no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Sorry I hadn't seen your post.

They generally do run pregnancy tests on all sexually active women before most serious medical treatment as far as I know.

I've no idea whether she's been making it up or what - I've only met her once. It's more likely she and/or him are just really confused and haven't been asking any of the right questions.

Mentally running through list of pregnancy symptoms, kind of bummed at how many of them I experience at low levels every so often anyway - I imagine the real thing to be so many orders of magnitude worse that you just know, but, ugh, do not want to be one of the people who doesn't just know

another reason to renew efforts to lose some damn weight I guess, or try to stop putting it on so fast anyway ;_;

(weight gain ongoing for much longer than 9 months - not really a serious candidate for ILXor "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" here, unless it's an elephant or something)

I was creeped out by the biblical story of the virgin birth at a relatively young age.

in my case I think I was just educated poorly on sex and how my body worked.

my mom just said, "we've got a book about that somewhere, and uh, you can ask me if you don't understand anything"

I admit every couple months or so if me period isn't to-the-minute punctual I just do a pregnancy test. I keep a couple around for sanity's sake. $4 every couple months for not freaking out is worth it to me.

Except I left a finished preg test sitting in the bathroom once and my husband saw it a few hours later after the results faded...I was gone until 11 p.m. that day & he spent the whole day thinking I'd left it out to say "lol u have babby now." Poor dude!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! o man

omg ahahaha but also yeah, poor dude!

How many times did you have to apologize for that one??

haha - makes me want to leave notes for random people i know that just say - "lol u have babby now!"

It was one of those situations where I was like "I see why many people enjoy having a cell phone now."

Isn't there a thread about movie plots that only worked pre-cellphones? Add to list.

Oh man, that is terrible and yet hilarious. Sorry!

And $4 every couple months for not freaking out is worth it to me is probably OTM, just gotta suppress the instinct which kicks in when I look at them in the shop and goes "but if I get the $30 one and not the $4 one it will be... better, somehow?"

capitalism has me right where it wants me I guess

Like you're at the shelf and you somehow think that if only you buy the expensive "electronic" one and not the pharmacy's cheapest own brand one it somehow translates into less pregnancy for you.

That's why I am glad I saw they have preg tests at the dollar store – if I am buying a two-pack of the K-Mart brand ones I can say to myself "at least they're not the ones from the dollar store" with a total sneer in my imaginary voice in my mind.

yeah - they probably fine but $ store pregnancy tests just seem like a disaster waiting to happen

I did one once and the screen on those actually says "lol u have a baby now"

Man, I am investing my dollars in the wrong things.

A woman I went to law school with was preg and didn't know until her water broke. Honestly I kind of don't believe her because nine months before she had the baby she suspected she was pregnant AND got a positive pregnancy test, but the baby's fsther was uninterested in the issue and then she experienced some bleeding so I think she just decided it was a false alarm and spent the next nine months working on her denial skills.

That is out of this world nuts.

A girl in my sister's class who lived a block over from us had sex followed by denial followed by scary toilet birth - it was a huge o_0 scandal because the baby died. The girl's younger sister is one of my cousin's closest friends, so this is not some urban myth. Sister's classmate went for psych care for a couple of months but today, she's fine.

Yeah, I think the denial thing happens most with young girls.

i think my theoretical art project would involve mini-lcd screens that alternate between "lol u have babby now" and "scary toilet birth"

"scary toilet birth" is what the $ store pregtest says when you aren't pregnant!

xp And not licensed and practicing attorneys.

I have considerable sympathy for young women in that position, especially w/ so many states having parental notification laws and restricted access to abortion. It's terrifying to be in that situation and sometimes there doesn't seem to be any other option.

lol xpost.

i think putting them in dollar stores would be kinda mean -- they'd have to go somewhere absurd -- like pet stores

Probably the reason I'm a feminist is because another neighbour got pregnant at 14 and to terminate, had to represent herself as a mature minor in order to avoid parental notification. She succeeded and it made me totally pro-choice to the point where I'd counsel a teenager to just plain get rid, but this was on a backdrop of full-colour 'this is your fetus' leaflets handed out by 50-year-old men in the Reagan era.

I have considerable sympathy for young women in that position, especially w/ so many states having parental notification laws and restricted access to abortion. It's terrifying to be in that situation and sometimes there doesn't seem to be any other option.

― Jenny, Friday, September 24, 2010 4:58 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yes, exactly.

guys theres a bitchin iphone app and website called epocrates where you can look up pills buy name, shape, color, imprints etc. it crazy. anyway you can check drug interactions there.

havent been on this thread in a while (omg @ christine upthread)

Hmm...Which part?

discus

http://animalnewyork.com/2010/09/femen-to-metro-molesters-i-will-rip-your-balls-off/

ever get the feeling you've been cheated

I feel like their message is undermined by presenting themselves as sexualized in a male gaze-approved kind of way, but I always feel that way about this kind of thing because I've got a stodgy second wave streak a mile wide.

With ya. I'm happy for you if you feel powerful, womanly, have a sense of claiming territory, etc with yr shirt off or whatever, but I still veer between "It would be a greater loss to let someone else's opinion override your right to feel that way" and "How powerful can it be when you're playing right into their hands?"

yeah see for some reason i think this woman is a total hero
but i kind of don't see anything wrong with toplessness; i just wish it were an equal opportunity endeavor
i also have the kind of chest people don't tend to stare at

she's holding up a sign that says she will CUT THEIR BALLS OFF
that's pretty fierce

Which she'll never actually do because it would be assault and also honestly she probably wouldn't win a physical confrontation. Whereas men WILL harass her for being shirtless, don't you think?

Actually -- this is so layered, I can agree with you but there's a price... I think she's a hero in that she looks fierce and iconic in an "images of the feminine" way and absolutely resolute -- and if she's willing to bear the burden of the disconnect between how the world should be and how the world is, that's her personal undertaking and I wish her strength and cheer and beauty to balance things out.

you put it better than i could have, but yes -- i agree. i have a tendency to live in that disconnected zone so i guess it's not surprising that i would applaud her.

I have no problem with toplessness qua toplessness at all but you can't look at this in a vacuum. She does look fierce but exactly in the way that male comic book artists draw women as fierce, right down to the in-your-face sexualization. I might feel a little more impressed if she didn't land smack dab in the middle of acceptable beauty standard and stood around with her boobs out holding a sign, too. Basically I applaud her message and her fierceness but I feel like the fact that she looks and acts lime what dudes wish feminists looked and acted like (sexy, fierce lady warriors) dilutes the radicalness of her act.

I'm looking at this from an American perspective, though, which is not entirely fair to the woman's intent but I think still works for the purposes of this discussion.

xp pretty much what Laurel said. I definitely don't live in that disconnect, for a lot of reasons.

she can't help what she looks like and whether or not she's attractive
it's the spirit of what she's doing that i like

I'd be interested what men actually DO in that sitch, tbh. You know, I was imagining the worst, some kind of hooting circle that would stay a little way back and enjoy the show, or random outbursts of anger because she's acting against the status quo...but it's also likely that they just put their heads down, tried not to look, and went about their business feeling intruded upon. Which is honestly hilarious. Because that's what they expect women to do, isn't it.

No, but it does matter that she's attractive, because that's the territory that harassers are trying to claim. If she weren't conventionally attractive, she'd represent territory that men are told they shouldn't WANT to claim because it would reflect poorly on THEM if their desires were out of line with the norm. Which is a whole other thing....

it sounds like from the article that there were a group of women doing this, or am i misreading?

Yeah but I didn't say it didn't matter; I said she can't help it.

That's true, and you're right. Maybe they only chose to photo her for the paper for that reason? There are too many filters here with too many different agendas/bodies of influences to really grasp. So maybe it's better just to admire the spirit of the thing. :)

i just think the dynamics of it being a group action are different than were it the action of a sole individual

I know she can't help it. I'm not holding that against her nor do I think it means her convictions are weak or anything but I think it weakens the gesture as activism. That's all.

Though sarahel has a good point abt group dynamics and whether this one woman who fits so well what we want a fierce sexy warrior woman to look like was pictured in the paper for that very reason.