#bad syscourse

This is gonna be a long one, so hold on to your britches, and saddle up for the long ride – after the cut of course.  PYP. “Pee your pants”. “Urinate in your trousers”. Whatever words you use, this is disgusting and ableist.  Not only is it sexually degrading, and generally humiliating and embarrassing. It’s ableist towards people who have problems with continence – and there’s a LOT of those. We don’t know how many, because it’s seriously underdiagnosed, because it’s embarrassing and so people don’t talk to their doctors about it. But what we do know is that a LOT of people deal with it. Like, more female-bodied persons than not, especially if they’ve been pregnant, and especially as they get older – so PYPers are apparently OK with being sexist. People who’ve been sexually assaulted – PYPers are OK with harassing trauma survivors.  People with mental and physical health issues – depression is a major one, though all the research on that goes basically: “There’s a strong correlation but which one causes which? IDFK.” Schizophrenia, and dissociative disorders, are two other major ones – anything that disconnects someone from their sense of their body can cause problems with control of their bodily functions. There’s also a strong correlation between incontinence and autism, though the reason for that isn’t quite known yet. Physical stuff includes, obviously, injury to the urinary system. Disorders that affect how the urinary system is formed and functions. Urinary tract stenosis – narrowing of the tract is a common, usually genetic, cause of continence issues. Connective tissue disorders, like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome – I know there are a few zebras in the system community! (shoutout @cambriancrew who wrote up the reply that I’m basing a lot of this on, making organizing all this much easier! This section was so much shorter before!) EDS makes you pretty stretchy, and not just your joints – it can affect your skin and internal organs too. And if your tissues just aren’t firm enough to hold things in, well, that’s a problem! (Apparently it can also cause stuff to prolapse, or literally fall out of your body. That is a google image search we do NOT want to ever repeat!) Spinal problems, particularly the closer you get to the tailbone, because a lot of the nerves that connect to your bladder run right through there. Injuries to it, obviously, and spinal stenosis, which is when the spine gets compressed and the space between and around the vertebrae shrinks. That puts a lot of pressure on the nerves there. Also, seizure disorders – accidents can happen when you have a seizure.  Diabetes is another big one – higher blood sugars can cause more urine production, which in turn can cause Problems™. Chronic pain disorders can also contribute, as can chronic constipation and both forms of IBS. (And chronic pain can cause chronic constipation because most pain meds stronger than Tylenol have constipation as a side effect.) Straining to go, or just going a lot, can also screw up other muscles in that area. So. It’s a really big freaking problem that a lot of people have to deal with. Got that?  Now. Here’s the offenders list, the people who need to know that this sort of harassment is Not Okay. (Not going to talk about any other problems by any party on these pages, JUST the PYP stuff. This post is hella long as it is. Practically a CVS receipt at this point.) Remember, people reading this, do NOT harass these folks! Be kind. If you can’t be kind, just say nothing. We’re trying to set an example for what this sort of discussion SHOULD be, with no harassment or insults or ableism or sexism or anything, just honest, polite, and respectful discourse. Last thing we want is to add more fuel to the fire, k?  @endos-pee-your-pants http://web.archive.org/web/20170729052943/https://endos-pee-your-pants.tumblr.com It may be a meme, but that doesn’t make it any less ableist. 2 PYPS, plus the URL.  @endosurinateinurtrousers http://web.archive.org/web/20170729042042/https://endosurinateinurtrousers.tumblr.com/ Oh look at that, three PYPs on that one page, not counting the URL.  @peeyourrpants Just the URL there, so not too bad, I guess? Here’s a web archive of their page anyway. http://web.archive.org/web/20170729041703/https://peeyourrpants.tumblr.com/ And one more who followed that trend:  @micturate-your-pants (No bonus points for using Micturate, this isn’t Scrabble.) http://web.archive.org/web/20170729053412/https://micturate-your-pants.tumblr.com/ Know what else this isn’t? @yourgrandmasboxofbranflakes http://web.archive.org/web/20170729053835/https://yourgrandmasboxofbranflakes.tumblr.com/post/162299257311/hey-endo-systems This system is young, and they seemed to have been having a bad day, and probably didn’t know any better, so let’s be especially kind to them, k? But no matter how old you are, it’s not okay to be ableist. We hope they, and all the others here, learn and don’t do that again.