horny and suicidal

snake’s ass:

A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.

The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.

Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types: 1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse. 2. Sabotaging birth control 3. Marital rape Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.

The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.

The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her.  She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.

One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”  Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.

WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?

I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.

Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo. 

When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.

And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.

I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy. 

you start with a frog playing piano. you are instantly intrigued. you get given a really cool intro song that plays perfectly on the notes of like, autumn nostalgia? it’s pretty and slow music, showing you images you haven’t seen before but the tone makes it feel like stuff you’ve forgotten, things on the tip of your tongue, rather than stuff that’s entirely new

we then have the narration, that’s like, storybook shit, you think ah yes i know where this is going, this is the feeling i was just having

this is furthered by the creepy but still fairytale style woods

and then we have greg’s first line which is literally just the list “antelope, guggenheim, albert, salami, giggly, jumpy, tom, thomas, tambourine, leg face mccullen, artichoke, penguin, pete, steve” and with every new word added you’re trying to guess what the fuck he’s listing and how this has anything to do with the setting you thought you knew, it puts you completely on the back foot but you’ve gotta find out what it is now

but nothing prepares you for the moment greg goes “but i think the very worst name for this frog is-” and that’s the kicker. bc it’s ridiculous and its funny and it tells a whole story and makes you look at the whole thing in a new light and sets an incredible tone for the story before we know anything about the characters or even reach a single plot point

Whrn the group moves to the left, Gwen is the one who takes her eyes off him to make sure the group roubds the corner. Miles turns his head both times, but not only is he the center of the group, but his leg is one of the few things keeping Peni suspended meaning he needs to pay the most attention to the wall.

Noir and Spidey both keep their eyes completely on chair-guy on the first pass. Noir only looking away when they go back for a split second to confirm where they are going, before snapping back to the “threat”. Spidey however, doesnt look away, which leads to his feet dangling in the air while they round the corner.

And of course Porker is a cartoon and bound to his own Roger Rabbit logic as he squeezes behind them without disturbing them.

It May seem silly to point this stuff out, but it informs so much about the individual characters, and really needs to be appreciated ot terms of great animation techniques.

This is also the best shot for showing off the different art designs ie. Noires filter over his image, the cartoon nature of Ham, and even small details in the difference between Gwen and the other two mainline spideys.

Like, she’s up there too, and out of all of them she’s the one who technically doesn’t have any of the spider powers necessary to stick to the walls. So how is she staying up there?

Miles and Gwen.

Look at how they’re both positioned: Miles keeps his right leg angled so that Peni has a sort of perch to keep her legs against, even while they’re on the move, while her upper body is being held in place by Gwen’s left hand (Gwen’s entire left arm isn’t visible in the movements, compared to how we see everyone else’s arms).

Also Noir: 

i was a freshman in college and i had this history teacher who was ~edgy~ and his hotness level on ratemyprofessor was off the charts and he was the first teacher i ever heard use the word “fuck.” anyway he would do this thing every so often where we’d have a “quiz” and the first two questions were always really easy and the last one was hard - they were all similar questions, and the point was to show what you learn about history and what you don’t. 

so one day he’s like okay kids time for a quiz and the first question was who killed abraham lincoln. the second question was who killed JFK. third question was who killed william mckinley. 

we all take a few minutes and write down our answers, and then the teacher asks the questions again so we can shout out the answers. everybody answered the first two with really no problem.

now, keep in mind that this class was at 9 a.m. and i was exhausted All The Time during my freshman year of college so i sat in the back in my sweats and never said a word and the teacher definitely had no clue who i was. 

so you can imagine his surprise when he asked the class who shot william mckinley and without missing a beat i said, “czolgosz,” pronounced correctly and everything. 

my teacher froze and in a very stern voice asked, “what was that? what did someone just say?”

i repeated: czolgosz.

my teacher: “who said that?”

i raised my hand, and my super cool history teacher glared at me. he then asked me how the hell i knew the answer. he said that in the TWENTY YEARS he’d been teaching this stupid class, nobody, not A SINGLE PERSON, had ever known the answer to that question.

So when our test asked for an example of a legume and I wrote “peanut” he marked it wrong bc it wasn’t the example from the actual textbook. But it was a right answer, so I fought it him on it.