Radical and Mathematical

When men meme about protecting Latino men, they meme about protecting their buddies, the guys. They meme about them being equal, being human

I feel like anything I'd read, including a great many medical sources, feminist sources, and the actual instructions given with the medication, didn't prepare me at all for what to expect, and in fact, I feel like it was minimized by a lot. I went into it expecting "extra rough period cramp" type of pain. Several articles (and the advice given by with the meds) advised to put on a comfort show and have some food that I enjoy; take some over the counter pain meds. It was easily the worst pain I've felt in my life. I had an abdominal surgery a few months ago, I've broken a few bones, I cut the tip of my finger off last year, and none of these, even a teensy bit, compared to the mildest pain I experienced during my abortion.

I was completely blindsided. I almost caved and asked to be taken to the hospital, because NOTHING I had read had described anything even close to how bad the pain was. It came in waves, and there would be thirty to forty minute intervals where I couldn't even speak if I wanted to. I curled into a ball and just laid there. I won't lie and say it wasn't traumatic.

My first thought, tbh, was "holy shit, is this what other women's period cramps feel like? Have I just been lucky this whole time?" But a while back, when I still used TikTok, I came across an abortion joke video, and a ton of women in the comments were discussing how painful it was, and how they weren't prepared for it properly because they'd been told to expect much milder pain.

It was about a 9 hour process, for me, and as soon as the pain waned, I was out like a light. I had no residual symptoms the next day, thankfully, but during it I was almost positive that something had to be going wrong, because I hadn't seen anyone anywhere mentioning that it could hurt that bad.

My partner gets flashbacks to it sometimes because I locked my bathroom door behind me when I bolted in there (the meds also gave me instant diarrhea) and then I couldn't stand long enough to unlock it again. He listened to me screaming on the other side of the door for 15 minutes before the pain abated enough for me to stand up and let him in. I bled so much we thought I was hemorrhaging.

I took all the pain meds we had in the house and was in and out of consciousness for 20 hours. I was too weak to walk up my stairs without a break for a week afterwards. I have come out of a surgery that required general anaesthetic in a better condition than I was after my abortion.

My two medical abortions (10 weeks and 11 weeks) were extremely easy. They were easy for me emotionally. I felt nervous beforehand but I felt relief afterwards. While I did experience some pain, it wasn't worse than my typical period cramps or bad food poisoning.

My two births and pregnancies were also extremely different. My firstborn extremely traumatized me. The delivery was wretched, my postpartum was horrible and slow and painful... I just assumed everyone else was lying about their positive delivery stories to save face. Meanwhile, for my twins, the pregnancy was horrible and I wanted to die, but my delivery was basically painless and was done super quickly.

For periods, I used to have cramps so bad I would lose consciousness and black out on the bathroom floor, whereas now, I get some back pain for a few days and get very sleepy.

What this has taught me on a personal level is that anything to do with a woman's reproductive system is incredibly varied, and there is nothing an individual can do to affect it. Someone having an easier time doesn't take away from the trauma of someone else's experience, and someone else having a horrible time doesn't mean that the women who have it easier are lying or covering anything up.

Culturally, we dismiss women's ability to tell their own experiences and relay their own narratives honestly and faithfully. Even after years of trying to deprogram, I still subconsciously do it, and other feminists do too - cultural programming is hard to completely rid yourself of. It's easy for people who haven't had these experiences to listen to the stories that validate their own worldview and dismiss the ones that "don't fit the narrative".

When gay people say “I’m not interested in having sex with someone of the opposite sex” they flip their lid. They go into this “HOLY SHIT DATING DOESN’T HAVE TO MEAN HAVING SEX?? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??” rant. 

I mean yes, Im not interested in dating a biological female full stop as a gay man - but its asinine to ignore that sex is a part of a romantic relationship for almost all of us, gay asexuals are in the minority. 

So what do you expect from us exactly? We fought to have gay sex decriminalised and we are still fighting for gay sex education. After decades of tireless work we are finally making major steps to prevent/cure AIDS. Our sexuality is an innate part of who we are and you are asking us to ignore a large part of it. By that I don’t mean we’re sex craved maniacs (though thats the narrative I see a lot), but we have had to fight for our sex to not be illegal - do you not understand the significance of that? We fought for our right to have sex the way we want to and now you want to take that away from us while claiming to be part of the same community and supporting us. Anyone who claims to be gay or our “ally” while supporting this rhetoric is nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A lot of gay people will spend a significant part of their lives in the closet, wishing they could change. Once these people have come out of the closet, to then tell them that ACTUALLY they should still have have sex with people they’re not attracted to or accept a sexless relationship is nothing short of evil and homophobic. 

Glanced at American news and Republicans are trying to pass a bill to track pregnancies and would allow the gov to track pregnancies beginning to end so they gov can say if a foetal death is suspicious or not.

When women complain that men are not doing their share of the chores it’s always: have you tried communicating that with them? Have you spoken to them about it? Have you given them a list of chores to do? Basically, have you done everything humanly to make it easier for him to do these chores?

I saw another one recently where a woman was complaining that her husband asked her three times when a certain appointment was and she said things like this put the mental load on her and was just draining. Basically every single comment was some variation of telling her she needed to put it in a calendar, saying that he probably has other things on his mind because of work or male-dominated chores (when the oil needs changing, when the grass needs mowing, etc), or basically telling her that he has a job so remembering all of this is hard and she needs to help him. (Or just insulting her.)

Meanwhile, I saw a post where a guy said that his wife always ate his fries when they got fast food so instead of doing anything about it, he hid the fries or ate them before she could get any. The responses? SHE needs to communicate better about what foods she wants in the future. On a different post where a woman was complaining that a man was eating all the snacks she would buy for herself, no matter how much asked him not to and actively hid the snacks, half of the suggestions were that she needed to buy more snacks because he clearly wanted them even if he wasn’t communicating it properly. So women eating men’s food and not asking for their own is poor communication and she needs to communicate better. But men eating women’s women’s food and not not asking for their own is poor communication but women should understand that it means he wants the snacks and get them?

Then when men don’t pull their weight in the household it’s: maybe he’s stressed from work. Maybe he’s depressed. Maybe he doesn’t know what needs doing. You, at the woman, need to communicate with him about this.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that people still assume that men are working and paying for everything while women remain at home, despite most households having two working adults.

He rapes or sexually assaults her and everyone turns around and tells her to stop overreacting, it was just a miscommunication - on her part. She should do a better job of communicating her sexual boundaries, the very same thing he very likely will tell her. She might not even realize that terms such as sexual assault or rape might be applicable here, since she's been conditioned to analyze and explain away men's bad behaviour. She just needs to communicate better.

This is because there are two parts to memories - their encoding and their recall. The encoding determines their availability, their recall determines their accessibility. The reason why trauma memory and childhood amnesia are different is in this distinction. Trauma memory is often encoded differently, bypassing to the limbic system where it is stored as intrinsic memory. It can’t be recalled because it was never encoded. Childhood amnesia, however, seems to indicate that the memories are encoded, but we lose access to them as we age. This is most likely due to the development of brain structures that fundamentally change our encoding and recall of memory as we get older.

Saying “yeah I decided to be a bitch bc I had had enough” is still using it in the second frame sense. You are still referring to yourself and other women as a slur.

The difference between that and the r slur is that there aren't yet any precedents of people even trying to make the r slur into an enjoyable identity.