smileanja

[smileanja]

The Origin of Misogyny: It is not Men’s Socialization or Men’s Nature, but Men’s Ability

The idea that misogyny comes from socialization is circular logic. Misogyny comes from misogynistic laws and religions? Who made the laws? Who made the religions? How is it possible that women were  socialized to be subservient to men in so many cultures, even ones that had no previous contact with each other?

However, the idea that misogyny comes from men’s nature is also flawed. Yes, men’s hatred of women is extremely common, as previously established, yet it is not completely universal. There have been matriarchal societies. And in our day-to-day interactions with men, we do notice differences between men based on how they were raised and their respective day-to-day environments.

So what is the root of misogyny, if it’s not men’s socialization or men’s nature? 

I think a more useful way of understanding misogyny (and honestly all forms of oppression) is not to focus on socialization or nature but on ability.

Men have a unique ability to harm women in a way that women cannot harm men. Men can impregnate women. Women cannot impregnate men. On top of having this unique ability, men also have major incentives for doing it: by impregnating a woman, they receive pleasure and a lineage. Unlike women, they also run such a small biological risk for producing a child. After having their orgasm, nothing else is biologically required from them. At worst, they might get an STD.

You might argue that some men are gay or do not want children. That’s all very much true. However, I am not arguing that men have a natural impulse to use their ability. I am simply stating that they have the ability. It is also important to understand that men exist as a class, as well as individuals. While individual men might not even have the ability to impregnate (due to infertility), we can hopefully understand that men as a class have this ability.

If it helps, we can think of this unique ability like a gun. Half of the population is born with a gun (ability to impregnate)  and a bullet-proof vest (inability to be impregnated); the other half is born with neither. The ones born with the gun and the bullet-proof vest  are not necessarily born with a natural impulse to fire the gun–but they are nonetheless born with one.

Even if a man never hurts someone with the gun, I want you to imagine how his psyche is formed just by virtue of having it. Imagine walking into a room with a gun and a bullet-proof vest, and no one else in the room has either. Even if you would never use the gun…just having one gives you a sense of protection, and perhaps a sense of superiority and power. Even if you would never use your tacit threat, you nonetheless have a tacit threat. And now imagine the psyche of those without the gun or the vest. They are vulnerable, and know that they are vulnerable, to the ones who do have one. And so their options are to either appease those with guns and vests, always tip-toeing around them–or to band together.

The ability argument answers the questions that the socialization argument fails to address; namely, it answers the question “where do sexist laws and religions come from?”  It comes from men’s unique ability to harm women in a way that women cannot harm men. This is not to say that men have a natural impulse to harm women–just that they can. 

#feminism #socialization #nature #ability #this hits #misogyny

[smileanja]

Werewolves are for women. You’re telling me that you turn into a wolf once a month depending on lunar cycles? 🤔 sounds awfully menstrual to me.

#feminism #I love this #werewolves #the female mythos #myths #female monsters

[smileanja]

I cannot tell you how much I hate the implication that I “identify” as gay. I reject the suggestion that my homosexuality is an identity. When I say I’m gay, it isn’t a statement of identity, it is a statement of material, irreducible, absolute biological fact. It’s as immutable as the colour of my eyes.

#identity #language #homosexuality #biological reality #language shapes perception

[smileanja]

By: Helena

Published: Feb 20, 2022

My name is Helena, and as of this writing I’m a 23-year-old woman who, as a teenager, believed I was transgender. In the years since detransitioning (stopping testosterone treatment and no longer seeing myself as transgender), I’ve become interested in exploring why, in the last decade, nearly every English-speaking country has seen a meteoric rise in adolescents believing they are transgender and pursuing cosmetic medical and surgical interventions. Here, I’d like to go over how and why I came to see myself as transgender, the process of transitioning, and the events leading up to and following my detransition.

The short version of my detransition story for those who want the bare details is that when I was fifteen, I was introduced to gender ideology on Tumblr and began to call myself nonbinary. Over the next few years, I would continue to go deeper and deeper down the trans identity rabbit hole, and by the time I was eighteen, I saw myself as a “trans man”, otherwise known as “FtM”. Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood to begin a testosterone regimen. At my first appointment, I was prescribed testosterone, and I would remain on this regimen for a year and a half. It had an extremely negative effect on my mental health, and I finally admitted what a disaster it had been when I was 19, sometime around February or March 2018. When the disillusionment fully set in, I stopped the testosterone treatment and began the process of getting my life back on track. It has not been easy, and the whole experience seriously derailed my life in ways I could never have foreseen when I was that fifteen-year-old kid playing with pronouns on Tumblr.

But what leads a girl with no history of discomfort with stereotypical “girl” toys and clothes, or even the slightest desire to be a boy in childhood, to want to be a “man” through hormonal injections as she approached adulthood? In a vacuum, such a profound confusion leading to such drastic measures sounds like it should be rare and a sign of some sort of severe mental disturbance. Was I a fluke? Was I some kind of idiot who mistakenly believed I was trans because I’m crazy or just downright irresponsible?

The truth is that there has been an extreme rise in adolescents, especially girls, believing they are transgender. UK NHS referral data shows a 4000% increase in pediatric gender service referrals (not a typo). So-called “gender dysphoria”, which was once a very rare diagnosis that described mostly prepubescent boys and adult men, is now most commonly diagnosed in teenage girls. Activists will argue that these explosive numbers are a result of increased societal acceptance, and that at long last trans people are coming out of hiding and living as their authentic selves. If this were true, one might expect to see comparable rates of transgender identity across all age groups and between both sexes, but its disproportionately adolescent females feeling that warm and fuzzy inclusive acceptance. Considering “acceptance” now implies supraphysiological doses of cross sex hormones and having healthy body organs surgically rearranged, it’s worth a deeper look into what kinds of factors are driving this population clamoring to go under the knife.

[ Continued on Substack... ]

This is a very long, very compelling, very personal essay by a woman who got caught up in gender ideology, but thankfully realized she made a mistake before doing any irreversible damage. It’s far too long to post here - a good 20-30 minute read - but well spending the time on.

I wanted to pull out a part of it that stuck with me.

How could I have been so stupid?

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Jamie what I was truly thinking. I knew that she would probably freak out and try to make me rationalize away these feelings, but it was too late for that now. The dam had broken. Instead, I silently berated myself and catastrophized internally until I mustered the courage to tell my very pro-LGBT therapist: being trans had been a massive mistake.

I remember her response clear as day: “But you always tell me about your terrible dysphoria!”

“I know, but I… I don’t think that’s what it is” I replied, and started to tell her my still developing thoughts on how I had developed the “dysphoria” after finding out about gender identities online as a teenager, when I had been struggling with so many other emotional issues for a long time, and that in retrospect I must have gotten carried away, thinking that being trans was the explanation and solution for all of my problems. She wasn’t really hearing me, and questioned the things I said from the angle of “you’re trying to talk yourself out of being trans because transphobia is making you hate yourself.” Ironic that nobody ever questioned my desire to be trans that way.

This was the first moment I started realizing something was off about the trans movement, and institutions in general. I had experienced this massive realization, and it was agonizing but at least it was finally something real, and here I was being met with all these rationalizations for why this of all things was a psychological symptom. Not the effects of the testosterone, not my belief that all of my problems would be solved by transitioning, not my aversion to being female, but the fact that I now knew transitioning had been a mistake.

I left this session feeling frustrated, and I don’t think I ever went back. Sitting in the car outside the building, I told Jamie that I was regretting my transition and questioning my trans identity in general, and predictably she was extremely upset. She reacted in anger, saying I must be confused and, like my therapist, accusing me of having these thoughts due to some underlying psychological issue, like only an insane person would ever regret being trans.

She was not being uniquely harsh here, this is a common occurrence in the trans community. In one direction, there’s a desire to encourage gender questioning in others who have not questioned their gender yet (some people call this “cracking an egg”). In the other direction, there is an intense fear of others changing their minds about being trans or wanting to transition. Once someone is questioning their gender, there’s a push to encourage them to take steps towards social and medical transition, which, once initiated, makes changing one’s mind more complicated and going back to living as they did before more difficult. I personally have gotten very angry and desperate when friends in the past would voice doubts about identifying as transgender, and I have also encouraged gender questioning and trans identity in friends of mine who did not yet identify as trans. I regret this very much now, as some of these friends have gone on to medically transition, and I no longer believe this was remotely in their best interest. But in the trans community, people cope with the inherent doubts and cognitive dissonance of pretending to be someone they are not by encouraging others to do the same. This is also why so many adult trans people advocate for child transition. If an innocent, pure child can “be trans”, that validates their identity and belief system too. An enormous amount of mental energy is devoted to the crowdsourcing of validation and firefighting of anything that triggers internal conflict, which is always nagging in the back of the mind.

When a person is at peace with themselves and expressing themselves naturally, they don’t desperately micromanage everything and everyone around them.

Consider someone who doesn’t hold a belief in a god, becomes a Xian, then deconverts. The Xians from the church they left might accuse this person of “having these thoughts due to some underlying psychological issue” and never spot the hypocrisy.

Apparently it’s relevant only when disparaging someone leaving the group, but is never a consideration when welcoming someone into it.

If we question the ethics when Xians do this, why other than reasons of activism, wouldn’t we do the same here?

#helena #gender transition #detransition #gender ideology #social contagion #gender activism #gender pseudoscience #to read

[smileanja]

not the reason radfems want to destigmatize and appreciate periods: because they’re cute and fun and not gross at all. the actual reason: girls are shamed for their periods, to the point where girls literally die in menstrual huts. periods are given as a reason women should not be leaders. tampons are taxed as a luxury. girls are taught to hide the fact that they get periods (hide pads/tampons, for example)

#menstruation #periods #feminism #reproductive rights #important #reference

[smileanja]

My healthcare provider (Kaiser) referred me to an external therapy provider because they are so understaffed internally, and the referral is for a therapist literally

128 miles

away from the city where I live (a large city in California, with over half a million residents). 🙃 Guess I’ll just not get therapy. What a shitshow.

#anecdote #kaiser #kaiser permanente #mental health #american health system #american healthcare #privatized healthcare #hell world #rant post #personal

[smileanja]

“It is sad proof that I am a pent and coiled harpie of spitting indignation and outcry. It is suggestive that I carry deep and abiding inner pain. I'm not denying this. It is sad that I have such subtext, always and still. And it is sad that I know I'm not alone. And it is sad that any expression of feminine rage is dismissed as personal trauma, rather than valid, even when it's concerning things like other women and children. And it is sad that the angry woman is an archetype that makes people uncomfortable - an Angry Woman is symbolic of hormonal irrationality, civilly inappropriate, a Bitch -while simultaneously touching real women's hearts in a sweet way. Real life women recognize something in images of Medusa and Kali and Athena like we recognize our own name called across a noisy chattering room. We cock our ears almost instinctively. The duality of women recognizing and feeling rage while society is made uncomfortable by it ends in a repression of women's reality. This is all so complicated. It's woven and unwoven like a Sutra. Or Penelope's rug. Or the circulatory system.”

KALI AND FEMININE RAGE

#female anger #kali and feminine rage #beautiful #important #writing

[smileanja]

Reading this was incredibly hard but I feel like I need to be a witness to these women. My heart goes out to them. I have my own story to share too:

I had a surprise endometrial biopsy during a regular pap smear appt, with no pain management. It was not “just a pinch” the way my (young and female!) OBGYN said it would be. I have a high pain tolerance (tattoos, severe menstrual cramps, history of clumsy accidental injury), so I agreed to the biopsy as-is. It was a sharp internal pain and then twingy and sore for a day, with a bit of blood spotting.

I ended up being diagnosed with PCOS and my biopsy came back with questionable results. I got a quick 5-minute phone call to tell me it might be cancer and to come in about 4 weeks later for a colposcopy. I spent a month quietly freaking out and then went in for the procedure. I was told it would be uncomfortable and maybe a little painful but overall a quick experience.

While I was in the stirrups and painfully clamped open, my OBGYN said she could actually see some growths and she could just cut them out real quick. I was in significant pain already and desperately doing breathing exercises through my COVID mask while staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t quite reach the area she wanted to so she asked the nurse to go find a different speculum, one that was longer and skinnier I guess because she had to go deeper but she couldn’t force me open any wider without risking tearing.

The nurse left for about 10 minutes (while I was trapped and cranked open and in pain) only to come back and say she couldn’t find it. The OBGYN told her to go ask the other nurses on the ward, and she left again, only to come back empty-handed once more to report that the other nurses told her the specific tool the OBGYN wanted wasn’t ever stocked at their office. By now I was starting to disassociate because of the prolonged pain mixed with my increasing levels of panic.

The OBGYN got visibly frustrated and left the room to track down that missing tool. When she came back, tool in hand, she told me I was “doing amazing but I needed to breathe” and sat back down to get to the business of cutting out part of my insides with no anesthesia while I was already in a heightened state. The actual removal of the growth was a kind of pain I don’t think I will ever have the words to describe. Just thinking about it now over a year later I can feel my heart racing and my stomach rolling.

After she collected the tissue she stuck some kind of pad up there to place some medicine to help with blood clotting, told me I would be sore for a couple of days and that I might see some spotting and pass some blood clots for up to a week, and walked out with the nurse.

I felt horribly alone and disregarded, and finally started crying after they closed the door. I couldn’t even sit up yet, and was just focused on not passing out or getting hysterical. After a couple of minutes I got myself under control and sat up to get out of the stirrups and put my underwear and pants back on. I was horrified to see splashes of my blood on the ground around the OBGYN’s work cart, as well as bloody tools and wipes. I had to wait a moment until I no longer felt dizzy, and then hobbled back into my clothes. Bizarrely, I felt responsible for the mess and actually tidied up a bit, wiping up blood from the floor. Moving my body at all made the pain flare up, and I couldn’t walk normally.

I limped out of the room, down to the elevator because I knew the stairs would hurt too much, and finally made it out of the building to my car, where I had a brief breakdown with sobbing and hyperventilating. I drove home and passed out for a couple of hours, and then got up to reply to the work emails I had missed earlier that day. It hurt to pee for a few days and I had soreness and cramps for about 10 days, with constant spotting and some fairly large clots.

Anyway the American healthcare system utterly fails women.

TW: Medical Abuse, Medical Misogyny, Graphic descriptions of surgical procedures.

“This past week, Redditor u/Ancient-Abs asked the question, "Why are many gynecological procedures done without pain medicine?" before discussing the discrimination women face in medical treatment and sharing their own experience having an IUD inserted.

1. "I started bleeding when pregnant with my first and went to see my OBGYN at the hospital. She looked and said there were polyps on my cervix. She then told me to just hold the nurse's hand and pick a spot on the ceiling, and she’ll cut them out real quick."

"I honestly never thought to ask for any kind of pain meds for any procedure like this before. WTF is wrong with me and other women? We’ve been so brainwashed to believe that 'it’s just a pinch' and now drive home and go make dinner.

I’m a medical professional and had to read a thread on Reddit to realize I need to advocate for myself, and I don’t need to be in pain during gyno procedures." —u/CanadaOD

2. "I had a cervical biopsy when I was 18, and the doctor was like, 'You’ll feel just a pinch.' Then I felt, well, a chunk of my cervix cut out and screamed. He was like, 'Shhh.' So I cried quietly, and he looked up at me and said, 'Why are you crying? There are no nerve endings on the cervix. I know you aren’t actually feeling pain.'"

"That was literal decades ago. I had hoped things had changed for women since then. Good to hear that old asshole doctor is still the norm. Cool. Real cool." —u/notthefakehigh5r

3. "I got a LEEP procedure, and that was more painful than drug-free childbirth. I can feel my cervix descend before my period and I can feel the penis on my cervix during sex. Still, the doctor told me I shouldn’t feel anything. I had no sexual desire for months after the LEEP, and I talked to a lot of women who had the same procedure and some said they’re like that after years, or they feel pain or bleed during sex."

"Why are they so set on 'the cervix has no pain receptors?'" —u/MarinaA19

4. "When I was 18, my gynecologist's office apparently forgot to tell me to take extra strength ibuprofen before my cervical biopsy — that's the recommendation they use. I got the same 'just a pinch' spiel, and they decided it was worth it to just go ahead and do it anyway. (Surely, they had some ibuprofen they could've given me.) The sample the doc took got stuck, and he was yanking on it while it was still attached. The nurse who was with him had to grab and hold my leg because she saw I was about to kick him in the head."

"I had done eight years of Tae Kwon Do at that point. I would have made an ass of myself. If doctors really think it doesn't hurt, perhaps they should just shut up and deal with however we choose to express our clearly fake pain." —u/asylum013

5. "When I had my first baby, I was very tiny, and the kiddo was a big, bouncing boy. I got snapped at by the first nurse for making a sound. This was long before maternity pain relief was really a thing. We got gas and pethidine/demerol. Fast forward, my then-husband had his vasectomy done eight weeks after my fourth baby. During 15 hours of labor, I had gas. For the excruciating pain after, I got OTC pain killers. For the raw, cracked bleeding nipples, I was told, 'You know how it goes, they’ll toughen up in a couple of weeks (of breastfeeding).' He was given Valium to take the night before, another one for that morning, and then pain relief for the duration of the five-minute procedure. He was given another script for afterward and told to go easy for a few days."

"Are women seen as tough or subhuman?" —u/MamaBear4485

6. "My hysteroscopy hurt so badly that they had to call extra people to hold me down on the table. I was screaming for help and ended up kicking my doctor in the face and breaking his nose — on accident of course, but honestly, he deserved it. He was literally torturing me and all he cared about was completing the procedure at any cost. I bled and was sore for nearly a month."

"Something was very, very wrong with what he did, but I could never tell you what. I cannot believe they do that procedure without sedation." —u/[deleted]

7. "I had no idea to expect pain for my colonoscopy. I thought that because they weren't numbing anything, it must not be bad. I started crying and screaming, and I couldn't keep my legs open. They ended up only doing a partial biopsy because I went hypotensive (blood pressure dropped). It angers me to this day."

"I have also had three IUDs, and my blood pressure tanks from the pain every time. I have to be monitored." —u/galumphingbanter

8. "I got put under to have wisdom teeth removed, but nothing when I got my IUD put in. I literally screamed when they inserted it."

"I've broken bones and have been in less pain." —u/MissAnthrope94

9. "I argued with a doctor who told me that there would be no pain management for my colposcopy — after I showed up for it. His reasoning was that 'it was only a five- to 10-minute procedure,' and I could have some ibuprofen(!) afterwards. When I told him that vasectomies were a five- to 10-minute procedure, too, but that I bet if he were having one, he'd want some anesthetic for his balls, he straight-up walked out on me."

—u/la_bel_iconnu

10. "I had a procedure done a few months ago where they had to tear through my cervix to fill my uterus with fluid — something to do with fertility issues. The pain was unbearable, and I felt violated. I cried so hard and was furious they would let me go through that without any anesthesia or pain reliever."

"How is this so normal?" —u/Skorpionfrau

11. "I had both an HSG and a saline ultrasound. I have high pain tolerance, and I was sweating profusely and extremely nauseous. I have never needed a few minutes before getting up, but I did that time — and that was with 800 mg taken beforehand that I learned I should take from the internet, not my doctor, who never said a word about needing pain medication."

"I am absolutely blown away that a doctor can do that procedure hundreds of times a year — see hundreds of women crying, sweating, writhing in pain, and passing out from pain — yet no form of anesthesia is ever offered.

It’s fucking cruelty. They literally push a tube through your cervix. Why would they ever think this would be ok to do without pain control?" —u/birdieponderinglife

12. "I had a LEEP procedure fully awake. I remember I started shaking, and the doctor got on to me. It was a horrible experience. It frustrates me. We can get pain medicine for removals of moles, but fuck your cervix."

"That was just one of the many things they should have not have done." —u/Khalano

13. "The last time I had an endometrial biopsy attempted on me – my third one, my first two were done successfully but painfully — I could not handle it and asked to doctor to stop. I had to ask her again to stop because she ignored my first try. She became visibly agitated and started slamming things around the room, ripping her gloves off and mumbling that this was a waste of her time."

"This was nearly 10 years ago, and I have not been to a gynecologist since. Not only did she hurt me, but she also shamed me for being intolerant to the pain." —u/Psychological_Sail80

14. "So, I used to get ingrown toenails. I went to a doctor who numbed them, removed the edges, and then shoved a Q-tip of silver nitrate into my nail bed to kill the toenail to prevent it from growing back in there. I was numbed for it. But after having my son and a second-degree tear, I wasn't healing properly. My gyno told me there was a section where that wouldn't seal even after many stitches. He said, 'Don't worry, I'll take care of it.' Before I know it, I'm laying back, and he's prepping. He calmly asks if I'd ever heard of silver nitrate and explains that it'll seal the spot. It was the same as with my toenail — a Q-tip covered in the stuff. I was in so much pain, and I'd just pushed a giant baby out of there for 31+ hours! I was crying, and wanted to cuss him out and kick him in the head! The nurse then pipes up, 'Oh, I think we've got a numbing spray around here somewhere we could have used.'"

"You knew what that'd do and feel like, and you're just now mentioning anything for the pain?! The stuff literally kills fingernails! I think it's used in photography! And y'all are just slathering it on an open wound on my most tender area to cauterize it with ZERO pain meds and minimal warning!?! Burn the whole system down!" —u/roxannearcia

15. "Just the other week, I had a vulvar biopsy on the very delicate, sensitive tissue on the inner part of my vulva. My gynecologist assured me that I wouldn’t feel a thing after she injected some local anesthetic. Well, that clown fucked up the anesthetic, because I felt EVERYTHING. It was horrible. I literally had tears pouring out of my squeezed-shut eyes as I threw my hand over my mouth and stifled a scream. She said, 'Oh, you felt that? You weren’t supposed to feel that!' Then, she kept going — gouging into my delicate bits with her medieval tool — and I kept crying and shaking. She then commented to the nurse, 'Oh, she must be nervous.' It took me a few hours to stop shaking due to the intense pain put my body in such a panic mode."

"I had a few panic attacks for the next three days, kept obsessively thinking about the procedure, and would just randomly start crying. Don't Google what a vulvar biopsy is if you're squeamish." —u/Moal

16. "I had a cystoscopy with no pain meds, and it was so fucking traumatizing. There I am, sitting and acting like everything’s okay and like it wasn’t the worst pain in the world. After, I go home and have to pee. I went into the shower to relax my body, and I couldn't fucking pee. The pain was insane. I sobbed for hours. They ended up prescribing something extra to help, but in the end, that single event of trying to pee left me so traumatized. It hurt to pee for a week. The initial shock, sitting there awake while they do it, and the, 'You may feel slight discomfort after' — after shoving a metal rod thicker than a pencil in my urethra — and I was trying to figure out why my bladder is so sensitive."

"I hate doctors so much." —u/sammmythegr8

17. "I recently had an endometrial (uterine) biopsy. The doctor told me it would hurt, but it would be over in ten seconds. I started counting out loud, 'One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three...' then I started screaming. After, I was crying and hyperventilating. The doctor told me my reaction was normal."

"It was so painful that I can't really tell you how it was painful. My brain just won't go there. Years ago, I had, had cold cauterization done on my cervix — twice. Again, no pain meds. That was bad. The endometrial biopsy was worse." —u/trekbette

18. "I hadn't had any other form of birth control and got an IUD placed. I had asked my doctor before the appointment if it was okay to drive myself home, and if there were any pain meds I could get. She told me all I would need was over-the-counter stuff. I nearly passed out during the insert from the pain. Once my head stopped spinning, I very carefully got myself to my car and started to drive home. It was incredibly painful. Our roads are shit here, and every single bump I hit had me screaming in pain while trying to keep focus. I made it home and basically couldn't leave my bed for two days."

"Moral of the story, no, it's NOT okay to be told you can drive yourself home after your first IUD placement.

It's also completely ridiculous that we are given no numbing or pain meds for a procedure that puts a foreign object in the most sensitive part of our bodies. Our bodies literally fight back against it being there." —u/Valkyry

19. "I had a polyp removed from my cervix. They told me I'd have some cramping and that I'd be ok. I walked out of there straight to the bathroom and almost fainted. My mom looked for me for 15 minutes until she started knocking on the door. I was able to get up and walk out. Everyone was super concerned, but no pain medicine or post-care. Nothing."

"I could have busted my head on the sink locked in the bathroom." —u/KnightBustonowhere

20. "I had an HSG done — they basically insert a tube into the vagina/cervix/uterus, inject dye, and see if your fallopian tubes are blocked and the shape of the uterus. It was the fucking worst. I was literally in agony and opted for exploratory surgery after they injected the dye for the third or fourth time. After uterine surgery, I had a balloon catheter in my uterus for two weeks. My body started having literal contractions to try to force it out. The doctor said I didn't need to be out of work."

"It was fucking hell. They told me to use ibuprofen and Tylenol at the max dose. It's insane how horrible pain care for women is." —u/PansyAttack

21. "After having my third kid via C-section, they refused to give me any pain meds except two regular strength Tylenol every few hours. My baby was in the NICU for a few nights, too. So when I wanted to see or hold him, I had to grind my teeth and get there through sheer willpower. However, my husband got put on morphine for kidney stones at this same hospital."

"For the record, I wasn't breastfeeding. It was in my chart. So it's not like they were trying to get around accidentally dosing the baby. I'm also not saying my husband's pain wasn't great but that there is a glaringly obvious bias. I filed a complaint, but nothing happened." —u/1thruZero

22. "I had a cervical biopsy done. I am a candidate for endometrial ablation, and my insurance company required the biopsy. I didn’t know it was going to happen until 30 seconds after my ultrasound. My OBGYN requested that I take my mask off (COVID) to 'help with breathing' because it was going to hurt so much. I put my hands behind my head since I didn’t know what to do with them. I have what I consider to be a very high pain tolerance. During the procedure — I didn’t even realize I was doing it — I used my own nails to cut into the top of my other hand. The nurse actually had to bandage my hand before I left."

"I now have four U-shaped scars on the top of my hand. That was six months ago, and I haven’t scheduled my ablation because that situation fucked me up in the head." —u/Victim_Kin_Seek_Suit

23. "Five years ago, I had my first IUD inserted. I lucked out with a physician who insisted on the local anesthetic for insertion and made me lay on the exam table for 30 minutes afterward for monitoring. They've moved on to another state so I had to find a new physician for my replacement IUD. When I scheduled the replacement, I specifically asked for the anesthetic, and they stated they would make sure it was prepped for me. When I got there for the appointment, they told me that the anesthetic was not prepared and it would 'take longer to prep and numb you than to just insert the new device.' Already strained, I buckled and allowed them to do removal and replacement without the anesthetic. It was agonizing. I complained with the office manager and asked to have my physician changed, but I was bullied out of that, too."

"I had first asked after tubal ligation instead of an IUD and — though my physician was a woman, and I'm 37 with a 17-year-old child and no interest in more children — I got so bullied by her that I settled for another IUD. I'm autistic, so it's incredibly hard for me to initiate care in the first place, and it's harder to stand up for myself. It sucks.

When I went for the ultrasound follow-up two weeks after the replacement, the tech laughed and said, 'They placed the IUD too low.' When I asked what that meant, she said I'd have to talk to the doctor. Sobbing and horrified that I might have to go through this shit a second time, I demanded a doctor look at the images there-and-then. A much younger doctor examined my images and gave me the OK after advising that while the placement was lower than was common, my particular IUD doesn't come with as long of an insertion rod. She explained that so long as the device was not in the cervix, and I was not bleeding or cramping or the device was expelled, I was protected. I hope to fuck she's right, but as soon as I get past the trauma of the whole affair, I'm finding a new GYN and getting a second opinion.

Women are discriminated against to a revolting degree; disabled women are abused outright. It's easy for people who are not me to say things like, 'You should have said no,' but I'm inherently conflict-averse and anxious to the point of nausea at pushing back against authority figures, especially doctors. It's really hard to self-advocate when you're on the spectrum, and most people are confused about what that means." —u/PansyAttack”

#personal #healthcare #american healthcare fails women #women’s stories #anesthetics #medical malpractice #systemic misogyny #institutional misogyny

[smileanja]

There’s this “gotcha!” about radical feminists being “obsessed” with female genitals, and there’s an automatic pushback against that, but it isn’t a negative in the first place. I think too many women miss that the sneer itself is misogynistic in the first place.

Our genitals are the reason that we’re oppressed. Ancient men didn’t understand the inner workings of the female body. Ancient Greek philosophers were convinced that women could suffer from a “wandering womb,” where the best treatment was marriage, sex and pregnancy - lucky for men, who were invested in owning, using and breeding us like cattle.

Today, many women still can’t point to their vulva. Too many grow up and are horrified when their black underwear turns a rusty red, unaware of their own body chemistry. Unsure how to safely clean themselves. Ashamed when on their periods, silent when in excessive pain during menstruation because they’re sure that they’re just complaining and too afraid to take up a doctor’s valuable time. 

How is it not a strive towards liberation, when the mysterious, feared and disgusting vagina is brought into the light? How is it not a positive to share images of them and normalise them the way that we’re normalised to see cartoon penises etched across buildings, scrawled in notebooks, paraded in open sight, no age restriction needed?

Why should we answer the accusation of an obsession over genitals with anything other than a proud yes? 

The language of the oppressor is constantly reclaimed, a way to normalise it, take the power away from it - or so it’s said. Words constructed by abusers to cut down who they see as their lessers, only for the oppressed to take it for themselves.

Our genitals have always been a part of us. There’s nothing to reclaim. We could never escape them. We could never change them. There was never any filth in us but the lies told about our nature.

Why shouldn’t we be pleased to celebrate what was once - and still is - shrouded in darkness and shame? Why should we shy away from reclaiming ourselves, when so many others rejoice in reclaiming a word?

Women stand together because of our oppression. We are still treated as lesser because of biology. Social misogyny is only an evolution from the abuse of our genitals, built from the ground up on the backs of men disgusted by periods, but who wanted to use our bodies and own every inch of us. Who saw those things in our biology and then wrapped themselves in “logic” to make us the weaker, fairer sex.

When we’re accused of being obsessed with our genitals, too many women rush to explain themselves. It’s internalised misogyny that has us rushing to distance ourselves from those accusations. 

They might type “You reduce women to their genitals!” but what they mean is “Hide your genitals away, they’re not natural, they’re wrong, they make us uncomfortable, nobody should see them, women shouldn’t know their bodies, women shouldn’t speak about what binds them, they’re a humiliation!”

Think about why it’s easier to pretend that what we’re doing isn’t based on our genitals. Think about why it feels right to deny it.

Take a little time and wonder exactly why.

#feminism #poetry #genitals #history #misogyny #pride #our bodies

[smileanja]

So proud of my mother for doing her own research after I sent her that meme. A sign she hung in her car window.

#komen #susan g. komen #cancer #breast cancer #signal boost #charity

[smileanja]

proposing a new aesthetic I’d like to call gorgoncore, and has such features as:

women

women wearing messy clothes with messy hair

snakes, so many snakes (also acceptable are dragons, since gorgons are described sometimes as dragonlike)

being intentionally strange, frightening, and off-putting

mean evil feminism

makeup? I don’t know her

combat boots

sisterhood

witchcraft

the color green & also earth tones

weaponry (specifically bows and swords)

body positivity, but diagonal: all bodies that can kill a man are good bodies . and all bodies can kill a man.

womanhood is about big teeth and sharp claws . womanhood is about mace and snake tattoos

basically anything Medusa-related is gorgoncore

#nice #gorgoncore #we need a woman-only aesthetic that isnt about being hot #medusa #medusa did nothing wrong

[smileanja]

my most controversial opinion that i will not budge on is that there should be no such thing as a religious exemption from vaccinations

#hard same #this #medical exemption #vaccine #the social contract #get vaccinated #vaccines save lives

[smileanja]

~you can’t expect het women to give up love for feminism!!!

Because romantic love from males is the only love that matters, right? There’s no way to be happy and fulfilled outside a het relationship. Het women would waste away in loneliness and despair without romance with a man.

Give me a fucking break. No one said a revolution for female liberation would be easy. Some things are more important than an individual falling in love.

Why are you so scared to be without a man? It’s okay. Really. You don’t need him. Romantic relationships are not the end all be all of your life, damn.

#feminism #important #class solidarity #female solidarity #romance #sexual relationships #intimacy #heterosexual #het women

[smileanja]

There is nothing wrong with women who have a greater sense of self preservation than motherly instinct. There is nothing wrong with women who have zero motherly instinct at all.

We don't exist just to get pregnant. We have minds and free will. We can decide how we will live our lives and what we are or are not willing to sacrifice for others.

Nature seeks a balanced, harmonious, stable ecosystem. A high birth rate goes against that. Nature creates women who don't want to be mothers as part of the balance. As soon as women discovered eating a certain plant will abort a pregnancy, we immediately began passing that knowledge down. Humans are human because we use tools, craft things, make medicine.

We are the agents of creation, we decide to create or not, abortion is part of our humanity and always has been.

#abortion #feminism #pro choice #make all abortion legal forever #bodily autonomy #motherhood #pregnancy #female rights

[smileanja]

#love this #incredible #accents #i love accents #baltimore #scotland #english #language

[smileanja]

by the way, in case anyone wants a good source in regards to trans women in prisons, have a parliament committee evidence report submitted by kathleen stock and co. when the self id for prisons thing was being debated in the uk. got the swedish study and showed that there’s no debunk of it. criminality sex offense rates, the lack of data kept, the risk to women, etc. it’s basically a collation of all the evidence we have that trans women should NOT be in women’s prisons.

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/

#trans #transwomen #gender #male #patriarchy #statistic #prison #jail #female only #safe space #reference

[smileanja]

Another woman utterly failed by our society’s devaluation of women’s reproductive health. We can’t wait around for male doctors to decide what we need to know. This is why we need to take control and educate ourselves about our own bodies.

#female reproductive health #pregnancy #feminism #reference #important #reblog to save a life