no boys allowed in the room!!!!

In case my questions weren't overt enough in the wall-o-text:

What expectations were you raised with, within your families (mothers, aunts, grandmothers) as to how women should age? Did your female elders have "second acts"? Are your experiences similar to / different from them, and how?

Also, the thing that kept coming up while I was showing, is... What does "acting like a teenager*" look like, for a generation where the traditional markers of adulthood have been rendered inaccessible by economics?

*(I generally know what "acting like a teenager" means, in terms of, the person who does this in my family is my Boomer father, who has decided to spend his 70s doing all the funstuff he was too busy studying/working to participate in when he was young. I'm guessing you mean something else?) Please explain?

It’s a shame they’ve killfiled me again* because this

where we could talk freely, without worrying about offending the everpresent ~feelings of men~.

I'm sure that the despair of a middle aged cis man whose wife recently died of cancer is really about how he never became a patriarch in the patriarchy.

Exactly, it’s deliberately disingenuous because the men of ilx aren’t the abstract patriarchy, they are real people with real pain and the only way BB can look at those posts they made yesterday (in reply to me) is by removing all context from the matter.

Zelda, I made it clear before posting that, that I had not read the thread - and even before my second set of posts, that I had read only a bit of it, which was... not that.

The idea that we should have to check the feelings of everyone in the room, including people who aren’t even in the room (and in fact are not even who the room is designed for) before having conversations about our own lives? That’s structural misogyny.

(That’s not even getting into the ableism of presuming that everyone is *capable* of pre-emptively doing that checking or understanding when and how it’s supposed to work. That goes double when that kind of sympathy-checking is seldom exercised on your behalf. Do I need to remind you how ILX reacted when I found out my mother has cancer? It is ableist to hold autistic people to these highly gendered neurological standards around the management of other people’s emotions.)

And yes, I do think the disparity between “how cis men are raised to believe their middle / old age is gonna look like” and how “people raised as women are taught to believe their middle / old age will look like” DOES contribute to the stuff that Sarahell was talking about.

And that I *would* like to talk about.

It is ableist to hold autistic people to these highly gendered neurological standards around the management of other people’s emotions.

To be clear, I’m sorry someone’s wife died of cancer. That’s awful.

As far as I know, he’s never read or posted in this thread. I don’t see how these discussions connect. Sarahell moves the conversation to a different topic!

About as ungracious as you’d expect. Incredible how everyone else was able to see how it came across and acted accordingly, whereas you doubled down, mocked me (in some fairly misogynistic terms, no less) for even bringing it up, and now finally have squeezed about the most terrible excuse for an apology that you can bear now that it’s become clear that you’re alone on this. It’s such an indictment of ilx that you haven’t hit twenty yet.

Having known and interacted with Sarahell for a long time, her action of “there’s a grieving widower in here, I’m going to take this conversation about gender to another thread” absolutely 100% WAS an act of consideration and being sympathetic.

It’s *bizarre* to me that anyone could read that act of consideration as inconsiderate or hostile.

It seems to me, to be about the complainers’ hostile views towards the poster(s), rather than anything she said it did.

We need to talk, again and again, about he gendered expectations of emotional labour. How this emotional labour of “anticipating and managing the emotional needs and reactions of other people, and always putting them before their own” is something disproportionately placed on people raised/treated as women.

Maybe because of my autism, maybe because of my unconventional upbringing, I honestly did not realise that this was something expected of me/women until I was in my late 30s. It’s one of those aspects of ~performing womanhood~ that I absolutely suck at because: autism - and I really chafe at the idea it is only *expected* of “Women” (cis men who can do it, will be rewarded for it, as the *skill* of emotional intelligence.) It’s OK for cis men to put their needs and emotions first. But if “women” don’t do it - RAGE!

It wasn’t until I was in my 40s, and in therapy, that I connected the ragestorms and clusterfucks of people being intensely angry at me for reasons I could not figure out - with this “transgression”. I had failed to anticipate someone else’s needs or manage their unexpected emotions; I had put my own needs first.

The weirdest thing was, that the biggest explosions of anger at my failure to perform this expected emotional labour were NOT actually from the men who tried to throttle me, or pulled over CD shelves on top of me, or threatened me and tried to physically hurt or discipline me.

It’s similar to the way that the biggest explosions of rage and hatred about female fat don’t come from angry men - they come from thin women who are FURIOUS that they have spent their entire lives hungry, on diets, and how dare we SHIRK our female obligation to be attractive by being so unapologetically fat while they work so hard at it.

It’s the same with these explosions of RAGE that I cannot (or as they have it, WILL not) perform this gendered emotional labour. The RAGE is about their fury and frustration and anger that *they* feel about having to do it, when here am I in my unapologetic autistic transmasculinity saying “this gendered labour is unfairly distributed. No one should have to regulate other people’s emotions as much as women are expected to do.”

This anger isn’t about me refusing / being unable to (delete as to your level of ableism) - it’s about their own resentment at still forcing themselves to. Hence why it’s Sarahell or me that end up as the punching bags for this rage. Other people’s rage is... not my job to manage.

Absolutely fuck this. Fuck this blasé attitude about real people who we really care about. FUCK YOU. Your refusal to care about other people has NOTHING to do with rejecting patriarchal standards and everything to do with the fact that you don't care about other people and can't be bothered to.

That's my fucking FRIEND. Fuck off with your idea that people getting upset are in service to the patriarchy. Funnily enough, I consider sarahell my friend also, and I STILL got upset. It isn't about ilx beef, it's about CARING ABOUT PEOPLE. If other people's rage is not your job to manage, then don't even think about attempting to manage HOW MUCH RAGE I AM EXPERIENCING RIGHT NOW. FUCK OFF.

I’d settle for them managing their own shoddy behaviour, but all they ever have in the tank is “no u” and “actually here’s why my terrible behaviour is your fault. It’s unacceptable.

I'm angry, too. I've always been angry at how everyone excuses Branwell's behavior, but I always just held my tongue and left any thread that they were in. Now I can speak my piece.

I'm neuroatypical (probably autistic, but I've never been diagnosed. I was diagnosed as mentally ill.), non-binary, and was bullied pretty heavily when younger. We are painfully similar people. I was clueless when I was younger, and I probably hurt some people. The difference? I was willing to admit that I was wrong sometimes. My self-centeredness and selfishness has been a burden that I fight against every hour of my life. I don't seek out social issues to validate my self-image, I seek them out to try to change things. Also, "acting like a teenager," in rural Floridian underclass terms, means that you drink and heavily and get arrested all of the time. I'm crying in RL right now and getting incoherent, so I'll say
one more thing. Go away. Please go away. Stop seagulling us, by which I mean swooping down periodically, shitting on everything, and leaving. You are as bad as Dom ever was.

I apologise when I have done something wrong. The idea that I should have to apologise for the absurd fantasies that people build up around their intensely negative interpretations of what I say?

Nah, mate. Not on.

Can we go back to the conversation we were having?

Because it’s not me that shits up threads at the moment - it’s people’s bizarre inability to ignore me or mute me rather than carry on feuding like this.

Dom used to go around saying things like “sometimes I fantasise about punching women in the face”.

I say things like “cisheteropatriarvhy oppresses ‘men’ and ‘not men’ in different and unequal ways’.

These are 100% exactly the same thing!!!!! Are you kidding me?

are you now Whitney G Weingarten?

omgggggggg!!! lol

So I sometimes get a one or two big hormonal zits around my period but I just got my period midway between my two vax shots and JESUS CHRIST my chin/jaw are an absolute mess, like, just the worst acne I’ve ever had. Anyone else having hormonal issues after their vax?

now that you mention it, i did break out after my first vaccine and i usually don't

Interesting you say so, because I’ve had the same. I also missed a period but that could have been stress related.. but that’s usually a delay, not a complete skip.

i had an unusual forehead breakout after my first dose that i thought was due to increased peanut butter consumption since i discovered you can add powdered peanut butter to anything. also really weird small, painful zits on the end of my nose. i thought it was getting better, and it mostly has, but i got a few new pimples on my forehead during period, plus a huge cyst near my upper lip, though i usually get hormonal cysts. i'm not ready to say it was caused by the vaccine but it's possible. either peanuts or vaccine could have increased inflammation in my body. good news is i can try eating peanuts again?

Which vax did you all get? Mine was moderna

moderna

Pfizer. Didn't have any discernable breakouts and my periods were already deranged.

Sorry yall, I got the Pfizer and I experienced no side effects, I haven't had a period in ages and I didn't have one then, and my skin is excellent right now especially considering my personal habits which are not the healthiest. But I did pick up a new cleanser and moisturizer from TJ Maxx's sale section so I credit cosmetic science.

I got moderna and my period was same as always, maybe the mood symptoms were a little worse? Hard to say why but I doubt it was related to vaccine tbh. Prob just good old me.

i also got moderna

fucking period fairy brings me my menses 2 weeks ahead of schedule today wee
it’s the turd in the punchbowl that has been this week

but explains the terrifying/crazy mood swing i had on monday, like fully at my desk crying at 10am for no reason, SOBBING watching bobs burgers at lunchtime, knowing there was no reason just thinking “ok THIS now!?!”

i have had a couple really bad ones usually a week or so post-period too

old lady hormones are just gonna be semi regularly one on now i guess yay

I had the first full period I've had in 3 or 4 months last month. And it was a heavy but painless one, like I always had. I'm 50. This should be over by now.

i apologize for the fact that the period fairy was trash

also apologize for acknowledging "it's the turd in the punchbowl" can be sung to the tune of "It's the eye of the tiger"

lmao that just cheered me up infinitely

I AM TOO GODDAMN OLD TO BE FEELING LIKE AN INSECURE ADOLESCENT.

It looks like I'm going to be treated as an adorable lost child for the rest of my life. I feel like one always.

So there are, what, half a dozen of us left on ILX?

i think so, yeah

o we doing a non-boy roll call? i now formally announce that i am not a boy

it is actually a scientific fact that cats are not boys and dogs are not girls 🌠 ~the more u kno~

So there are, what, half a dozen of us left on ILX?

xp - uh, no offense, but we know you're not actually a cat. If you're a non-cis male human IRL, then welcome here.

Plenty of dogs are girls, to say otherwise is nonsense!
I guess I’m still here.

"I am not a cat."
(I'm bigender, male and female. So I guess I still belong here.)

every so often I seriously re-consider my life choices ... it used to be in a "what a waste of time" way, but now it's more like, "if I had done x, then it would be easier today to do y, but if I wanted to do y now, could I?"

So there are, what, half a dozen of us left on ILX?

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie)

2020 was fucking _rough_

I'm still here. But yeah.

I'm here too, but mostly lurk anyways.

i was horribly forming a "joek" abt how felis catus & canis familiaris ≠ homo sapiens and this joek has landed, not on all fours, but on its big dumb face

but ye, +1 cisgirl

if i'd had the vocab during my teen years i might have gone with non-binary bcuz of not identifying with any of the standard """woman""" archetypes, but now it's whatever

there was a time there when i'd shaved half my head and kept my hair long on the other side and the panic/confusion/dismay on the faces of occasional squares who couldn't immediately categorize me was v. gratifying

here's hoping the girlxors of yesteryear have found more fulfilling timewasters

Sometimes I read a thread here and there. But they are always disappointing. I just don't have the patience to sift through inane one-liners about serious topics or to read some thought dump that isn't actually engaging with anyone else. It's super aggravating.

feelin so called out right now, lol