no boys allowed in the room!!!!

it had nothing to do with any of us being married

having said that, my boyfriend is a big flirt and is still good friends with most of his exes and i would be lying if i said i didn't indulge in stereotypical jealousies from time to time. maybe it is my crazed religious upbringing outing! on the whole i think it has been good for me to confront some of that jealousy.

yeah see I think with Mr Veg he isn't really all that flirtatious, he just is fun to talk to. if that makes sense. Engaging without being all that 'knowing', I guess is the best way to put it. And that's one of the first things that made me fall in love with him, so for me the fact that he has all these other cool women that we hang out with is more like an affirmation that he IS an awesome dude to hang out with

xxxp

Oy.

Yeah, echoing all of that--my parents were obsessed with that "appearance of impropriety" stuff and never being alone in a room with someone of the opposite sex. I wasn't allowed to have male friends over at the house (not that I had any but the one time I almost did, I got in trouble for inviting him in). I think I dismissed it as a weird grown-up thing and was therefore surprised when in college, my work manager's wife publicly accused me of trying to break up her marriage by being friends with her husband (who did have a crush on me and ended up cheating on her and leaving her, but I was COMPLETELY unaware of any of that).

In short I guess I'm saying I think we're all on our own in deciding how to navigate this one in our lifetimes.

Sometimes women seek out the company of other women because of patriarchy, or because they are actively excluded or dissuaded from inhabiting "male" spaces.

And sometimes women seek out the company of other women because the company of other women is inherently pleasurable.

That's a separate issue from a lot of what is being discussed here: the pressure of coupled women to drop male friendships, etc. But I don't have much to say about that.

I've told this story before but my mother once made me go with her to our church on a weekday so she could rehearse for a vocal solo with a male accompanist IN THE SANCTUARY OF AN UNLOCKED CHURCH. Even though it's a public place, they couldn't be "alone together" there. And my dad made me go sit in his office while he met with a (female) draftsperson to work on an engineering drawing outside business hours, despite being right in front of a giant picture window that was visible from one of the busiest streets in town. That was fine with me, I just wanted uninterrupted time to read, but I was like, you guys, this is ridiculous.

Then again my town was small enough that someone really might notice that your car and so-and-so's car were parked in the same parking lot together.

A lot of my friends growing up were boys (from church) and no-one really cared what we did until one time one guy's family had mentioned to him that another family member had been accused of inappropriate behaviour of some kind when alone with a girl so maybe it would be best not to be alone in a room together to avoid any danger of that (behaviour or allegations of). I guess we hung out in a group most of the time anyway so can't remember if we took much notice.

And sometimes women seek out the company of other women because the company of other women is inherently pleasurable.

This reminds me, I went back to reading The Beauty Myth and finally got through the Culture chapter (which was kind of "duh") and the Religion chapter (which was a little less mainstream but not exceptional) and into the Sex chapter, which immediately went into my brain and hit REBOOT and I still haven't taken in half of it. But right now I'm reminded of:

But we long to be loved the way we were, if we were lucky, as children: every toe touched, each limb exclaimed upon with delight, because it was ours alone, incomparable. As adults, we seek that release from the scale of comparison in romantic love: In the eyes of one's true love, even the most jaded wish to believe, each of us will be "the most beautiful woman," because we will be truly seen and known for ourselves. The beauty myth, though, gives us the opposite prospect ... by having to "present" herself to her lover as "beautiful," the woman remains not fully known. ... Insofar as he will never know her [when she is not "beautified"], the man will never fully know her; and insofar as she cannot trust him to love her with her "beauty" in eclipse, she can never fully trust him.

Sometimes you just want to be encircled with being seen and known and loved with no effort wasted on worrying about beauty or comparison, and in this world for most of us that means a circle of women.

oh yah, reminds me of my fave onion article:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/female-friends-spend-raucous-night-validating-the,27446/

growing up around a lot of mormons -- all i can say is that mormons are weird.

probably my closest male friend in high school was someone I had been in a playgroup with when we were 2-3 yrs old, so my parents found him completely non-threatening, because their strongest memory of him was fighting with me about who got to wear the kitty tail when we were 3.

girls rule!
boyz drool!

Shoes for LL:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a9593937ff753acc762ba1c09ab7b4de/tumblr_mwh9opGeFW1so7nuho1_400.jpg

There was a link to a website with more info about these shoes, but the link leads to nowhere. So they are mystery shoes, but they remind me of you.

those shoes rule

Yeah that is some amazing footwear!!

yeah holy crap they are rad

hanging out with women is inherently pleasureable. Nowadays I find my male friendships fading away, and new ones hard to foster - it seems if I am not a sex object to said man, there's no interest on his side in a friendship. If I AM a sex object, he wants to be friends... but will sext me out of the blue at some juncture.

so this year, i got a radical punk dayplanner that includes a "mystrual calendar" - and it turns out my cycle is pretty damn regular -- but only 26 days, as opposed to 28 -- this was after an episode late last year when i was convinced i might be knocked up because my period was late but i had merely forgotten when i had last it

*mynstrual not mystrual

I track mine on Monthly Info. I have a 27 day cycle with a standard deviation of two days!

I use an app called "My Days" and am surprisingly regular considering I spent years thinking I wasn't. My average length is 28 days. Today is the 17th day in my cycle and I should get my next period on or about May 11th. I love this fucking app.

i don't keep track of my cycle at all -- these days i know it's coming from my general mood + the convenient discomfort of mittelschmerz

Me neither! I have to laugh when the doc asks for the date of my LMP, I'm usually like, "Sometime in..the last 3 weeks? I'm pretty sure."

i used to just rely on my bank records for transactions that probably included tampons

That's very accountant-y of you.

hahahah

I jnow when it's coming based on zits sprouting and bad attitude, but its usually 30 days.

i use the period tracker app, and i have a 28 day cycle and my next period will start 2 days into my honeymoon which is also my birthday!! which is only really crappy considering menstrual onset engenders a lupus/MCTD flare every single time for me. so i'll have one honeymoon day of bad pain and fatigue but hey, get used to it, husband. lol.

on the bright side, maybe the stress of marriage and graduation will delay my period.

i feel like this is a very Job Robinson post so id like to say something positive about my life which is that some of my BFFs and i are organizing a knoxville rock camp for girls this summer, and we've got mad funding, equipment, and a location all sorted out - registration for volunteers and students starts soon and i'm v excited.

that is so cool!!
you must have insane organizational skills. that's a lot to pull off!

Wow! Rock Camp For Girls thing sounds super-amazing! Well done!

(also good luck on yr honeymoon, ugh for day of crappiness and pain)

Rock camp! Awesome!

I want to send Ivy to rock camp. She can probably hold drum sticks.

I wished that rock camp for girls had been around when i was growing up. A friend of mine works for the one here. I am unclear on whether there's a national organization that the regional ones are subsidiaries of or whether they are all independent and are kind of like a franchise or ...?

gah no kidding
i was sent to babysitting camp and horse camp :-/

I was sent to church camp, she announced, much to the surprise of no one.

I went to a week-long Elks camp. I was 12. I had my period. It was terrible.

I was supposed to go to sleep away camp one year but I was too scared to be away from home for that long so I chickened out and never went. lol @ me. I went to day camp every summer and was a counselor there until college though and that was pretty fun but I bet nowhere near as awesome as rock camp.

i got hives at horse camp and everyone thought it was because i was allergic to horses but it turns out that it was just because i hated camp so much that i broke out in hives

I went to camp to do archery. I think I was about 14 or 15? It was me and a gang of 12 year old boys. I kicked their asses, basically.

parents didn't send their kids to camp where i was from. i think i went to a day camp once? they had a banana slip n slide and we made ice cream from scratch. that's all i remember. Oh and I went to "nerd camp" one summer, which was actually cool.

I went to a 7-week girls camp in Maine for many years, lol WASP lyfe

most summers i would go "actual" camping with my parents at Big Sur for at least a weekend

I wished that rock camp for girls had been around when i was growing up. A friend of mine works for the one here. I am unclear on whether there's a national organization that the regional ones are subsidiaries of or whether they are all independent and are kind of like a franchise or ...?

― sarahell, Wednesday, April 30, 2014 4:02 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a national coalition that a lot of them are affiliated with, but not all. Ours is and some of us went to the national conference this year which was awesome. The theme was trans allyship and one of the dorms was named Beyonce. We stayed in Rihanna iirc

Yeah, camp was not a thing where I grew up either. The Elks camp was because my best friend's dad was the president of the Elks or some shit so we got to go for free.

There were "day camp" things but those were really just classes and band camp, but that was just summer band practice. Camp. The word has no meaning.

xp omg

I'm really focused on making our rock camp help attendees break through gates that keep girls and women out of music, or parts of music production that girls are kept out of sometimes - things like gear, electronics, recording, tech stuff. I think that's so important and overlooked. I also want to have a women's camp or series of workshops to teach skills in these areas to grown women who feel intimidated by tech/gear stuff

that is so awesome

Oh, I'm so glad. Because that was so often (at least in my generation) treated as some kind of a barrier to female musicians. And I was lucky in that my Dad was a soundman, and he taught me to have no fear of the tech/gear stuff. But I think it's really important to teach young women "this stuff is not intimidating; this is how you do it!" And encourage that sense of experimentation without that whole oft-repeated "this stuff is scary; ergo, girls will be rubbish at it" load of crap, so that they end up getting familiar with it, and putting in the time to mess around with it and learn it.

I have never been to an anything camp because that is not really a Britishes thing. Only the Girl Guides/Boy Scouts/etc do that over here, and the local Brownies which I was in v briefly never went camping. I did go to a one-night trek-and-hostel trip with a Christian youth group when I was 12 and it was horrible: my period + mean gurlz who laughed at me all weekend + couldn't sleep bcz massively uncomfortable dorm bed with bright lights and snoring

My coworkers' kids all go to "rock school" every week and I am jealous, nothing like that back in my day. I like to pretend maybe if rock school had existed I could've been someone! but it does sound like it is a lot of boys trying to be ~hard~ so I probably would not have got on enormously well (my life: "hi I am into boyish things why will none of these boys talk to me"), so I think roxy's rock camp for girls is super awesome and I hope many girls will get the courage to start kickass bands from it

we started a short lived weekend workshop version of it several years ago, and it didnt last for various reasons - we've been building and planning til we can do a full fledged camp which is now happening. anyway, one band formed out of those workshop days called the Pinklets, and they still (3 or so years later) gig regularly, have tons of songs, and are completely overbooked constantly. they are really good, too! all about 10, i'd say. the drummer might be 8.

this is them: http://www.knoxville.com/news/2013/may/09/knoxville-music-pinklets-vestival/

That makes me so so so very happy.