Here’s an unpopular opinion that shouldn’t be unpopular: Not wanting sex is a reasonable boundary to set for literally any reason. Be it your trauma, your mental health, your sexuality, or any other factor. Your partners should respect that and they should respect you. This shouldn’t be a debate.
Day: August 11, 2018
Trump’s Public-Charge Rule Would Threaten Disabled Immigrants’ Health and Safety – Center for American Progress
“The proposed changes would exclude from permanent residence eligibility any person with ‘any medical condition’ who is also enrolled in government-subsidized health insurance, creating a dangerous Catch-22 for the disability community.”
At first, I assumed that my partner might be allergic to shrimp/shellfish in general.
Nope, he evidently just got hold of some bad shrimp one too many times when he was in college. At the end of the night, one pizza place would let people have as much of any toppings they wanted that shouldn’t just go back in the fridge for the next day. So, one time he got a pizza loaded up with shrimp that should have just gone in the trash before that 😧
No lasting harm done, thank goodness. But, come back at least 25 years later and he can still hardly stand to look at shrimp.
Can’t say I blame him, but not quite what I would have thought at first.
(Similar with ketchup, it seems. Some diner type place left it sitting out long enough in the hot kitchen that he got some on his food which was pretty spectacularly fermented. Didn’t even get sick that time, but the experience was offputting enough that he hasn’t voluntarily eaten any ketchup since then.)
Tonight’s badly lit delight: the other half of that mixed seafood pasta thing. Which did turn out to be pretty good. I added an extra handful of frozen shrimp this time, because protein.
Along with one adaptation of the herby zucchini and tomatoes my mom used to make, because I got an urge. Good thing that did turn out about as good as I was hoping, because there’s most of a pan left to finish up on my own 😅
(ETA: Still not sure how I ended up living with a picky eater who can’t stand shellfish, any type of squash, or cooked sweet peppers. Among other things. But, it’s not so coincidental that these items show up a lot when I’m cooking for myself. Good opportunity to cover all those bases here 😊)
That Debbie Ryan fat girl show “Insatiable”, and the attitudes it relies on are super relevant to me because I was Debbie Ryan’s character for 4 months, and it just further proves how much society openly and unapologetically hates fat people. As if anyone could just not eat for 3 months and lose ~150 lbs!
Funny how when my intestines were trying to kill me, I went 4 fucking months without eating hardly anything and I was literally starving because my stomach couldn’t handle food. I lost 50 lbs in the first month before I actually found food I could (barely) stomach. If I had kept losing weight at that pace, I would have lost like 200 lbs from May to August.
And you know what? Even after starving I was still fat. You know what I lost? Muscle mass. I was athletic and active before I got sick, but then I got sick and lost energy, and even getting up from bed was exhausting. If I had kept losing weight at that pace, I would have fucking died by the time classes started up.
And I still remember my “doctor” congratulating me on losing all that weight in that short period of time. I was STARVING TO DEATH. I was so weak I almost needed a wheelchair just to get into the clinic from the car, I was fucking malnourished, and she was congratulating me.
THAT is how much society hates fat people. “Hey good job dying, you might actually become a person of value before your organs shut down and kill you.”
Your doctor and the people congratulating you while you were starving are despicable, OP. Despicable.
I had an ED an dropped 80 lbs in 4 months. I also developed a heart condition in the same time that I’ll never recover from. It wasn’t from being fat. It was from starving myself. I was congratulated and cookied and pet on the back and the only person worried was my mom. BTW super fat again now, but dammit, I’m ALIVE. I’m glad what happened to you didn’t actually kill you, OP. And fuck everyone who was ignoring the fact that you could have actually been dying.
Everyone else—LET’S NOT ENCOURAGE TEENAGERS TO STARVE THEMSELVES OVER SUMMER BREAK, MKAY? Fuck this “Insatiable” show five ways. I hope it gets pulled.
-ATL
I would like to add some context to this post.
This illness all started immediately after finals week in May of 2016. It began with nausea and other gastrointestinal problems. I was so sick and weak that I could barely get out of bed and walk the ten feet to the bathroom. I ate nothing for several days because everything, even the most bland food we could find, made me sick.
I went to a clinic. The doctor took one look at me, a fat person, and said I was obviously diabetic. She had me do a blood test and prescribed me an antacid and an anti-nausea med. Nothing helped and I spent the next week in hell. When I went back to the clinic to review the test results, she made me do ANOTHER blood test because my first one came back negative for diabetes and she just couldn’t believe it so she did another quick one. Surprise, it was still negative. She said she didn’t know what my problem was but said I needed to immediately cut out all dairy, a major source of nutrition for me for much of my life, and probably go on a paleo diet. She was so surprised that a fat person didn’t have diabetes that she wouldn’t even try to help me further.
Shockingly (sarcasm), my problems persisted. The next week I traveled from Florida to Minnesota for the summer months. I was still incredibly miserable and not eating. I began to think it was all due to my extremely irregular menstruales cycle, and once again went to a clinic. I asked the doctor if I could have PCOS and she thought it was likely. She prescribed me Yaz. She mentioned that some people who took Yaz developed blood clots but she didn’t think that would be a problem for me. She ordered more blood tests, including one a few for thyroid function, as thyroid problems run in my family.
Two days later my legs began to hurt. Two days after that they began to throb. One day after that I couldn’t walk due to pain. I had to borrow my grandmother’s walker just to be able to make it from the couch to the bathroom and the car to the clinic. It was so severe that I would lie awake at night crying. I went in to see a different doctor, who told me my pain was due to my being overweight and that I should just go home and take Tylenol. I’ve been fat my entire life, but I’ve always been able to walk. My mom begged him to at least run a blood test to check for blood clots. She pointed out that my legs were red, hot, and swollen, to which the doctor replied that it was “subtle at best”. He grudgingly agreed to order a blood test to check for blood clots, but guaranteed it would come back negative.
Two hours later his nurse called me, the doctor audibly telling her what to say, to tell me to immediately go to the emergency room. The blood test indicated major clotting and I needed to begin blood-thinning medication as soon as possible. For the next ten days I gave myself lovanox shots in the stomach.
The day after I went to the ER, I had an ultrasound that confirmed I had what I was later told were several small “superficial” blood clots in my left leg only. The reason was because I inherited the Factor V Leiden clotting gene from both my parents, making me vastly more likely than other people to develop blood clots. I will have to take blood thinners the rest of my life.
I was still experiencing stomach problems and barely eating. When my thyroid test results came back, they showed they were beginning to fall out of line. My doctor referred me to an endocrinologist in a larger city a half hour away, for whom I had to wait a month to see. I was not prescribed any thyroid medication. All that month I continued to suffer stomach problems and barely eat. I was able to eat a little more than the previous month, as I narrowed down which foods I absolutely could not tolerate and which were usually tolerable. I couldn’t eat dairy, citrus, tomato products, any oil, anything with fat, most fruits and vegetables, salty foods, anything remotely spicy, anything with vinegar, anything acidic, and most meats. I lived off minute rice, Tostitos, fat-free shortbread, an occasional turkey burger patty, small amounts of boiled chicken, and water.
The endocrinologist ordered a new round of blood tests and a nuclear scan of my thyroid. Both revealed that my thyroid was getting progressively worse. I was diagnosed with thyroiditis and prescribed nothing, being told it would even out eventually.
Two or so weeks later I began experiencing severe stomach and back pain that appeared rapidly over the course of a few days. I couldn’t sit due to the pain. My mom brought me to the emergency room and I was given fentanyl, which didn’t even work, and then morphine. Further testing revealed I had kidney stones but had appeared to pass them while in the ER. The stones were never captured so their composition and type remain unknown.
Hearing of my latest trip to the ER, my original doctor (who prescribed me the Yaz that triggered my blood clots) told me to come back in for another appointment. She told me nothing new and advised me to “be glad that we caught this when we did and not when you start having children”. I broke down and left the room. It was at this meeting where she congratulated me on starving.
I was able to get into a more prestigious clinic, where I was assigned a team of physicians who reviewed my problems. They ran dozens of new tests over the next few days ranging from blood tests to an upper endoscopy (which I endured completely unsedated because I’m immune to fentanyl, their sedative). They discovered that
1) my thyroid had almost completely ceased functioning
2) the blood clots in my legs were not several small, superficial clots, but massive ones that would have entered my major veins within a day or two and likely caused a stroke or pulmonary embolism had I not begun blood-thinners when I did.
3) my kidney stones were quite possibly due to the sudden cutting out of dairy and calcium, resulting in any body trying to produce its own calcium and instead creating calcium-based kidney stones.
4) my weight is largely due to PCOS and thyroid problems, and regular diet and exercise will never be enough for me to lose the amount of weight I need.
5) my stomach problems were caused by a sudden shock to my system that completely screwed up the function of my digestive tract, causing my liver to produce acid that created extreme irritation.
I was eventually prescribed thyroid medication, a different type of birth control to treat my PCOS, and stomach medication. My treatment at this clinic is ongoing but has slowed down considerably now that I have some form of a functioning treatment plan. Of course, my family is now even more broke and in-debt than before.
I’m telling you all of this because it corroborates my original point: society fatally hates fatness. The doctor in Florida refused to try and treat me, a fat person without a disease that fat people are commonly assumed to have, because she simply didn’t know or care what else could have been causing a fat person’s health problems. She recommended a diet that other physicians have since told me was totally inappropriate for my needs, which may have caused the development of kidney stones. The first doctor I saw in Minnesota congratulated me on losing drastic amounts of weight due to literally starvation and malnutrition. The second doctor I saw in Minnesota dismissed my sudden and debilitating leg pain as a side effect of being fat, and if I had followed his original advice, I could easily have had a stroke or pulmonary embolism. My problems were not caused by fatphobia, but it greatly exacerbated them and almost proved fatal.
Society’s obsession with weight and disdain for fat people, such as is displayed in “Insatiable” are a symptom and a further aggravator of a complete disregard for the health of those whose bodies are deemed unattractive and worthless. And that is why the show is absolute flaming garbage.
I feel all of this so much. When I was in my early years of undergrad, I spent a lot of time not being able to eat, throwing up food (and water) that I was able to ingest, and avoiding food because I couldn’t stand the discomfort of not digesting anything. When I was finally taken in (after a week of this), I was diagnosed with “nervous stomach” (which was a result of anxiety) by my doctor. He further completed the diagnosis with saying that I’d “done well” in losing 15lb (around 6kg)
I actually had an H. pylori infection, which was causing ulcers. Because it went untreated for too long, I now get to deal with peptic ulcers.
I was refused treatment for a spinal injury for years because the pain was ‘just because of your weight’ despite MRI scans showing actual real damage after the accident. After different doctors told me to ‘just lose weight’ I began to believe them and started to starve myself (the back pain is still so bad I can’t do most exercise). The doctors practically applauded me even when my organs were starting to shut down, but they still wouldn’t do anything about the back pain until my BMI reached an ‘acceptable amount’.
In the end my mother took me to the doctors and demanded emergency help because I was fainting constantly, was ice cold and had a pulse rate of under 50bpm. 3 months later I was finally diagnosed as having several fractured vertebrae and put on a pain management plan and there’s a big warning on my medical record that says telling me to lose weight is bloody dangerous.
Also when I had anorexia at age 16 I was never in the ‘underweight’ BMI category even when my bones were sticking out of my skin. Yes ‘big boned’ IS a real thing!
PSA: The wage gap isn’t real
So fun fact! Depending on your sources, the wage gap varies, but it really isn’t the fundamental issue when we are looking at pay inequality in the US.
There are many other factors that come into play when talking about PAY GAPS: Women have less success in gaining promotions than their male counter parts (and other Glass Ceiling effects), women are dissuaded from higher paying fields (such as STEM fields) through institutional hostility, women are expected to take unpaid maternity leave for child care when men are not (regardless of whether or not they will), women are less successful at salary negotiations and are sometimes even penalized by employers for trying at MUCH higher rates than men, work that is traditionally female dominated being undervalued on a cultural level (women might be cooks, but not chefs; nurses, not doctors; etc.), when women begin to work in traditionally male fields in higher numbers the pay for those fields drop, and men in traditionally female fields tend to be promoted more quickly and get paid more, and a myriad of others.
We know, for example Women need an additional degree in order to make as much as men with a lower degree over the course of a lifetime.A woman would need a doctoral degree, for instance, to earn the same as a man with a bachelor’s degree, and a man with a high school education would earn approximately the same amount as a woman with a bachelor’s degree.
The fact is that women, on average, DO make less than men, and the issue isn’t always direct illegal wage imbalance. The issues are often far more wide reaching and speak to a cultural misogyny that has to be confronted beyond just legislation.
I mentioned maternity leave earlier. (Did you know that the US is one of the only “industrialized countries” in the world to NOT have guaranteed paid parental leave? yeah. That’s fucked up.) The entire notion that women, more so than men, are expected to take off time from work for family is one of those cultural aspects of inequality that I mentioned.
And all this discussion fails to take into account things like disability, trans people, sexuality, and race, which makes all of these issues even more extreme and complicated.
This is a really good article to read for more information:
This is my shit!
fandomsandfeminism talked about several of the major contributors to the wage gap, including:
1. Discrimination in promotions
Women are typically overqualified compared to their male counterparts, are promoted less frequently, and are passed over for promotions when they have the same experiences and qualifications as men. For example, white male professors who do the least service and mentoring get promoted the fastest. Female managers are also held to stricter standards for promotion than men. Women with more than a high school education do not leave jobs more frequently than men, and female managers even have slightly lower turnover than male managers.
2. Dissuasion from higher paying fields
Millennial men are less open to accepting women engineers than older men are. Only 41% of millennial men are comfortable with women engineers, compared to 65% of men 65 or older. Women get burned out working in the tech industry because they are underpaid, undervalued, and underappreciated in their Millennial male-dominated fields.
3. Structural disadvantage
Paid family leave is not mandated in the US, but women are more likely to return to work after having a baby when they have paid family leave, and men who take paternity leave spend more time on child care later.
Investing in a universal, free childcare system, in which workers are paid a decent wage, would create 1.65 million jobs and reduce the gender pay gap. Most of the investment would be recouped through increased tax revenues and lower welfare spending. In Canada, women’s participation in the workforce increased substantially above trend levels when marginal taxes and the net costs of child care were reduced.
4. Penalties for negotiating
Both men and women are more likely to rate women as “less nice” and are less interested in working with them if they ask for more money. Women are aware of how they’ll be viewed if they ask for more money, and therefore don’t ask. Women ask for much more money if they’re negotiating for someone else because they don’t have to fear appearing selfish and greedy. Employers outright lie to women more often during negotiations. Furthermore, a recent study in Australia found women ask for pay raises at the same rate as men but receive them less. 19% of women vs. 33% of men got raises when they asked.
5. The devaluing of work associated with women
People view men’s and women’s work differently. There is a tipping point at which men flee an occupation, and in the absence of perfect information, workers take the percentage of female employees as a proxy for an occupation’s prestige. When teaching in the US became female-dominated, the pay decreased. When programming in the US became male-dominated, the pay increased. Doctors save lives and go to school for many years no matter where you are in the world. But in Russia, they are paid the same wages as secretaries, making about 12,000 US dollars a year. A study of Census data from 1950 to 2000 found that when women enter an occupation in large numbers, that job begins to pay less, even after controlling for a range of factors like skill, race, geography, and occupational crowding.
Men’s low-wage jobs demand far less in terms of skill, education, and certifications than women’s low-wage jobs, yet the male-dominated ones usually have higher hourly pay. Janitors, who are mostly men, make 22 percent more money than maids and housecleaners, who are mostly women, despite the jobs requiring identical skills.
6. Special treatment for men in female-dominated fields
Even in even in job fields where women dominate, men are paid more for the same roles. Men in nursing outearn women by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals in the US after controlling for a large number of variables. Men in female-dominated fields aren’t marginalized at all; they get special treatment, are fast-tracked to the top, and receive preferential hiring (often by other men who were also fast-tracked to the top).
7. Disabled people, trans people, gay people, and people of color also see wage gaps with their more privileged counterparts
There are many other important reasons for the wage gap, including:
8. Pay secrecy
You can’t demand higher pay if you don’t know you’re being underpaid. In the 11 US states where pay secrecy is unlawful, the gender wage gap is smaller. In government jobs, where pay transparency is required, the gender pay gap has shrunk to just 11-13 percent. Unionized workers, who also require pay transparency, have a wage gap of 9 percent.
9. Women’s unpaid labor
Women tend to put in fewer hours of paid work than men, but when unpaid work is added to the equation, women all over the world tend to work slightly more hours per day, per week, and per year than men. Women in the US proportionately still perform much more housework and childcare, such as managing children’s schedules and activities, taking care of sick children, and doing chores, than men. Men still perform only half the housework and childcare that women do. This doesn’t look like it will change soon: Fewer than half of Millennial women believed they’ll handle most of the child care, but two-thirds of their male peers believe their wives will do so. When the time women spend on unpaid work shrinks to three hours a day from five hours, their labor force participation increases 20 percent.
10. Long hours != greater contribution to company
The worth of work should be evaluated by productivity rather than time. Long hours backfire for people and companies. Managers can’t tell the difference between those who worked an 80-hour week and those who pretend to. Pharmacists have one of the smallest wage gaps because the pay is measured by productivity rather than time.
Even in workplaces that offer flexibility, however, women have reported penalties for taking advantage of flexible work options, such as loss of responsibility or longer hours than promised. Flexible work hours will work only if that attitude changes.
The point that “men earn more because they put in more hours at the company” is untrue anyway. The wage gap between women and men remains steady whether we compare employees working 40 hours a week, 41-44 hours a week, 45-49 hours a week, or 50+ hours a week.
11. Motherhood penalty
Women earn 10% less for each child they have, while men earn 6% more for each child they have. Mothers face a lot of stereotypes at work: they get competency ratings 10% lower than other women, and they’re also called back half as often as fathers for jobs. To the contrary, studies have found that moms are more productive workers. The thought-leadership industrial complex has even called having kids a “productivity hack.”
12. Implicit bias
Even after controlling for all variables known to affect earnings, there is still a wage gap of about 6.6% in the US. Accounting for these variables explains only about 60% of the wage gap in the US. In Australia, these factors only account for about 40% of the gap.
There are almost innumerable examples demonstrating implicit gender bias. Resumes with women’s names are given 12% lower starting salaries than the exact same resumes with men’s names. Employers are more likely to hire a male job applicant than a female job applicant with an identical record. Employers reported that the male job applicant had done adequate teaching, research, and service experience compared to the female job applicant with an identical record. If there is only one woman in a pool of candidates, her chances of being hired are statistically zero. Mentoring does not provide the same career benefits to women as men and that women are “championed” less often by senior management for promotions and raises.
Luckily, people can overcome their unconscious biases. Employers for university STEM faculty were 6.3 times more likely to make an offer to a woman candidate when the employers had been presented with an intervention, including discussion of implicit bias. Sadly, women who bring up concerns about diversity in the workplace receive worse evaluations from their bosses than men who bring up the same concerns.
13. Just blatant sexism
Married men with stay-at-home wives are significantly more likely to view women in their workplace unfavorably, are much less likely to take jobs at companies with female board members, and pass over female co-workers for promotions.
Three-quarters of Millennial women anticipate that their careers will be at least as important as their partners, while half the men in their generation expect that their own careers will take priority.
Women are not as respected as men in leadership roles, especially by the men over whom they have a leadership role. Women in leadership positions receive less favorable evaluations because they are perceived to be violating gender norms. Male students systematically overestimate the knowledge of the men in their classes in comparison with the women despite clear evidence of women’s superior class performance.
Millennial men are less open to accepting women leaders than older men are. Only 41% of millennial men are comfortable with women engineers, compared to 65% of men 65 or older. Likewise, only 43% of millennial men are comfortable with women being U.S. senators, compared to 64% of Americans overall. The numbers were 39% versus 61% for women being CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and 35% versus 57% for president of the United States.
There are many proven ways to reduce the gender wage gap, including:
- Mandate paid family leave.
- Invest in universal, free childcare, or at least invest in reducing marginal taxes and the net cost of childcare.
- Confront implicit bias through training and intervention.
- Raise the minimum wage.
- Mandate pay transparency.
- Prohibit employers from inquiring into prospective employees’ wage histories.
- Create more flexibility for jobs by valuing productivity over contact hours.
- Remind workers of their rights.
- Perform your fair share of unpaid labor.
- Change cultural norms so it is more acceptable for moms to work and dads to take care of children.
- Support women’s ideas in your workplace. When a female colleague’s point is ignored, pile on and emphasize the point, making sure you acknowledge that it was her idea. When a qualified female colleague is consistently passed over for a promotion, ask your boss to promote her.
But we can’t get any of these done because these idiots are out here plugging their ears and saying “the wage gap isn’t real.”. If you need more convincing of why you should help the gender pay gap, please read this post.
If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.
Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.
I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.
I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”
I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid – see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours – you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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