Tag: misogyny

Female Marvel Comics editor harassed online for milkshake selfie

lord-armitage:

stfuprolifers:

“…the incident has once again ignited a firestorm of discussion about the prevalence of abusive responses to both gender and racial diversity in the comic book world, and the recent increase in female staffers.

Chelsea Cain, the writer behind the female superhero comic book Mockingbird, left Twitter in October 2016 following months of harassment, while Zainab Akhtar, a British-Muslim writer, closed her Eisner Award-winning comic book journalism site Comics & Cola last year after being deluged with racist, misogynistic abuse via email and social media.“

A selfie among six Marvel colleagues enjoying milkshakes together was followed by a slew of online attacks.

I don’t like the Telegraph but whoever was writing this article nailed it with this line. 

““Can we just get off of feminism and social justice and actually print stories,” one person tweeted, to reiterate, in response to women drinking milkshakes.” 

Female Marvel Comics editor harassed online for milkshake selfie

dollsahoy:

mysticalmoonstone:

firespirited:

dollsahoy:

mmymoon:

mysticqueen-bee:

lycanrocgiveaways:

mommacomms:

how-to-be-a-sad-bitch:

cantcolonizethispussy:

dynastylnoire:

wickedkhaleesi:

philosopher–queens:

thepageofhopes:

dottewa:

prokopetz:

feminerds:

hyggehaven:

witwitch:

sweetpotatodotcom:

newtonssidekick:

sweetpotatodotcom:

The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))

What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?

Endemetriosis

Vaginal Thrush

Menorrhagia

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Fibroids

Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.

Men are so damn privileged they can’t even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they can’t be affected by one of these conditions.

Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely
uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I
have, makes you anæmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially
difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.

Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.

Chronic pain is overwhelmingly experienced by women, and women are less likely to be taken seriously or given treatment by medical professionals. I went through two years of diagnostics to finally find out I had occipital neuralgia; I felt doubted when I described my pain at every step of the way, but was lucky to have a partner who was persistent in helping me get treatment.

Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.

Don’t forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnant… seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people “trying” it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination or monetary benefit of essentially being in a late stage drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after they’ve experienced the adverse affects. 

This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!  

Sources: Nature, Nature, Medscape, Biomedcentral.

Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.

Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?

Except that’s not right at all.

Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis – and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.

Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.

And yet we tell folks it’s just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.

Bonus round: Look up PCOS and gender identity.

Then look up PCOS and diabetes.

Ok, to show how incredibly important this post fucking is, I just looked up endometriosis and I match just about every sympton, and it would explain not just my incredibly painful periods but many other things as well. I had no idea this existed.

Please, read this post and reblog this so others can learn.

I will reblog this every time because my cousin (a cis girl) went through seven years of pain without being taken seriously until SHE suggested it was endometriosis. And that’s not even unusual – that’s the average amount of time it takes between first symptoms and a diagnosis of endometriosis.

NO KNOWN CAUSES OR CURES. JUST SUFFER. – the doctors diagnosing me with pcos, Fibromyalgia, and endometriosis.

I was diagnosed with endo when was in my early twenties. Their advice to me was hurry up and make babies because you could be made infertile.

Go on birth control

Or have a hysterectomy

Something else to know is endo spreads. So you can get misdiagnosed for everything but endo because of the location of your pain.

My endo spread to my navel, gallbladder, rectum, ovaries, and vagina. The gallbladder pain caused my side to burn. Went to the er for it 4 years ago and they told me it was acid reflux

When my navel started bleeding when I was at work last fall er docs told me if was an infection.

In both cases I said I have endo but the endometriosis causing these symptoms was ignored until I went to a specialist.

i’ve had endometriosis and pcos most likely since i was 15-16 years old. i was already infertile by the time i was finally diagnosed with both at 23. i’m 25 now and JUST started being treated for it. i went to doctors for years who didn’t take any of my symptoms seriously and tried to convince me over and over again that my symptoms were nothing to worry about, that it was totally normal to be having excruciatingly painful periods that prevented me from getting out of bed for days and that there was nothing that could be done. i’ve gone to the ER and have had doctors give me painkillers because my periods were so painful. before i knew i was infertile there was a time i thought i had a miscarriage and maybe just didn’t know i was pregnant or my appendix had ruptured because it was so bad. now i’m waiting for my doctor to figure out if i have fibromyalgia because there’s no actual test for it. these are only a few amongst a host of other health issues i have now, many of which developed from undiagnosed + untreated endometriosis and pcos. it took me over 10 years to find a doctor who is listening to me and taking all of my concerns seriously. 

I have fibrocysitc breast disease which is extremely painful, a week out of each month, no cure, “common”. Nothing they can do about it.

Other female-identified issues that doctors ignore:

—Subchorinoic hematomas in pregnancy. I almost LOST MY SON because of these… And my male OB staff didn’t even bother to TELL ME about it, the ULTRASOUND TECH had to do it! “Oh it resolved itself” is what I was told when I asked the doctor I saw that day.

—PMS and PMDD

—Breast-related spinal degradation; there’s probably not a medical term for it but this is when the breasts are so heavy they literally pull down part of your spine, causing consistent subluxation, muscle and nerve strain, and neck issues. I need a reduction for this reason but doctors won’t take me seriously.

—Orthopedic damage postpartum. It’s been 14 months since I had my son and my hips are STILL really loose and almost detached.

Hey reblogging because I spent the worst year of my life trying to get medical treatment, being dismissed by every doctor I visited, and having to do most of the research myself to even be taken seriously by a specialist. Listen to women.

Doctors have said that I have PCOS and basically a couple years ago I had to be taken to charlottesville since I had heavy bleeding that resulted me to be somewhat anemic, took a palyp out of my ovary and place a IUD to prevent any further problems, I think I should check out more about this just in case

FUN FACT! I nearly died from the above!

I self diagnosed after ten+ years of utter living hell because an older woman friend mentioned “endometriosis,” I looked it up and found a list like this. Armed with that information, I sought out a COMPETENT gynecologist (not an ob/gyn – some are competent but a lot are too distracted, I’d seen so many before) who basically FLIPPED OUT and immediately rushed me into surgery immediately. They weren’t exactly sure why I was was not already dead because my entire insides had basically stitched together! 

I’m still fighting “female condition” fallout (please ALSO look up “POTS” and “mast cell” if you’re one of so many women with the chronic fatigue/ME/fibro constellation.) Some of the super competent, skilled, cutting edge researchers I’ve visited for that suggest the above endocrine disorders are likely another branch of an overall problem that’s being systemically ignored… because, you know, ladies are so hysterical. Add to that racial bias in healthcare (and the fact a lot of patients with these issues may be extra likely to be fat) and yep, here’s a whole legion of patients completely ignored and basically left to die. Fun fun!

Do research, advocate for yourself, and don’t doubt what you feel. It’s real.

Nowhere near ‘serious’ for me, but I remember how much my period ‘cramps’ hurt for most of my life and how I’d try everything written about how to relieve cramps yourself and how none of it worked and then I had an emergency caesarean (I’d planned a home birth with a midwife and some doulas) and the surgeon casually mentioned I had a ‘bit’ of endometriosis and…oh.  So.  I’d probably never had menstrual cramps. (And I only knew what endo was because of knowing @mmymoon) (And later reading found some studies that suggest that pregnancy with endo may lead to complications…like needing a caesarean…)

So even if it’s not debilitating, not-knowing what’s really wrong can lead to years of taking the wrong approach to try to alleviate things. (Will also mention I had a bladder infection once that went diagnosed for a few days because I thought it was regular PMS pain, heh.)

God help you if you get sick as a teenage girl.

You might as well have a lazy moody timewaster written on your forehead because that’s what most doctors and specialists will see from your charts even when the answer is right there in the symptoms.

Wait….bad cramps arent normal past puberty? Wth why have I never heard this? I thought feeling like my insides are being carved out each month is normal…. is heavy bleeding even normal then? Wow…

In my understanding, if it’s endo, what you’d be feeling isn’t actually cramps, but instead it’s your insides sticking together, so people can absolutely technically say “bad cramps don’t last beyond puberty” and be right while also neglecting to mention all the other things that might be causing pain during periods…

(Emphasis on the ‘in my understanding part’–I’m nowhere near learnèd on this.)

discoursedrome:

amodernobject:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: feminism is the embodiment of all the stereotypes it claims are false.

sigh

so the single most important rule when evaluating internet news is “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is”, and yes, “good” includes “likely to go viral by confirming people’s suspicions about their enemies”,

Even a cursory google on the subject (e.g. here or here) will show that the actual objection was that the woman was that “that four colleagues bullied and harassed her, including sexually” over a period of 21 months, and then when she finally snapped and reported it to her manager, he responded with the headline comment.

This is a bit old but the reason it’s making the rounds is because BAE is appeaing the amount of damages; the interpretation taken from the headline is the argument being advanced by the defendant’s lawyer, someone who is required to misrepresent situations in his client’s favour as part of his job.

I didn’t bother trying to dig up all the proceedings since this thing has been ping-ponging around the tribunal for a while, but here (.doc format) is the first decision I was able to find relating to the case – it’s from one of the cross-appeals relating to the amount awarded. As a general rule, judges’ decisions are a drastically better source of case details than newsmagazines. A few excerpts:

There were a number of allegations made by the Claimant about the period of 21 months leading up to a particular incident in April 2006.  On 26 April 2006 the manager, to whom we have already referred, made a remark to the Claimant that the Employment Tribunal dealing with what has been called the liability hearing, namely the Employment Tribunal presided over by Employment Judge Cook (“the Cook Tribunal”), decided was an act of sex discrimination contrary to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.  The Claimant described this as “the last straw” and she went off work the following day, 27 April 2006.  Just over a year later, she asked to return to work, but putting matters briefly, the Employer refused to allow her to do so and subsequently dismissed her on 23 July 2007.  She complained to the Employment Tribunal and her complaints were heard by the Cook Tribunal, which found that her dismissal was because she had raised allegations of sex discrimination.  It therefore amounted to victimisation contrary to section 2 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.  It also held that the refusal to allow her to return to work without conducting any risk assessment and without making any reasonable adjustments to take account of her ill-health amounted to disability discrimination contrary to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and by its decision of 8 October 2008 the Cook Tribunal also held that, because the dismissal was sex and disability discrimination-related, it was an automatically unfair dismissal.

Based on other parts of the document, BAE’s counsel appears not to dispute that the history of harassment and discrimination occurred – his argument is based on the fact that these individual incidents were either not brought to the tribunal as distinct complaints, were rejected, or were determined to have happened too long ago to warrant awards. He’s therefore arguing – as I understand it – that the manager’s comment is the only one that “counts” on the basis that it was the only case upheld as sex discrimination under the letter of the law. The plaintiff’s argument, which appears to have won the day, is that the context of the complaints matters because a) the business knew about it and b) it’s not possible to split off just the harm done by that one incident without taking the others into consideration, even if the others by themselves would not have received a reward.

Needless to say, it is a lot of trouble to dig into this shit even a little, and no one who read the original post is going to fucking see this. The “teachable moment” lesson is as follows: this is why it’s important to have a low-cost bullshit screen before stories go viral.

Source: amodernobject

Oh my, just reminded with my younger cousins coming up.

I was actually the only grandchild on both sides and not spoiled at all until I was 14. (With the youngest born a few years later.) My mom was not working then, so it looked like an even better idea for her to watch the new baby the whole first summer after my aunt went back to work. Not only because family and trustworthy, but most daycares won’t take children who aren’t toilet trained yet. It worked out pretty well for everyone. We watched both of them a lot after that, too.

So yeah, I was out of school for the summer and usually didn’t mind helping look after the baby. What I did mind were the filthy looks and nasty comments we kept getting whenever we went anywhere, with some people filling in their own assumptions about what must be going on.

My mother thought it was kind of funny. I really did not, and not just because I was 14 and easily embarrassed anyway. She also wasn’t dealing with the worst of the judgments there, other than maybe doing a terrible job of raising me.

But, that did make an impression. I was certainly aware of the hostility too often aimed at teen mothers before that, which is kinda hard to miss. But, that experience really helped bring home how ridiculously common it is, and how quick some people are to jump to judgy assumptions. Not to mention just how openly unpleasant some people feel entitled to be with that. Nobody could possibly deserve that shit, and certainly not for getting pregnant.

madeofpatterns:

nightunite:

scrawnyflannelman:

emeraldlace:

feminists-against-feminism:

i-was-a-naive-antifeminist:

Obstetric violence is institutional violence. Break the silence.

I’ve heard of some really fucked up forced birth malpractice of doctors. Sharing for awareness. This is more fucked up than circumscision. This is as fucked up as doctors returning your baby to you with a botched circumcision after you made it clear they are absolutely not to circumsize him (which yes, has also happened, which helps me to believe some doctors are fucked enough to do these things). Doesn’t matter if you’re a feminist or not, this is a human rights issue by any standard. (I don’t know anything about the organization advertising itself here, not endorsing or condemning it). Share for awareness. Medical treatment to requires consent, because the second it doesnt, some really fucked up shit is possible, orders of magnitude worse than even this.

…I have questions, now

This looks like some serious shit.

My mom has a story similar to this about me. 

When they found out I was going to have kidney issues (extra ureters, nothing lethal), a secondary doctor demanded my mom have me three weeks early. This was supposedly when my lungs would be ready enough to immediately go into surgery. 

After 16 hours of labor, the original doctor was informed and told my mother how that was unnecessary since I couldn’t be operated on until 8 weeks anyway. My mother had me early for no reason, and they had to monitor my lungs just to be sure I was alright. 

The secondary doctor also demanded weekly amniocentesis on me. Mom says you could see on the monitor me visibly distressed and wiggling away/trying to push away the needle. It got to the point where my mom grabbed the doc’s wrist and told her no more. 

While not as violating as the stories mentioned above, I want to confirm this does happen and if you feel unsure about a doctor at any point that it’s not wrong to switch to one you feel better with. Pregnancy is a complicated thing and the last thing an expecting mother needs/deserves is to be mistreated. 

Also
Women I’ve seen talk about this often express it as “don’t medicalize birth”.
But this kind of thing happens all over the hospital.
And it shouldn’t happen to anyone. Ever.

Source: i-was-a-naive-antifeminist

nightunite:

scrawnyflannelman:

emeraldlace:

feminists-against-feminism:

i-was-a-naive-antifeminist:

Obstetric violence is institutional violence. Break the silence.

I’ve heard of some really fucked up forced birth malpractice of doctors. Sharing for awareness. This is more fucked up than circumscision. This is as fucked up as doctors returning your baby to you with a botched circumcision after you made it clear they are absolutely not to circumsize him (which yes, has also happened, which helps me to believe some doctors are fucked enough to do these things). Doesn’t matter if you’re a feminist or not, this is a human rights issue by any standard. (I don’t know anything about the organization advertising itself here, not endorsing or condemning it). Share for awareness. Medical treatment to requires consent, because the second it doesnt, some really fucked up shit is possible, orders of magnitude worse than even this.

…I have questions, now

This looks like some serious shit.

My mom has a story similar to this about me. 

When they found out I was going to have kidney issues (extra ureters, nothing lethal), a secondary doctor demanded my mom have me three weeks early. This was supposedly when my lungs would be ready enough to immediately go into surgery. 

After 16 hours of labor, the original doctor was informed and told my mother how that was unnecessary since I couldn’t be operated on until 8 weeks anyway. My mother had me early for no reason, and they had to monitor my lungs just to be sure I was alright. 

The secondary doctor also demanded weekly amniocentesis on me. Mom says you could see on the monitor me visibly distressed and wiggling away/trying to push away the needle. It got to the point where my mom grabbed the doc’s wrist and told her no more. 

While not as violating as the stories mentioned above, I want to confirm this does happen and if you feel unsure about a doctor at any point that it’s not wrong to switch to one you feel better with. Pregnancy is a complicated thing and the last thing an expecting mother needs/deserves is to be mistreated. 

Source: i-was-a-naive-antifeminist