LOVED this interview about being gay in publishing in the 1970s:
What else did you acquire and edit initially, and how long was it before you decided there was a market for LGBT lit?
That took a while—I was a bit dense, I guess. The first books that really hooked me on publishing were political. I might not have known much about editing or publishing, but politics was what I knew from the ’60s, and the earliest books I really got involved in were political.
I soon came to see that this could be an interesting job, and I started feeling my way into it. The most notable book I edited in the beginning was probably for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. It was actually Ntozake Shange who raised the issue of gay books with me, saying, “You’re publishing all these women’s books and black books, how come you aren’t publishing more gay books?”
Which was a good question.
The utter nonsense spewed by those jerks who hassle women outside Planned Parenthood:
Outside the Worcester clinic, demonstrator Fred Delouis, who is in his 80s and has been protesting abortion for more than 30 years, wears a sandwich board sign with a bloodied fetal head and the words “STOP ABORTION” on the front, and an image of a fetus in utero on the back. He also points to social change as destructive.
“Society was great before they had abortions,” he says. “Because there wasn’t as much evil in the world. They weren’t murdering God’s babies, which is the most important thing.”
I am incapable of wearing contacts or thinking about contacts so this THING on fears about contact lenses had a lot of Personal Resonance for me:
4. I misidentify the contact disinfectant with 3% hydrogen peroxide for normal contact solution again. Once, a roommate of mine had a 3% hydrogen peroxide lens cleaner called Clear Care. It is apparently supposed to be used with a special contact lens holder that neutralizes the peroxide. Hmm. Because the bottle and label and most of the language included on the label looked identical to that of non-cornea-burn contact solution, I used it as if it were non-cornea-burn contact solution. Trouble was, it was cornea-burn contact solution. Lesson learned, I guess. I never used my roommate’s contact solution again and, after several rounds of eye-flushing and screaming (genuinely), my eyes were left without permanent damage (as far as I know). In this fear, they are left with permanent damage. I am blind. Why didn’t I just buy more of my own contact solution when it ran out? Why didn’t I read the label more carefully? Why was I born with imperfect vision when some were born with perfect vision?
Here is an informative and horrifying article about starfish wasting disease:
In June 2013, Steven Fradkin stumbled upon a grisly scene at Starfish Point in Washington, northwest of Seattle. About one in four of the park’s namesake animals were contorted and covered in white lesions. The seriously sick starfish were crumpled and sagging, their internal organs beginning to rupture through their skin. But that wasn’t what really stuck with Fradkin, when I spoke to him a year later. What really affected him were the arms that had ripped loose from the animals’ bodies. “There were individual arms just roaming around in a Walking Dead kind of way,” he says.
I never read Salon anymore but a LISTICLE brought me back into the fold today:
5. David Brooks: Research Is for Liberals
6. Well: How to Burn Calories While Getting Your Kid Into a First-Tier College
7. The Pour: Using Oenophile Jargon to Rationalize Ordering the Second Cheapest Bottle on the List
8. Thomas Friedman: I Kinda Wanna Make Out with China
9. Maureen Dowd: Inscrutable Fake Dialogue Utterly Devoid of Context
10. A Thing Happened at Harvard
11. Magazine Preview: A Slightly Different Take on an Increasingly Common Diagnosis
A TWOFER in deleted comments of the day:
*
THIS JUST IN: Society was great before 1973! There were NO problems! Let’s go back there immediately!*
*offer applies only to straight white nondisabled middle- and upper-class men in the United States
“No, you don’t understand, I really LOVE women! That’s why I don’t want them to control their own reproductive lives. I respect them TOO much for that!” ugh ugh ugh brb while I go throw up a bit
natural family planning is the best option to space out births. Clark agrees, although she notes its lack of popularity.
“You can’t even get Catholics to use it,” she says. “It does work though. Of course, I have nine kids.””
I….see………
A friend of mine from college is ALL ABOUT NFP, and the last time there was a serious conversation about abortion rights happening on my page she threw out basically that exact same thing: “I did NFP, everything is awesome and my two unplanned pregnancies were blessings!” Great, glad that’s working out for you and that everyone has the exact same life situation as you do, well done.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. “It works! Also unplanned pregnancies are blessings, not failures, and awesome!”
Um, okay.
Jesus apparently delivers diapers and college funds.
I thought that was the stork’s job?
In other, unrelated news, since I count strikes as home runs, it turns out I am the best baseball player in the world.
YESSSSEEESSSSERSERALEAFJLDSKJF. yes.
I mean I guess if this is the method you use to plan to have a bunch of kids, it works.
I’ve used NFP for (…counting…) eight years for non-religious reasons. (I’m atheist.) It works out really well for me and my temperament, because I think it’s nifty to have a clear understanding of what my body is up to at any point in my cycle. And I wasn’t a big fan of how my body reacted to the hormones in birth control, so the minimalist approach is nice for me.
Also, when I was ready to have my one child on purpose, it was convenient, because I knew exactly when to, you know, optimize the sex.
But! It does require taking your temperature every morning and, ideally, recording that temperature on a chart, so obviously that takes a lot of commitment. And it requires familiarity with distinctly unsexy concepts like “cervical mucus.” So it’s definitely not for everybody. And even if a woman was in my exact life circumstances (monogamous relationship, no health issues, an unplanned pregnancy would be really inconvenient but not terrible), I would never dream of suggesting it’s for her, because that’s none of my business.
Ironically, since I’m not religious, you know where I learned about NFP? The Planned Parenthood website.
ETA: I just realized when I say “my one child on purpose”, it kind of sounds like I have a whole host of not-on-purpose children. Whoops. I just have one child.
it definitely can be a solid choice if your body and health cooperate, and if you have the information and the commitment to it.
but it’s also a plan that requires women to have a pretty extensive education/understanding of how their bodies function, and continued access to information—none of which are on the up and up with folks who look to control reproductive freedom for women.
Oh, yeah, totally.
And even if you have all the knowledge of how it works, you still have be willing to abstain or use a condom or something on the days when you’re fertile. And lots of people would not be enthusiastic about that. (I am not always enthusiastic about that.)
Yes, I think I read somewhere that when done correctly (i.e. as you have described) NFP actually has about the same success rate as proper condom use. But (again as you described) it can be difficult, time-consuming, and not necessarily pleasant to do correctly…
“Abstinence,” Clark says. “It’s possible. I taught my daughters abstinence. It doesn’t mean I’ve been successful with my first two, but I have three more to go. You hold your breath.”
Right…
I like the idea that you can “teach” abstinence.
Guys! Everyone knows how NOT to have sex! We are born knowing how not to do that!
… I’m not actually sure I agree with that. 🙂
Wait. Is holding your breath part of the abstinence programme or the natural family planning?
I’m asthmatic, is that why I had an unplanned pregnancy? Not enough effective breath holding?
Holding one’s breath: Also not reliable birth control.
Unless you hold it until you die?
My husband and I got married in the Catholic church, and in addition to the required pre-marriage counseling, there was a class all about NFP. It either was formerly required but not anymore, or was about to be required but wasn’t yet, I can’t remember… in any case, it was optional for us, though the church strongly advised that we take it. We did not.
One of my friends started using NFP to prevent pregnancy after her wedding due to the wedding course the church made her attend.
She was pregnant in 17 days.
Oh man, I heard all about the mandatory natural family planning class my good friend had to take before getting married in the church. Everyone who came in to extol the virtues of NFP had multiple children, so at least it was realistic about outcomes? #blessed
(ughhhhhhhh trying again to get this comment in the right place)
A good friend of mine and his wife were going through Pre-Cana and they were assigned a married couple to be their mentors and go through the learning with them. They got to the chapter on NFP and the mentor wife said “uh, we”re going to skip this. I’m not super comfortable talking about cervixes with you.” And then she signed off that they had “discussed” the chapter.
I had to take the NFP class in 2010. It lasted half an hour and nobody talked, even when the presenter asked questions. I almost felt bad for her, but Mr. Delperro and I are both the children of physicians and the silliness and pseudoscience she was spouting were a bit much. (this is not to say that NFP does not have a scientific basis, but she didn’t understand the science, and I wasn’t about to correct her. I just wanted to get out of there)
We took the rest of the day off of work and got drunk afterwards at the bar across the street from the hospital the class was held at. Best idea we had.
Some of these quotes are so clueless I truly kept checking to see if the piece was satire. This person is real? Not a rogue pro-choicer who has infiltrated the pro-lifers to make them look bad?
‘”[Women] had equality,” Delouis says about the 1950s, before Supreme Court cases legalized contraception and abortion. “But they had to be obedient to their husbands. That’s where equality comes: where the mother stayed home and raised the children in God’s light, and the husband worked, and everything was great. When I grew up, there were no problems.”‘
This guy is off the hook. I would laugh if I wasn’t busy crying.
Obedience = equality??? Ooooooook buddy…..
What’s next from Minitrue? I can’t wait.
Ugggh this dude. “That’s where equality comes- when things are radically unequal.”
His central thesis that there were no abortions pre-Roe v. Wade is actually kind of hilarious, if you don’t think about it too hard.
That seems to be a recurring problem. Regarding birth control as symptomatic of a godless society and whatnot:
“Abstinence,” Clark says. “It’s possible. I taught my daughters abstinence. It doesn’t mean I’ve been successful with my first two [both of whom got pregnant “outside of wedlock” according to the article, one of whom while in high school,] but I have three more to go. You hold your breath.”
“The most important thing” is not “murdering God’s babies.” You’re right, Fred. That is definitely the most important thing of all.
“before they had abortions” AhahahaSTAB.
I read this article once that argued that using contraceptives is an act of self-violence because the ability to bear children is what makes women PURE and SACRED and by interfering with OUR LORD’S MOST PRECIOUS GIFT they are just debasing themselves and driving a wedge between themselves and THE GRACE OF GOD’S LOVE so if you ever become romantically involved with a woman who uses or wants to use contraceptives, you need to show her the error of her ways, for the sake of her soul.
Now I am also going to throw up a bit.
Oh yes, this is absolutely the official stance of the Catholic church (ask me about my high school religion classes…)
I attended an ethics conference a while back where one of the speakers argued that employers’ insurance shouldn’t have to pay for birth control because fertile and pregnant was a woman’s natural, healthy state and preventing pregnancy was introducing malfunction to that healthy state. (He then accused a woman who questioned his conclusion of being “hysterical,” which went over as one might expect.)
I know the birth control vs. Viagra comparison is probably played out, but not getting boners when you’re an old dude is also natural and NO ONE IS TAKING VIAGRA AWAY. Fuck these morons. (But not, because no condoms!)
“[Women] had equality,” Delouis says about the 1950s, before Supreme Court cases legalized contraception and abortion. “But they had to be obedient to their husbands. That’s where equality comes: where the mother stayed home and raised the children in God’s light, and the husband worked, and everything was great. When I grew up, there were no problems.”
I mean … I don’t … where to start?
Everything was GREAT.
“Women had equality if you define equality as not being equal at all! Words have no meaning!” This is like the comment from the Every Recipe Ever “Anything is cake! Turnips! A trip to the dentist! Words have no meaning!”
“Anything is cake!”
SURREAL BRILLIANCE and I will be deploying it whenever or wherever needed, which will be, like, nearly everyday.
I’ve heard crap like this referred to as “fractally wrong” (wrong at first glance, but also wrong upon closer and closer inspection).
Or, “not even wrong”.
I am stealing the idea of “fractally wrong.” That’s amazing.
“Fractally wrong” is GREAT. I learned about “not even wrong” while working for an academic publisher and it is the most delightful science diss ever.
Maybe nothing was wrong because he was like… 6… living in a loving household where his parents hid their problems from him because he was like…. 6? Many children don’t know about all the awful bullshit going on in the world.
“For a woman to say that she has to have control over her body or over herself in such a way that she can’t be a mother really speaks to a degradation towards women.”
EXCUSE ME?
“The fullness of being a woman is being a mother”
Damn, I’ve been doing this woman thing all wrong.
I just read this sentence three times and I can’t figure out how that even works
I think he means women who seek to control our own reproductive health are bad at being women and need this guy to teach us what REAL WOMANHOOD is about.
Then isn’t it also a degradation to tell women to abstain from sex?
That author is ace at using quotes and facts for some subtle snark.
I just can’t with this article today, maybe tomorrow, so I’m super happy you guys got it covered in the comments.
I’m not really sure why “natural family planning” is any more acceptable than contraceptive family planning – you’re still subverting God’s will by deciding when you are or aren’t going to have children. I am the literal opposite of the Duggars, but logically, their approach makes more sense: they do it whenever; if she doesn’t get pregnant, God’s will! If she does, also God’s will! If the “natural” state of humans (and most specifically, women) is to be having children, then doing anything at all to prevent that should be forbidden.
That NYTimes list is a hilarious but it seems like a huge oversight that none of them are phrased “For____, ______” as in 90% of their headlines. For the Elderly, Wheelchairs! For New Jersey, Tomatoes.
To be fair, us here in Jersey are all about our tomatoes.
For Some, Abortions! For Others, Miniature American Flags.
Oh my god I don’t know which quote from the Planned Parenthood protestors article makes me want to vomit the most.
“The fullness of being a woman is being a mother,” Father Andrew Beauregard, a Franciscan monk who comes to pray the rosary outside the Boston Planned Parenthood, says.
Aside from all the obvious reasons why this is inane, this attitude is also so damaging to devout Catholic women who want to have children but cannot. A teacher (in my Catholic high school) shared a little about her experiences not being able to get pregnant and how priests kept telling her, you never know, God is powerful, etc etc. Well guess the fuck what, God did not make her infertility go away, that just made her feel shitty!! It infuriates me that religious leaders in the church spout this crap, alienating more progressive current and former members, as well as the more conservative devout base. GET A GRIP, FATHER.
Yes, could the man who has essentially sworn off women please tell me how all women should feel? Also, there are beatitudes in your religion telling you how to act to serve your fellow humans, padre, and none of them are protest the abortion clinic, for the harassing jackasses shall inherit the moral high ground.
“It’s the best feeling in the world! Well, no, I haven’t done it. No, no, I’m not going to do it or be involved in any way. I have better things to do. But it’s probably the best feeling in the world. Stands to reason.”
Best thing in the world for women, though. Not men who have important grandstanding and praying on street corners to do.
Aw, I guess I will never know the fullness of being a woman. Just have to settle for the halfness of being a person who isn’t too much of an asshole.
I really like your usage of “guess the fuck what” and I’m totally going to steal it. Also the rest of your comment is ON POINT.
I had a colleague once who, when I made an offhand remark about IVF in relation to someone who was not her, stonily informed me that she didn’t “believe in” IVF because “if you can’t get pregnant, it means God doesn’t want you to be pregnant. Because you’d be a bad mother.”
Of course, she routinely tried to seduce her handsome young priest, so her version of Catholicism is perhaps not to be taken too seriously.
Huh. I suppose when she had a headache, she didn’t take aspirin because GOD MEANT HER to have that headache or she wouldn’t? Or when she got hungry, she just sat patiently and lived with it, because GOD MEANT HER to be hungry or he’d drop a sandwich on her lap?
Okay, so, comparing having a baby to, um, a sandwich is not the coolest thing I ever did. But with people like this, I like to poke and prod, explore exactly where they imagine the line of divine intervention lies.
ahahahaha, nope, with people like that I mostly like to walk away. But if I can’t, I absolutely explore their false reasoning with ruthless civility.
Hey, I have a baby through ivf and I’m fine with that comparison.
Well I had to stop reading after “‘We’re not here just for the baby,’ she says. ‘We’re here for the mothers too.'”
ARE YOU THOUGH
OKC expands gender and sexuality categories. [1], [2]
I was just about to come post about that. Yay! Do you think my partner would mind if I reactivated my account??
My one negative comment about this is that I will be really mad if some dumb white person identifies themselves as “”hijira”
“But it sounds so pretty, like an exotic drink!”
I’m sure they will, but I’m hoping OKC did some cultural demographics and included them for people who could legitimately use the terms.
…I may be overly optimistic in my attribution of motive.
Ha ha ha, you can’t trick me. I wouldn’t read that article about horrible things that can happen to eyes (even if only imagined) if you paid me.
NOOOOOOOPE
I remember when I first got fitted for contact lenses, at 14, the optician was very surprised at my willingness to poke myself in the eye when practicing putting them in. (Apparently it’s quite common for people to go in far too gingerly, increasing the risk that they fall off your finger and you have to start over again.)
On point #1 on that list, though, I do know that paramedics will always check an unconscious patient’s eyes for contacts as soon as practical and remove them if necessary, so at least you don’t have to worry about waking up in hospital with ulcerated corneas on top of your other injuries? I am not sure how reassuring this is.
It took me three separate one-hour sessions to learn to put my contacts in, because–no joke–it turns out I can’t use a mirror. I’ll stick my finger in my eyes just fine, but watching my finger come at my eye in a mirrorNONONONOPE.
I had the same experience! I got contacts at 10 or 11, I think, and my optometrist was FLOORED that I just popped them in without freaking out. It was cool.
Now I wear contacts approximately 5% of the time because it turns out I have the most sensitive corneas of all time. I will not tell the horror stories of conjunctivitis, scratched corneas, and minor ulcerations UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT ME TO.
My optometrist tried to get me on hard contact lenses (aka gas permeable, which I just learned!) when I was about five. This did not go well. If you didn’t hit right on the cornea it hurt so so bad. I wouldn’t try them again until I was a teen, and went with soft lenses that time.
After reading that list I never realized how horrified I should be of being stuck somewhere because my vision is so so bad without my contacts I would be dead meat. NEW FEARS.
hard (gas permeable) lenses are great, and SO much better for your eyeballs than soft contacts, because they let oxygen in to your eyes, but I cannot imagine using them as a 5-year-old!!! yikes!
they truly are much better for eye health though… and they don’t hurt that much even if you get it wrong if you are plus-five. Usually when I have gotten my hard lens lost in my eyeball it travels up under the lid or down in the area below the lower lid, and I just have to move it back in place or pop it out. That happens to me maybe once every 2 years, and it never ever gets into the cornea… which is probably one of the benefits of having adult fine motor skills as opposed to the fine motor skills of a 5-year-old! Just sayin’, in case you ever want to try it again.
Holy shit, no. I was twelve or thirteen when I got my gas perms, and it was still really hard.
Also, I don’t know about everyone else, but mine really did hurt me for quite a bit and I had to work my way up to wearing them full time. I took about a week, I think, a couple more hours every day, and ever since then I’ve had no problems ever, but it was stingy at first.
And yeah, I poke one off the cornea once every six months to a year or so, and honestly, it’s not a huge problem getting it back. It’s kind of frustrating because my eye always waters a lot and makes it harder, but eh. I wouldn’t trade to soft lenses, no sir.
eh, we had different experiences then. I was 12 or so too, but an extremely motivated 12 year old, and I don’t remember it bothering me much — I would wear them longer than recommended that first week because my vision was so much better than it was with glasses. Peripheral vision! No headaches from the weight of glasses on my face! I do have pretty terrible eyesight though — it is probably less exciting to get contacts if you are more mildly afflicted.
No, I have really terrible vision as well, I just remember it being pretty painful until I developed the calluses. It’s possible that my eyes were just more sensitive, though, I think.
yes, we could have had different types of hard lenses or your eyes might be more sensitive or less malleable than mine– isn’t it both cool & weird that rigid lenses reshape your eyeball a little bit?
I can honestly say my eyes have not gotten ANY worse since I was 13, which my optometrist attributed solely to the fact that wearing hard lenses 12-16 hours a day has kept my eyeballs from slumping or malforming any further. I love it. Amazing.
brb naming my next band Slumped Eyeballs
Gas permeables cause calluses? Well, that’s terrifying.
I’m an optician and I’ve done many contact lens classes over the years. A lot of the time I’ll lead with a cheerful, “So, how do you feel about touching your eyes?” The reaction to that question tells me a lot about how things are going to go in the next hour or so. In general, teenage girls are the easy ones, because they listen to instructions and a lot of them have experimented with eye makeup enough to be comfortable touching their eyes. Even if it takes them a while, they’re generally pleasant. Middle-aged men (don’t listen, blame you and/or the contacts when they struggle) and kids under ten (frequent crying, pushy parents) are the worst.
Dear deleted comments men, Feminists are now so powerful that we will be able to Ban Words. Your worst nightmares have come true.
I think you mean deleted comments males.
Indeed. Because the first word to be banned is “men”!
we can ban the words IN YOUR THOUGHTS, you’ll never be able to think what you want again!!
That moment of mental troubleshooting when you put in a contact lens and your vision fails to clarify.
Was my lens on my finger, or am I just poking my eye?
Is my lens inside out?
Did I put a lens on top of another lens that was already in my eye?
Did I put something that was not contact solution on my lens?
I did once put toothpaste instead of solution on my lens, but even in the state of sleep-deprived bleariness that induced that behavior, I could recognize that I should not put the pasty lens in my eye.
Followed by several minutes of closing one eye, then the other, to see if you put the contact lenses in the wrong eyes.
All of this, yes.
We gave up on our contacts at the point that we got photochromic lenses for our glasses because keeping track of our sunglasses and carrying them around was just too much bother on top of all the eye-related angst every morning.
“Before they had abortions”
So…before humans existed?
In that case, maybe he has a point…
Those were the Days, surely.
Well once women started having abortions it made it harder to tell that they had had pre marital sex and then it was bascially a crapshoot to publically shame them so yeah thems definitely were the good old days.
(This is sarcasm. That man is an ass and I hate him.)
So tempted to find a PP protest and hand out literature on Magdalen laundries and what happened to all those adorable little bastards after their mothers were shamed into slavery in the name of the Lord.
“Back when infanticide was more in fashion…”
Circa 200 C.E., in the Roman world, I suppose! Heady times.
Right? Does he think that abortion spontaneously appeared in the 70s?
The 3% hydrogen peroxide contact thing happened to me too!! Oh my god, I just remember screaming and crumpling on the floor of the bathroom trying to grab those things out of my eye while not being able to open my eyes because they hurt so bad
My sister-in-law put my Clear Care directly in her eyes during a visit a few years ago. She was in the bathroom for a long time and managed to snap her glasses in half in the process, but I swear she never made a sound. I had no idea what was going on until she came out with bright red eyes and said, “I used some of your contact solution.”
As an optician, I tell people two things when I’m doing contact lens classes – don’t put anything unfamiliar in your eyes without reading the label first, and don’t put anything directly in your eyes if there’s a red tip on the dispenser.
I am terrified of putting superglue in my eyes by accident. I think I read somewhere that someone did that, and it was okay? It’s totally irrational, because I hardly wear my contact lenses and I don’t own superglue.
Didn’t do that, but had chili pepper dust on my fingers one day while trying to take my contacts out. I was a wreck.
Oh man, I once accidentally dropped part of a spicy potato chip in my eye (I was eating upside down on my bed, don’t judge) and then had to fish it out with spicy potato chip dust on my fingers while stumbling like a deranged thing to the bathroom. Never again.
This has happened to me TWICE (but only in one eye each time so.. maybe it counts as once?) and I remember my eye was so red for DAYS that I actually thought it was going to shrivel up and never work again. Daily disposables have been my jam ever since.
I am a fan of disposables! They are so rad.
Yup I use disposables too, I get a 6 month supply but only ever wear my contacts maybe a couple times a month so they last me forever. Then just toss them when I’m done.
They are such an indulgence but I am never, ever choosing another option. I do sports where I could get hit in the face, so hard ones are basically out, and since I have an astigmatism the re-wearable soft ones are super thick and uncomfortable. The disposables are great. If they didn’t exist I would probably just never wear contacts- even now I only wear them for sports and days when I’m really, really going to want to wear sunglasses.
I had bear spray all over my hands once, on a day I was wearing contacts. For those of you who have not gotten bear spray on you (so…everyone but me), bear spray reactivates when it gets wet. I basically had to bear spray myself to get my contacts out.
This happened to my roommate’s best friend over Halloween – she crashed at our place, my roommate doesn’t wear contacts but I do (and use ClearCare) … I woke up the next morning and my roommate was like “DO YOU WASH YOUR EYEBALLS WITH FIRE.”
Pro tip, by the way: never ever use generic/drugstore-brand ClearCare. I’ve been using the name brand stuff for 8 years now and holy god is it expensive, but I tried switching to generic one time, for one day, and could barely see out of my eyes for a full day. Yikes spikes.
Totally agree about the generic brand. I used the entire bottle, but every time I used them I felt a little bit of burning and was like “this.. is not right.” I think it’s because the case is a different model?
YES, WHAT IS IT WITH THE GENERIC BRAND?!?! I have found that rinsing with regular saline solution before putting them in my eye makes it ok, because I am cheap and sometimes still buy the cheap brand even though it is the worst.
I used to use AOsept, and let me tell ya, even with the catalyzing container that’s supposed to neutralize the solution, it didn’t always work perfectly. And you reeeeeeally had to keep on top of replacing those catalyzing discs/cases, because they decreased in efficiency as they aged.
I was so pleased when I switched to a different lens-cleaning protocol.
“Wombs of torture,” selfish objects.” FFS.
Bless Jill Filipovic, honestly. I can’t even imagine the patience and restraint that went into these interviews. I would have lost my mind and possibly been arrested trying to listen to these people.
ALSO, in Contact News: I have worn hard gas-perm lenses for about 15 years now, and I love them and they cause me about 150% less trouble than my husband’s soft lenses cause him. Mine will occasionally get a bit of dust in them or an eyelash or bit of makeup, at which point I pause somewhere, rinse it out, pop it back, and I am done. For him, getting dust in the eye is A HUGE MAJOR PRODUCTION which involves like twenty steps and he never wears his lenses half the time because it’s just an effing hassle. AND mine are cheaper: they were about $400 a pair, but this pair has lasted me about six years now, so let’s call it $67 per year, and let’s say I wear them 360 days per year, they cost me about two cents a day.
GAS PERMS FOREVER.
hurrah, yes, gas perms forever!
Is that why people sometimes look shocked when I fix a contact on the fly in public, if I can’t go to a restroom – a soft contact wearer would not be able to do this? I figured zillions of people wear contacts now, so it should not be a big deal, but it still seems to be a surprise. (I don’t rinse mine in water because the ph is wrong and water is uncomfortable for me, so I just use the tiniest bit of spit, which I recognize is a little gross but it feels so much better and is super fast).
I THINK SO. I do EXACTLY the same thing with a little bit of spit (which yes, I know, is a little gross, but fixes the problem and I figure it’s my own germs, so whatever, and I don’t do it when I’m sick or whatever). Honestly, it seems like ten thousand times easier and faster than whatever it is soft lens wearers have to do. (Apparently some kind of voodoo ritual, I guess, I have no idea.)
I mean, I wear soft contacts and will spit-clean my lenses if I have no other option … I’m a weirdo and carry around eye drops in my purse at all times so that usually isn’t an issue … but I’ve certainly done it before and have no clue why it freaks people out. Wouldn’t you rather have slightly “gross” yet clean lenses, than itchy burny dirty lenses?
My eye doctor tried to get me to wear these for a while (apparently they’re good for mild astigmatism?) but I couldn’t get used to them. I used them for maybe two months and went back to soft lenses, which are a pain in the ass, but much less so.
Huh. I wear soft and have been known to pop them out of my eyes, rinse them in sea water, and put them back in. But I’m kind of weird, maybe.
A microbiologist friend once referred to opening her eyes in the ocean as akin to getting “ocular gonorrhea.” Which I realize is not actually a thing one can get from seawater, but which has nonetheless scared me ever since.
Well, I’m stil alive? But you never know. I’m actually hoping it will turn me into some kind of super hero. 😀
OMG, the dust, abject misery for soft contact lense wearers (as well as mistakenly rinsing with hydrogen peroxide; motherfucking PAIN).
That’s why I got my eyeballs lasered and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (and I generally make terrible life choices, for clarity’s sake). The best part of that whole deal was the clinic televising your surgery into the waiting room for the next patient in line to watch. I assume it was to show them how there was nothing to worry about, and BONUS my partner got a gross thrill out of it.
The worst part? Being temporarily blind due to your cornea being, you know, lasered. During that weird moment, I rode the “unicorn weaving in and out of the stars” imagination train because if I dwelled on the realness, I would have freaked out on the table (anaesthetic was just for your eyes, your brain is up and running).
I am a soft contact wearer and basically have no problems unless I get really sleepy (knock on wood), and if something does get in my eye I do the same thing you do. Do you live somewhere particularly dusty? Otherwise I’m drawing a blank on why soft is so much harder to take care of
All I know is my husband complains endlessly (and this is over two different provinces and like four different homes) about how irritated his eyes get, and how gunky they get, and how much it sucks. He may be a big baby about it, I have no idea. I’ve never had soft lenses so I don’t know.
GAS PERMS BETRAYED ME. I had them and they were GREAT and then I lost one and got a new set, and they’d changed the coating to something that degraded in ~ a year leaving me with TERRIBLE ITCHY PLASTIC BITS. After the second unwearable pair in two years, I had to quit them. 🙁
I know it’s been said many times, many ways, but I am so, so happy that the Toast deletes stupid comments and refuses to “hear both sides” when one side is just a bunch of useless, incoherent garbage. Thank you, as always.
Agreed! The Toast has the nicest comment section I’ve come across on the internet.
There’s no name-calling or awfulness. I’ve learned about interesting things and gotten great book recommendations in the comments here. It’s the only website where I never miss reading the comments.
So yeah, much thanks to our benevolent comment overlords!
You would not BELIEVE the number of super-mad white ladies we have been keeping out of the birthing cultural appropriation comments! SUPER SUPER MAD.
Oh, that sounds dreadful.
Thanks, crunchy granola crowd, for keeping up the ongoing cultural obliviousness.
Well clearly they weren’t held enough as children.
I believe it – these are the same monsters that come up to new mothers and helpfully tell us how wrong we are about whatever we are doing
Keep fighting the good fight.
Once Mothering.com gets wind of any sort of critical article on the internet they swoop down with a vengeance.
I believe I speak for us all when i say, we would like to see these rounded up and displayed.
Seconded.
Agreed agreed agreed.
It seems like a long, tiring, thankless job, for which I am ever grateful.
There’s something really lovely in knowing that this is the one comment section on basically the whole internet where I can wade in and talk to people, and I know that even if someone disagrees with me, they’ll be sensible and respectful and have a conversation instead of a slur-filled screaming match!
Amen, amen, AMEN.
This seems like a good opportunity to post about this Jezebel article on the history of abortifacients! (Also, my Firefox spell-checker is trying to change “abortifacients” into “antiabortionists” which… no, Firefox, I mean the opposite of that.) http://jezebel.com/the-history-of-abortifacients-…
SPOILER ALERT: the moment people figured out that some plants cause abortions, THEY STARTED HAVING ABORTIONS
Yeah didn’t the Romans or Greeks or someone abort an entire species into extinction?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium#Medicinal_u…
What happened to that plant could HAPPEN TO US!1!!11!!1! or something, I guess.
1. I AM SO FUCKING GODDAMNED SICK OF FUCKING WHITE PEOPLE THINKING LIFE WAS SO FUCKING GREAT IN THE 1950S
2. Cosmo has really stepped up its game with its journalism and I’m loving it.
Yeah, I’m really impressed this article came from Cosmo.
I was initially worried when Jill Filipovic moved to Cosmo, but clearly that was a great decision all around.
Re #2, yeah. They ran a beautiful photoset of by a trans photographer last week which provoked much the same reaction. It’s here: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a33094/…
“For a woman to say that she has to have control over her body or over herself in such a way that she can’t be a mother really speaks to a degradation towards women.”
Ugh.
Can I pull a Lloyd Dobbler, but instead of a stereo, hold up my iPad playing “Call the Midwife,” and instead of in front of Ione Skye’s house, in front of a sidewalk counselor? That’s not crazy, right?
Was very tempted to do this a couple of years back, substituting Spring Awakening and the Michigan legislature.
Follow all that up with this exit:
Can I wear this outfit? My pro-abortion sparkledress? NOT CRAZY AT ALL.
Fuck man, I have a lot of sparkledresses, and will now dub one my pro-abortion sparkledress.
How, just HOW does that kind of thinking pass through the brain’s logic filter before leaving the mouth?
These people need Sister Evangelina in their lives.
Wait, Lavender Brown was black but they CHANGED HER to be white once she became a love interest?!
I’ve actually heard that before–that in the first three movies Lavender Brown has no speaking lines, but is played by a black girl, but in the fourth (?) movie, she’s played by a white girl because she suddenly has speaking lines? It caused a HUGE amount of controversy at the time and a lot of people were really upset–but I don’t know if she’s canonically black or white in the books themselves. No idea.
I somehow missed that whole thing. WTF. How did that conversation go? “Well, you know, we already have Cho Chang. Lavender Brown can’t be black anymore, because there just wouldn’t be enough whiteness!”
I think I read about it on Buzzfeed, of all places! It’s especially weird because the Harry Potter universe does have a number of non-white characters and the entire mythos is so heavily an expy of racial lines and stereotypes, YOU WOULD THINK someone would have thought this all the way through.
Her race isn’t mentioned in the books. People were pleased when she was originally cast with an actress of color, because that sounds like a nice thing — instead of limiting black actresses to only the Roles About Black People, we can just cast them as people who exist in the world, as sometimes black people do!
I prefer not to speculate on why they chose to cast a white actress for the movie where she hooks up with Ron, but…people were less pleased, yeah.
And that’s totally bizarre, because Ginny hooks up with Dean, and Fred asks out Angelina, who eventually marries George, and both Dean and Angelina are black, so…not like there aren’t any interracial pairings in the books (there seem to be lots!) and there are interracial pairings within the Weasley family!
I haven’t seen the movies enough to remember — what did they do with the whole Dean Thomas (canonical black character) and Ginny romance? Did they include it? Down play it?
I haven’t seen all the movies, so I have no idea, but now I’m quite curious.
Yeah, I really didn’t like the movies much, so nothing sticks in my head about this storyline
(I wish they’d just animated all of them instead of relying on children growing up to be good actors).
It was downplayed, to the point that (if I recall correctly) it was casually mentioned but not really seen/explored. Like, you never saw them together, but someone mentioned they were together once. So…yeah.
You see Dean and Ginny kissing, much to Ron’s discomfort.
I stand corrected! Thank you! (It’s been a while since I watched the movies).
Did anyone else who read the books before the movies came out picture Hermione as black? I always did, maybe because her teacher’s-pet characterization reminded me of Liberty from Degrassi Junior High, and I was disappointed when the movie cast was announced.
It’s been a great betrayal to all my friends in the theater that they wear makeup onstage and I don’t, but I flip my shit at the thought of eyeliner. (Seriously, how do people do that? You’re putting a thing near your eye that you have purposely sharpened into a deadly, eye-gouging point.)
Anyway. I do not need to read nightmares about contact lenses, I am very confident that all of the many nightmares that are immediately conjured to mind when a person says “contact lenses” probably cover everything.
Yeah I recently broke down and got contacts, because I can’t wear glasses under my ski goggles (and also I’m vain and didn’t want to wear glasses in my wedding photos). It literally took the poor woman at Pearle Vision an HOUR to teach me how to use them and to stop seizing up when it got within six inches of my eye. I still hate putting them in and wear them as little as possible.
I put eyeliner on in the car on the way to work (I am not driving). I think of my mom forbidding me from such behaviour every time I do it, and do it anyway.
Madness.
when i learned that people put eyeliner on the inside of their eyelashes wtfffffffffffffffff
(I close my eyes when i put it on and it goes above the line of eyelashes ONLY and mascara only on the very ends, where my black lashes are lighter) (also i like a dull pencil and can’t use the liquid stuff! turns out i have an allergy to a common ingredient and my eyelid swelled up for three whole days each of the last two times i tried!)
Buffalo Toasties, stay safe and warm!
Wellll that starfish article has my gag reflex in overdrive. Fascinating. I love that stuff. But it’s also really sad– I kept waiting for the “environmental factors” shoe to drop, and drop it did. Poor oceans. Poor starfish.
And speaking of horrible things happening to animals, read this just yesterday. About Tasmanian devils suffering from horrible disfiguring and fatal skin cancers (devil facial tumour disease) and we might be the cause 🙁
(There’s a picture and it’s horrific. Not in a oh-god-that’s-disgusting-I’m-going-to-throw-up way, but in a oh-god-that’s-horrible-poor-things way)
http://phys.org/news/2014-11-tassie-devils-isnt-c…
Kind of want to go back to my all boys catholic high school for something like career day, and just spend the entire time talking about why abortion is important and good. Sure, they won’t invite me back, but it’s not like I’ve ever given money or would go back now that my cross country coach no longer coaches there.
A high school friend and I were recently discussing how we could infiltrate our very conservative catholic alma mater to bring pro-lgbtq, pro-choice, etc. viewpoints to the students’ attention. Pamphlet drops? Kidnapping and brainwashing priests? Secret society (like Dumledore’s Army, but for progressive-minded and/or queer kids at catholic high schools)?
My worst fear as a contact wearer is Some Sort of Apocalypse or Monster Scenario.
If not for my treacherous eyes, I would be awesome in a zombie apocalypse or against a giant creature attacking the city! I would kick ass as a horror movie character, if I could take a few minutes to clean the lenses! If I had a handy pack of contacts and solution, I would totally manage to not only find food and shelter, but build myself a boat to get off a deserted island.
I would do so well in an apocalypse! BUT I WEAR CONTACTS!
We’re all going to have to get Laser eye surgery or just get used to running with glasses on, I guess. :-/
I think about it too, but more in disaster or crime terms. Like what if I get kidnapped, and I’m wearing my contacts, and then I eventually have no choice but to take them out and I’m blind? Or I get kidnapped in the middle of the night and don’t have glasses OR contacts? Or what if I’m in the woods somewhere and my contacts come out (??) and I get lost and I DIE?
I mostly think: but what happens when I go back in time?
I may or may not have used “zombie apocalypse” to convince my contact lens patients that they need a backup pair of glasses or two…
I used to wear contacts and now I wear glasses and I’m scared either way. Those of us with bad eyesight will be the first go when the apocalypse comes!!!
I’m a sucker for fictional apocalypses, and the heroes are always digging through ruined buildings for supplies, but there’s never a mention of old glasses or contact lenses as valuable items on the black market. I can only assume that means people with eyesight like mine are already dead.
My first stop in any apocalyptic scenario is breaking into my eye doctor’s and stealing all contacts my prescription and up.
Hahaha I use that Clear Care stuff. Because I have VERY OILY TEARS, apparently, which is so gross.
Also, I’m gonna put this here because I will forget by the time the open thread comes around:
WHO IS PLAYING DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION? WHO IS PLAYING IT ON PS3 AND WOULD POTENTIALLY LIKE TO DO MULTIPLAYER W/ME? My PSN is mona_boehner.
I WANT TO BE PLAYING IT BUT MY PC IS TOO WEENY. SO I EITHER HAVE TO UPGRADE THE PC OR BUY A SECOND, CONSOLE COPY :\
I HAVE DONE LITTLE ELSE FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS! However, I am playing on PC, so I don’t know if cross-platform multiplayer is a thing?
Also, I accidentally killed a fennec while dicking around in the Hinterlands, and I felt SO BAD about it. 🙁
I am, but on PC. I want a discussion thread on this! The game is fun the the PC controls are so not good (it is obvious they optimized for consoles first and PC controls were an afterthought).
Oh my god, seriously? Because one of my major issues with it is that the controls for CONSOLE seem like an afterthought! YOU USE THE SAME BUTTON TO PICK THINGS UP AND JUMP. I HAVE NO IDEA WHOSE TERRIBLE IDEA IT WAS. IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO FIND THE MAP BECAUSE IT’S LEFT DIRECTION BUTTON FOR SOME WEIRD REASON. I thought it must be better on PC, cuz more buttons. How is this possible!?
Wow, jump and pickup the same? That’s really bad.
For the PC:
For some weird reason they made A and D turn instead of strafe, (which is Q and E). Weird, but fixable in keymappings. I have to hold down the right mouse button to mouse-look around, all the time.
F is loot / open, but there is no keymapping to pick up all items (which could be something like, oh say F again).
You have to be right on top of something to active / loot / attack. There is no click to walk over to the item. This also makes for awkward camera angles when that activation thing is floating in the air above you. While you are under attack.
You have to hold down the attack key (left mouse or R) to attack, so no click and auto-attack. And you end up missing all the time because target locking / cycling is terrible. Overall it feels way less tactical, unlike previous DA games, more like a Mass Effect game with a DA skin (I like ME, but I want my tactical gameplay too 🙁 ).
Tactical mode SUCKS. You can’t zoom out very far, you can’t select multiple allies, and they don’t stay on task very long. Battle kind of feels like a crap shoot. The Ally AI is pretty dumb too.
Besides all that… the game is fun. Is is also gorgeous, especially if you have a decent PC to turn up some graphics options. The character creation is very sophisticated.
I AM FRANTICALLY REFRESHING MY DELIVERY TRACKING PAGE FOR IT! I am also on ps3, as inflammatori, and I am sooooooooooo excited!
This interview by Jia with Drake’s vocal instructor is amazing: http://jezebel.com/a-chat-with-dionne-osborne-the…
This is so excellent and sums up everything I think is good about Drake, and now I just wanna talk about how adorable Drake is and music and vulnerability and the New Sincerity for hours.
I don’t even listen to Drake but as a vocal coach I loved that interview.
I accidentally did the 3% hydrogen peroxide thing to my boyfriend one of the first times he ever stayed over! My roommate mentioned she was going to leave contact solution in the bathroom for any overnight guests who ended up needing it (how sweet of her!) but I didn’t realize that he couldn’t use his own case. Neither of us read the bottle, and the next morning was NOT PLEASANT for him. I ended up having to guide him like a seeing eye dog to the subway so he could get home, because he didn’t have his glasses with him.
Also, I can’t wear contacts. I’ve tried a few different brands, and I always get this weird buildup on the center of the lens that won’t come off with any amount of contact solution (only on the left side, weirdly). My optometrist didn’t know WTF it was when I brought the lenses in, and insisted it must have been a defective pack. Well, the same thing happened with the next pack… and with the two other brands I tried… I don’t know, I guess my left eye secretes something gross and contact lens-ruining.
I had hard contacts for a bit when I was little and my doc gave me a tiny suction cup to yank them out with. I thought that was AWESOME, but my friends were… less pleased.
that sounds awesome
Not specifically a contact lens thing, but one time at Sephora I sampled some eye makeup, then squirted some of their eye makeup remover onto a cotton pad and went to remove it. SURPRISE, I grabbed the wrong thing and it was actually rubbing alcohol! That was the first (and hopefully last) time I’ve ever screamed at full-volume in a crowded mall.
I have definitely mixed up eye makeup remover and nail polish remover. Once. That was all it took.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bill Cosby: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/…
(TW: rape, sexual assault)
Ta-Nehisi Coates rises in my estimation every day. This is so crucial:
“The heart of the matter is this: A defender of Bill Cosby must, effectively, conjure a vast conspiracy, created to bring down one man, seemingly just out of spite. And people will do this work of conjuration, because it is hard to accept that people we love in one arena can commit great evil in another. It is hard to believe that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist because the belief doesn’t just indict Cosby, it indicts us. It damns us for drawing intimate conclusions about people based on pudding-pop commercials and popular TV shows. It destroys our ability to lean on icons for our morality. And it forces us back into a world where seemingly good men do unspeakably evil things, and this is just the chaos of human history.”
I ADORE the woman who said that the sea stars she brought back to health were “ready for the cover of Vogue.” Oh, scientists who specialize in weird-looking animals, I love your enthusiasm and I love your love.
I did the 3% hydrogen peroxide cleaner thing TODAY and my eye is still all Sauron-y 🙁
This photo of Mary Waltz from the sidewalk-terrorist article is amazing (is it possible to be in love with a woman you know almost nothing about?):
“If we want to have rights to be in school and to work and determine our own success, we have to be able to determine our health care, and whether and when to have children.” How disgusting that this is a controversial statement, as shown by some of the appalling statements the side walk terrorists made in response.
Right? What a badass. Throwing so many roses at Marty Waltz right now.
That is such a great pose. It’s part “haters gonna hate,” part “come at me bro,” and part “Admit Defeat, Ye Denizens of the Underworld, for Thou Shall Ne’er Breach My Fortress Walls.”
With just a touch of “my understanding of the world is complete enough to understand my opponents’ position and also several nuances beyond”
Which I guess is just longform for “haters gonna hate”
Ugh I love this picture so much. I can’t read Cosmo at work, which is probably as it should be, but I am pretty sure that is my friendly neighborhood PP on Comm Ave in Boston– not sure but guessing it might be since the buffer zone thing started in Massachusetts. That Planned Parenthood still has the now-irrelevant 20 foot buffer zone painted on the sidewalk, which fuels my rage every time I walk by.
Yes it is! You can see the Green Line B tracks behind the nutjobs.
I tried to get fitted for contacts when I was fourteen, and the doctor wouldn’t stop trying to jam his finger in my eye even though I was squirming backwards trying to escape, and as a result I have never again tried to wear contacts.
I’m a little sad that I can’t wear Harlequin masks, but apart from that, I don’t think I’m missing much.
I wore contacts for five years or so, during/after high school, but I always felt like my face didn’t look right without glasses.
I have a long face and glasses break it up a bit. With contacts in, I think I look sort of sallow. In a fit of inverse vanity, whenever I consider looking into laser surgery, I remember how much better I think I look in glasses.
I feel like you could easily do a whole list of Modern Love.
Our Mountains To Climb
As the air grew thin, so did our excuses.
For Tomorrow, Yesterday Is Now
My grandfather’s clock. A promise from my husband. The fire that destroyed everything.
No More Pigeons… Til New Years
Dating in New York is for the birds.
Nights in Morocco, a Lesson In Change
An international adventure woman has sex on a boat.
Messy House? Fugghedaboutit!
A little bit of clutter and a whole lot of love.
Fractured Shadows On My Broken Moon
We were so happy. Cancer was coming. Then Peter drowned.
Or how about:
Happily Ever After?
Long Distance Relationship During College Does Not Work Out
“When [journalists] were talking about the Middle East, they talked about the rooms of torture. We have the wombs of torture.”
Because nothing says “I am a serious person speaking on an important topic” like puns.
There are so many things that are offensive about this statement, and the pun is definitely one of them
I am honestly concerned about the mental health of those protesters. It’s one thing to be worried about baby souls, i can understand that, but the way they talk about women and abortion can be very creepy weird.
I’m assuming that was followed up immediately with “Am I right, guys? Up top!”
Is this a safe place to mention that every time OKCupid is referred to as OKC, I think it means Oklahoma City instead? :-/
(A reply to AmazingSandwich, not a TOTAL non sequitur.)
I had no idea it was OKCupid and instead, what, some sort of Oklahoma City government website registration? Do you need to register your gender online in Oklahoma City? That seems Big Brother-ish. Huh. So, yea, you’re not alone! Safe place!
As someone who grew up partially in Oklahoma City, yes, I do the same thing.
I have no affiliation with Oklahoma City and always think the same thing. Always.
Elderly white people, please take up a new hobby other than harassing women who are exercising their rights as a human being who is smart enough to make her own reproductive choices. My grandparents are elderly white people who go ballroom dancing instead of make people miserable, do you want to try that?
My grandmother plays bridge! I recommend it, they seem to have a lot more fun (and wine) than the sidewalk-terrorism people.
Young white people do it too :(( And ballroom dancing needs more young people.
Problems, I solve them.
“Society was great before they had abortions,” he says. “Because there wasn’t as much evil in the world. They weren’t murdering God’s babies, which is the most important thing.”
so….society was better before people had abortions because…people weren’t having abortions?
were people ever not having abortions?
I am confused.
“Society was great before they had abortions,” he says. “Because there wasn’t as much evil in the world. They weren’t murdering God’s babies, which is the most important thing.”
Does this guy still think that Zeus is knocking these women up?
Relevant–just popped up on my Facebook feed.
No abortions before 1950, huh?
Is that illustration a devil eating a baby? Because…that’s kind of fantastic.
Few things make me yearn for violence like those who harass women going into these clinics. So it was really awkward for me the first time I visited my best friend’s family, over spring break, and her mother invited me to join her one morning in a protest. (They’re Catholic, though my friend is more progressive; she doesn’t like abortion, but she doesn’t harass people about it.) I declined, but the conversation also involved her matter-of-factly saying the pill was also abortion and NFP was the only way to go.
I like my friend’s mother and I appreciate the hospitality they’ve shown me on that and other occasions. And it’s just surreal to imagine her in that crowd of people saying such awful, horrible things. I imagine myself walking down that sidewalk, carrying an open umbrella to the side because that’s the best protection I can imagine, but I know I’d also want more than anything to charge them with it, to hope the center is pointy enough to do them damage, because ugh, I hate them for thinking they have the right to shout at women they don’t even know, to shame them for their choice.
Oh god, this totally reminded me of the time I visited some cousins in Ohio, and one of their daughters is super Catholic. We had dinner at their house and she wasn’t there, and her mom just said she was “at one of her extracurriculars”. The next day when she showed up for lunch I was all, “Oh hey, we missed you at dinner last night!” and she apologized and said she was at a pro-life rally she helped organize.
My brain literally blue-screened, like, I could not formulate any sort of response to that statement without starting a scene at this lovely welcoming family’s home, so I think I just went “Ohhhhh!” and smiled vaguely while raging inside. To this day I really wish I’d said something but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or a shit-stirrer, especially when everyone was so happy because of this family reunion.
God, I know. It’s so hard to balance issues you feel really, really passionately about with respecting hospitality and the love you have for everyone else in the room and not making their holiday/reunion miserable by starting a huge debate about a sensitive issue, because you know there’s no way one of you will persuade the other and it will everything tense going forward.
NFP. I really liked the article where the woman was like “natural family planning really works! Well, I have 9 kids.” You could just hear the wheels churning there.
I liked it almost as much as the lady who was like “I teach abstinence.” and had to admit that her record was 0 for 2 at preventing unplanned, out-of-wedlock pregnancies in her daughters, but had her fingers crossed for the next three. OH FOR TWO LADY, those are bad stats. My pro-abortion mom was TWO ALL in preventing unplanned pregnancies in her daughters. She would have happily driven us down to the clinic and taken us out for a nice lunch after if necessary, but as it turns out, it wasn’t necessary.*
*As an aside, as I hit 30, my mom got pretty grumpy about the supreme effectiveness of modern birth control. I think she’s reaaaaaallly hoping for some grandkids, and if they aren’t fully planned, OH WELL.
Oh man. “You hold your breath” vs teaching your daughters how to keep themselves healthy and safe, yes that’s working so well for you.
The NYTimes headlines list reminded me of a fake Times article I read awhile back that I so badly wanted to share about a teenager creating, like, an alpaca sanctuary that helped her get into Brown. Alas, my googling was unsuccessful, but I did find a real NYT article about people keeping llamas as pets, called “The Llama Is In.”
Here is a cheerful piece of news regarding the UK doing it right. No, Pick-Up Artist, you do not get to come here and teach our lads how to assault women.
I think my bc pills are giving me problems with contact lenses, which makes me sad. Relatedly, I went for a screening at a laser eye surgery clinic and they said my corneas were too thin to have any of the procedures they offered, they couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t have worse problems after. So have any Toastfolk had lens implants, which is my only other option?
Seconding this question. My corneas are normal thickness, but my eyesight is so bad that there’s still not enough to laser. Boo.
My mom had that done maybe 10 years ago. Other than having to go back in for some scar tissue removal (it caused blurriness, but no pain), she is really happy with it. She went from coke bottle glasses, to hard contacts, to just needed reading glasses because she is an old.
Me on the other hand, too much of a wimp to even do the consultation for Lasik.
Anyone else want to scream WHAT ABOUT NUNS? Are they not fully women? Are priests not fully men, then? Discuss. UM, this is supposed to go with the comment about the priest saying “women aren’t fully women until they are mothers.”
Doncha know, the only thing more godly than non-contraceptive sex is being married to to god.
I read the PP protester article the other day (I saw a link to it on Facebook).
When I got to the part about life being so great in the 50’s, my eyes rolled so hard they flew out of my head and are now orbiting the earth. How the hell can people be so ignorant????
ARGGGGGGH!!! #BanAllMenButReallyBanThisManInParticular
As a companion to the article on Do They Know it’s Christmas from yesterday, Al-Jazeera had a delightful article titled “We got this, Bob Geldof, so back off” article about it and the new ebola song http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/11/bob-…
I’ve been enjoying reading pieces by various artists about how they were approached for the song, and why they turned it down. I wish I could find them to link back here, but I’m on my work computer, so. But people seem to be articulating really well why they can’t get on board with this, and I’m so glad those articulations are getting out there!
Sounds like "The Most Emailed 'New York Times' Article Ever": http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-most-emailed-ne…