Hugs if you want them.
This is a continuation from here. A thread to discuss personal issues and provide support for one another. No trolls, no arguments.
Posted on September 14, 2013, in kitties, off topic, open thread. Bookmark the permalink. 266 Comments.
Misogyny. I mock it.
I find a lot of it in what's called the "manosphere," a loose collection of Men's Rights, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and Pickup Artist (PUA) sites. That said, there are numerous posts here that don't have anything to do with MRAs, or PUAs or any of their ilk.
Contact me by clicking my head, above, or at futrelle [at] well.com
Enjoy!
David Futrelle
Click here to donate to Man Boobz through Pay Pal using any major credit card.
God, Tristan, that’s so shitty and I’m sorry I assumed you had someplace to retreat to.
@cloudiah: omigod that dog-cat-guinea pig-rabbit foursome is so awesomely cute I think I’m going to have a cuteurysm.
No, he isn’t someone I have to have that discussion with. I was in a certain forum where I’m a regular (it’s a cult recovery forum), I responded to something, & he responded back with that, & I’m going to ignore him. He isn’t worth responding to. I’m just angry about it. Oh, & in the same thread a gay guy (who’s posts I usually like) acted like a total MUA. I felt sick & angered. Despite the presence of other feminists there, I’m not going to post there anymore.
I meant MRA. So angry I’m getting my acronyms twisted around.
@Cloudiah
Thanks for the dog/rabbit/guinea pig/evil cat photo. & the other dog/evil cat photo as well.
(I’m being facetious regarding cats. I’m allergic to cats, & their personalities do not mesh well with mine.)
Ah, I’m glad ignoring unequal-wage denying immovable asshole is a viable option.
I want to thank everyone for listening to me. It really means a lot.
You’re welcome.
Tristan — as long as you like other critters I think the feline overlords will overlook your inability to pet them. I’m a fish person myself after all (not a fish-person, cuz I’m a carrot and a fish-carrot would be weird)
But of course, Tristan! Sorry I didn’t have any good advice, but here’s a dog with an iguana.
cloudiah,
http://www.jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=9118a9ef-0771-4777-9c1f-8232fe70a45c
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/05/171196714/the-jobs-with-the-biggest-and-smallest-pay-gaps-between-men-and-women
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1182859
I knew it - when dog cat rabbit hamster combination was mentioned, it was odds-on it’d be Sharky the pit bull and Max-Arthur the roomba-riding shark cat and some of their friends.
Tristan, adding my sympathy and wishing I had something practical to suggest. All I can say is, vent here, we’re listening!
Meanwhile, have a malamute pup.
Hooo. I hope it’s ok if I vent. I don’t think anyone else would really get this. I did my thesis this year on marginal groups and their effects on the mainstream (that is condensed a little!). This lead me to mra/pua spaces and as a result to this awesome website I’m commenting on right now.
To cut a long story mercifully short, I had a terribly bad break-up, partly to do with me bringing my work home with me. My family never recognised my five year relationship because she is Trans*. Nope, she was not my room-mate. Thanks Mom. I don’t know, this isn’t terribly coherent, I guess I just wanted to scream into the abyss!
Now go look at baby elephants, you deserve it.
@Tristan Gareth-Grey
All the interweb hugs that you want.
@theda bara
I didn’t understand all of what you wrote, but hugs for you too if you want them.
Theda, oh that’s the worst, when people pretend you’re just roommates. Sorry!
@SittieKitty, Thanks! There’s good stuff here too: http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/search?q=wage+gap
(And now I’ve added your links to Zotero so I can find them again.)
Theda Bara, you’ve broken up? That’s horrible, and then your family on top of that …
All the hugs plus a cuppa-of-your-choice from the Sir and me!
@Theda
That just pisses me off, what you mom did to you. It’s just wrong, wrong, wrong. :head thump on desk: & I’m deeply sorry about your break-up with your ex, because 5 years is a long time.
^^^^
***your***
My typing & grammar are bad when I’ve just woken up, when I’m tired, & when I’m angry & distraught.
@Kittehs’ Thanks to ye both, Himself, kitties and cuppas? Perfection!
@Tristan Gareth-Grey I’m sorry for what you are going through too. Life can be an awful Esmay at times. (esmay remains my favorite swear word) Thank you for your kind words.
I’m sorry your family is being assholes, Theda. That is really shitty.
@Tristan — You’re welcome! I don’t really have advice to give, I damn well better be able to listen!
If I may fanboy a bit — I JUST SAW MY BABY GIRL CRAWL 18 INCHES.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
@Falconer Eeeee indeed! The little things are the best things.
Next thing you know she’ll be crawling EVERYWHERE! Get ready to chase babies!
I need to pick up my dirty socks….
Yay for baby crawls!
You know it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be walking on Legos, don’t you?
It’ll probably be Duplos first.
But I have a lot of experience keeping my four-siders picked up.
Oh geez, probably time to explore diceless RPGs for a while….
OW ow ow … worse than kitty litter fragments …
Yay for milestones!
Falconer — I just set you up with one! (Well, the P&P version is d10, but that’s not relevant now is it?)
And my mother says it’s time to childproof the house and AWWWWW
This is probably really minor comparatively, but I need to vent it out…
M’lady and I live in the middle-of-nowhere-Virginia, and are at minimum an hour and a half drive from any of our friends. This doesn’t usually bother me, but lately I’ve been getting both very lonely and very restless. I just want to hang out with people, maybe have a cup of tea, talk about mutual geeky interests, stuff like that. But getting together with anyone is a major trip and not something that can be done just on a whim.
Normally, my various internet-assisted friendships fill the gap, but lately I’ve just… wanted the physical contact too.
I tend towards shyness with new people, which makes it hard to make new friends normally, but coupled with the whole middle-of-nowhere stuff, it’s nearly impossible. Plus, I work opposite hours from most people, so even the sort of social groups/activities I can find don’t mesh with my work schedule.
Like I said, just needed to vent.
@Dvärghundspossen
I used to have really bad depression (idk if that’s insane according to people? Either way, it’s not neurotypical and it messed with me). and as far as I could tell my pain levels were average.
(TW: suicide, self harm)
I recall trying to “practice” cutting myself to see if I could kill myself if I needed an out i.e. parents and/or cops try to take me to a mental institution or something. I didn’t ever really get far because it hurt too much.
(End tw:)
Anyway, my antidepressants are working pretty well now, and my pain is still funky, but not because of my insanity — because of my fibromyalgia, which is often correlated with depression but they don’t always go together.
@Binjabreel
Gad, I hate those pain scales! It’s mostly meaningless numbers. Like, my brother (who is able bodied and has been lucky enough to not have many serious injuries) probably would rate my “five” as his “ten”, but my mom might rate my “ten” as her “seven” because of her incredibly painful nerve condition.
@NonServiam
I get sad /because/ I’m switched off.
Me: Nothing matters.
Me: I HATE THAT NOTHING MATTERS WHY DO I EXIST IF NOTHING MATTERS
Me: *gratuitous crying*
@Tristan Gareth-Grey
I just… this resonated with me for some reason. A marginalized group can never escape isms, because it’s so dang ingrained in every part of society.
palmedfire - I can so relate to that. I’m not in the middle of nowhere in the small town sense, but in the outermost suburb (Melbourne is as big geographically as Greater London); it’s an eighty-minute trip to town by train and I don’t drive. This suburb’s dead as far as things I’m interested in go, all my friends live overseas, and I’m also not good with socialising with new people. You totally have my sympathy on this one!
Message to Theda Bara if you’re reading:
Did we ever swap emails?
News from Canada. Bad news, and don’t read the comments.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/16/mens-rights-edmonton-rape-posters_n_3938004.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
I got nothin’.
Shaun - Oh. Oh gods. Oh gods, MRAs, why do you consist in harassing individual women for speaking out and trying to solve problems that you refuse to correct?
@Fade
Better pain scales:
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/10/27/65/1027659f6bbb154bc4f214841222e59f.jpg
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/f3/ea/8f/f3ea8fb5dfde1a13252a5189e578d7e1.jpg
The full post can be found here:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html
@neuroticbeagle.
I like that one okay…
(i’ve seen it floating around some chronic pain/disability blogs). I admit, as a pain scale, maybe the doctors would take it more seriously, since you can see expressions, as opposed to an ambiguous “five”
The best one I’ve seen (the one I use if I feel the need to communicate pain to family members and saying “it fucking hurts okay” doesn’t work) says what your pain limits you to doing lilke “Cannot concnetrate for more than thirty minutes due to pain but can work with effort” or “physical activity and work severly limited” or other stuff. I haven’t been able to find it again, tho.
Pain scale I could use — “nope, sorry, it requires moving more than my arms and my back thinks spasms are fun”, “lol, yeah right, my knee(s) are screaming”, “[insert joint here] is cranky”, “please stand on my right/left, my neck has decided turning the other way hurts”, and the good old “amazingly, I don’t need advil currently” (lol, which is only half true since I usually don’t even bother since it just means adding “stomach acid is delicious” to my list of complaints)
Scoliosis, which means everything connected to my spine is wonky, as are the weight bearing bits…combine with typing at weird angles for years and I’ve pissed off more joints than I care to count.
As for my pain tolerance, idk if it’s that, or cuz I’m nuts, but fucking nothing tends to actually hurt. Truly cranky muscles, like, spasm level cranky, I’m down for the count. When I lost my big toe’s nail to a door…holy fuck was that painful for weeks…but not bad enough to bother using my student health care. Smashing myself with hammers? Walk calmly to a sink and turn on the cold water.
I do have the sense to refuse more stairs than needed when they’re making me wince, but yeah, my knees are fucking shot. To the point the narcissist ex had a chiropractor friend who questioned how I walked on them and refused to touch them (did wonders for that whole “so misaligned the attached muscles are spasming” thing though)
So yeah, if I say it hurts, we’re probably in the realm where most people would be whimpering. (This makes for interesting sexytimes since I’m a masochist who can take a lot ^.^ )
I see AVfM regulars GWW and Neil “the ballerina is the stamen of privilege” Westlake are there, pooping in the comments.
Not only are they harassing hte prof, but they filmed some women tearing down the posters, put up a video denoucing them as “fascists,” have posted their pictures on AVFM and are actively trying to doxx them.
I’m not sure what the appropriate thing to do is about this. This is obviously just going to be their standard procedure forever.
It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it? They just want to harass people, but if you try to do anything about it, you just get put on their harassment list.
I keep thinking it’s because deep down underneath their hatred, they know that we’re right. But they don’t want to admit it, so instead they want to shut us down so that they won’t ever have to come face to face with themselves.
One of my friends just posted on how someone street harassed her into giving a creepy guy her number even though she made it clear that she was a minor and that she had a boyfriend and that she wanted him to leave her alone. He then proceeded to calling and texting said number, even though she (and her boyfriend) made it clear that she didn’t want to be contacted by this creepy guy at all.
What the hell people?
I actually think just pointing out how fucked up it is, over and over, is useful. Anything that helps to un-normalize it. I know it seems Sisyphean, but it’s one of the many reasons I so appreciate your attention to this stuff. Other people tune out, but you keep covering it.
I feel like I should send you a cake or something.
cloudiah - We should make misandry cupcakes. Decorate them with hard chairs, female penguins, and scented candles. *nod*
And don’t forget the kitties!
We should send him cupcakes. David, we’re officially decorating misandry cupcakes with cat hair and sending them to your domicile. (That is, addressed to David Futrelle, c/o Chicago)
What? This isn’t welcome? Harumph. No sense of humor.
Okay, ‘night all — I”m going to bed earlier than usual to see if I can get into work early enough to catch a visit from the cat the katz fostered and my co-worker adopted! I’ll try to post pictures for katz to see how well she’s doing! She’s an actual cat now, not a kitten!
Aww, kitty pics! Get thee to bed, we want pics!
Pics of Shana? Yay!
@Marie
I’m down for bonding over how depression feels! Do you ever get that thing where, when you’re coming out of a rough patch, one feeling triggers several others that seem like they shouldn’t be connected? I swear, last time I was recovering, I had this thing where something would make me laugh and that triggered needing to pee.
@Fade
I know some other people who get that too. Depression does so many different things to different people. I think we’ve all been at the gratuitous crying stage though. For me, all the tears come on better days - which sometimes confuses the people around me!
@Tristan
I’m so sorry for everything you’re putting up with. I have no advice, only support and sympathy.
cloudiah - Have a good rest! And KITTEHS!
[Content note: death, suicidal thoughts]
I hope this doesn’t sound too alarming (although to some it probably will anyway), but my suicidal mindset is back. I feel so weak and overwhelmed these days that it’s easy for me to have suicidal thoughts. I’ve had suicidal thoughts before, but this is the worst they’ve ever been.
I’m thinking about calling some kind of suicide hotline, since I have a lot of hotline numbers, but I’m hesitant because I’m thinking that my problem isn’t severe enough for me to call a suicide hotline. Yet at the same time, I really need some kind of help. I can wait until I go to UCSC, whose student health services include free counseling, but I also don’t want to wait too long, either.
Right now I feel sick to my stomach. I’m honestly scared by all of these harmful thoughts. If anyone can offer some advice on when to call a suicide hotline, I’d greatly appreciate it - although if I have to I guess I can just try to call a hotline and hope that it won’t be a bad experience.
I want to add that I’m not feeling suicidal right now, and I think I’ll feel a bit better after I get some sleep - I’m just talking about the times I do feel suicidal, which are happening more and more frequently as time goes on.
Note: I am the last person you want to ask, seeing how I refuse to call them, but…
“I’m thinking that my problem isn’t severe enough for me to call a suicide hotline”
That is your jerkbrain talking, and it’s full of shit. Also, *hugs*
There’s a great flowchart for this.
1) Am I having suicidal ideation?
If so, then yes, 2) my problems are “severe enough” to call a hotline.
Go right ahead.
*hugs Ally* You can call a suicide hotline whenever you want. No one’s going to judge you if you call when you’re sitting in your dorm room at 10 PM with suicidal thoughts.
I’d also recommend going to Student Health Services when you get back onto campus, so that they can do some blood tests and rule out physiological conditions like hypothyroidism (which is what happened to me). And of course, take advantage of CAPS, they’re here to help you (plus if you need it, they can write a referral to allow you to get long term care, since I know in UCSD, the number of visits to CAPS is limited to I think 20 visits in two years).
[TW]: depression, self harm, suicidal thoughts
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Last summer I ended up sitting in my room all day, spending my time on the computer, taking a lot of naps, isolating myself and refusing to go anywhere, and just being utterly depressed. I pretty much figured that I was depressed by July, and was waiting for school to start so that I could make a CAPS appointment.
In the meanwhile I was wondering whether my life was worth it. In the meanwhile, I had serious problems, from financial aid to class registration failure to screwing up and having a hold on everything until I took a TB test. Parents yelled at me, but I didn’t really care. I hated myself, constantly punished myself by scratching my arms red (so that there would be no scars), and otherwise wishing I was dead because I thought I was the most worthless and the most useless person on Earth.
(Incidentally, I wrote a poem expressing this perfectly once, but okay, moving on.)
Got onto campus, when I had a panic attack first day of class, when I found out that I didn’t have insurance for some reason. It was related to class registration failure, because I ended up being waitlisted for all of my classes. This meant I had no financial aid, because I didn’t have the right amount of units to access it. That problem was soon rectified, but that was terrible. I thought that I would have been kicked out of my dorm room and everything.
I destroyed my phone by accident. The Pacific Ocean killed my phone battery, because it was in my pocket and I forgot it was there. My parents were not pleased.
In the meanwhile, I made an appointment for CAPS, but it wasn’t for another two weeks.
One night, my roommate was out for the evening (I don’t remember why, I think she was in the library or something) and I was sitting in my room feeling sucky. And that night, I thought “fuck it, why don’t I just do it?”, and so I ran out of my dorm room, intending to walk to the cliffs in the night and jump off.
It was a cold night. I started to leave the campus, but then I forced myself to walk around campus instead. After a walk around the campus, I went back to my dorm room, and called the suicide hotline on Skype (again, no phone). The person on the other end was nice.
Started seeing the psychiatrist over at UCSD. During this time, I began to research various methods that were used to commit suicide — Tylenol poisoning, aspirin poisoning, carbon monoxide poisoning, hanging…
One day, I was walking around campus, utterly depressed. The night before I was tempted to commit suicide again, this time with a rope that somehow made its way inside my bag when I moved in. My plan was to hang myself in the wardrobe with the door shut, and I didn’t care whether my roommate would find my body or not, I just wanted to die. I even thought of a day and everything; I remember thinking that I would die on Wednesday. Walking around campus, I could look at the railings on the upper floors of the lecture halls and imagine myself jumping off the railings and falling down to the floor with a splat. I was convinced that no one would ever give a shit, so why bother?
That day I told the psychiatrist what I was thinking. I don’t know why, but I was tempted to say something. Maybe it was because I wanted attention, I don’t know.
In either case, they found out that I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, had no meds, and sent me to do blood tests. It turned out to be pretty bad, with a really high TSH count.
Then they put me on levothyroxine to treat the hypothyroidism.
Eventually I started to feel better. I now have a therapist (which reminds me, I need to make an appointment for October) who is going to help me in the long term, and I haven’t thought suicidal thoughts for a long while.
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I think the only reason I said this now was because I want to let you know that I understand and that I care? I don’t know.
But there’s no shame in asking for help. It’s only the first step towards recovery.
*gives moar hugs because depression suicidal thoughts suck balls*
Alice and Ally - all the hugs.
Nthing the words, Ally: call a hotline! That’s what they’re there for.