As a woman who is both gender non-conforming and who is planning a pregnancy in the near future AND who works with children, I am very invested in the conversation about the confines of femininity, the complexities of motherhood and the fascistic expectation of women to have children. I also often find it deeply frustrating.
I do not think it should need to be said, but unfortunately it absolutely is, that nobody should ever be forced to become pregnant, be a parent or carry a pregnancy to term. Ever. This requires both complete and total abortion rights & access but also the dismantling of the gendered expectation of women to want and need children. Remaining child free should not only be possible for women, it should also be normal and completely accepted. Anything else is oppressive.
However, I am deeply bothered by how many people who share these views talk about children. I have come across many posts describing children in cruel and dehumanizing ways, emphasizing how gross and terrible children are and how much of a burden they are to their parents. This, I think is also wrong.
Children are a particularly vulnerable population. They often have very little rights and autonomy and are at the whims of adults around them, which makes then particularly vulnerable to abuse. Children are real, fully realized people who have very specific needs and considerations. Constantly discussing how disgusting and terrible children are, means attacking people who have no power and cannot defend themselves, legally or otherwise. These views cannot be separated from calls to remove children from public life, like parks and transportation, the practice of which is both dehumanizing and oppressive. This goes hand in hand with the gendered oppression of women who are unfortunately still often the primary caregivers of children. Forcing children out of the public sphere means forcing mothers out of it too. And the right to not have children needs to go hand in hand with the right to have children. Women need abortion rights and access but they also need the right and access to give birth for free. They need robust childcare and child & family friendly infrastructure. Otherwise the only people who can afford to have children are wealthy elites.
The rights of women to not have children and the rights of children and mothers go hand in hand. They are not contradictory. Being a parent is a complex relationship, one wrought with a long history of violence and oppression of children and women. It is not easy to navigate, and nobody should be expected to do it. Simultaneously, the people who do decide to do it deserve help and support, not scorn or mockery. And most of all, children, all children, even the annoying, dirty and screaming ones deserve a safe loving world that sees their full humanity, respects their perspectives and their bodily autonomy. We are all a part of creating that world for them. Society should be about being good to each other, and that includes children too.
Not to intrude! As a woman, I've been hearing that birth control bills messes up hormones and hage very bad effects on women. I think you should look up the studoes about it / don't type: does birth control bills hav3 a negative effec/ type: studies about the effects of birth control bills.
I only wanted to bring it to ur attention only out of care. Not out of anything else. I genuinely hope you're safe and healthy.
God bless you, have a sweet day/ night.
I am absolutely gonna answer this because it's so important.
Let's say it out loud: with conservative views rising, especially on the internet, the birth-control-scare we are seeing is a propaganda tool.
I've seen so many women obsessed with being "natural" lately preaching to always have unprotected sex and avoid pregnancies just by observing their menstrual cycle. Which is, how my father got unwillingly conceived in the 60s.
I was scared too in the beginning, so I looked into it, I picked up a book on female sexual health on the library, and this is what I found:
"Messes up with your hormones" is a phrase I hear a lot about it. Yes, it does. Because it stops your natural hormonal cycle by giving you hormones that will stop you from ovulating. Afftecting hormones is litterally how it works.
However, it's proven that when you stop taking the pill you get back to how you were before taking it. It doesn't have any lasting effects on your fertility.
The most talked about side effect of birth control pill is thrombosis. It's proven that birth control pills raise the chances to have it. It's also getting less common in the past decades because now the pill has a lower dosage.
What convinced me to ignore this issue is the fact that the risk of thrombosis is way higher for pregnant people than it is for people on birth control.
So if you don't want a pregnancy, and your reason to risk a pregnancy is fear of thrombosis, you are actually just putting yourself in double danger.
The medical professionals still take this risk very seriously, so if your medical history shows a predisposition to it, they will prescribe some specific pills that are known to not have the same risk. Because actually genetics have a major role in this side effect.
About the risk of cancer, it's more complicated, it might raise the chance of some specific cancers (we don't really have clear results on this), but it's proven to avoid other specific cancers. So there are proven good effects and possible bad effects, to me, they balance each other out.
All of the other side effect that you see on the internet (lower libido, mental health issues, depression) are not proven. It's anecdotal knowledge, and whenever they tried to do real studies on it, they didn't find any clear results.
There are a lot of confusing variables about the mental impact of birth control, e.g. most people start taking it when they get into a long term relationship, so when after a few months of taking it they say they have lower libido, how do we know that's because of the pill, when most long term realtioships experience a lower libido after the honeymoon stage?
Among my friends and family, different people had different reactions to the pill, most of them still takes it because they had a good experience, or found one that works for them after a bit of trial and error. Some chose to just stop taking it.
My take on this is that, just like everyone has a different realtionship with their cycle, we all see different changes of it when they take birth control.
But we can't ignore the fact that scaring people away from birth control is putting them in danger. Especially in a time when we see our right to abortion at risk.
I think that we should celebrate the pill, because it's an amazing invention that gives us full agency on our own bodies and our ability to plan pregnancies.
And even if you don't want to take it, you need a form of reliable birth control, it doesn't need to be hormonal, but in 2026 we cannot think that pulling out (expecting the other person to pull out) or observing our cycle will keep up safe.
I look forward to start taking it because condoms stopped working for me, because I want to skip my period as much as I can (it's just boring to have it) and because it feels feminist to me.
There's a direct correlation between how embarrassing and/or undignified some specific cause of death would be, and how much potential it has for a cool name for a punk band. Consider:
I have very vivid memories of my whole childhood, I remember how it felt to be 3, what I thought, what confused me, how I saw adults. Many people in my life are surprised by how much I remember things from my early development.
From my experience, a happy childhood is no better than adulthood, at least young adulthood.
I had no trauma nor abuse when I was 8, and I have plenty of cherished memories from back then. Still, being 19 to 22 has been way better.
I remember how little autonomy I had for everything, I remember the drama, the fights with other kids over stupid little shit that got stuck in my head for days, the little crushes that kept me delusional for months, I remember not wanting to do my homework and having to ask for a Nutella sandwich.
Maybe I was a sensible child, but I feel like it was not so easy and free as we like to consider it. Now friends' disagreements are resolved in a 2 minutes long adult conversation, now I have ways to deal with my feelings, to act on crushes. I can go wherever I want, I can make a Nutella sandwich by myself, I WANT to do my homework, and if I didn't I could just not do it and decide to do something else with my life.
The levels of agency I have, along with the social communication and the emotional regulation skills I developed, make being an adult so much better than being a kid, as much as I liked being a kid.
I love death, not because I want to die, but I love how it brings everyone and everything together, how it shapes the meaning of life, how it symbolises getting back into the world and coming out of it in a new form again and again and again and again
this recent trend of women posting pics of themselves and captioning it “plan a: go to school get xyz degree be successful buy a house etc” and the u scroll to the next slide and it’s “plan b: bf wants a baby, have the baby, be the best mom i can be, stay at home and raise them” is insane especially bc everytime i see it the comments ask her if her lame ass boyfriend gave up his dreams and she says no……idgaf about marriage as a symbolic like thing but the way these loser ass men can even be bothered to get a ring and certificate for yall before literally putting ur life in danger…………i despise men so badly
Adding another level here, but very likely the plan a wasn't these women's dream either.
It's just all societal expectations dressed as ambition. There are two ways for a woman to be successful: 1) get a degree, get a high status job, earn a lot of money etc. - the way man are supposed to be succesful too, that extended to women in the past couple decades 2) be a good mother and wife and run smoothly a beautiful house - the traditional way women would be successful.
If a woman is spontaneusly giving up plan a to follow plan b something tells me that she didn't really have dreams of her own, she is just doing what is expected of her, and choosing among the options based on what's easier in the moment.
(This applies in Western Europe and North America, not sure if I can extend this opinion to other areas/countries)
What do pets think of clothes? Do they think we are shedding? Do they recognize clothes are objects? Do they think we are just collecting objects like all the other objects in our houses, and then putting them on us because we are weird like that? Do they realize we need clothes because we have no fur? Do they just don't notice them?
Being in the state of recovery where I'm in bed like. I'm bored. I want to get up. I want cookies. I want to go on a walk. I want to go do things. I want to sit by a fire. I want ice cream. I want to get up.
Then I get up and it's woaaaah I do not want to do any of those things.
Currently feeling like I got kicked in the gut by a horse. I'm not taking the painkillers - not as some sort of a Suffering Martyrdom Fetish Weird Flex, but because I'm not in pain if I'm sitting in good positions and not moving wrong. The only pain I experience are mild stings of Hey Perhaps Do Not Do That, which are welcome reminders that I'm doing something wrong. Not an ache like a headache or tooth ache, but very polite little jolts of Can You Fucking Not. Turning them off would be actively worse for my recovery.
You're using your painkillers like we'd give them to horses in low doses so they have that same "hey, don't do that" feedback loop lmao. Speedy recovery!
It's not supposed to hurt, but it's better than not feeling anything, it's not just pain that's blocked it's everything, it makes you not being able to think to remember what you were doing.
And in time it doesn't help anyway just gets you addicted to more.
You're calling people trogs on a post about me not taking tylenol for a temporary injury because nobody was talking about your chronic pain issue in the first place.
Wrong again. You're a trig because you assume things you don't know about.
Your dealing with stub your toe pain no matter the cause.
Something that will pass in days or a wk. I'm talking about pain that even a pump doesn't help with. Pain that's lasted longer than you have most likely been alive.
I know. I made a post on my own blog, talking about not taking a mild painkiller for a mild pain because I know it's a temporary one. Now tell me again what you are doing here, and why.
it's hard to explain but i often think about how divorced we are from our bodies and how that divide is encouraged by capitalism. if we view our bodies as a separate commodity, it's easier for us to accept that our labor is also separate from us. alienation from the body haunting everything.
and it's a perfect circle for capitalism, isn't it? they make trillions of dollars asking you to lose weight so that you may be a more valuable asset. you need a nose job and lip filler and a bubble butt. you need more time at the gym, more protein, less freedom. you need your hair removed unless you're a different kind of person and then you need to be so hairy. you need a ton of makeup unless you're a certain skin color and then fuck you, we're not matching our foundations to you, buy 2 and mix 'em. those clothes are cringe now, buy a whole new wardrobe. you need 18 kinds of skincare, you need 12 hair products, all must-haves.
"here's the steps i'm never skipping in my morning routine - and how it made me rich. we all have the same 24 hours, right, you should just wake up earlier. click the link in my bio for the pills that made me like this. for the class that taught me how to prioritize myself. for how to be a better you; and by that i of course mean how to be beautiful."
and the way people talk about bodies. holy shit.
and it's tiring, and you are exhausted, and you are insecure because of course you are - how could you not be? nobody looks like you. nobody else has loose skin or bad skin or scars or back pimples or stretch marks or cellulite or a broken nose. the filter literally sorts all of that out, and leaves beauty behind. the things that are yours are erased.
so you buy the $14 mascara because honestly it really is a nice mascara and it lasts for a while and besides, it gives you a little boost of confidence. so you buy the expensive face mask because it is your skin, you deserve like, one nice product. self-care is now a product, isn't it? self-care isn't just meditation, now you need to download this meditation app, and then you'll be okay again.
and it's so fucking hard to find your way back to your body once you've gotten used to the price of it. because, what, you're going to pay 200 dollars a session for a "somatic" therapist? (you don't even really believe in a lot of "somatic therapy." what the fuck are they saying when they say "trauma is kept in your hips". the body keeps the score; but like, you believe the real help for trauma lies in neuroscience. you'll still do the stretch just in case, but come on). and the thing is that you are selling your body - no matter how gentle your work is; your time on this earth is limited, and you are selling hours of that time in order to make a miniscule profit (ha! as if breaking even equals "making profit").
so how do you take care of the thing that is essentially your tool? capitalism recommends you hone it. you certainly don't feel better when you rest; you feel almost self-indulgent. quick-fixes make you feel worse, annoyed with yourself for stopping at a fast food place; calculating how much cheaper it would have been to just buy the stupid ingredients and get over how tired cooking makes you.
you woke up this morning and thought - i need a vacation. but how are you going to take a vacation from your body? it costs money to exist.
I think "trauma is kept in your hips" might be something that comes from yoga.
I am in no way an expert, but I took a vinyasa yoga class last year and we did a "programm" on chakras. Loosely explained, the principle is that different parts of your body hold a chakra that regulates a different part of your spiritual life.
By exercizing different parts of our body, combining it with respiration a visualization, we are opening (healing, exploring) a specific part of our spiritual emotional self. We started with the root, which is at the base of the spine, and worked up to the crown, which is on the top of our head.
The root chakra is related to security and stability, so it makes sense, for this approach, to associate hip movements with healing from trauma.
That yoga class has been the best way I've been able to feel a connection between my body and my emotional state, and I think it's an amazing way to contrast this body/mind separatism that you are suffering. If you are interested, I think you could find vinyasa yoga classes and practices online for free.
At the same time it's obviously been appropriated for profit by western therapy. I am not against western therapy at all, but I think we shouldn't take other practices out of their context to use them within a completely different framework, because we risk of loosing the point of both.
One thing about being able to think in more than one language is that you brain shifts uncontrollably between one and the other.
But your words can't, the grammar structures don't match enough to keep shifting so you are either stuck constantly translating or trying to merge the languages in a way that makes sense.
But no single language contains enough words for you to express yourself anymore, and thousands of miniscule pieces of you get lost in translation.
And its still making me so crazy how intentionally it goes from "charlie you were 14 that so doesnt count. Ok whatever man" to "you were 15? What like it's supposed to make it better?"
Plus with the realization these are his friends not really hers. And how horrible she looks that entire scene she really fucking doesnt wanna say it and she's downing the fucking wine and he doesnt notice her. And later "I dont wanna talk about this, you're fucked up. How did you get so drunk?" God I feel sick
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