To fail to address the points of your post, I will say that when I read "chaired a meeting" and "visiting Irishman", I at first thought that you meant an academic meeting with a guest lecturer. Mostly because I hear all the secretary gossip and we've had a couple of hard-drinking guys from the UK and Europe around lately. I don't know if they spoke of sleeping in ditches in any but a sociological context, though.
I have a wealth of horror stories from my family and friends. One sister was a Dalkon shield victim and had to adopt because she became sterile. At least in Minnesota she got a good (middle five figures) settlement. (Yay trial lawyers! Boo tort reform! Yay Miles Lord! -- Lord was the judge who awarded the settlement, and he was almost censured for the way he wrote his judgment).
Then a sister-in-law continued to menstruate through her pregnancy. (Duplex uterus? Not sure.). She was in total denial and wondered why she was gaining weight. She and my brother had broken up when she phoned to report that she had given birth. (The baby is now 30 and perfectly healthy, but she's a Goth and quite the mopy little bitch.)
Then this woman I knew pretty well said her cousin was born holding the IUD in his tiny fist. Call it an urban legend, but it's only second hand. I've met the guy but didn't ask him about it, probably because he was more or less mentally ill.
You're welcome, always glad to help.
Was out on the town with my AA-attending brother-in-law and some other relatives. He wondered why we weren't drinking more than we were. He extolled the virtues of alcohol, and remarked, "If I wasn't an alcoholic, I'd be drunk all the time."
I assume that's a standard AA joke, but it cracked me up.
In considering all this it ocurred to me that if it were men who got their periods, we'd have to hear about it all the fucking time, and there would be macho discussions about how much blood was coming out of their body.
This is so true. My morning amusement will come from imagining the blogs of Instapundit, Ace O. Spades, and Hugh Hewitt as they would be in this possible world.
Men can never know what an incredible, amazing feeling it is to finally get your period when you're afraid that you're pregnant.
True. The feeling it is to find that this marvellous event has just happened to your girlfriend can in some circumstances not be too far off, though.
there would be macho discussions about how much blood was coming out of their body.
In what way doesn't this post satisfy that criterion?
4: We'd also be told that Edwards and Obama don't even *use* tampons because all they need for their little wussy flows are panty liners.
Unless your girlfriend is my sister-in-law. Just another reason why relationships are bad.
My first thought was "Wow, too much information." Since my father is an ob/gyn, it isnt often that I think that thought.
But, on second thought, I hate the idea of periods or reproductive being something shameful that cannot be discussed. It is natural. It is biology. It should not be shameful. (Ok, so maybe the IUD isnt natural.)
I might come back later to share nuva ring horror stories.
If you're done having children, Husband X (that's his name, right?) can go in for a simple outpatient procedure. Out of commission for a short period, a dull ache considerably less painful, if reports are remotely accurate, than any single period, and the whole thing is taken care of for life.
It's hard for me to conceive of a self-respecting man who'd prefer to subject a wife to either an IUD or chemical experimentation.
Once you're done having kids.
10:
exactly. I would say that about 90 percent of my friends have been snipped.
11: So you don't know many women, I guess.
Aside from observing that those guys would scare me plenty, all I feel like saying is "Thanks for thinking of us!"
self-respecting man who'd prefer to subject a wife to either an IUD
That would be me. What if I'm called upon to repopulate the Earth?
14 -- Yeah, I was thinking about that too. What if Scarlett Johansson came up to me and said 'I want to have your babies!' There's only one reasonable response: 'Sure, honey, let's give it a try.'
Charley, the disappointment will come when she hands you the semen collection vial. She's just after your fantastic genes.
Be serious, Ogged. If we're going to repopulate the Earth, it's gonna be with *white* babies.
I'm giggling at the thought of bloggy men comparing their menstrual cramps. "We were all on the front lines that day.... and I had my Tampax Pearl..."
I agree with "fuck a bunch of hippie bullshit." Went off the pill one month. Evilcalabody went back to its normal, horrible monthly routine. You know what? Pills are good.
For both sexes, there's that 'closing off your options' feeling about either party getting snipped. I'm not planning to have any more kids, but if Buck got snipped, we wouldn't be able to change that.
On the IUD, I've had one for five years or so, and I'm pro. Periods are heavier and crampier, but not insanely so, and they're way, way reliable and not subject to user error. (I've heard a lot more 'born with the IUD in its hand' stories than make sense from the stats -- I think it's an attractive subject for urban legending.)
I've heard a lot more 'born with the IUD in its hand' stories than make sense
Yeah, any doctor that didn't remove an IUD from a pregnant woman would be committing really, really serious malpractice.
LB, I assume you looked into it, so is the "frozen sperm and a turkey baster" approach too unreliable for the possibility of future kids? Is it the expense that rules this option out?
20: My vote's for urban legend, too. It's got too much of the pro-life hugglefuzzies.
22: Expensive and elaborate, considering that it's 20-1 that we wouldn't use it. And the IUD is genuinely not a problem. (Al sounds she's having worse results heavy periods-wise than I do, but I went from middle-of-the-road to quite heavy; it sounds as if she's going from quite heavy to OMFG. But it does return back towards whatever your norm is after the first few months.)
Apparently, my 21 is not entirely reliable medical advice.
My wife and I recently had the conversation about when and if I should get snipped. I offered to do so as soon as we decided about a third potential child, but she said she didn't care, because she wanted to stay on chemical birth control anyway--evens everything out, cuts down on mood swings (Jesus YES!), reduces the intensity of the period.
Well, the people who told me the IUD story were anti-life second- or third-generation Communists, but as I said, the ultimate source of the story was seemingly mentally ill.
How would the IUD get inside the amniotic sac? Or does the baby just grab it on the way out?
It's funny. We'd been having the conversation, and it seemed obvious to me: they're going to have you open for the C-section anyhow, just have them cinch your tubes shut while they're in there. But then she decided that she didn't like the idea of being surgically sterilized. "It's less invasive for you, anyway." Not when *you're* already cut open, it isn't.
So the IUD was the compromise.
Kids are playful, I don't think that it's worth speculating about their little motives.
This story, on the other hand, does sound plausible: I got pregnant with an IUD in place, and the doctor told me that he could pull out the IUD and the pregnancy would most likely come out with it. He phrased it as "You wouldn't even have to think of it as an abortion," assuming reasonably that it was an unwanted pregnancy. I opted to keep it in because I wanted to have the baby. I had to be cautious about baths and swimming until the string disappeared into the cervix, because of the risk of infection. After my son was born, my doctor told me that the IUD was delivered with the afterbirth.
From Apo's link
If you become pregnant with an IUD in place, your health professional may recommend that the IUD be removed. This is because the IUD can cause miscarriage or preterm birth (the IUD will not cause birth defects). Taking out an IUD early in a pregnancy lowers risks of miscarriage or preterm birth. However, IUD removal can also cause a miscarriage. As a pregnancy progresses, miscarriage risk is lower if an IUD is removed than if it is left in place.
The 'in its hand' bit has got to be hyperbole, but not relevantly important.
I guess we're not 100% sure we're done having kids. babies born with the IUD in hand...must have happened sometime but I agree that it's ripe for legend. it might be dangerous to try to remove it during the pregnancy, actually. seems to me that plenty of women have been killed by heart problems or blood clots related to hormonal birth control, but it doesn't have the same obvious impact as the IUD gone wrong.
apo, the "Edwards is so wussy he only uses pantiliners" thing is exactly what I'm imagining in bizzaro world.
as to whether the guys in question were scary as individuals, mostly not at all, except secret agent guy. I think it's just men in general.
...aaand, pwned. these real-time comment threads are hard.
I can see where too high a concentration of guys, any guys, doesn't feel right. If that's all you're saying it seems completely understandable to me.
My first thought was "Wow, too much information." Since my father is an ob/gyn, it isnt often that I think that thought.
Huh. Doesn't seem like an unusual amount of information to me, once you enter the realm of gyn talk at all.
Mmm. That's my worklife every day, but I do notice how relaxing it is being in a meeting with a bunch of other women when it happens.
A friend got fixed as a gift to his bride-to-be about six months before their wedding. I thought that was such a great present; the pill had some real hormonal/emotional side effects on her that just were not at all pleasant. It was also hilarious to see him sitting around with a bag of frozen peas on his crotch the day after.
Every day I find a reason to say this: "I thank all the gods that I am gay." Today I just get to say it a little earlier than usual.
My girlfriend just got an IUD last month, and it's been fine so far. And by fine, I mean totally fantastic.
I might come back later to share nuva ring horror stories.
Can you please share, Will?
aw, mcmanly, we're not so gross once you get past all the blood and bacon and play-doh and stuff.
Alameida is a pioneer and an early adapter. When full equality is attained, AA meetings will be gender-balanced.
Oh, it's not women. It's funny, actually, because I find myself intimidated by meetings full of men with no women at all or at least no other gay men at all. It's just the whole crazy reproduction thing. I find it very alien and weird. I'm thrilled when my smart and attractive and generally awesome friends have kids because yay for more people being raised by smart, caring liberals! I see this as undeniably good! The whole process vaguely mystifies me, though.
Wait, bacon and play-doh?
Nuva Rings are clear rings. They look like a clear ring seal or washer or some other type of round clear band.
I didn't really know what they looked like. Apparently, neither did our maid. So after this clear ring had been sitting on my bedside table for a couple of days, I decide to ask my significant other if she knew what it was or whether I should throw it away since it had been sitting there for a couple of days.
She initially shrugged and said throw it away, then suddenly her eyes bugged out. Fortunately, the pregnancy test was negative.
They are great and don't normally come out. But if you have been particularly vigorous, you might want to confirm that it is still there.
Is "early adapter" a common variation?
The whole process vaguely mystifies me
It's exactly like they told you in health class.
In my HS 9th grade science class, the facts of life were explained in terms of crayfish. Everyone was petrified. They do it belly-to-belly just like us, IIRC.
It's exactly like they told you in health class.
Are you kidding? I skipped class that day to go clubbing.
44: A conservative blogger recently referred to the female genitalia as resembling what H.R. Geiger would have come up with working in the medium of bacon and play-doh.
50: You've got to be joking. Seriously? I hope he never gets laid for the rest of his life.
50: The female duck, perhaps. Was this Ace?
51: I actually used to argue with the guy a lot back on a forum where I was hanging out when around the time the war was starting. Boring, unpleasant little nitwit.
The last time I followed a discussion like this was in a Brasserie in Paris. Two American women, thinking they were the only English speakers in the place, took an adjacent table and started talking out their childbirth experiences in exquisite anatomical detail from stirrups to saddle blocks. And then they raised their level of discourse to a discussion about their latest dental experience with all the nada data about deep pockets and scraping. Meanwhile my café noir and crock monsieur cooled as I lost my appetite. Not a very pleasant experience for a cunning linguist.
Yes, I suppose, we should talk more openly about these matters, as Alameida suggests, but not over petite dejeuner. "L' addition, s' il vous plait."
Whereas we all know that female genitalia are molluscoid (cf. P.Z. Meyers).
17 -- She'd relent when I told her that she's suggesting sin. (The more obvious sin wouldn't apply: I'd be a widower, the wife having died laughing at the mere thought of SJ making the request).
26 -- I'm not anti-pill. Rather, I think that it makes sense to manage a woman's chemistry, to the extent one needs to do so for other reasons, with amounts and formulations calculated to accomplishing those goals.
20, 34 -- Obviously, one has to decide whether one is really done. IMO, this should be done in a clear-eyed, deliberate, and self-aware manner. My story about how we came to this includes TMI (more properly, TMOPI) so I'll just say it wasn't optimal.
As 13 year olds in an all-boys school, we the religious education teacher was assigned to discuss the whole sordid business, which led to much snickering and so on in class. But then he had his revenge on us by playing a video showing a woman laboring and giving birth in glorious technicolor and full sound. That shut us all up, I can tell you.
A woman I work with (done having kids) got endometrial ablation, the procedure where they laser the lining of the uterus, and says it's the greatest thing evah. No bleeding, no pills.
She initially shrugged and said throw it away
She thought it might have come from someone else, was on your nightstand, and simply shrugged?
My recollection is that the pre-birth classes used to show 9 or 10 pound babies being born. The nurse would then turn to the camera and say, "And she did it without drugs!"
I thought, what kind of sick freak makes these scary videos.
"She thought it might have come from someone else, was on your nightstand, and simply shrugged?"
Just another reason you should never have a maid that is under 60 years old or under 250 pounds.
the procedure where they laser the lining of the uterus
All I wanted was a woman with frickin laser beams in her uterus. Honestly, throw me a bone here.
Charley's life usually tracks my own, right down to the boundaries of TMOPI, but we avoided needing to face this. Several of my friends had sub-optimal experiences though; I think it's very common to take action after a scare/blessed event.
53: Yes, Ace.
55: a cunning linguist -- very nice.
57: TMOPI -- over-priced?
Yes, Ace.
Somehow, that just made sense.
Of course, from your point of view, bacon is erotic. So it all evens out.
In Apo's dreams, women taste like bacon.
It's true, actually, that I did originally think that ala was simply referring to apo's known proclivities and I wasn't grasping the context.
Somehow, that just made sense.
I know Mr. Spades only at second hand.
Do women taste like oysters? Someone work with me here.
66.2: I refuse to believe someone over 14 has not heard that pun dozens of times before.
As for Ace of Spades's aesthetic critiques, I can see where he's coming from, but if you're spending a lot of time looking at the area in question, you're not doing it right.
75: If that were the case, wouldn't half the Internet shut down? There seems to be a market out there for photographic representations.
"44: A conservative blogger recently referred to the female genitalia as resembling what H.R. Geiger would have come up with working in the medium of bacon and play-doh."
Now I understand what Alec Baldwin meant.
if you're spending a lot of time looking at the area in question, you're not doing it right.
It's Ace we're talking about here.
75.1: I guess maybe I have, but not within the range of my feeble memory.
If Men Could Menstruate, by Gloria Steinem
Are you there, God? It's me, apostropher.
80 is a link, but it's not showing up blue on my computer. Still linky though.
That's because you screwed up the html, heebie.
Heebie:
If you were a heavy bleeder, you would have gotten it correct.
What Light-Bleeder!
I suspect the ring popping out thing has a lot to do with relative geometry.
"The feeling it is to find that this marvellous event has just happened to your girlfriend can in some circumstances not be too far off, though. "
Yeah, especially if you aren't sure your gf would abort, and you don't want to be a pops in college.
also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpVC9aaQOQ8&mode=related&search=
Then this woman I knew pretty well said her cousin was born holding the IUD in his tiny fist.
I heard that in the sewers of New York City, aborted babies ride tiny alligators while shaking IUDs in their tiny fists.
92: Then they don't buy gas for a day and bring Exxon to its knees.
And they're all named "Female" pronounced "Feh-molly" because the idiot mothers misread the birth certificate. Women are so dumb!
75: Yes. It's interesting in that pretty much all porn is just a very slight variation on the previous edition in a particular genre, yet that's all it takes to make it "new".
Except the large-breasted ones, heebie.
Apropos of the babies holding IUDs....So, in the Catholic marriage rite, you have to promise to accept children as God gives them. This is the part where most Catholics just lie to their teeth, but through the magic of philosophy, I can say, hey, God's omnipotent... surely 99.2% reliable birth control isn't enough to stop him....
hey, that gloria steinem thing was kind of great. slightly cringe-inducing, but I like the idea of joe namath pads for those light bachelor days.
cala, that's jesuitical hair-splitting...so should be ok, right?
Hey, if I learned it from the Jesuits.....
37: And this is why the bizarro world where men menstruate would be so interesting. I seem to recall a thread not so long ago where the fellas were striving to describe in thorough detail the sensations of taking a hit to the groin and nary a soul thought that TMI. But golly, menstruation, and the boys get all squeamish.
Aw, they weren't that bad -- I saw one comment saying, essentially, first I thought TMI and then I changed my mind.
Which boys got squeamish, missy? Will is a former swimmer, so he's totally gay.
But golly, menstruation, and the boys get all squeamish.
97: If his own kid had grabbed the IUD on the way out, the scene might have looked something like this.
I agree with 9 that biology is what it is and it ought not be a big deal to talk about it... on the other hand, I also have to agree with McManlyPants that getting to skip the whole blood-and-large-living-things-coming-out-your-privates thing is one of the consolations of being a sodomite. Judging from the one time blood came out of my privates, I think doing it every month would be distressing; and judging from the 18 years I spent living with my mother, actually going crazy once a month would kind of suck too.
Hmm. OT, but this infant Christ is a bit of a shocker.
one of the consolations of being a sodomite.
It's not as if the rest of us aren't habitually committing sodomy as well. But yeah, I could do without the bleeding -- it's not awful, but it is low-level irritating.
104. "I claim this lap in the name of God, for myself and the glory of my descendants!"
You know that's totally what he's thinking.
The neatly combed hair looks very Republican. That's one nerdy Jesus.
102: Well, okay, really just picking on Will (unfairly, I suppose, but all in fun). Is it the "former" or the "swimmer" part that makes him "gay" -- and was that intended as a compliment, snark, or purely neutral observation?
(As an aside, as a former swimmer myself, I recall fondly the early adolescent thrill of boys' swim meets. The combination of the speedo and the apparent -- and I do mean apparent -- nerves as the lads took to the starting blocks offered such delight to the imagination of a young innocent.)
I thought about getting an IUD for a long time, but of course fucking health insurance doesn't fucking cover it. Fuckers.
But since I, like you Alameida, am a really shitty pill taker (loved Norplant back when you could get someone to actually give it to you) and I'm almost 40, I've just stopped taking the damn things. Screw it, might as well take one last half-assed shot at having a second kid.
I do notice how relaxing it is being in a meeting with a bunch of other women when it happens.
Yeah, agreed. I know what Alameida's saying about the occasional fear around a large group of men--to me, there's very little that's more unnerving than being in public and realizing that there's a group of guys nearby, whether construction workers, volleyball players, suits, whatever. Especially if they're about the *only* people around. It's so normal I would never have noticed it except for realizing how incredibly comfortable and safe I felt in large groups that were almost exclusively women: a Hipmama conference, the March for Women's Lives, the NAPW conference. It's fucking amazing. I wonder if guys feel that safe all the time. If so, I hate them.
I like to imagine Di Kotimy's aside as read by David Cross playing Tobias in Arrested Development.
I, like you Alameida, am a really shitty pill taker
Those pills aren't meant for you two anyhow.
113: I was pretty awful at the Pill too. All the brains and education in the world, and taking a pill the same time every day was over my head. (I hardly ever missed two days straight, though, and did have an NP tell me that one missed day was pretty safe. And I never got knocked up taking the pill. Condoms, check. Diaphragm, check.)
I wonder if guys feel that safe all the time.
Pretty much.
Wow. I honestly can't imagine what that would be like.
It's so normal I would never have noticed it except for realizing how incredibly comfortable and safe I felt in large groups that were almost exclusively women
So the presence of even a few men is somehow, I won't say threatening, but anxiety-producing perhaps, a fact this experience of absence brings home to you?
re: 117
Really? Most of the time I never worry about my own safety, but there are certainly times when I do.
117: I'm skeptical. Maybe physically safe, but I've seen at least a few guys when dramatically outnumbered by women grow visibly uncomfortable -- particularly if subjected to "girly" talk. Perhaps not the sort of guys that hang out here. But the type that becomes a bit of a lost puppy when placed in an environment where more than a belch, a fart, and some homophobic humor to prove his manliness is necessary to fit in.
re: 124
My first job after leaving school I was the only male member of staff among 50 or so women [I was a hospital domestic in a mental hospital]. I wouldn't say I was uncomfortable, but there were people who tried their hardest to make me feel uncomfortable and the odd uncomfortable moment.
But 124 is a very different, although perhaps complementary issue. It's also not about safety.
125: Maybe on the evidence we've just heard you were disturbing their comfort by your very presence.
122: absence of experience is not experience of absence.
Moments when I've felt uncomfortable: being on a night bus in central london, being on ANY bus in Glasgow after about 7pm, walking through big crowds of football fans, passing certain groups of teenage boys, etc.
Other people don't get that? Ever?
I think I agree with ttaM's 123. I wouldn't say that I always feel safe. But if we're talking about feeling safe in, say, an office environment, no matter who's around, then sure.
I do not feel unsafe in groups composed of just men, but I do feel self-conscious, which is tiring.
The only time I can recall feeling physically unsafe during the last ten years was driving in Rome.
131: Yeah, this more, if we're talking about an office context. And in my office, literally 90% of the partners are men, with a much larger percentage of female associates, so there's a combination of feeling out-of-place and low status in mostly male meetings. There are bigger things to worry about, but the occasional room where more than half of the people are women is a relief.
126: Different? Maybe. Very different? I dunno. Perhaps I've misread the points made by Alameida and BPhd, but my own experiences when the lone woman surrounded by men makes me think the issue isn't purely about physical safety. Emotional safety is important, too. Me personally, I can't recall ever being surround by men and fearing that they'd gang up to physically hurt me. But I do know there's an element of worrying -- perhaps expecting -- that they will reduce me to the trivial, weak little girl to whom they in all their manliness can condescend. (Fears of physical harm arise more in the types of situation ttaM seems to be describing.)
But not being a man, I have no idea if the guys (who seem?) uncomfortable when surrounded by women are feeling emotionally threatened or what.
For the record, the "former" part was the most offensive part of his comment.
Also, for the record, much to the chagrin of my second grade teacher, I learned about the fallopian tubes when I was 5.
Girl parts and blood just don't gross me out.
Anyone else having placenta soup for lunch?
Girl parts and blood just don't gross me out.
Will has a good attitude towards menstruation.
Hey now. I didn't say that I embraced it.
Will -- if the blood and girly parts don't gross you out at all, then what part of the post did you initially think was TMI? (Serious question -- not trying to be confrontational or anything.)
For the record, the blood grosses me out a bit. It's messy, it's a pain, and as Alameida points out, it can ruin perfectly good garments.
I wonder if guys feel that safe all the time.
Not unsafe, but definitely uneasy in certain all-male situations. Not so much with women.
Anyone else having placenta soup for lunch?
Once on a garden job, I planted a cherry tree over the client's placenta from her first childbirth. She'd been keeping it in the freezer.
the thing about the fear is I realized it wasn't just fear of being marginalized or whatever, though me chairing a meeting all of guys most of whom are older than me did have a bit of that, but there's a kernel of actual physical fear too, which surprised me a little. I take it for granted that I will experience physical fear in lots of ordinary life situations (public transit in the states, the lots of construction workers thing.) men fuck with women out in public all the time. it was weird to realize that was still there in this ostensibly neutral context. and I'm with bitch, fuck all y'all safe-feeling motherfuckers. also, good night.
Di Kotimy:
I was just surprised that she didn't hold ANYTHING back. Not a single thing. It caught me off guard that she had so completely spread it all out.
guys when dramatically outnumbered by women grow visibly uncomfortable -- particularly if subjected to "girly" talk.
So, say, at a baby shower, for instance?
This is why we must invite more men to baby showers, and force them all to show up. Just so there'll be plenty of men there, and they won't be uncomfortable. It's for your own good.
144 -- or a pajama party.
On the subject of the nuvaring: The packaging says to keep them cool, so when my girlfriend gets one from the pharmacy, she puts it in the fridge. But it's more convenient to keep it in the beer fridge, so it's now known as the beer-and-contraceptives fridge.
Related to that, I know that antibiotics are generally said to render hormonal contraceptives ineffective, but the research I've seen says that it's an effect of digestive absorbtion. Does anyone happen to know if there's medical knowledge about antibiotics and the various non-pill hormonal contraceptives? With depo, norplant, the patch, and nuvaring, it seems like someone might have studied it.
144 -- "baby showers" s/b "pajama parties"
144: Yes, please, let's subject the men to the cutesy "name the baby" and assorted other baby-shower games. Let them be forces to gush politely about how adorable the 783rd onesie is. The agonies of menstruation pale in comparison.
The real question is who feels uncomfortable in a room full of babies?
I'm planning on getting an IUD in the next couple of months. But I'm thinking I'll almost certainly get the Mirena, which has a tiny localised hormonal effect, and in about 3/4 of women who use it, reduces or pretty much eliminates periods. Initially I didn't fancy the Mirena, having not used hormonal contraception for years and years, but having talked to a friend who's a consultant gynaecologist, I decided it would be ok. (Not that I can remember why now.) I think it's even more effective.
I wish my partner would get the vasectomy though. I've taken to asking him *when* he thinks he'll get it done, hoping that my assumption that he *will* be getting it will seep into his subconscious until he assumes it's going to happen too.
I know any number of puppies and kittens who would feel uncomfortable in a room full of babies, were said babies not suitably restrained.
God, I feel uncomfortable in a room full of babies these days. They hold no further charm for me now - if you can't have a conversation with it I don't want to know.
While he's asleep you can give him a surprise birthday or Christmas vasectomy. It's more than 90% effective, one way or another, and all it takes is a blowtorch, a pliers, a wire coathanger, and two strong men to hold him down.
being on a night bus in central london, being on ANY bus in Glasgow after about 7pm, walking through big crowds of football fans, passing certain groups of teenage boys, etc.
I wouldn't say I never feel unsafe, but in Utah it's rare to never. I'd certainly be warier in Glasgow or such. But it's not like Salt Lake has the equivalent of Compton.
155 - Well, the friend mentioned above could do it, and he'd be happier to have someone he knows doing it, but she doesn't do them as part of her job any longer, so it would be tricky to arrange. We'll see how the IUD goes - give it a few more years and the blowtorch option might well be looking very attractive.
The first time I went to New Jersey I felt incredibly unsafe. "My God! Nobody's around! Someone could just drive up and kidnap me!"
153: Oh, I'm still baby-focused. I don't want another of my own for practical reasons, but my impulse when talking to anyone with a baby is to ask if I can hold it. It's funny -- I had no interest at all in them until I had them, and now I miss having them around.
Toddlers I can skip. I like babies, and I love kids big enough to be reasonable -- the combination of mobile and irrational sucks.
I don't want another of my own for practical reasons, but my impulse when talking to anyone with a baby is to ask if I can hold it.
Christ, my wife has this, and bad. Logically she knows two is great, but would LOVE to have another baby.
This is why a world where people lived closer to family would make sense. The reasonable thing to do with this feeling would be to take it out in babysitting, but none of my friends that live anywhere near have babies.
I don't want another kid, just some baby-snuggling.
161: Come out to Jersey! Young S will put on her disconsolate-baby act for you, and E and I can go watch a movie.
S is a full-scale kid at this point, right? Those I've got myself. I'm talking about the full-strength, undiluted, "Ooo, look at the tiny little fingernails. Who's a baby? Are you a baby? Yes you are!" smack.
I figure it'll wear off at some point, or twenty-thirty years down the road Sally and or Newt may be procreating, and I can exploit them for babies.
Babies are mesmerizing. I do understand how people end up with houses full of children.
Yeah, in another time and place I could totally see that. When's Roberta due? Next month, this month, but real soon, right?
Scheduled C-section on the 31st.
It'd be stalkery to volunteer to fly down to NC to babysit, so I won't. But you do have to post pictures.
A good friend is having twins soon, the first of my friends to have any kids. It's not too soon: I need to coo and fawn over babies these days (kinda like Megan, I'm afraid), and strangers don't let me get near theirs.
Congrats, Apo.
LB, come on out -- I'll put mine in onesies and diapers, and give them binkies. You totally won't know they're four years old. Not before I've fled the house, at least.
I have a highly developed sense of scale, and can't be fooled by simple tricks like that. It's real babies or nothing.
It'd be stalkery
I'm okay with it. Come on down.
Man, you people are a straight up Birds reference yourselves with all the hovering and cooing.
I was going to keep my mouth shut but, fuck it, most any of you who know me IRL know anyway and it's not like my being on the pill hasn't been discussed before so whatever: as much as I hate the side-effects of being on hormonal contraception, my periods had been completely irregular and I felt like crap and I wanted to get back on it to straighten everything out so about a month ago I decided to go back on NuvaRing. The morning after I restarted it, I had an...incident...where I went blind for an hour. Not blind as in "everything went black" but blind as in "vision went suddenly and completely blurry and couldn't make out my surroundings". It came out of nowhere and stopped just as suddenly.
One of the "OMG" side-effects where they tell you to call your doctor ASAP is blurred vision so I took it out immediately and called my doctor and his office assistant wouldn't let me see him anytime sooner than my scheduled appointment two weeks later (bitch). When I finally saw him, he said there was a (small) possibility that I might have had a minor stroke or a TIA because of blood clots caused by the hormones (blood clots are a known side effect of all hormonal contraception). I can't go back on it until I've been "cleared" that I'm not going to stroke out. Since then, I've seen a cardiologist, a neurologist, an eye doctor, and am scheduled for a bunch of other stuff in the upcoming weeks, including a MRI and a MRA. (Yay insurance.) Every person has said pretty much the same thing: we don't think you had a clot but we can't be sure and, well, are you sure you want to risk it? (One difference: the female doctors are more willing to say "maybe risk it" because they understand what it's like to be miserable and need your cycle sorted out.)
So, I'm just stumped about what to do and hate not having clear answers and really think this is all going to end up with nobody knowing what the hell happened. Blah. Any insights, whatever, are appreciated.
173: Three kids between two marriages means I'm still living within the Zero Population Growth guidelines. My wife is one of seven kids, though. When this baby arrives, it will be grandchild #12 (the oldest one just turned 13), with #13 on the way about two months afterwards. The last of the seven kids is getting married weekend after next to a woman whose biological clock can be heard for blocks.
You should see Roberta's folks' place at Thanksgiving.
175: Wow. My sympathies. I gather your doctors haven't suggested alternatives, is that right?
Becks, do you have a history of nosebleeds or bleeding gums?
Whoa! Temporary vision loss indicates you might have had a "minor" stroke, yet the doc/office assistant wouldn't get you in for two weeks?! Where are the med mal lawyers on this blog?
This is scary. Abstinence is really starting to sound like a reasonable choice...
Yeah, 'suddenly went blind' is about the scariest BC side effect I've ever heard of. Have you been harassing your gyno for some solution to the annoying periods other than hormonal BC?
What the people at Planned Parenthood always say is that the risks in pregnancy are always more dangerous than those in hormonal birth control. (I have a cousin who developed a blood clot in her 3rd month of a wanted pregnancy: full bed rest until birth, baby!) So maybe you might risk it. I don't know what the story is with the copper IUDs, whether if you decide later on to try for kids you might have a long wait, but it's worth looking into.
176: Doesn't mean you will not have a house objectively full of kids, at least some of the time.
It's like cats; get three or more in one place and soon enough it seems like there's more all the time.
178 - WTF? I have a history of nosebleeds.
The problem with IUDs is that very few US gynos will prescribe them for unmarried women. The idea is that if there's any substantial chance you'll have multiple partners during the use of the IUD, the STD risk makes them inappropriate (that is, STD's are more dangerous if you have an IUD in).
My sense is that this is over-caution, and not really justified by the stats, but it doesn't mean that you can find a doctor to prescribe you one.
178, 184: Heh. I love games of "Diagnose your friends!"
The doc doesn't have any suggestions other than BCP for the weird periods. He had the same thoughts about clots during pregnant vs. when on the Pill as JM said in 182.
To recap: IUDs cause excessive cramping and bleeding.
The pill (and other hormonal methods) cause risks of blood clots, particularly for smokers.
Apparently this novaring thing makes you stroke out and go blind.
Sterilization is a bit permanent.
The rhythm method is none too reliable.
Any remaining options short of the barrier methods?
What the people at Planned Parenthood always say is that the risks in pregnancy are always more dangerous than those in hormonal birth control. (I have a cousin who developed a blood clot in her 3rd month of a wanted pregnancy: full bed rest until birth, baby!) So maybe you might risk it.
That's what my objine said, too. "Double your risk of clots" is "still less than the risk you'd incur by getting pregnant."
But holy christ, Becks. That's scary.
We couldn't believe it when that cousin decided to go through another near-death pregnancy a couple of years later. Full bed-rest again, but only after month four or something. That that it was uterine fibroids (and the blood-thinners again, of course).
S is a full-scale kid at this point, right?
Yabbut she can do a good baby impression when she feels like things are going too smoothly.
(I don't find that "the combination of mobile and irrational" is confined to the toddler years.)
186 - That's why I posted it. I was thinking "gee, I don't want to scare everyone" (really, I've been fine for the last month. I'm not too worried, although I was pretty freaked out immediately after) but then I thought "this is a weird enough group that someone might have just heard of something".
184: I ask because a friend of mine (who also has a history of nosebleeds) had the "suddenly go blind for an hour" thing happen to her a couple of months ago. Went to the doctor, who determined she'd had a mini-stroke, and several others in the past few months as well. They initially thought it was just due to anemia, but...
I had a trans-esophageal echo cardiogram, this is where they put an ultrasound wand down the esophagus. That test showed no shunting of blood. Next, I had a CT angiography. That showed shunting of blood in my lungs. I have multiple pulmonary arterio-venous malformations. Which means unfiltered blood is going to my brain causing mini-strokes. So today I met with the specialist that will perform the surgery to correct the malformations. My surgery is scheduled for Wed, March 28th. It will be an outpatient surgery. They are going to put a stainless steel coil into each of the lower lobes of the lung.
As it turns out, I have a genetic disorder, Osler-Weber-Rendu syndrome or HHT. This causes the AVMs, nose bleeds and other vascular issues. Now that my doctors know, they can keep an eye on me and my kids.
I don't want to freak you out, because the odds of any given person having HHT are really, really small. Just that I had a good friend describe this exact thing to me less than two months ago.
Becks:
I think blurred vision is risk with any hormonal bc. For the record, I know a lot of people who use the nuva ring. None of them have had blurred vision. I would be surprised if the risk for you was greater than on bcp.
Virtually every woman that I know who uses the nuva ring loves it. (popping out notwithstanding)
I like the way Lizardbreath thinks.
What the people at Planned Parenthood always say is that the risks in pregnancy are always more dangerous than those in hormonal birth control.
Yeah, for women who haven't had a problem. There's other ways to not get pregnant, and the odds of something sketchy with hormonal birth control (for Becks) is rapidly approaching 1.
uterine fibroids
You know what works well against uterine fibroids? RU-486. But probably not the standard of care when you're pregnant.
195 - Huh. That's kind of weird. I'll talk to my doctor about it.
Seriously, is blurry vision worse than a condom?
If my gf had an incident like that, I'm thinking we would stick to condoms until her situation was figured out.
Don't worry - I'm not taking any hormonal contraception or anything for the time being. Definitely not risking it. And if the do find something, I'll stay away from them. More what I was worried about is if this all ends up in some weird uncertain "we have no idea what happened" phase after all of the tests are done, which would suck.
It's not as if the rest of us aren't habitually committing sodomy as well.
Yes, but of course we're more wholly committed to it as an ideal. Sniff.
Also, holy shit, Becks. Good vibes to you.
Also, a room full of babies would completely flip my shit. A room of cats or puppies would be no problem. I get the "let me hold it!" urge around pets, not babies.
188 "Any remaining options short of barrier methods?" Yes, there is always abstinence. But have no fear, check this out:
A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety.
Bdelloid rotifers are microscopic animals, less than four times the length of a human sperm, are all female, yet have evolved into different species that fill different ecological niches. Two sister species were found to be living together on the body of a water louse. One of them specialized in living around the louse's legs; the other stayed close to the chest.
In view of these findings, may we assume that those who practice abstinence will also find their ecological niche on a water louse? Since the legs, body, and chest are currently occupied, what other louse real estate is still available? Any suggestions?
Yes, but are the Bdelloid rotifers *happy*?
Dunno. Check your community Rotifer Club.
Nobody is checking off "rotifer-style" as their favorite sex position.
A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years
Hey, don't be picking on teo.
206: Do they have baby parks where I'd be able to let one off the leash and then break up the fights it starts with other babies?
213: The playground is right next to the dog park and you still haven't looked at it?
More what I was worried about is if this all ends up in some weird uncertain "we have no idea what happened"
The protocol then goes to reducing the risk-factors for a stroke. They'll put you on aspirin and a statin, and yell at you to quit smoking and eating cheeseburgers. I just did all that a few weeks ago, when I suddenly couldn't tell where my right arm and hand were unless I could see them. The brain MRI showed some small clots but the other tests didn't turn up an obvious cause to be dealt with.
Bio, take care of yourself and stay on top of this.
Forget birth control. Apparently Unfogged causes strokes.
Unfogged causes strokes
It's the swimming posts, obviously.
216: For sure. Being subjected to four days of hospital food makes for a hell of a great incentive to stay out of even a supposedly top-notch place.
Fortunately Unfogged doesn't cause much sex.
Unfogged doesn't cause much sex.
So young, so naive...
217: I think it's only those posts about "the male gaze" that are potentially lethal. The various other Theory of Humanity particles go through without interacting.
I'm surprised none of you have picked up the obvious implication of Rotifer-topia: Don't need a bike when you can unicycle.
226: Why buy the cow when you can mitotically divide for free.
With profound regrets, it seems the cow is the only one capable of doing this.
Alas, I think the rotifers have solved the converse of the problem at issue here. They have managed procreation without sex. We still have but imperfect solutions to the problem of sex without procreation.
198: There are multiple varieties, you know.
Alas, foiled again by my purity and innocence. So much to learn...
231: MTV get off the air!
So LB references sodomy three times in a single thread. Interesting.
Apparently she was referencing a different variety each time...
It's a time-honored and viable birth-control strategy. And fun to say -- sodomy sodomy sodomy.
Been listening to the "Hair" original cast recording, eh?
I may commit sodomy on a regular basis, but there are some depths to which even I will not stoop.
Di Kotimy, remember this? "Rather than deal with our own inability to empathize, we project the flaw onto the other by implicitly declaring them unworthy of the empathy that we are incapable of."
It cuts through the snark, and I did learn from this. Thank you.
sodomy sodomy sodomy
Sock it to me!
Thanks for that reminder, SC. It took me a minute to realize that I was the one who'd written that.
Oh, man: sodomy, babyfights, and weird neurological symptoms all in one thread. Surely this thread was meant as a present just to me?
Oh, wait, there was all that menstrual blood at the beginning.
... and procrastination.
You forgot Poland cancer.
Man, Alameida, that must suck. I've tried getting on the pill just for the sake of regularity, b/c I was the most irregular woman on the planet. I don't start cramping until after the crimson rush, and I've been very suddenly, mortifyingly surprised in front of groups of guy friends (who simply averted their eyes in an extreme display of gentlemanliness, and were always incredibly sweet and "need some candy? a hug? tea? anything?" when I returned) at least twice. So I've taken to wearing black jeans for half the month regardless, but it's also gotten much better with age. I chalked up my frequent failures with the pill to lack of motivation, since I was only needing its secondary function of regulation, but it sounds like it just doesn't work very well? Oy. I guess I'll have to deal with that at some point. I hope your IUD works out better. Are you monitoring your iron-levels to make sure all this extra bleeding isn't taking its toll? Especially given your breathing problems, that seems crucial.
Oy, I just read 195 et al. Yikes! I hope that gets sorted out asap. Stupid healthcare system. . .
I have been deeply uncomfortable in that "I'm surrounded by men and there's no woman anywhere nearby" way a lot, but it's not *necessarily* so. There are a lot of crowds of guys with whom I feel extremely safe, both physically and emotionally. Certain friends, certain relatives, certain monks. Conversely I have also gotten very emotionally and physically freaked out when I'm surrounded by certain groups of all women. All in all I've been physically attacked in my life (in childhood) as often by girls as by boys, and on a few occasions I've been rescued from a group of girls by a single older boy. I'm used to being outnumbered in almost all my identities, though.
Some years ago, I was interviewing the underage witness in a contributing to the deliquency of a minor case involving a bf/gf (bc of consensual sodomy).
Her reaction to my description of the then-sodomy law made me burst out laughing.
"NO WAY! I LOVE [slang for sodomizing her bf]." Emphasis her's.
Oh, I forgot about the scary men part. I can't think of an instance of being uncomfortable in a group of men, although I sometimes get very, very bored when interacting with a group of only straight men (which is not a shot at my fine, straight, unfogged brothers, I'm just saying that meatspace is usually more fun when there's a gal around). I guess I've occasionally been nervous when surrounded by surly looking teenagers, but even that, no so much since I've been in New York.
I'd probably be better served by a little more fear instinct... I sometimes leave work in the wee hours and walk right past a men's shelter which usually has some crazy guys loitering outside, and it never occurred to me to be nervous about this until I was talking with a girlfriend here about safe neighborhoods. Turns out, safe for men and safe for women aren't the same thing.
At least none of you women have had the side-effect to the Pill suffered by a friend of mine: She ballooned to a JJ. There was/is only one bra manufacturer who made that cup size in a 32"; the bras cost about $100 in today's money and she had 1" wide ridges in her shoulders. Her first OB/GYN told her the Pill had nothing to do with her tits growing; the second one said "OMFG! Stop taking the Pill!!!" She had to go through hoops to get her insurance company to pay for the reduction surgery, despite the fact that she was suffering hideous back pain. The plastic surgeon took 7 lbs off when he did the job.
In keeping with this thread, but out of kindness, I will not link to the photos of what happens when a toy poodle decides to eat several [used] tampons. The owner of said toy poodle won the family's "grossest picture ever" award.
250: Oh dear.
251: Oh my.
Back to 250: A close friend of mine has quite a large bust, so much so, that she'd started talking about reduction surgery already in college (then boyfriend, now husband has managed to dissuade her all these years). I'll never forget when I saw her right after their first child was born and she was lactating: it was the first and only time in my life I couldn't take my eyes off a woman's chest. They. Were. Huge.
Becks, I had vision problems on the combo pill back at 18; ever since I've used progestin-only methods, and they're fine. It *might* just be the estrogen, if you're using a combo pill.
But fuck your docs: just stop taking the shit immediately. (Am posting in a rush so dunno if you've said you did that.) Also, some iuds contain hormones (usually just progestin, I think), and some don't. So there's that option as well.
there's an element of worrying -- perhaps expecting -- that they will reduce me to the trivial, weak little girl to whom they in all their manliness can condescend.
It's hard to describe the being-among-men feeling I'm talking about. That's certainly a big part of it. But I think even things like knowing on some level that you're constantly "approachable" by someone with a vagenda, being told to smile, being hit on in ways that are just a little too pushy, having your ass grabbed in a crowd, having to "prove" yourself in a working group, having to keep an eye on your kid at all times lest he bother someone, all that shit has a little fear at the bottom.
But like I said, it's so normal that it didn't even occur to me until I was in a large group of all women, and the specific feelings I had then definitely included "wow, I'm so safe!" as well as things like relaxation, not caring about what I looked like, feeling accepted, feeling free. One of the biggest revelations was being on the D.C. Mall with PK after the march, where there were plenty of tourists but also plenty of women who'd been at the march, and realizing that I wasn't the least bit worried about what he was doing because there were a ton of women around who I knew were friendly to kids and would be able and willing to help him if, say, he got lost. It was amazing to have not only my safety, but that extension of my safety to him, feel guaranteed.
It's really amazing and fucking sad to realize that you're constantly carrying around a kind of anxiet/fear that you damn well shouldn't have to live with.
250: Not surprised; that's what pregnancy did to me. Nothing's more infuriating than finding out they don't even make maternity / nursing bras in big enough sizes. The goddamn fuckers.
250: Not surprised; that's what pregnancy did to me. Nothing's more infuriating than finding out they don't even make maternity / nursing bras in big enough sizes. The goddamn fuckers.
I'm not sure, maybe I missed it, but has anyone linked to this slate article about the new Lybrel? It suppressed periods also, but it is a daily pill.
I didn't even click post twice! I swear!
Okay, off to pick up PK before I suffer severe disapproval from his butt-pinch teacher.
249 "Turns out, safe for men and safe for women aren't the same thing." A sad commentary on our culture but one well worth remembering.
It's really amazing and fucking sad to realize that you're constantly carrying around a kind of anxiet/fear that you damn well shouldn't have to live with.
It's pretty sad to read here that it's so common. There's not much I can do about the physical size dynamics between men and women, but I seriously hope that one contribution I can make to science is to mentor women such that they will not be intimidated by all the jackass old boys in the field.
"Men can never know what an incredible, amazing feeling it is to finally get your period when you're afraid that you're pregnant."
You think that's anything like waiting for an HIV test you're pretty sure will be positive because you were told one of your ex-lovers just died of AIDS, only to test Negative? Then to swear off all kinds of body-contact for six months because you read it can take up to two years to "convert" to being positive, get tested again, and again be slightly relieved at another Negative result? Then try to live a fairly normal life, stringently adhering to the Safer Sex Guidelines (with the few people who don't think insisting on Safer Sex means you're really secretly out to infect the known Universe)? And to live with this anxiety for five years and half a dozen retests, again with Negative results, until a Medical Professional sits you down, holds your hand and tells you "Face it, you're HIV Negative, you got away with your 'youthful excesses,' now just keep practicing Safer Sex and quit bothering us with your hypochondria unless you have good reason?"
It sounds roughly analogous to me anyway.
Maybe the situations are analogous, but men are unfeeling brutes, so...
Hardly. They are awfully touchy when women talk about things without including them, the poor dears.
So was the comment to which it was responding, no?
his butt-pinch teacher
257: Is that the ritual Aragonian pizco or the Americanized slap-squeeze?
So was the comment to which it was responding, no?
You mean Ogged's 261? No, not really humorless, that.
260 was a reasonable analogy to the pregnancy-scare experience, i.e. OMFG. And moving at that. (disclosure: my brother is HIV-positive, so I've seen this as close-up as I might without going through it myself)
In any case, no, B, your 262 was dismissive on apparently female -- I won't say feminist -- grounds. Bad form, dude.
I'm perfectly willing to sympathize with other people's pain. Nevertheless, I find the one-up-manship game kind of irritating. Dude.
266: It's the classic American tightass problem.
268: I didn't see it as one-up-manship. At all.
Sorry for the "dude;" obviously I do that when I'm irritated.
Honestly. We have been through the pregnancy-scare thing; there are comparable male experiences, though they may not be as common. End of story, really. Why lash out about it? You have some territory to defend?
It is a valid comparison. Unlike you, I saw it as oneupmanship.
In any case, I stand corrected: next time I'll make a funny joke about AIDS.
B is trying to run off the other women, so she can have Ben me all to herself. It's a common problem around here.
meh, I should leave this alone. but it's really fucking annoying. B, you apparently want to insist that no man can understand *what we women go through*, and moreover, they should not try; and if they do, they're what, posing, grandstanding, or some such. Do you realize how obnoxious that is? There's some truth in it, but not when broadcast with such a wide net.
This:
In any case, I stand corrected: next time I'll make a funny joke about AIDS.
is just seriously unfunny.
No, I don't want to insist that. I'm not the one that made the original comment. All I want to insist on is that when a group of chicks is kvetching about some chick thing, it would be nice if some guy wouldn't always butt in with some bitter snark about how we're ignoring the fact that men have problems too.
Sorry if that came off wrong. I wasn't trying to one-up (or worse, be misogynistic), it's just that I really DO think it's roughly analogous -- and I really hate hearing those "men can never know" comments. Maybe it's just me and maybe I'm the only man who feels this way, but those remarks rub me the wrong way, as if the person's saying "you people with penises aren't really human."
But, well, maybe they're not THAT comparable. You're either pregnant or you're not (and having your period probably means you're really not pregnant), while one of the things that freaked a lot of people out in the mid-to-late '80s was that (as far as those of who weren't academic medical researchers or privy to such knew) they hadn't yet worked out the whole HIV "dormancy" or "false negative" thing so you didn't really know what a negative HIV test result meant. Did it really mean you're negative, or just that you hadn't "converted" to positive yet? So they advised doing what I did, basically multiple retests (which for many people meant worrying yourself sick and shunning "unsafe" conduct unless you WANT to murder somebody till somebody told you "enough is enough"). So no, in 1987 a negative HIV test result did not necessarily mean you were not OMG AIDS INFESTED, while even in 1987 you didn't necessarily need lab work to tell you're not pregnant because getting your period was a pretty reliable indicator.
Man, (at least in the U.S.) the '80s were great times for hysterical hypochondria. First "the horrible curse of genital herpes" on the covers of Newsweek and Time, and then that Horrible Gay Plague thing. (Who else remembers seriously considering that maybe you could get HIV from mosquitoes?) And for both sexes: you don't have to have a penis to get (herpes or) HIV, nor even to get all angstful about the subject, so except for my personal data (and its neurotic spillover) there's really nothing "man v. woman" about it.
And by the way, according to the Wikipedia article, NOW they've got the "window period" down to less than a month, so even hysterically hypochondriacal multiple retests can be worked out within a few months instead of years. So now I could say 'Ha! You young people and/or people who've never had anything like "unsafe sex" can't possibly know what WE went through 20 years ago!' (Except that somebody might take that as "one-upping" and become offended.)
Oh and by the way, go ahead bitchphd, make a funny joke about AIDS. I haven't heard any in so long that I've forgotten the few I heard that I did think were funny, but (along with all the other stuff I've blurted out here tonight) I'll confess to a morbid sense of humor: e.g., I grew up cackling till I puked about dead baby jokes and almost spent money on that comic book about about uses for a dead cat. But to this day I still can't recall ever hearing even a single breast cancer joke, even an unfunny one, so I'm SOL as far as those "dozens" go. (So peace out all, and yes I'll shut up now.)
You're way out of line here with 275 and the last few. 260 quotes you as saying "Men can never know what an incredible feeling etc etc.", which is an unnecessary "Aren't we women great" statement, and an obvious invitation for a man to try to prove it wrong. I guess it was just thrown in to bait a man into responding, so he could then be criticized for "butting in".
And 260 sounded pretty heartfelt to me, rather than being "bitter snark".
I hate those "men don't understand/women don't understand" things either, and I actually agree that the HIV testing thing is a valid comparison. I don't actually know any funny AIDS jokes, unfortunately.
Anyway, I'm sorry I was snippy and that I fought with parsimon.
But then bitchphd I wasn't really offended by your taking offense; actually, coincidentally, I'm glad I found something to do with all my extra energy tonight.
And I finally went ahead and had a vasectomy this past Fall because my Main Squeeze (who can't take the Pill and distrusts IUDs) had one of those "On no, I'm a week late, did his condom slip?" panics. The simple courtesy of not inflicting an unwanted pregnancy on somebody aside, please consider too that a lot of men have times when for their own reasons we really don't want to hear "I'm pregnant and it's yours." Granted we get Fear Of Pregnancy at one remove, but still. So I can kinda sorta relate to 'FOP' a little, though yes I have the option of reacting to that news by moving to L.A. and calling myself Friedrich (not that I would of course because I'm an especially Sensitive New Age Guy, really I swear).
[Hey bitchphd, are/were you having one of those nights when you just need to argue about something? I have those sometimes, though tonight I'm just generally antsy. Would "Your daddy wears Candi pumps!" improve your Friday night? And don't you hate people who say they'll shut up and then don't?]
I have those sometimes too, but I think I'm mostly just antsy right now too. What's this Candi pump thing? My daddy would be incoherently indignant at such a suggestion, homophobe that he is.
What IS the male counterpart "Your mama wears combat boots!" then? (Which oh lord I see there's a Barbara Eden movie about.)
FWIW, Bitch, you most definitely were just now getting strung up on some bullshit male jealousy / insecurity re: girl only experiences... WTF between the Crooked Timber comments and this? Sure, lots of bad shit happens. Not sure why it's all that applicable here. (There are, after all, a few females in the wider world who end up stuck in the same situation as the one you've been forced to, what, come to terms with here...)
"Sure, the not-prego period. But what about having your arms sawed off by a cluster bomb? Does that compare?"
what the fuck, people?
1. waiting to find out if your AIDS test is positive after you know you've been exposed is indeed very scary--which I know because I've had that experience before, because I used to share needles and have unprotected sex.
2. if someone writes a post about her peculiarly female problems, saying "men can never know this feeling" doesn't amount to a claim that women are better than men; it just says, men can't know exactly what this is like, though they may have analogous experiences.
3. if women start talking about anything like this, there is always one man who interrupts to complain that we're not talking about men and their problems. always. every time. without fail. this man usually goes on to make about 50% of the comments if it's an online thread. sometimes it's just not about you, OK? there's no need to get defensive and hostile because some woman says you don't know what it's like to fear being pregnant. you don't know. I don't know what it's like to be worried I've knocked someone up, either, nor do I know what it's like to get kicked in the nuts. to be fair, each individual man who blunders into this position may be tarred with the brush of all the other ones, and this may be modestly unjust. tiny violins, etc.
4. bitch is not "being a humorless feminist" she is "right". david's comment was one which induces personal sympathy because that's an awful situation to be in, and I agree that it's analogous to the pregnancy fears. however, saying "You think that's anything like..." "Then try to live a fairly normal life..." etc. just is one-upsmanship with an underlying whine of complaint that runs "why aren't you talking about men's problems? you think you've got a monopoly on problems, but you don't. men have problems too, and you're ignoring that." ogged pops up with some snark to the same effect, i.e. "women don't think men have feelings", and we're off to the dumbass races, now with new pretending to be offended by AIDS jokes. I say bitch was entirely too accomodating and y'all should back down.
bah, I'm in a bad mood because it hurts when I breathe.
285: This was, I think, awesome. It totally belongs in the Big Golden Book of Moderately-Left-Wing Netiquette. Yes, tiny violins.
(I often think that the most valuable political principle is "It's not all about you".)
I'm sorry, Alameida, that it hurts when you breathe. You should probably only read my comments today, since I'm the humorless-est poster and I imagine it will also hurt when you laugh.)
287: Sorry to hear that, Al, I thought you were all better from that one.
I thought that too, and that's why I thought it would be Ok to get some moderate exercize this week in the form of brisk walking, but obviously I was wrong. fuckity fucking fuck. at least I have lots of delicious turkish delight to cheer me. and the internet on the laptop in bed...sweet internet, you never let me down. there are always more words on the internet.
I have lots of delicious turkish delight
Alameida lives in Narnia!
let's just call it "imaginary christian fantasy land x", OK?
Argh, crosspwned. Well, here's a funny video by Dennis Kucinich. It's kind of sweet too.
there are always more words on the internet.
For sheer quantity of words, no one beats my blog!
285 is indeed terrific, and I'm relieved Alameida had the energy and will to say it. In many ways this has been an outstanding thread, as I think I said somewhere else yesterday.
But, on Thursday when it was going full-tilt, the dynamic of complaint, of equivalence which 285 skewers was evident, and felt like putting a wheel off the pavement. In the context of a recent passionate discussion at another blog of just what goes wrong with gender discussions here, watching it was almost painful. But there was so much energy, with several themes going and new people arriving and weighing in on the original topic, that it seemed successful anyway.
There's always going to be a need to go over the same ground, again and again, because of the arrival of fresh readers and commenters. This David guy from last night makes a pretty good impression on me altogether, I'm sure better than I did when I showed up. That he should relate these things to himself, and search and maybe strain for an analogy, reacting defensively to the "men are..." shorthand, is not that surprising, and is not that irritating at least to me because he's new.
But I'm starting to feel, particularly when addressing familiar commenters, we've got to share the work of saying "that's not the topic, it's not helpful, enough already." It's awkward: who the hell are we to say what we ought to be discussing, and how?
But it's wrong to leave this entirely to LB, B, and Alameida, however practiced, authoritative and passionate they are. It just gets tiresome; people who have tried to help have given up and gone away, or cut way back, avoiding the subject entirely if they still come here. You can sense it when people are just not participating, even when they're around.
Yay 285, which is indeed entirely correct.
This: You're way out of line here with 275 and the last few. 260 quotes you as saying "Men can never know what an incredible feeling etc etc.", which is an unnecessary "Aren't we women great" statement, and an obvious invitation for a man to try to prove it wrong. I guess it was just thrown in to bait a man into responding, so he could then be criticized for "butting in".
Was just bizarre -- Ned, if you're going to call someone out of line, make sure you're quoting them. The language you quote, also quoted in 260, was Alameida's from the post, not Bitch's; trying to chastise Bitch for it is kind of off. And chastising Al for it would have been just as off -- what on earth offends you about saying that there are biological experiences women have that men don't share? The reverse is certainly true, although waiting for an AIDS test can happen to anyone.
Everyone's too touchy lately. You're all banned.
what on earth offends you about saying that there are biological experiences women have that men don't share?
Absolutely nothing. However, what is somewhat amusing is the idea that particular details make emotional reactions unique. Like, no one else has ever anticipated bad news and felt vast relief when the dreaded event didn't happen.
I don't find any differences in plumbing possibly making that difficult to relate to.
To me, waiting for a pregnancy test to come back would be pretty terrifying even if I wanted to be pregnant, which is something I can't imagine wanting to be. If I were a wife I'd be one of the ones shopping for a bionic uterus.
How many women on the thread about getting kicked in the nuts claimed to know exactly what it felt like?
None, I think. B said something about getting hit in the breasts, as I recall, which I assume she meant to be relevant as a comparator.
Heaven forfend we should ever discuss an experience other than at the highest level of abstraction.
Possibly being pregnant when you hadn't been planning for it isn't simple bad news, like finding out you've got a disease -- it's getting handed a choice between upending your life for the next 18 years or so by taking on a consuming responsibility, one which can have a substantial upside as well as the downside, or having surgery that many people find emotionally difficult or morally fraught. That doesn't make it worse than finding out you're HIV positive -- of course not -- but it makes it different.
And finding out by paying attention to your body, focusing on all the twinges and little sensations that you normally ignore ("My breasts hurt -- does that mean I'm pregnant, or that my period is about to start?") and getting the final answer from a routine and generally terribly annoying experience, is different from getting a lab result. Again, this doesn't make women better than men, but it's a different experience.
There was nothing horrendously wrong with David's analogy to HIV testing, but it read like oneupsmanship to me as well -- sure, a positive HIV test would be a worse and more frightening possibility than an unwanted pregnancy, but that doesn't mean that Alameida's post was wrong in describing what happened to her as unique to women's biology and experience. Unique does not mean the biggest deal ever, and being able to come up with something that's a bigger deal has nothing to do with it.
Though it does lend credence to ala's joke that if men could menstruate, they'd be one-upmanshipping each other over the amount of blood lost.
303 just shows that you don't understand the nature of male one-upmanship, Cala.
I'm doing the best I can without a dick.
We may just have to be prepared to say "I don't think how scared you've sometimes been by punks on a commuter train advances an understanding of virtually atmospheric anxiety and low-level-fear" and put up with the unpleasantness. People need support.
People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that empathy means saying, "I know how you feel because it's just like when I... " They mean well, and are stunned when that kind of thing is received as competitive one-upsmanship rather than pure sensitivity. Being able to consider another person's feelings without trying to make it about yourself is a surprisingly difficult thing for many of us to do. But failing to do so is dismissive and hurtful.
Oh hell. I apologize to Alameida for stepping on her post, to everyone in general for the shit storm in a thimble my comments caused, and to each individual who felt offended by any item within them. It was not my intention to one-up Alameida (or womankind in general), single out bitchphd for a communal bitchout, crusade against "extremist feminism" (or whatever some Media Pundit would call it), or to start a derail that'd last for a dozen comments. Whether there's really anything analogous between Fear Of Pregnancy and Fear Of AIDS beyond my personal opinion I'm certainly not equipped to say; and now I wish to hell I'd phrased 260 with more thought and less needless confrontationalism, perhaps more like "But I underwent a situation that strikes me me as somewhat similar..."
As to Fear Of Pregnancy itself, stories like Alameida's (and the others I've read and heard in lo my many decades) make damn glad I can't get pregnant, and personally I think it's unfair that "they" haven't come up with a really decent form of female contraception and that tubal ligation is so much harder to get and go through than my little snip-snip. (Which after years of trying to get an answer even turned covered by the HMO after all -- and four days after which I was off on an extended Amtrak journey.)
Which last "Life is unfair!" observation brings to mind the signature picture on bitchphd's blog (and my favorite picture of Johnny Cash), which I can sorta relate to -- except that (if I gather bitch's gist correctly) in my case it's not "the Patriarchy" I'm always giving the finger to but rather The Evil Demiurge (or something). Back in the '70s there I saw a "humorous" cartoon T-shirt I could really relate to of a mouse caught out in the open flipping off a hawk that's almost upon it; does anybody know where I could find one of those shirts (or even just the cartoon)?
Something else I noticed on bitchphd's site: "BLOGGING IS MY JOB." Will somebody send me a URL or two so I could find out how to do that? I doubt I'd be competing with, crusading against, one-upping, echoing or even reinforcing her blog; I'd just like to make a few bucks spouting off like I do anyway.
So anyway, do y'all sing "Kumbaya" around here?
We do. And there wasn't anything particularly awful about your analogy, I just understood B's eyerolling response to it. The bit of the interaction that confused me was parsimon's and Ned's hostile response at that point, and I figure everyone was just having a cranky evening.
Are you new around here? I have a mental block on first-name-only handles -- I can't keep track of which I've seen before. If so, welcome, and someone should be by shortly with a fruit basket. You don't want the fruit basket.
I'll cop to cranky.
I can't clarify much beyond what I said last night: I simply didn't read David's post as a case of oneupmanship. We have disagreement about that, and it won't be resolved.
The charitable reading I was giving it was something along the lines of: hm, I can't know what it's like for a woman to have a pregnancy scare. The closest I can come to understanding it would be something like this experience (HIV testing).
I think my impatience with B's response was that it seemed to declare a man's attempt to understand by analogy, however inadequate it must necessarily be, to be illegitimate.
I'm fully prepared to admit at this point that I may be distorting what both David and B were doing. And don't really want to reopen the issue.
And. Plus also. I dreamt last night that I'd become pregnant. By mistake. Accident. Clearly I was overly absorbed in this thread.
No blood, no foul. I, myself, am ferociously hostile right now because I hate writing briefs for evil people. (I'm not going to give details, and it's financial skulduggery rather than anything more exciting, but the phone call where I got the facts of the case from the client was a strain. I had to keep biting back the question: "What made you think doing that was okay?")
I, myself, am ferociously hostile right now because I hate writing briefs for evil people
Think like a criminal defense lawyer. The question is not whether your client is nice, the question is whether your client did the particular not nice thing they are accused of having done. In your case, the answer seems to be no, and because you believe in the rule of law, their rights must be protected.
Are you stuck in the office on a Saturday writing a brief for your evil client?
No, I'm at home writing a brief for my evil client. I try to work from home on the weekends.
I apologize for my attitude and for assuming that Bphd had written what Alameida had written.
My point was basically that even if the HIV story was a form of one-upmanship, you can't get mad if it was in response to something that basically said "I dare a man to try and one-up this." As soon as I saw David's comment I thought "Hmm, I bet B is going to respond to this by saying that men insist on butting in on conversations about women's issues", so when she did, I responded in a knee-jerk way.
I try to work from home on the weekends.
A practice I know well. But today I am reviewing documents for one of our virtuous and completely in the right clients. I can't say it makes document review any more fun, though.
Anyway, hang in there.
But, even overlooking the misattribution, the post wasn't a dare. It was a description of an experience that only women have. Calling that a dare seems to be saying that any claim that women have experiences men don't share is self-evidently offensive to men, or an attack on men, and it really isn't. I don't know what it's like getting kicked in the nuts, and you don't know what it's like having your period start when you think you might be pregnant.
It was a description of an experience that only women have.
I've mostly resisted staying out of this and all similar arguments, because they follow the same tedious pattern. Your description above misdescribes the post in important ways. Had the post only been a description of an experience that only women have, it would not have elicited the responses it did. But of course it was not just that. It was titled as being about the differences between the sexes; on the having her peiod point, the point, one of the key differences noted was how women go through this phenomenen and say nothing, while if men had to do so, they would raises a big fuss over it and talk about it all the time--in other words, that cherised belief that all men are tools and whiny idiots who have no idea what real pin or suffering are. And, of course, who are not--we learn from the rest of the post--to be trusted.
Hrm. Without getting into a whole fresh argument unless you really want to, I don't think you're accurately describing what made Ned's knee jerk -- he seemed pretty focused on the 'woman-only experience' facet of the post.
re: 318. I see your point in 318 without fully agreeing with it.
But no, let's not argue. You have work to do, as do I, and maybe we are both avoiding it here. Yesterday's (off--line) discussion was better as a work avoiding diversion than this one.
Does the sanctity of off-blog communication mean nothing to you?
Idealist is banned!!
Does the sanctity of off-blog communication mean nothing to you?
Well, I'm an atheist, nothing means anything to me. Oh wait, that's the other thread.
Idealist is banned!!
[hangs head in shame. weeps.]
I wanna know what Alameida's secret is that when someone else says "x" and a bunch of people come in and say "uh uh, y, z, a, and b" she can come along and say "X, dammit" and everyone says "oh yes, of course X."
It's because she's prettier than me, isn't it?
She's so charming and whatnot. It's all about the whatnot.
It's because people are scared of her, you mean? Fuck.
It just goes to show that the arguments that feminists need to make sure and appear reasonable and calm in public is bullshit. Clearly it's much more effective to make sure everyone knows that you've got a background full of crazy unpredictability. I *try*, with the fucking around, but I can't hold a candle to the history of addiction. If only I weren't so old....
Developing a little sister who beats up Nazis in bar fights might also help--no one knows what might not run in the family. Dr. Oops is impressive, but not so much with the ultraviolence.
if men could menstruate, they'd be one-upmanshipping each other over the amount of blood lost
It certainly works that way with hair.
305: hahaha. You just keep trying your hardest, sweetheart.
Or maybe we woke up determined to say something, came to the blog and found A's 285 a good starting point. It's all timing.
It's because she's prettier than me, isn't it?
On the internet, nobody can tell who has the better rack.
325 pwned by 324.
328: That would be an adequate explanation except that many of you have met both me and Alameida.
329. Having met neither of you, I get the impression you're both pussy cats. When I was a lad, you'd have shut this conversation down 100 comments ago.
Back in the day when men were men and feminists were feminists, and the former feared the latter?
Back in the day when OFE was younger and more scared of girls.
I want to thank everyone (she says, brushing off her lapels very carefully) for this thread; I've learned some things about this blog.
296, 322 in particular for their candor.
I don't mean anything remotely snarky by that. I enjoy this place tremendously when my sense of humour is intact, and when it's not.
"Think like a criminal defense lawyer. The question is not whether your client is nice, the question is whether your client did the particular not nice thing they are accused of having done."
No no no. That's not how it's done. Regardless of whether you think your client did it or not, if she's rich and/or someone you relate to you try your damndest to get her off and if he's poor and/or "lowlife scum" you get him to plead to a lesser charge to get rid of it. That's the benefit of America's impartial legal system: the innocent and the guilty deserve the same quality of legal representation.
[Change genders as appropriate; I'm perfectly okay with calling everybody "s/he" and/or "it".]
And to get back to that other issue, I'm disappointed nobody's called me a misogynist yet 'cuz I don't get to come back with "No, I'm just a prick." [*ba-boom*] (Yes, I'll be watching carefully for hints about that Wit thing.) In closing, I really hope I haven't made Alameida and bitchphd hate me, and not just because I fear their mighty Amazonicity, though one good thing about the Internet is I get to enjoy the virtual presence of people who might coldcock me in real life.
322 in particular for their candor.
Eh, Alameida is a lot prettier than I am. I may be a bitch, but I'm pretty enough to be secure about it.
I've been putzing around with other things all day and haven't been keeping up, but since I like the sound of my own voice and I liked the sentiment in 296, I'm going to chime in once more. It strikes me that much of the tension here results from good intentions gone astray. The original post made the (fairly indisputable?) observation that men can never really understand what it's like to worry about being pregnant and then confirm you are not. Some well-meaning guys chimed in with their thoughts on what they considered analogous experiences and were caught off guard to find that this irritated rather than ingratiated much of the female demographic here.
Here's the problem. The guys are trying, they truly are. They want to understand and do so by trying to analogize to their own experience. While I think the one-upsmanship charge is completely valid, I think it's worth recognizing, too, that this effect is probably not (in most cases) the conscious intent. Just as those perceived to be one-upping do well to not just get defensive but step back and think about why they are coming off that way.
But when a woman commenting about a uniquely feminine experience is automatically perceived as daring men to one-up it, there's a significant perceptual problem going on. Honestly, it seems clear enough that no man has ever experienced the fear of being pregnant. Why does making that observation have to be a challenge to men to come up with an equally significant experience? Why not just acknowledge, yeah, that's something I've never gone through, and maybe even ask a few relevant questions that might actually help you better understand the experience.
David's HIV comment could perhaps have charitably been read that way -- translating it to, "Here's my experience with HIV fear, is the pregnancy fear like that?" That framing or that reading might have led to a more productive, less defensive, conversation. David's comment, particularly in light of his later explanations, didn't trouble me so much at all.
What bugged me was the commenters who took the position that the original post was a "dare" to the men to one-up it. The compulsion to turn everything into a competition (and I direct this at no one in particular, at least no one in particular here) truly bugs the crap out of me. Sometimes people say things because they want to share their experience and even ideally to be understood rather than because they are trying to prove soem hierarchical point.
But when a woman commenting about a uniquely feminine experience is automatically perceived as daring men to one-up it, there's a significant perceptual problem going on.
If the woman didn't begin her comment with "Men can never know...", in mixed company, none of this would have happened. That is not to say that David's and my butting in were justified. It's just another situation where tone cannot be conveyed through pixels.
I don't hate you, David, and as I said, the experience you related was objectively awful. the modest injustice part comes in when a man is just saying something he thinks and doesn't realize he's stepping into a well-formed, preexisting role as a dick. it was really the hostile response to b's objection that threw me. also, bitch is a total fox and this seems unlikely as a basis for people agreeing with me. I think it's an advantage in this forum that I don't actually comment here very often although I am a poster, thus giving me quasi-oracular powers.
We're not mean to you, alameida, because we don't want you to fall off the wagon.
I was the one out of line here, not David. I was out of line because I inappropriately assumed that the thing he was responding to was posted by the same person who got upset at him for responding to it. This seemed to me to be a case in which he was baited. Obviously I was wrong. In my defense, I enjoy listening to Kathleen Edwards records.
That doesn't sound like something Ogged would say sober.
Ogged hasn't been drunk in several years.
I was aware of the "I don't know what drunk-ogged sounds like" complication, and don't think it's a particularly serious one.
342: We will drink no Ogged before its time.
344: Naaa aaah haaaaanh!
Ogged do you not drink, or are you just good at it? Or do you do too much black tar heroin for it to matter?
Oh, come on, Ned. The one-up-manship thing happens all the time, whether the women say "Men can never know" or not. Tia posted on this about 9 months ago. Chris at Pandagon posted about it last week.
And while may be it's originating with the best of intentions to empathize, it gets annoying when it's impossible to have a discussion of a women's issue without ensuring that the guys feel validated, too. (And if you want to empathize, rather than oneupman, there's certainly ways to convey that.)
Every discussion of rape has to have a timeout where we all say, "yes, men can be raped, too." Any discussion of battered wives seems to need to include "oh, yes, there are abused men." So you're probably picking up a little frustration at having to pause, furrow the brow, and acknowledge the man, every single time. In other cases, sure, you're guys, you're trying to understand, it's not your fault that other assholes derail conversations by wondering why the men aren't getting their nod when we discuss date rape.
But here it's just silly. You cannot know exactly what it is like to get your period and know that you're not pregnant. You don't have the architecture for it.
Once I got a bloody nose and I wasn't pregnant. Pretty close, eh? Go, dudes!
Sometimes men's conversations get hijacked, you know. Let's talk about that!
I don't really drink anymore, Sifu. I'll have a scotch or glass of wine occasionally, but it's a pretty reliable trigger for my atrial fibrillation, which makes it not worth it. I sure do miss it though.
You cannot know exactly what it is like to get your period and know that you're not pregnant
What is it like to be a bat who is a week late?
You know what sucks? Heart palpitations.
Yikes. That's a good reason. You should develop a GHB habit: nearly as fun, somewhat more dangerous, and 100% heart healthy!
346: The same thing happens when men start talking about something as if they are assuming it's a male-specific problem. Many times a woman chimes in to cite the Ginger Rogers "the same thing he did, in high heels, backwards" idea. Nitpicking always happens.
That's a great meta-troll, Ned. I think you're just wrong on the facts.
Oh no, I was baited into doing it again! And pwned by 348!
It's time to take a few weeks off from this place and join up with an internet community where some of the men actually are sexist boors, instead of occasionally revealing slight tendencies toward being sexist boors. I'm starting to think everything I say to women comes with some sort of tag attached to it that indicates that it's from an un-consciousness-raised point of view.
"think everything I say to women comes with some sort of tag attached to it that indicates that it's from an un-consciousness-raised point of view" could be also be phrased as "get defensive about everything".
What is it like to be a bat who is a week late?
Is this a kids' riddle?
di kotimy is right. as far as things seeming like a challenge or dare, I think my posts tend to come across that way much more than, say, LB's, because I am basically a pretty macho person. nonetheless, I didn't mean it like that. saying "men can never know" wasn't intended to be hostile towards or dismissive of men: it's just a plain fact that men can't know this. as I was writing it I thought it might be interesting for men to hear about some of the experiences I related in the post precisely because they're not talked about so much in mixed company. if you regard that as an attack or challenge you are being defensive. saying that we would have to hear about menstruation all the time if it were men who had this experience--yes there is a kernel of criticism in there but for the most part that's also just a plain statement of fact. men's experiences are generally depicted as normal, crucial; women's as abnormal, unimportant. this really is feminism 101. also, I see idealist's point in 317 about linking the two parts of the post, but there again the point was not so much about men (they aren't trustworthy) as about me and my feelings (interesting and sad that I fear them in this way.) turning everything around so it goes back to men and what they're like is really to miss the point.
No, actually it's on-point and quite the witty squib. Cala can explain it to you.
I'm sorry, are you telling me to go find a blog with actual sexist guys so I appreciate the unsexist Unfogged more?
I'm not sure if you meant that, or if you meant that you needed to reassure yourself you were an acceptable amount of sexist, but, please let me know if you did mean to pat me on the head and send me off, because I'm just not sure where to point this flamethrower, there's so many juicy targets.
339: awesome.
345: I reject the premises of your claim, sifu. drinking still makes a difference even when you're doing lots of black tar heroin. so typically male of you to want to create a clean disjunction when the truth is so complex and intertwined with other factors.
Men living in today's dangerously amoral world have a great deal of tough, manly responsibilities that only masculinity can help them face:
a) Defeating bands of outlaws.
b) Protecting the honor of Sparta.
c) Carrying out missions for Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Some people have told me this list is outdated, but then I found out that 300 was based on a true story, so there.
I believe masculinity can also help them explain boxing: guys? why boxing?
No, actually it's on-point and quite the witty squib. Cala can explain it to you.
I'm going to borrow this comment often.
I think we can all agree that had it not been for Rocky and sequels, boxing would have quietly disappeared, replaced by Mexican wrestling. That's right: I'm talking about watching a version of Million Dollar Baby where Clint is an aged Jack Black, haunted by the nachos he couldn't libre.
354: Yeah, and the "in high heels, backwards" thing was cute a hundred years ago, but now is just tiresome.
I think it's an advantage in this forum that I don't actually comment here very often although I am a poster, thus giving me quasi-oracular powers.
Yeah, yeah. Fuck reasonable explanations, Alameida. I think it's b/c you're all foreign-by-association now and everyone's afraid of being racist.
why boxing?
... to see two men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their bodies; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand steady to inflict or receive mortal offence, and rush upon each other, "like two clouds over the Caspian" - this is the most astonishing thing of all: - this is the high and heroic state of man! ... I never saw anything more terrific than his aspect just before he fell. All traces of life, of natural expression, were gone from him. His face was like a human skull, a death's head, spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed with blood, the mouth gaped blood. ... Ye who despise the FANCY, do something to show as much pluck, or as much self-possession as this, before you assume a superiority which you have never given a single proof of by any one action in the whole course of your lives!
See Ned, it's not so much a question of everything you say coming attached with a tag attached, etc. and so forth. But when someone (in this case, some women, but the point really does apply ecumenically and equal opportunity and all across the board) says that it's irritating to be one-upped and then you tell them it's their own fault because you interpreted their personal expression as a call to competition, you really are minimizing the legitimacy of the original personal expression and that's just not a very nice thing to do.
Really, as Cala explained in 346, the "Men can never know... " part was neither confrontational nor debatable. Men don't have the architecture to understand this one 100% and making that observation is confrontational only if you have a problem acknowledging there are, in fact, some things men can never know.
359: Also, you forget to mention that you do that shit because *it's funny*.
Not that defensive non-sexist guys can tell the difference.
Oneupmanship of this sort is a liberal disease. We're all schooled in the art of misery poker. It's instinctive.
a liberal disease
And it's catching.
I was expelled from misery poker art school, you insensitive clod.
Nobody suffers like the Shia. That's probably why we never engage in oneupsmanship.
And in politics, oneupsmanship has a companion, which is "You know who's got it really good?" The answer often being blacks and gays, oddly enough.
I deny that misery poker is a liberal game.
Ogged, everyone -- including Wikipedia -- knows that Irish people are the Most Oppressed People Ever.
You know who has it really good? Me!
I have gotten so many breaks in this life! Yow!
Let me tell you.
guys? why boxing?
There are lady boxers these days, you know. Laila Ali could probably tell you.
I realize that this is a thread about what one cannot know, and I'm in total agreement, but I'll also point out that the original post taught me a hell of a lot about IUDs, about which I did not know much. It also contained a convincing anecdote about the gendered conditions that produce a feeling of threat, and about a certain kind of subtle aggression.
Oneupmanship of this sort is a liberal disease. We're all schooled in the art of misery poker. It's instinctive.
Liberals don't have a disease. It's more like a fever. Like a Saturday Night Fever if you're reading and commenting on this particular thread.
What a lovely way to burn.
Most Oppressed People Ever.
That's awesome. I suspect the Shia actually like their suffering so they don't complain so much. Martyrdom and all that.
I think I'd like boxing except that I don't want to get hit in the face.
Ogged, are you saying that you want us to bomb Iran?
386: That's exactly how I feel about barfights.
386: Helps to make you a better boxer.
388: If getting hit in the face is the price for hitting somebody else in the face, then that's how it's got to be.
Cala nobody likes getting hit in the face. In boxing typically you are actively working to prevent that from happening.
Also how did this thread also become a boxing thread?
Unfogged: Fight night!
Few women fighters, when asked outright to acknowledge brutality in their sport, will. "I don't think it's violent." "It's a science." "It's an art." "It's a sport." Most are athletes first, and most come by way of other martial arts, especially kickboxing. "It was a new challenge." "There weren't enough opportunities in muay Thai; I couldn't get any fights." "I ruptured my ACL and had to stop playing basketball." Many more than you might expect come for weight loss. "When I started I weighed over 200 pounds. Then I got addicted." But why boxing? Why not aerobics? "I heard it was the best workout there is." A whim: "My office was next to a boxing gym. I thought I might be good at it, and I was." "I'm an actress. My assignment was to develop a superhero, someone as unlike me as possible. I chose a boxer. I found out it's actually not so not like me." A spell of darkness: "I was accosted in the subway. I wondered what it was I was projecting--some vulnerability? I wanted to be strong." "My house was broken into while I was home. The guy ran off. I ran after him. The cops asked me what I would have done if I'd caught him." But the latter stories are few, or seldom told. More commonly: "It's not about aggression, or anger." "I don't want to hurt anybody."
Interesting. I've wanted to do the boxing-as-workout thing for a while (not that I'll ever get around to it) primarily because I think it would be great to really know how to hit someone.
I certainly come to boxing by way of kickboxing, the sport of the future.
When I was growing up, I had a punching bag, and I used to wrap old dress ties around my knuckles. I don't know we didn't get boxing gloves for me. It really wore those ties out. At least I know how to hit people. All said people must be cylindrical and marked "EVERLAST."
I hate getting hit in the face because I've had my nose broken so many times. this means I hate it when people get too close to me. I remember a sketchy guy in berkeley on the street tried to hug me (in a bullshit hippie you look like you could use a hug way), and I pushed him away so hard he almost fell down, and told him if he tried that again I would break his fucking nose. although, you know, I probably would hate getting hit in the face in any case. to bring it back around, one of the things that's interesting about south-east asian city-state x is that it's so incredibly safe--the risk of street crime is basically zero. if I wanted to go walk through a park in the middle of the night, I could. naturally there are assaults, rapes, murders, but very few, and almost exclusively among people who know each other (not that that makes it any better for the victims, but it doesn mean that public spaces are safe.) among chinese people there is basically no street harassment--in fact, chinese pedestrians pretty resolutely refrain from even looking in your face, using the "everyone else is transparent" 100-yard stare so familiar to new yorkers. indian guys and malay guys hassle me somtimes, and the only actually scary people are bands of bangladehsi construciton workers, who stare in a creepy way. but i feel sorry for those guys, they've got a tough life here.
393: There's always Wing Chun Kung Fu, the rare (only?) martial art developed by a woman.
398 to 395. This might turn out to be 400.
I've had my nose broken so many times
This is in "don't want to know" territory, right?
This is in "don't want to know" territory, right?
Self-falsifying question, in that asking it demonstrates that one does in fact want to know?
I don't think so, because she can say "yes," and I would believe it.
Self-falsifying question, in that asking it demonstrates that one does in fact want to know?
No, it opens a "space of politeness" (cf. Cavell, et al) in which one is asking but not demanding to know?
Wow, I'd be a featherweight! A featherweight of DOOM!
397: Huh, that's kind of neat. Thanks.
In the blue corner, Cala "won't make you stronger" Bobala.
Alameida's frankness is interesting, and we should all do it.
Alameida's frankness is interesting
...and Cala's left hook is devastating! We should duck it if we can.
it's really not as awful as all that. I got punched in the face by a random guy all tweaked out on meth on the street in new york and my nose got busted a treat. it healed up not so bad and I didn't and up getting surgery (to have it re-set). then an ex of mine accidentally hit me in the face at a party and broke it again (actually accidentally: he was drunk and standing above me on the stairs and swung around, catching me on the bridge of the nose with his forearm. for some reason I decided after that point to drop acid and drink half a bottle of bourbon, and I really don't know where I was going with that.) decided to get it re-broken and re-set after that, but didn't take good care of it in the post-surgery phase because I was snorting heroin (!). since then each of my children has, while fooling around nursing in bed, clonked me right on the bridge of the nose with their hard little foreheads, producing the distinctive crack I know so well. I'd sort of like to have it fixed again, but boob enhancement and arm-wattle removal surgery is probably higher on my plastic surgery wish-list, so...
406: It's also probably the most practical of the traditional Kung Fu variants; close in fighting, high speed, designed for short limbs and less strength. Like all Kung Fu styles, it becomes basically useless after somebody knocks you down, but c'est las vie. I trained in it for a while, I like it a lot.
Wing Chung, the fighting style for hobbits.
Bruce Lee ain't no Frodo.
But sure, you could probably teach a hobbit some Wing Chun, and then they could beat the crap out of another hobbit, yes, sure.
errata: bangladehsi s/b bangladeshi and and up s/b end up. ack I was just thinking about that surgery to get my nose fixed. I got pretty high before going into the hospital and had to rinse my sinuses out with saline since someone was damn sure going to be up in there. they give you valium or something first, and I was worried that in the twilight zone I might get afraid for my life and tell the anaesthesiologist I'd already taken a bunch of heroin. but I'm too smart for that!
Would it affect people's judgments of my comments to know that I'm so ugly being punched in the face might help? (But that's not an invitation: one thing I like about my ugliness is that it doesn't cause physical pain to me.)
415: Wow, fracture-flipping. That's some frontiers in drug use there, ma'am.
I trained in it for a while, I like it a lot.
Pussy.
412: Sexist.
Bruce Lee ain't no pussy sexist.
Right: men can never know what it's like to be pregnant. We can come close though.
Then too, women can never know what it's like to be a man in "Western" culture who's been anally raped; you have neither the "proper" innards (no prostate for one) nor the "proper" social conditioning based on your genitalia. True, in both cases the victims are often said to have deserved it, or asked for it or secretly wanted it. But no woman can never know exactly what it's like to be a man who's been butt-raped. Still, women usually assume they're the norm for rape victims, even if the woman talking has never been raped and the man she's talking to has. That last phenomenon can get downright funny when the woman talking has not only never been raped but is a lesbian who's never gone past "second base" with a man, while the man's only "sexual" experience with someone of his own sex was forcibly at knifepoint. It never fails though, let a guy start talking about rape and some woman will chime in as if her kind owned the subject and (the most "forward" segment of it) had the only legitimate interpretation of the subject. Of course, hey, a Granny Smith is not a Red Delicious, no question about it.
(Now I just tried to be a one-upping dick; how'd I do?)
Pretty good. You'd be surprised (I hope) by how often discussions of rape get interrupted by some guy saying "but men get raped too, why don't you talk about that?!?"
Why are you trying to be a one-upping dick? It kinda seems like you're mocking the idea that some experiences are difficult to communicate and/or impossible to fully comprehend without experiencing them.
very well. you do a really convincing one-upping dick.
Speaking of hobbit fighting, one of my favorite clips from Extras.
I think my posts tend to come across that way much more than, say, LB's, because I am basically a pretty macho person.
I'd be hurt, but it's true. I never managed to achieve scary levels of macho. I can impress people when I'm working at it, but frightening them is pretty out of reach.
359: Also alameida's prose style is pretty arresting in this sort of context which means whatever she says tends to have a very immediate impact on the conversation, wherever it goes. If I was running for President I'd rather have LB write my press releases, but I'd want alameida to script my short TV slots.
Can women be macho, technically, or is there another word for it?
426: Machismo is not, in a contemporary context, gender-specific. Speaking of contexts for machismo, am I hallucinating an excellent essay by Borges about Argentinian cowboys and anal sex with prostitutes? It may actually have been an excellent essay about Argentinian cowboys with a paragraph or two dealing with anal sex with prostitutes. Anybody know it?
vote for one fat englishman, or I'll break your fucking nose!
clownae: umm, hallucinating? if not I'd be curious to read it.
LB: that wasn't meant to imply you're not totally kick-ass. machismo is not an unadulterated good. it's often more like a drinking contest: everyone loses.
frightening them is pretty out of reach.
Huh, I sometimes find you pretty terrifying, if it is an consolation. It must be the added effect of knowing you IRL.
vote for one fat englishman, or I'll break your fucking nose!
Cool, I'll get the t-shirts ordered.
I would delighted to have a little more terrifying in my repertoire. Alas, I do not.
428 -- I've definitely read the essay. I could be mistaken in attributing it to Borges. I will try and figure out what I'm talkin' 'bout.
(Assuming no one else figures it out for me in the mean time.)
more like a drinking contest: everyone loses
Well, if you approach it with a defeatist attitude like that, sure.
dude, I've "won" plenty of drinking contests. I stand by my judgment that it's non-zero sum, and all parties lose. good night everybody. please solve all the problems of human relations and faith in god while I'm asleep, thx bye.
Never trolling Alameida for her ex-junkie tough-girl schtick is the fourth wall of Unfogged. The contrast with, e.g., baiting Dr B, is striking.
392: This is really interesting (although I've only read the part you quoted, so far). You'd think that women boxers, at least, would be able to come to terms with the idea that women can choose violence just like the mens. Or maybe they just know that a deliberately violent woman is a scandal, whereas if your opponent's black eye is just a side effect of "science" maybe you won't have your girl-card taken away.
Hmm... not finding much. The International Encyclopaedia of Sexuality: Argentina says,
In Argentine society, both oral and anal sex carry a negative connotation, especially for older persons and among the traditional middle- and upper-class families. Argentine youth, however, seems to be taking a new look at these sexual expressions, according to what they said at the meetings.
Girls were divided in their responses. One group accepts and practices oral sex as a way of avoiding the risk of pregnancy and maintaining their virginity until marriage. For another group, it was a more intimate form of sexual relationship, somehow more romantic than intercourse. Youth holding this latter view believed that oral sex should only be engaged in with a stable partner, and not in the first exploratory encounters. Some other girls joined some boys in rejecting this way of expressing love to a partner, and thought that only prostitutes could practice fellatio on boys. The older the boys are, the more easily they accept oral sex as a normal part of dating and within marriage.
Prejudices against anal sex are even stronger among older adults, and even the younger set. A minority of the youths in the groups I spoke with accepted anal sex, and then only for fully committed couples and not as part of dating. The boys agree that: "A woman will never ask for it." The old injunction against sodomy is still well alive in their subconscious.Which jives a bit with what I remember from this essay, that cowboys regarded anal sex as the ultimate expression of machismo and something that would not be practiced with any woman who was not a prostitute. Also I found a Dictionary of Borges which looks useful.
(I thought if I did not include carriage returns in a block quotation, everthing would work like it should. In the above comment, everything up to "subconscious." should be in a block quote, and bit starting "Which jives" is a new paragraph.
guys? why boxing?
An analogy that's been made before.
Men fighting men to determine worth (i.e., masculinity) excludes women as completely as the female experience of childbirth excludes men. And is there, perhaps, some connection?
(Having no interest in boxing, I read the Joyce Carol Oates book because, consciously and subconsciously, I thought that writing about boxing as a woman, she would also be approaching it from the perspective of an outsider, and would be better positioned to explain. It still didn't explain.)
437: Come to think of it, I don't think Alameida rises to bait as easily as I do.
Not rising to bait = hit and run blogging. There's limited value in replying to people who don't reply. Simple, and effective.
So anyway. If y'all gals want to think I was trying to butt in or top you, well, go ahead. I was kinda peeved at Alameida's "You men..." remark, but I wasn't trying to JUST argue. As far as spltting hairs goes, of course "analogy" or even "functional equivalence" ain't the same as "absolute identity." I'd wonder why (at least what I see as) the flip side, "...and all women feel the same way I do," goes unremarked, but then that might well just be me; I sometimes have an idiosyncratic kneejerk response that people "from this planet" don't get. (Those of you know "bright, sensitive and introverted" near-pubescent boys, please take my advice: regardless of their Reading Level, DON'T recommend they read Nietzsche till they're at least in 9th grade, and make 'em get through a Basic Logic textbook first.)
And speaking of "analogy ain't identity," I've always wondered why "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in HIS MOTHER'S milk" got stretched so far. I can almost understand expanding that into "don't cook meat and milk from the same species in the same pot at the same time," but "thou must have two sets of cookware, flatware and plates" is a bit much. Goats are kinda like sheep and both kinda resemble cows in some ways, but really, some goat walking up to a herd of cattle saying "I too have cloven hooves and cheweth also the cud!" is just butting in, y'know?
Oh, that's not funny? But that "ruminant" remark came to me around 3 A.M. yesterday and it struck me as so "PROFOUND" I've been wanting to work it in somewhere. Hell, I give up. I was trying to be playful, but if I'm the only one having fun I might as well wank by myself.
From what I can see, generally speaking the appeal of anal sex with women is that it's "dirty" and "perverted"; I read someplace too that in some macho cultures it's perceived as degrading to the woman, treating her like a maricón, which is somehow supposed to be fun for the man. When I was a teenager I liked it that nobody gets pregnant that way, but the more "mature" I get the less the idea of anal sex with anybody appeals to me: I think of what comes out of it and want to go wash something instead.
My favorite Joyce Carol Oates novel was You Must Remember This, though I got a kick out the scene in Son of the Morning where The LORD commands him to go bite the head off a chicken. That's what "geek" means to me, not "somebody who knows what 'LOL!' means."
