As a medical professional and a medically complicated human this is very important to me
That’s not wrong.
The tone of both comments is what causes poor doctor-patient relationships. Don’t underestimate how much education a doctor has. This doesn’t simply stop with medical school. It continues during residency and fellowship. For good doctors, this continues during practice. Good doctors stay up to date with medical guidelines and the changes that occur over time. Good doctors will research any condition their patient has with which they’re unfamiliar. Good doctors will listen to their patients and gently correct errors and misconceptions. Unfortunately, not all doctors are good doctors.
On the other hand, I’ve learned tons from my patients. Things that no book will ever teach me. As a patient, you deserve to be treated respectfully. Most doctors do their best to listen to their patients. No one puts in the time and effort required to be a physician with the goal of being a shit doctor. Of course, it happens. Doctors are humans and are just as flawed as everyone else. That’s the exception rather than the rule. Please respect the fact that we have a better filter for information than you do, regardless of how long you’ve had an illness. When patients request a specific test that I know is not indicated, I ask WHY. When a patient thinks they have an illness that that subjective and objective data do not support, I ask WHY. What are they concerned about? What is their fear? This is the question that needs to be addressed. That information generally allows me to either come up with a different, more appropriate test or list the reasons why their fear isn’t likely to be a reality. It’s all a two-way street that requires respect from all parties involved. Don’t go to a doctor who doesn’t respect you. Don’t go to a doctor who makes you uncomfortable. Don’t go to a doctor who is overly dismissive of your concerns. These are all red flags that you’re dealing with an asshole who just happens to be a doctor.
I mean, if you’ve got a choice in what doctor you go to, that’s great. I guess I’ve consistently had shit doctors because it wasn’t until… oh, 2010 or so that I had one that would listen to a goddamn word out of my mouth. And then that one retired.
You know why people have an antagonistic reaction to doctors? Because many of them have twenty or thirty years of their questions, concerns, and sometimes even symptoms being outright ignored.
Me at 14: So my periods are leaving me in so much pain I’m throwing up all day.
Doctor: They’ll get better when you have kids.
Me at 16: So I’m getting these crippling headaches.
Doctor: Maybe you should try taking some Tylenol. *writes down the symptoms I gave him COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN I SAID THEY WERE* (found that out years later)
Same year, different doctor: So take these I guess. *gives me pain meds that were so strong they affected my pulse, no follow-up*
*insert long gap of just not going to the doctor*
Me at 32: So along with these other symptoms that add up to GERD, if I go too long without eating it makes me sick.
Gastro Doc: Yeah it’s GERD. I want to check for Barret’s esophagus. (this bit I agreed with) Now here’s the advice I give every single GERD patient no matter what, including the bit about not eating for several hours before bed.
Me: Uhhh, if I go too long without eating it makes me really sick.
Gastro doc: Don’t eat before bed.
And then I look for a camera to stare into like the Office.
If someone is antagonistic towards doctors, if someone is aggressive with their own care, if someone outright tells the doctor to their face that they’re wrong… it’s because of a long history of THIS SHIT. It isn’t a rare doctor that ignores you, it’s a rare doctor that doesn’t. They may not go into the medical field to be bad doctors, but they might not have gone into it to do more than get their years in so they can retire, or so Mom and Dad can brag about the doctor in the family, or for the power trip.
So don’t try to tell me that my doctor has my best interests in mind, because historically that’s been rare. That doctor is going to have to prove it, and I am going to be suspicious at first. And this is just me! I’ve got a few weird body things, but overall I’m pretty functional. The periods got better when I was no longer underweight (which I had to figure out for myself), I worked out a routine for my headaches (which my one Really Good doc gave me an idea for the source of the problem, the rest I figured out on my own), my stomach is largely under control (which I had to figure out for myself), and the only thing that’s really acting up right now are my feet (which I am figuring out for myself). The only thing I really go to the doctor for are antibiotics (when I can’t argue any longer that I don’t need them) and my psych meds (which I ALSO FIGURED OUT FOR MYSELF).
So no, I don’t have a lot of patience with doctors pulling the “Well I went to medical school” card. If that makes you so much better than me, why did I have to figure shit out without you?
Our society has a number of loveable buffoons who fool around and are excused from acting like prats because they’re funny. They might be rubbish at most things but as long as their banter is flowing, we put up with it.
These types are almost exclusively men. You don’t get hilarious, idiotic women being lorded as icons of our culture. Diane Abbott is dismissed as a cretin while Boris Johnson is a joker.
Which begs the question: is conscious male incompetence a form of misogyny?
If you labour the point that you can’t cook, then chances are that you won’t be made to cook. If you make a hash out of doing the laundry or hoovering, you’re forcing someone else to take over.
Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands.
I was recently listening Semi Circles, a BBC radio comedy starring Paula Wilcox, first broadcast in 1989.
It’s about a housewife who recently wakes up to the fact that she’s spent the past eight years being a slave to her kids and nice-but-emotionally-dim husband.
Part of this awakening is the realisation that she does all the housework because her husband is crap at it. Left alone, he makes inedible food. He lets the kids stay up well beyond their bedtime. He leaves the house a tip.
He doesn’t even try to do a good job because he fears that if he’s too good at these jobs, his wife will make him do more of them.
Put these garbage men in the garbage where they belong.
I went and checked the original source and it’s worse. While most of the comments get the problem (the lying, not the eggs) some of them just cannot see that this shit is actually a big honking warning sign for bigger shit. A loving person is not capable of doing this.
He literally puts his mere convenience over her actual well being. This guy thought up and executed a plan where she has to do *all* the work (because of course it wasn’t just this one specific thing) while he watches her tire herself out from the sidelines. Imagine this going on for *years*. …now imagine this with kids. You think this guy cares if she gets off during sex? Would he take care of her if she were to get sick? Would he ever lift a finger if he could get away not doing it?
She can’t trust a word he says and he doesn’t give a shit about her needs. It’s not about the *eggs*.
Sorry to reblog from you, stranger, but this commentary is all very good. I especially appreciate the emphasized statement that “a loving person is not capable of doing this.” That line is going to rattle around my brain for ages — the words feel good in my mouth. How you’ve said it is just so right.
I want to add some of OP’s further comments on the thread she made:
“To be fair, I have pretty high standards for cleanliness and his idea of clean vastly differs from mine and honestly, that’s okay! But now I’m starting to seriously wonder if he sabotaged cleaning, too, just to get me to do it. Dishes, for instance. He will wash half and leave a nasty sink full of the rest, claiming he’ll do them later. This drives me nuts, so I just do them. Often he will leave crusted on shit on then, too, so okay, I’ll just do them, right? Now because of the egg business, I’m seeing it as malicious.”
→ The husband is lazy. He seemingly commits to housework, only to bail partway through, and doesn’t even put in the effort required to do the job right in the first place.
“Yes, he sucks at dishes and laundry to the point he is banned from doing them. He will leave clothes in the washer overnight and doesnt separate anything to the point I’ve had many white clothes ruined. My favorite white brassiere is now pink due to his bullshit.”
→ The husband is inconsiderate of his wife’s property, even that which is well-loved. Could his repeated failure to learn how to do this task have been a ruse? Did he anticipate his banishment from laundry duty? OP now has to genuinely wonder about this.
“I’m starting to think he does things wrong on purpose now just to get me to do it. Another example! My car. For a while my driver side door wouldn’t open from the outside, so I had to crawl through the passenger side. He ordered a handle and kept putting it off for WEEKS. Finally, he says his hands are too big to do it, so I had to do it.”
→ The husband makes excuses for himself that cast him as an unwitting victim to fate, with the implication that he would totally do [action], if only he could. He distances himself from any possibility of blame.
Obviously, anonymous forum posts are taken with a grain of salt — we, as readers, will never know for sure if OP is real. That’s not a concern for me, though. Like I don’t care. The fact is that if one assumes this is all true, it is very obvious that the poster’s husband is a perfect example of maliciously feigned incompetence. He’s manipulative and lazy to the point of cruelty, expecting his wife to work while he fails to lift a single functioning finger. The statement that “he likes her eggs better” isn’t cute like some have stated in the replies to this post; it’s just another excuse that walls him off from criticism, a bullshit reason he pulled out of his ass to make her feel guilty and unreasonable for being upset.
The absurdity of the situation when taken at face value — lying about eggs, getting mad about making eggs, even just the reality of deviled eggs (an inherently silly prep style) being someone’s favorite food — extends an air of the absurd to the wife’s concerns, and to others’ warnings. I have noticed several comments to the tune of, “These people are all mad about eggs? What a joke! How oversensitive. That’s just how men are; this is just what marriage looks like.”
It’s fucked up, is what it is.
…deviled egg lady, if you’re truly out there somewhere, I hope you told your husband to make his own goddamn eggs from now on. It’s literally the least he can do.
@manthedog
“It’s literally the least he can do.”
we all just witnessed a fucking murder and it was beautiful.
By popular request, and explanation of the term “Social Justice Calvinism”
Social Justice Calvinism, like regular Calvinism, revolves around the idea that human society is so steeped in sin that, not only is it inherently irredeemable, but almost everyone involved is essentially damned (to hell, in the case of real Calvinism, to … I dunno being bad, I guess, in the case of Social Justice Calvinism).
Similarly to real Calvinism, Social Justice Calvinism allows for a small, elect group of people who are miraculously able to rise above the morass of evil that is human society (in real Calvinism this is due to G-d’s will, in Social Justice Calvinism, this comes as a result of their overwhelming moral superiority).
As in real Calvinism, nobody knows who the elect of Social Justice Calvinism are, but they are identified by certain signs (in the case of real Calvinism these signs include prosperity, in Social Justice Calvinism, these signs are things like using trigger warnings or sharing photo sets of queer people of color).
Like real Calvinists, Social Justice Calvinists tend to shun and loudly denounce much of the society that they see as inherently corrupt so as to demonstrate (as much to themselves as to everyone else) that they are likely to be members of the elect. However, because membership in the elect is impossible to determine, a Social Justice Calvinists are often wracked by guilt and anxiety as to whether or not they are actually members of the elect.
Finally, and most importantly, much of Social Justice Calvinism’s appeal comes from its goal of challenging a corrupt and oppressive power structure, and its hints of moral clarity. Social Justice Calvinism so especially frustrating because the things that are being fought for are so important (see I’m one of the elect). As with salvation and prosperity in real Calvinism, many of the signs of goals and signs of the Social Justice Calvinist elect are actually quite desirable, but unfortunately they come at the price of believing that nearly everyone, up to and including you, is damned.
… wow, everything I’ve ever thought about The Discourse in a neat post. OP you’re a blessing.
we could probably have a long debate about the fact that social justice calvinists come from the US and US society was basically born out of calvinism…
This is reminding me a whole lot of a certain kind of evangelical atheism I’ve run into here and there.
I feel like maybe there’s some kind of meta-morality that people internalize when they’re young, that’s less about what constitutes right and wrong and more about how one perceives the whole idea of rightness and wrongness.
Do you consider it your responsibility to tell others about what’s right and wrong, and correct them if they are in error? Is it permissible to tolerate other people’s wrong behavior and/or wrong belief to any degree at all? Is there only one kind of right behavior and/or right belief, or is some variation okay? Are people generally good/right or generally bad/wrong, and does that include you too? Can a person do wrong and also do right, and if so, do either of those somehow negate the other? And so on.
I don’t know if meta-morality is harder to change than its subject matter or if people are just less likely to try, but it certainly seems to happen a lot that people break away entirely from the moral/religious code that they were raised with and then apply exactly the same meta-moral framework to whatever new code they embrace in its place.
I grew up hearing the phrase “you never stick with anything, what’s the point” a lot. I’ve always been attracted towards seemingly disconnected interests, and gone through phases of being really into something. But eventually my interest would fade and I would move onto something else.
Or at least that’s always how it’s been phrased for me, by others. Now I realize that my interest for the old thing didn’t fade so much as my interest for something new outshined it, and that’s vastly different.
I was always made to feel bad about it, with every abandoned endeavour I was told I needed to stop starting things if I wasn’t going to stick with them. I was told I was wasting time and money picking up these random interests and abandoning them after a year.
So eventually, I stopped picking things up. I told myself “what’s the point, I’m going to give up in a year anyway”. Even worse, I started dismissing every new interest, because I had no way of knowing if my interest was “real” enough or just another passing phase. I stopped trying new things, I stopped looking up stuff that piqued my curiosity, and having chronic depression made it really easy to leave everything on the dirty floor of neglected ideas. The more they piled up, the more depressing it was. All these things that could be nice, but I just can’t take care of them.
I realize now how bullshit that kind of thinking is. So what if I stopped doing karate after a year? That’s one more year of karate than most people I know. And in that year I learned discipline, I learned to listen to a teacher, something I had never done before in all my years of private education. I learned the true meaning of respect, that it’s something you do out of faith at first and maintain as it’s reciprocated, not something you do blindly and regardless of how you’re treated.
It gave me the foundation for the determination and grounding I needed to practice yoga. Another year. Not enough to be good at it maybe, but again a year more than most people I know and a year that is not lost, but gained. I learned balance, I learned to listen to my body, I learned how to let go of emotional tightness through physical stretching.
And then iaido, only a few weeks because I couldn’t afford to keep going. The year of yoga I had done a couple years previous had given me a better starting point than the other newcomers to the class. I already had balance, I had strength in my legs and I had better posture. In those months I learned the importance of precision, the true definition of efficacy, the zen state that is incessant repetition.
Did I practice long enough to get good at iaido, and yoga, and karate? No. Of course not. It takes years to become proficient and decades to master any of those things, but I learned other skills and those skills were an invaluable part of my growth both spiritually and emotionally. Likewise for my forays into painting, sewing, graphic design, film. I’m a photography student now heading into my second year of school, and every single second of practice I have in those other disciplines has given me more experience in those areas and made learning easier.
Skills carry over. They intersect and connect in ways that are sometimes unexpected. Nothing is ever lost, experience is never a waste of time or worthless or stupid. Allow your focus to wander, reflect on what you learn, and consider how you can keep using it in other aspects of your life. Stop telling people their interests aren’t worth their time.
‘A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one’
^^^^The real jack of all trades quote if anyone’s i interested.
For a week I was super into making LED arrays.
For a few months I was really into costume makeup.
For a year I was into sewing clothes
For a few months I was into sculpting and molding and casting
I’ve always had a sustained interest in animals, but the hyperfocus on birds in particular made me very familiar with feather formations.
Couple months I loved the idea of engineering moving sculptures.
Add all that together, and hot diggity shit, that’s some SOLID basework for making costumes, cosplay, and other impressive props.
—–
For a week I was into welding and took a welding class.
A year of interest in woodworking and fiddling with the tools means I’m fairly good at that as well.
Add that to the engineering from earlier and the focus on balance and stable structures means I can make my own furniture – Couches, shelves, desks, just give me the material and tools and I can make it happen.
—
Brief interest in business law meant two classes taken in college, and an accidental qualification for a business degree.
Those same classes let me point out some serious litigation bait in a friend’s startup company.
—-
A wide array of interests means I also have a TON of little nitpicky facts about how the world works, which translates into amazing immersive writing.
I know how it feels to use a chisel, and the delicate precision of electronics. I know the smell of forests and barns and old yarn being put to use again. The bloody smell of a freshly slaughtered chicken, and the anticipatory fear moments before skydiving.
The pattern of a bad weld and a good one, and the careful calculation of load bearing walls when building underground.
Anyway, this world is HUGE and really cool. Why on earth would I want to stick to learning ONE thing, when there’s HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of things I could learn?
Learn all the things. Satisfy your knowledge dragon. ❤
They also have a blog…. with generic parenting-related topics
most of these articles are posted multiple times with different titles
These posts seem suspiciously too competent for the usual phrasing on this website, and are from the pespective of parents. careful googling reveals that they’re actually from a mommy blog, here , whose content was just wholesale stolen.
…..okay
on another note, they have a character page with… this guy
…… i hate it
anyways, at the bottom of the page, there’s a link to the hosting company they use.
They’re a 3d animation company in India pretending to be a media/web hosting company for a youtube channel based in the UAE? ?? what is happening??? also btw they’re hiring!
This website also has a privacy policy page
An note.
The website also has the same layout as the first website… but with a buuunch of broken links.
….except for these, which all link to the main website instead of their profile. okay
In conclusion: What the fuck ?
So, I’ve been dealing with these videos for years now at work, and the simple answer is that they’re ad revenue generators.
Make enough of them that are similar enough and pass kid-safe standards (which they all do because they’re brightly colored and nonviolent, two of the major standards), and you can get the YouTube autoplay algorithm to put your videos on basically infinitely, until someone actually changes the channel. The next recommended video, based on content and audience similarity, will just be another one of your “lullaby educational kids song 3 hours” monstrosities, indefinitely.
A kid, babysitter, or exhausted parent clicks on one of them. It plays. Ads appear every 7 minutes (the maximum amount before additional screening for spam kicks in). The kid wanders off without turning off the console or computer, just the screen. Now you get ad revenue every 7 minutes until that machine turns off or gets used again, probably overnight or maybe even a full day, because every next autoplay is another of your videos. And every video that plays further locks in the autoplay.
Channels set up these nested shell companies so their channel can become verified as an official business channel, which automatically reduces the amount of screening you undergo, too.
They tend to be based in India because there’s a sufficiently skilled talent base and resource base to produce the hundreds of hours of just distinct enough visuals. In many cases, titles are generated algorithmically based on what pulled the most revenue the week before and to search terms for the last few days. Videos are then created to match the algorithmic titles, hence the bizarre combinations of topics.
This helps get these videos to the top of search results for popular kids searches, increasing the chance that the infinite recommendation loop gets started by the largest possible number of people.
I admit, if you haven’t been wading through this shitshow professionally for a few years, it probably looks pretty creepy.
Hi guys! So I know we all don’t actually read the terms and conditions of things and just hit agree assuming there’s nothing important in there (I do it too oops) but if you take writing commissions or anything involving money, then there’s actually something in the AO3 terms and conditions to be aware of.
Linking to a personal website or blog/social network where you are taking donations, posting commissions or mentioning published works is permitted, but advertising it directly on the Archive is not, nor is using language which one might interpret as requesting financial contributions. For example, you can say something to the effect of “check out my Tumblr if you want to know more about me and my writing” and include the link to the site, but you cannot specifically state anything about donations, commissions or sales on the Archive.
Today someone reported one of my fics as violating this condition – presumably because I’d mentioned my patreon in the author’s note (I wasn’t actively requesting donations either… I’d literally just mentioned that it existed, and that the fic in question was written as a thank-you for hitting one of my goals).
I’ve written to AO3 to check whether just saying ‘thank you to those who support me on patreon’ is fine and I’ll let you guys know when they get back to me, but if it’s still going too far in terms of being a ‘commercial promotion’ then I’ll just avoid mentioning this in the future! :’)
As I said, someone did actually report my fic for this – so there are people out there who are noticing/reporting these situations. Please be aware of this if you take fic commissions, or use patreon or ko-fi, because your account could end up suspended, which of course no one wants!
❤ ❤
UPDATE: AO3 got back to me – you’re not allowed to mention or link to patreon at all, regardless of how it’s phrased. Not sure if it’s the same for ko-fi but it might be better to be safe than sorry!
❤ @kahnah23 relevant to you and possibly some others~
That’s a fucking bullshit rule, I’m sorry. They shouldn’t deny you the opportunity to advertise your own work.
this isn’t just a self-determined descriptor; that’s a legal definition that requires adherence to specific rules and laws regarding income, profit, and donations.
this isn’t a “bullshit rule” just meant to prevent creators from advertising. in op’s post, the contact from ao3 offers a roundabout way to advertise. this rule ensures that ao3 and the organization for transformative works to stay a non-profit organization – this “bullshit rule” is essentially a way so that ao3 and the other services that the organization for transformative works can stay online.
it’s not just about maintaining nonprofit status. (i question if that’s even applicable here, since the profits in question don’t go to the organisation, but i know very little about nonprofit law. just a gut feeling.)
the actual point is, they run a legal services organisation for fans who get into legal trouble. they literally exist for the purpose of helping you not get into legal trouble. profiting from fan fiction very much opens you up to the possibility of getting into legal trouble. they’re not going to let people do things on their website that they know will land them in exactly that trouble.
and to be clear, just because everyone who slaps a patreon button on their tumblr isn’t getting sued, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing something for which they could be sued.
let me say it again: profiting from fan fiction very much opens you up to the possibility of getting into legal trouble.
here’s why.
use of other people’s characters is subject to copyright law. the general principle that makes downloading a movie or a song piracy also applies to the use of a character, assuming certain factors such as uniqueness.
how fan fiction has come to scrape by in the past: by not being a commercial enterprise.
in contrast, for use music, video, images incorporated into new works: by being significantly transformative.
these two factors, commerciality and transformativity, are considered side by side. the greater the transformativity, the less weight commerciality will be given. if something is highly transformative and non-commercial, then it’s almost certainly fine. down the other end, if it’s not at all transformative and commercial, forget it.
it’s a matter of judgement as to what degree of transformativity there is in the work that will push it over the line to overcome the general prohibition against commercial use. but fan fiction in the truest sense is barely transformative. in fact the goal is to come as close to copying a character as possible.
an analogy with the use of music: a cover band, despite every part of the performance of the song being done by that band, is still playing a song that was created by someone else. you, the fic writer, as covering someone else’s character.
the cover band you see at your local bar? they, or the local bar itself, have paid a fee to obtain permission to play that song. (even if they were playing for free they would still have to obtain permission, because any public performance of copyrighted music is prohibited.) in contrast, use of a line from one song in another another song that uses the line for parody? fine (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994)). let’s call that the AU with the names changed, the location different, and everything about that character’s backstory is gone. they just look like the actor and have a dialogue pattern that matches.
the better you are at writing a character in character, ironically the more likely you are to violate copyright law. and that’s why the commercial factor becomes incredibly relevant.
basically, don’t get paid, keep being cool with the law*.
*this is not an endorsement of the principles of copyright law itself. this is about what that law is and how it works.
People also forget the reason why disclamers on fics became so prevalent.
Please understand that profiting off fanfiction, fanart and all forms of fan-content is direct violation of copyrighted material.
Your commissions to draw popular characters? Direct violation of Copyright. AO3 works hard to maintain fandom expression protected. You hurt their cause by not adhering to their term of use.
So there’s a known thing in the study of human psychology/sociology/what-have-you where men are known to, on average, rely entirely on their female romantic partner for emotional support. Bonding with other men is done at a more superficial level involving fun group activities and conversations about general subjects but rarely involves actually leaning on other men or being really honest about emotional problems. Men use alcohol to be able to lower their inhibitions enough to expose themselves emotionally to other men, but if you can’t get emotional support unless you’re drunk, you have a problem.
So men need to have a woman in their lives to have anyone they can share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with. However, since women are not socialized to fear sharing these things, women’s friendships with other women are heavily based on emotional support. If you can’t lean on her when you’re weak, she’s not your friend. To women, what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.
So this disconnect men are suffering from is that they think that only a person who is having sex with you will share their emotions and expect support. That’s what a romantic partner does. But women think that’s what a friend does. So women do it for their romantic partners and their friends and expect a male friend to do it for them the same as a female friend would. This fools the male friend into thinking there must be something romantic there when there is not.
This here is an example of patriarchy hurting everyone. Women have a much healthier approach to emotional support – they don’t die when widowed at nearly the rate that widowers die and they don’t suffer emotionally from divorce nearly as much even though they suffer much more financially, and this is because women don’t put all their emotional needs on one person. Women have a support network of other women. But men are trained to never share their emotions except with their wife or girlfriend, because that isn’t manly. So when she dies or leaves them, they have no one to turn to to help with the grief, causing higher rates of death, depression, alcoholism and general awfulness upon losing a romantic partner.
So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship. I am not sure any man can comprehend how heartbreaking it is to realize that a guy you thought was your friend was really just trying to get into your pants. Friendship is real. It’s emotional, it’s important to us. We lean on our friends. Knowing that your friend was secretly seething with resentment when you were opening up to him and sharing your problems because he felt like he shouldn’t have to do that kind of emotional work for anyone not having sex with him, and he felt used by you for that reason, is horrible. And the fact that men can’t share emotional needs with other men means that lots of men who can’t get a girlfriend end up turning into horrible misogynistic people who think the world owes them the love of a woman, like it’s a commodity… because no one will die without sex. Masturbation exists. But people will die or suffer deep emotional trauma from having no one they can lean on emotionally. And men who are suffering deep emotional trauma, and have been trained to channel their personal trauma into rage because they can’t share it, become mass shooters, or rapists, or simply horrible misogynists.
The only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s okay to love your friends. It’s okay to share your needs and your problems with your friends. It’s okay to lean on your friends, to hug your friends, to be weak with your friends. Only if this is okay for boys to do with their male friends can this problem be resolved… so men, this one’s on you. Women can’t fix this for you; you don’t listen to us about matters of what it means to be a man. Fix your own shit and teach your brothers and sons and friends that this is okay, or everyone suffers.
The next time a guy says, “What? You don’t want to be my friend?” I’ll text him this and then ask if he really wants to be friends or just have another potential girlfriend.
y’all I am living for these analyses where the new way to fight the patriarchy is to teach men to love each other and themselves
Im a communication student and can confirm the above is absolutely 100% accurate and it’s called agentic vs communal friendship theorized by Steven McCornack
It’s wild to me, the people who are willing to stan things like big pharma and health insurance companies in the US like somehow the cost of things isn’t arbitrary and absolutely made for profit.
Just saw a comment that said “I don’t think people realize how expensive health care actually is, it’s not like pill companies are out to make a profit” like, I’m sorry, my migraine meds which I can get for free or for a significantly lower cost in nearly every other country in the world, would cost me $120 per month in the US if I chose to fill the prescription. And yes, that’s generic. And yes, that’s with health insurance. My health insurance doesn’t cover them.
My epi pens, a literal life saving rescue med, if I can’t get a generic non auto-injector or if I don’t have a coupon, can cost me $600 per pen. And you’re supposed to carry two and replace them yearly.
For that price I can literally fly home to the UK for two weeks and have them replaced for free (I’m a UK citizen before anyone gets their knickers in a bunch about freeloading scroungers), and still have an extra $100-400 to play with depending on the time of year I fly out.
I literally plan trips home based around when my meds need refilled, because it’s works out cheaper than trying to get a pharmacy in the US that takes my insurance and provides generic non automated adrenaline pens.
That’s fucked up.
And it is absolutely because health insurance companies and “big pharma” are in cahoots over how much profit they want to make from tragic events and debilitating illnesses. Meanwhile people die cause it’s a choice between food for their kids or insulin for their diabetes.
But go off I guess.
Another thing that ticks me off is people who go “oh just get new insurance if yours is too expensive” like I didn’t already think of that, and am also not restricted with who will cover me because I’m an immigrant.
Cause oh yeah, that’s a thing.
Anyone that says “well immigrants come here to get free healthcare” are absolutely talking out of their asses.
“Oh but we meant the illegals…” except you cannot get Medicaid or state equivalent without an official alien green card number??? So that’s false???
“But I heard…” well ya heard wrong.
Free health care is such a weird phenomenon to me.
We have state clinics, which are cheaper than private hospitals. You still pay for your treatment though. Medical insurance is ridiculously expensive, and not a “Benefit” with most jobs in my country. You’re lucky if you land that gig.
My husband tore a ligament a year back, we carted him off to the state hospital, he sat in line for 9 hours, had a quick xray to confirm and was sent home with aspirin. That was the extent of the help he got.
I had my wisdom teeth removed in a private hospital. I’m deathly allergic to tramal, which is the painkiller they inject you with after you come out of surgery. Noted on my chart and medical alert bracelet. I felt confident that the doctors wouldn’t inject me with the thing that could kill me.
I guessed wrong.
If I hadn’t asked the doctor what he was injecting me with ( still high on anaesthetic, fyi) he would have killed me. Do you know what he said to me when I told him I was allergic? “HOW allergic?” 😐.
Pharma companies, healthcare in general? No one cares. Pay, don’t pay. You’re going to suffer regardless. All that matters is how much money they can make off of you.
‘Free’ healthcare isnt all its made out to be. The british NHS will do everything they can to blame YOU for anything that is wrong or that you need treatment for. If your BMI is over the optimim 18 to 25 points you’re screwed. Flu? Too fat. Broken Ankle? Too fat. Polycystic Ovaries? Too fat. Asthma? Too fat. Everything you would not have if you lost weight. Oh you have despression and are self harming? Well if you lost weight… do you see where this is going?
Also prescriptions; in Scotland and Wales prescriptions are free. But in England unless you have a medical exemption card you’re paying. I have asthma and regularly have to replace my inhalers for various reason; lose them, break them, they run out. I earn less than £7k a year so i earn less than someone who claims benefits. The one exception is if they are what are classed as ‘life saving drugs’ you dont have to pay.
Doc: If you dont carry your inhaler and have an attack you’re screwed and could die.
Me: Oh ok. So can i get a medical exemption card? These things are getting expensive.
Doc: Nope
Me: But you said if i dont have my inhaler i could die from an asthma attack.
Doc: Exemption cards are only for Life Saving Drugs.
Me: But you just said i have to carry my inhaler or else i could die. It could literally save my life.
Doc: Nope. Inhalers arent considered life saving drugs.
Me: but…
Oh and lets get onto mental health care. I was diagnosed with post natal depression after i lost my first child. That then turned into the fairly rarely diagnosed pre-natal depression when i was pregnant with Superpup.
After he was born the trauma of his birth and the isolation that came with being a new mother tipped me back into severe post natal depression again. I found the strength to seek help and my GP referred me to a state shrink…
I walk into his office and before i’ve even sat down he comments that he wished new mums didnt bring their babies with them. Then he told me (not asked) to tell him the history, asked some very emotionally painful questions before telling me to ‘snap out of it before you get committed’.
He then suggested i would feel better if i lost weight and was happy to write me a prescription for amphetamines that would make me very active and happy.
I told him to fuck off and stormed out.
So no, free healthcare isnt all its cracked up to be.
Oh friend. I got news for you. Private for cost care doesn’t remove any of that shit.
It just means I’m getting charged $500 per 20 minute appointment to be told it’s my fault.
That isn’t a money or cost issue, it’s a systemic ussue of the sexism, the racism and ableism that is permitted to run riot in the medical world, regardless of cost.
Okay. It may be a terrible photo, but this is a minor miracle. This is Britney, she came in to my work yesterday in a box looking like mangled road kill. We thought she was dead. She’s almost 4 months old and only 1.8 pounds. Yesterday she couldn’t move… but she would eat. And the day had been so goddamned horrible that the vet and I just HAD to try to save her because there was too much death already.
She survived the day at work, so I took her home overnight to continue feeding her a couple teaspoons of slurry every 3 to 4 hours. And she starting moving some. And this morning she was able to turn her head enough to groom a hind foot for a few seconds.
Now, I don’t know if you know cats, but a cat that feels like crap does not groom. And while she doubtless feels like crap… she already apparently felt so much better that she expended that tiny bit of effort. Over the course of today she has been moving about more. And so with the last feeding, I tried to see if she wanted to eat in a normal cat position.
Sure, I had to help her position her hind legs correctly (we’re quite worried about that, but she can pee and poop on her own and move her tail) and sure, she was wobbly as hell and fell over several times, but that my friends is our train wreck kitten sit/standing.
So Britney may be on Death’s doorstep, but she’s no longer in his living room having tea and biscuits and we’ll take what improvements we can get.
Can I just say that Britney is amazing? This is her third evening in my care. Tonight she was able to stand with her belly off the ground, with some leg positioning help. She can also pull herself sternal whenever she wants and kinda shift herself around a bit.
And and and…. just a little bit ago she army crawled a couple steps to me! She positioned her legs herself and wobble-scootched to me because I had stopped petting her itchy ears.
There’s an adage that if you put all the bits of a cat together in one room, it will heal. I think this little girl is trying to prove it true.
I love you Britney! You’re the most fabulous cat ever. You’re on Death’s driveway… and not looking back.
Oh my god! What a strong and beautiful baby! She is amazing and so are you for believing in her! ❤️❤️❤️ I am sending all of my kitty love her way! Please give her special snuggles for me!
Aww poor little baby!!!! Such a strong little baby!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I’m starting to think Britney actually has super powers. I blogged that last update a mere 4 hours ago. I got her out to feed her… and she stood! On her Own! AND SHE WALKED. Not well. But it was up and it was walking, no matter how wobbly, and she walked her way over to me (about 5 steps total) and then CLIMBED ON MY LEGS and is laying there purring and I might be crying right now.
She did that, everyone. On her own.
Yeah. Crying.
Britney is rather amazing. She is doing far better and far faster than we had any reason to expect or even hope for. I mean, 4 days ago we were fairly certain she *wasn’t* going to make it, and now? She’s still weak and wobbly, but when you started with a body condition score (BCS) of 1/9 (5 being ideal) and have graduated to a 2/9, what can you expect?
A different vet did her recheck today. This vet got a glimpse of her on Tuesday, the morning after she arrived. She couldn’t believe the first vet and I were trying to save her. So today she does the exam, and Britney turns and give her the same look that she gave us that first day and this vet looks up at me and says “I thought you both were crazy to even try… but I can see now why you did. She’s won me over. I’m team Britney now.”
She’s still getting fluids under the skin twice a day, and antibiotics. And she got a bath (horror) and a brush out to remove the gunk that was in her fur. Her wounds are healing really well. She is SO soft now, and she purrs SO loud and she loves SO fiercely that her biscuits are painful.
“Ow”
This is the best kitten.
I have given her super long lap sessions because of you all. Britney is very grateful.
Britney had her 3rd recheck exam today with the vet who first helped me save her. She’s far surpassed our wildest hopes. She’s still ataxic (wobbly when walking) and we are unsure if it’s from muscle weakness, toxicity/trauma, or something congenital like a minor case of cerebellar hypoplasia. We’ll have to see how she progresses. She gets her next vet exam in a week. The vet also told me that because she’s no longer in critical condition that she doesn’t *need* to be fostered to me. I’m sure I gave the vet a very strange and fierce expression as I said “But I love her. And she loves me.” And therefore even though I’m NOT keeping her forever, she gets to stay with me until she’s adopted. Because MY foster kitten.
She’s currently helping me enter physical exams and booster vaccines that I’ve done today into the computer. Very useful kitten.
It’s been 2 weeks since I took Britney home, fully expecting her to not make it. Today she was spayed and she did really well during the surgery and had a very gentle recovery.
Two vets did an extra thorough exam on her today and they’ve ruled out cerebellar hypoplasia as a likely cause for her issues for two reasons: 1- she doesn’t have intention tremors, and her issues are limited to her hind legs, and 2- she is painful when you press on her back where the thoracic vertebrae meet the lumbar vertebrae.
We took some really good spinal radiographs while she was under anesthesia and she doesn’t have any breaks or compressions or anything obvious. Both vets think she is not in any danger, but that I should not encourage her to be super active for a while longer. She should not get any worse, and will hopefully get better. So current thought is trauma, probably caused by whatever caused the head and neck wounds as well.
Britney on the recovery bed after surgery.
Super soon Britney is going to be up for adoption. She’s got an ‘unknown neuro’ waiver in place as well as one that she had height restrictions as it’s more accurate to say she flops off the couch rather than jumps. This would be exceptionally bad news if she did it off, say, a 6ft tall cat tree. She is also going to get a big story about her done by my shelter that should go out soon-ish so she can get a wide pool of potential adopters and we can choose the best one for this little miracle kitten.
I’m going to definitely demand (politely!) regular updates from whomever adopts her, because I really love her.
A short video of her and the laser pointer, to show how she kind of flops around when chasing it.
It’s been 2 years since my best foster case ever. Cheers Britney!
This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.
The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.
For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.
German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.
The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.
I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.
So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).
Holy fuck. I was raised Jewish— with female Rabbis, even!— and I did not hear about any of this. Gender studies are important.
“so you just threw gender in there for fun” ffs i hope you poured his drink down his pants
I actually studied this in one of my classes last semester. It was beyond fascinating.
There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.
Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.
(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage.
The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have.
Another interesting tidbit is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Kristallnacht is a term that historians came up with after the fact, and was not what the event was actually called at the time. It’s likely that the event was actually called was (I’m sorry that I can’t remember the German word for it but it translates to) night of the feathers, because that, instead of broken glass, is the image that stuck in people’s minds because the soldiers also went into people’s homes and destroyed their bedding, throwing the feathers from pillows and blankets into the air. What does it say that in our history we have taken away the focus of the event from the more domestic, traditionally feminine, realms, and placed it in the business, traditionally masculine, realms?
Badass women and interesting commentary. Though I would argue that “Night of Broken Glass" includes both the personal and the private spheres. It was called Kristallnacht by the Nazis, which led to Jewish survivors referring to it as the November Pogrom until the term “Kristallnacht" was reclaimed, as such.
None of this runs directly counter to your fascinating commentary, though.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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