I was going to write a long post, but I don’t have the energy. I’m bleeding so much I had to go home from church because I didn’t have the energy to stand up. Just a warning to those of you with uteri, apparently this is kind of normal for your thirties. Brace yourselves for the blood tsunami.
Can second that bleeding gets worse in the 30s.
400% of mental illness is thinking this is probably just how hard life is for everyone and you just can’t handle it because you’re a whiny baby who isn’t trying hard enough.
Native Americans weren’t allowed US citizenship until 1924.
Let that sink in. We lived here first…for thousands of years. And less than a hundred years ago we were finally given citizenship.
We also fought in WWI despite not being US citizens.
In Arizona, natives weren’t granted the right to vote until 1948. Think how that type of neglect ties into resource colonization as infrastructure was developed within years prior.
In addition: the indigenous peoples of Canada were not recognized as Human Beings until the year 1960.
Now let that shit sink in.
In the US it wasn’t until 1968 that the Indian Civil Rights Act was passed and allowed for the right to freedom of speech / assembly / press, a jury trial, the right to an attorney etc. It’s so fucking frustrating.
and it wasn’t until 1978 that we were legally allowed to practice our own religions. in a nation founded on religious freedoms, it was illegal to practice our own religions. in our own country. how fucked up is that?
Aaaand Native Americans weren’t entitled to their own languages (had no legal rights to teach them in their schools, use them in business) until the Native American Language Act of 1990.
Don’t go through life on your tippy toes. Don’t be the one just slip by without disturbing anything. Life is meant to be lived, action is meant to occur, and dreams are meant to be pursued. Don’t be scared to shake things up, for we only have one life to live.
Years ago, a friend went to a party, and something bothered him enough to rant to me about it later. And it bothered me that he was so incensed about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It seemed so petty for him to be upset, and even more so for me to be annoyed with him.
Recently, something reminded me of that scenario, and it made more sense. I’ll explain.
The party was a house party. One of those parties people throw if they’re renting a good-sized house in college. You know the type—loud music, Solo cups of beer, and somebody doing something drunk and stupid before the end of the night.
At some point, my friend had occasion to use the bathroom. When he went into the bathroom, he was disgusted to see that the hostess had left a basket of feminine hygiene products on the counter for guests to use if needed.
Later, when my friend told me about it, he wrinkled his nose and said, “Why would she do that? Guys don’t want to see that!”
When I suggested that she was just making them available in case a woman needed them, he insisted that they could be left in the cabinet or under the counter. Out of sight, anyway.
I wish I’d had, at the time, the ability to articulate what I can now.
To me, this situation is, while relatively benign, a perfect example of male privilege.
A man walks into the bathroom and sees a reminder that women have periods. And he’s disgusted. He wants that evidence hidden away because it offends his senses. How dare the hostess so blatantly present tampons and pads where a man might see them? There’s no reason for that!
A woman walks into the bathroom and sees that the hostess is being extra considerate. She gets it. She knows what it’s like to have a period start unexpectedly. The feeling of horror because she’s probably wearing something she doesn’t want ruined—it is a party after all. The sick embarrassment because someone might notice, especially if she’s wearing light-colored clothes, or worse, sat on the hostess’s white couch. The self-conscious, semi-nauseated feeling of trying to get through a social event after you’ve exhausted every avenue to get your hands on an emergency pad or tampon, and you’re just hoping to God that if you tie your jacket around your waist—you brought one, right?—keep your back to a wall, clench your buttcheeks, squeeze your thighs tightly together, and don’t…move…at…all—you might get through the evening, bow out gracefully, and find an all-night convenience store with a public restroom.
Or maybe she came to the party during her period, but didn’t bargain for her flow to suddenly get that heavy. Or she desperately needs a tampon, but her purse is in a room where a couple is not to be disturbed. Maybe she doesn’t know the hostess well enough to ask if she can use one. Or she doesn’t know anyone at the party well enough to ask. Or she figures she can make do with some wadded up toilet paper or something.
Whatever the case, she walks into the bathroom, and she hears the hostess saying “Hey, I know what it’s like, and just in case, I’ve got your back.” She sees someone saving her from what could be a minor annoyance or a major embarrassment.
The hostess gets it. The woman who just walked into the bathroom? She’s either going to see that the person throwing the party is super considerate, or she’s going to be whispering thanks to Jesus, Krishna, and whoever else is listening because that is a basket full of social saviors.
But to the guy who wrinkled his nose, it’s still offensive that those terrible little things are on the counter, reminding his delicate sensibilities that the playground part of a woman is occasionally unavailable due to a gross bodily function that he should never have to think about.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a tiny thing. It’s a tiny annoyance for the man, and a more significant but relatively tiny courtesy for the woman. After all these years, my friend has probably forgotten, but I never have. As a woman whose life is partially governed by a fickle uterus that can ruin an evening faster than a submerged iPhone, his story has stuck with me.
How can you be so offended by a small gesture that has zero effect on you, but could make such an enormous difference to the person who needs it?
It occurs to me now that this is a small but effective illustration of how men and women see the world. It’s part of the same thought process that measures a woman’s value through her bra size and her willingness to have sex with him—that everything about us is displayed or hidden based on how men perceive them or what he wants to get from us. Unattractive women should be as covered as possible, while attractive ones shouldn’t be hiding their assets from male eyes (or hands, or anything else he wishes to use).
A woman who isn’t smiling is an affront to him because it detracts from her prettiness, despite the fact that there might be a legitimate reason for her not to smile (or more to the point, that there isn’t a legitimate reason for her to smile). Her emotional state is irrelevant because she’s not being pretty. It’s the line of thinking where a man blames anything other than cheerful sexual consent on the woman being a bitch, being a lesbian, or—naturally—being on her period. Everything we do, from our facial expressions to our use of hygiene products, are filtered through the lens of “how it looks to a man.”
It’s the line of thinking where a small gesture from one woman to another, an assurance that someone else understands and will help her without question or judgment, a gesture which could save a woman’s evening from being ruined, is trumped by a man’s desire to see an untainted landscape of pretty, smiling women with visible cleavage and vaginas that never bleed.
And people wonder why we still need feminism.
My sexuality is women who terrify me and turn me on at the same time
