no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Sarahel - I'm sure you're fine but you probably should go just to make sure. 10 years is a long time.

You should go just to make sure. Then eat your favorite thing for dinner or something similar so you associate going to the gyn with something positive!

Jenny did I make this up or were you talking about a golden speculum award recently??

that's a good idea, Jenny! when i finally went to the dentist after 15 yrs, i used trips to my fave bookstore and record store (which are both a few blocks from the dentist's office) as a motivator.

xp Why yes I was. My gyn received such a thing last Thursday at a gala fundraising event for a women's health org on whose board I am.

That sentence is tortured. Let me try again. I'm on the board of a women's health org. They had a fundraiser on Thursday. They gave my gyn a golden speculum award.

I wish you were in Chicago, sarahel, because this org gives the best annual exams in at least a tri-state area. I'm not even kidding! Also: sliding scale from $5 to whatever the high end is.

OB-GYN is usually my favorite/least stressful health appointment of the year. I just have to make sure I see a woman. I saw a guy OB-GYN in May and I realized I have a real problem with authority figures who are male saying basically anything to do with my reproductive organs. Totally my own problem but a real problem nonetheless. It was a meltdown. Anyway, I rescheduled.

one nice thing about Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, btw, is that I didn't feel out of place walking down the street and book-shopping with a partially swollen face and a dazed expression.

I PCP does my annual and he's a guy and I'm fine with that. I've had women too - either one is OK with me but I understand that some ppl have a firm preference.

My PCP not "I"

Oh, btw I googled "Feminist Therapy Boston" today and found a place not too far from my home. I emailed and left messages for two of their therapists. Hope I hear back soon.

I was biased against the male OB-GYN from the start because his office had all these weird '90s dolls of Hillary Clinton as a doctor in boxes with all these messages like "public health care? wtf?" on them. (This guy was at a clinic primarily funded by state Medicaid patients like me btw.) And the first thing he said when he saw me chart was a comment on how I'd had an abortion. We had a fight over whether I could get an IUD or not. He agreed to try and then asked, "Do you still want an IUD?" in the middle of insertion when it was clear it wasn't working. Totally condescending. He wrote me an RX for pills and I had to fight with him to fill it at the pharmacy of my choice. So that visit was a clash of two stubborn asses who were both biased against one another from the start.

ENBB, I hope that works out! That is very cool.

Abbot that doc is a huge asshole.

HEY DID YOU KNOW? Glitter nail polish is like IMPOSSIBLE to remove! I have been sitting here with acetone soaked cotton balls and aluminum foil wrapped around my fingers, per this - http://hellobeautiful.com/style-beauty/hellobeautifulstaff2/how-to-remove-glitter-nail-polish/, and it still took an act of god to get this shit off my fingers.

haha yeah i stopped using any heavy glitter nail polish years ago because of just this! it is nail ruiner! i still use ones with "sparkle" or "sheen" or whatever they're calling it, but that's easier to remove.
ooh i need to paint my nails!

I really liked having painted nails (I hardly ever do) so I bought some pretty pink polish and planned to paint them tonight but I'm like exhausted from taking that shit off and now disgusted with the whole endeavor.

My nails are still shaped really nicely from the manicure, though.

Ooh, maybe that will be my post-GRE treat this weekend. I get pedicures sometimes but I've never had a manicure. What nail colour goes with v v dark purple almost-black toes wot like I have atm?

I'm trying to decide between black or raisin for my next nail painting.

I'm trying to decide between black or raisin for my next nail painting.

I've always thought that I didn't particularly like diamonds, and I choose a green sapphire for my engagement ring. But my MIL was here for the weekend and she gave me a family heirloom diamond ring and OMG IT IS SO PRETTY AND SPARKLY and now I feel like a silly girl :/

embrace it! what is life for if not to be occasionally giddy and silly??

Articles of interest in No Bad Self Talk 2012:

http://jezebel.com/5875219/cho-mad-twitter

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2012/01/an-alphabet-of-fat-cures-strychnine-pills-vibrators-and-hope.html

I love Margaret Cho. I've seen her live a couple times - she's always amazing.

I saw her with my Grandpa once! :D

Fuuuuuuck. That is good.

I've found some great girly tips on this website, ladies!!

http://lifedeathtoptips.tumblr.com/post/12785741553/sanitarycurves

oh my god

That site is pretty hilarious anyway, but that is just... mind-boggling.

Okay, why are you posting that here? I couldn't get beyond 'person who does/teaches yoga likes shit song, think that validates everything', but why here rather than the dedicated thread?

did we forget to mookieproofproof the thread again?

i found that post p interesting but maybe it's better to discuss on a thread where boys are actually allowed in the room, eh.

I sometimes wish there were an all female secret board on ILX whose members were at least as actively controlled as 77 to stop this nonsense. I know I've talked about this with Ms Agatha offboard.

Are women here unhappy with this thread being women-only? For it to be strictly women was how I've always interpreted it, but just1ne and a few others have said things showing you disagree/don't want that.

I like having beauty tips AND romants ish AND feminist discourse AND James Franco in one place, but I also think a women-only space is valuable, and that would be my choice for tt. Y/N? Thoughts about starting a new thread to that end, if it isn't this one?

Sorry, Lech, I know this is torture for you! If we need a more defined thread, for chrissake let's agree on that and move on.

my take on it is that about half of us like the idea of a woman-only thread and about half of us aren't partic bothered one way or the other. i would be into a new thread + would post in it.

Yeah, I basically don't care one way or the other; where private thoughts are concerned, I am more protective of who's reading than who's posting. If everyone can read it anyway, I don't feel the need to formally exclude anyone. But that's me.

I habitually exclude everyone by not saying 85% of the things I am thinking (by choice, not because I am intimidated or w/e)

i have never been a huge participant in this thread (or any thread that isn't a cooking thread, for the past several months) so my opinion should probably not carry as much weight as those who are. there have been topics on this thread i am interested in. and others i am completely bored by or bothered by. i don't think i've ever been one to want any women-only thing though. i am not opposed to having men comment on and discuss women's issues, and i think it can be good a lot of the time. but i have a personal philosophy, increasingly as i get older, that is less gendery.

yeah i will fall into the habit of imagining this thread as a woman-only space and then remember, oh yeah, dudes can read it, so, it's true, it's hard to imagine creating a truly women's-only space on ilx (or the internet?) at all.

xp

faves thing about looking at this thread as a mod is seeing the dozens of cancelled out posts of men saying 'hey why come i no post here' – continuing that fine tradition
http://www.emilymagazine.com/?p=837 is the link in question

i think i would participate in a thread that discussed feminism and allowed men. or like a book thread. i am not that interested in feminist blogs for the past few years.

since I started student teaching this total Australian shepherd side has come out that I think is hilarious
nip nip

lol i just searched ilx for a nonblog "feminism" thread to revive for harbl and the results were hilarious.

It's fairly obvious from Just1ne's contributions to our many lovely clusterfuck threads that her problem is actually a personal one with me. And she is perfectly entitled to feel that way and express it however she wants, but it is fast becoming mutual.

I *do* want a woman only space, and one where it's romants issues AND feminist discourse and *hot boy du jour* all at the same time, like what "womens magazines" should be. But maybe that space isn't going to be on ILX and I should just dealwithit.gif

I think at one point I was surprised that people were objecting to men posting itt because I thought it was started in a light-hearted NO BOYS ALLOWED! sort of girls-only clubhouse sort of way and not in a serious safe space way. The safe space thing is sort of weird to me because it's not like men can't read the thread. I do respect the fact that other people feel such a thread is/would be useful although since it would never truly be women-only, and because I don't really feel an overwhelming need for such a space anyway, it's not a huge deal for me one way or the other.

it totally did start in that way; i just think it's become different things to different people over time.

I was actually gonna start a "Female Gaze / Queer Gaze" to have pictures of hott dudes and also discussion of hott dudes and societal conceptions of male hottness, but done in a way which *assumed* a female or queer gaze to start with. Not that straight men would be excluded, not at all, but that they would be exposed to the topsy-turvy experience (that all women and queer men face every day) of experiencing a world that does not cater exclusively their gaze and their desires. Because I think that would 1) be fun and gratifying and entertaining to look at/discuss boys and their hottness but 2) might also be an interesting social experiment and everyone might learn something.

But that is not the same as having an actual safe space where you do not have to deal with the fear of having to deal with ~all the awful stuff that Men On The Interweb Do~ (yes, even our nice, sweet ILX men who are princes compared to the wilds of other internet forums) or having to deal with that constant, reflexive fear that I feel like I live under. I get that many of you think this makes me an awful human being because I have this need to have a place to retreat to, but, y'know, I can't tell other people how to interpret my actions in ways that aren't automatically totally awful.

And the problem isn't so much men reading, it really is men who feel the *need* to stick their oar in, even when they've been told not to.

It's almost like, I can't stop people from looking at me, but I sure as hell can stop them from shouting at me, or touching me.

For me the point is not that content is secret, so I don't mind men reading it. I just don't want to hear their voices/opinions on every single topic esp if it is in fact about gender issues that I don't feel like having explained away or having excuses made for, because they have the rest of the world/internet for that.

Starting out lighthearted would have been fine if dudes respected it, but when they don't, it does force anyone who cares to get a little heavier on the topic than we might have liked. And that "policing" job is BORING AND A BUMMER, which is ANOTHER reason I resent men making it necessary.

This is now feeling awful, and even though I have typed out about 5 replies to that other thread, and then deleted them because I thought they would be interpreted the wrong way and ~cause trouble~, I still feel like I've made everything go horrible and wrong and got everything I didn't want to have to deal with, just through trying to say, in a polite and non-confrontational way, "can you please not do this thing, this is why it bothers me?"

are you on 77? there is a "girls and gays ws too" thread there. but also, you could start a woman-only thread with that post and see what happens from there? i don't think there's any such thing as a safe space on the internet or in the world for that matter, and yes, men might still be reading it, but i still think it would be cool? i'd be down; it seems like Laurel and Jenny would also be down?

For me the point is not that content is secret, so I don't mind men reading it. I just don't want to hear their voices/opinions on every single topic esp if it is in fact about gender issues that I don't feel like having explained away or having excuses made for, because they have the rest of the world/internet for that.

Also, THIS, over and over and over again.

Laurel you always manage to express things so perfectly, and succinctly, and smartly, and also in a way that doesn't come across as blunt and sharp as I know that I do.

Please can you just keep saying them, and I will just say "cosign what Laurel said" and keep my big ugly mouth shut.

I am not on 77. Given the history of 77 and stuff that went down in the Bad Old Days of ILX, I would not feel comfortable being on 77.

I know, I know, everyone can tell me "but it's not like you think it is, at all!" to their heart's content, but it's like... if you have experienced concentrated nastiness from certain people in the open part of a forum, just every instinct I have says "do not go into a closed off part with them" same as, if someone pulls your hair in the classroom with everyone there, there's no way you're gonna follow them into the toilets. It's just not a good idea.