did she try it for the first time at Disney World? That's amazingly gutsy! I freaked out a bit when I realized that my planning mistakes meant that I was going to be at Pearson for my second cycle with my cup [my flow is heavy enough that I have to empty it every 1-2 hours on the first day, so yay for the family bathrooms at Pearson!].