no boys allowed in the room!!!!

E, love to you, and carl agatha absolutely OTM re: getting people with their capacity for moral thought and action still intact into positions of responsibility.

Someone posted this on twitter yesterday, seems salient to earlier discussion that was had here:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/20/mood-swings-more-than-pms-contraceptive-pill-alice-roberts

I have never, ever been able to take the contraceptive pill because I found it fucks with my mood disorder. I always wish there were a way to explore these experiences without degenerating into "periods make women be crazzzeeeeee" tropes. :-/ There were a couple of sentences in that piece that really hit me hard.

I turned down the offer of hormonal treatment for fibroids, for many of the same reasons. Surgeon consultant merely looked bemused when I suggested there ~might~ be a problem with his recommendation. GRRRR.

I will never, ever, ever, EVER take the BCP again. I took it for like 9 months in 2003 and it made me feel... terrible. I am "estrogen dominant" as it is without the help of synthetic hormones.

Bcp and all hormonal bc makes me into an emotionless zombie. Not good. Then there's always a weird fallout when I come off them.

I am currently 5 days late for my period and freaking out. I've felt like I was in lupus flare for a month - pregnancy might explain that?! :/

Eeep!

Pee on a stick, rox. It's been long enough and not knowing won't do you any good.

^^^

Agree, also whoa!!

I peed on a stick shortly after posting. Lol at that sentence. It was negative and I'm super relieved but also worried it's just too early. BUT there are also a milli reasons it might be late (stress and weird diet and sleep)

Most HPTs are pretty sensitive these days and if you're five days late I think it's probably not too early. You can get another just to make sure but it should show by this point afaik.

also yay not pregnant

And thank you for your kind words the other day. I don't think I ever got around to saying that.

Yeah, agreed that five days should do the trick. Also pregnancy symptoms don't usually start until after you miss your period (says the woman who spent three years googling every sniffle, abdominal twinge, and zit experienced between Doing It Day and Period Expectation Day for "signs of very early pregnancy") so the lupus flare is more likely to be a lupus flare than a baby on board.

And yes, congratulations!

everybody out!! that's me to my uterus

jk there is no current tenant

*fist bump re: empty utes*

Yeah!

http://www.moparts.org/moparts/picture/ute/66ute.jpg

no boys or girls allowed in the womb
(sorry)

Out of context my post is like "Congratulations on your lupus flare!"

Phew! (But also sucks to yr lupus flare)

[x] days babby free!

this is weird... but eveytime I have a pregnancy scare, I am sorta bummed when it's negative. Whiich is... ODD. Because I would be FREAKING THE FUCK OUT if it were positive.

Same. I think mine is always that I'm bummed that an easy explanation for my weird symptoms is escaping me and I have to persue another line of questioning. Lol. And I too would be freaking the fuck out if it were pos!

Apols for typos

I've had an IUD for so long I can't remember the last time I had a pregnancy scare. I was probably like 10 years ago!

Sometimes I worry that the fact that I've never gotten accidentally knocked up is some kind of indicator that I'm infertile or that I will be by the time (if) I get around to having kids. :(

That said, while I'd be a little disappointed I've never been one of those people who wanted to be a mom their whole life or who saw that as their most important achievement. I think I'd be pretty happy fostering or adopting or even not having kids at all and doing something awesome like traveling a lot or living in a beach town on some island cause why the hell not.

I do wonder if there is such a potential fertility test and if I would've taken it. I kind of had the same attitude as you re kids not being everything. Btw I never really had a preg scare but it was no indicator of having any trouble in my case...

I always thought I was infertile (I mean, how could someone as anaemic as me ever get pregnant?) until I got knocked up. Boy, was that not fun. Don't ever take fertility or infertility for granted without ... I dunno, some kind of proof.

No, I know. It's just something I worry/think about because worrying is sorta what I do.

Kinder - there is a test that you can have done that measures Ovarian Reserve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovarian_reserve) but whether or not it's clinically useful is debatable as it measures the cpacity of the ovary to provide egg cells that are capable of fertilization but there are other factors that can throw off the results complicate the whole business in a lot of other ways.

http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/08/16/humrep.der271.full

"There is only one study exploring AMH for natural fecundability in women of reproductive age (Steiner et al., 2011) and concluded that early follicular phase AMH appears to be associated with natural fertility in general population. However, this study was based only on 100 women and had a short follow up of 6 months. They have not even tested if there was any evidence of tubal or male factor infertility. Moreover, odds of pregnancy had very wide CI (0.08–0.91) to be convinced about the results.

A normal AMH level may be reassuring at the time but we do not know how long will it take for AMH to decline in an individual. Moreover, normal AMH does not guarantee conception even in an IVF setting, let alone general population. It is also unclear as to how frequently AMH levels should be tested and at what level should one be worried about rushing for interventions for fertility treatment. Unless these questions are answered and we have a validated long-term data on a general population for prediction of conception, it is premature to use AMH as a measure of long-term fertility (Broekmans et al., 2006)."

Still, I've read that some people/docs do recommend having it done if you're interesting in having kids and over 35 just to get a vague idea of where you're at in terms of your egg sitch. Idk - I might mention it to my GP the next time I see her and asks what she thinks.

I am pretty much infertile due to PCOS... until that's corrected, at least. Or... something.

I was writing an email to a colleague and explaining why we did something a certain way in one case when we did it differently in a similar case and I noticed that I kept starting my sentences with, "My understanding is..." and "My take on this is..." and "From what I can tell..." and "I think in this case..." Basically softening my explanation. And then I was like, wait no let me try something and I deleted all of that soft pedaling language and just stated my opinion to him like it was a god damn fact. "We did this here because X and we do this here because Y."

It feels exhilarating (and terrifying because LOL what if I'm wrong?).

I basically just channeled Malory Ortberg of The Toast and another colleague of mine (a dude) who projects this unassailable confidence that he is right about everything he says (and somehow manages not to be a total assbutt, somehow. He's actually a really great guy. Maybe he just confidently projects that....). LEAN IN, MOTHERFUCKERS.

It probably helps that I'm drinking beer while working.

Reminds me of a great blog post explaining to female grad students their most common self-sabotaging moves during job negotiations: http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/03/07/stop-negotiating-like-a-girl/

Yeah, this is Thought Catalogue and therefore, ugh, but this is not completely awful:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/nicole-tarkoff/2014/07/5-types-of-women-who-arent-in-relationships-and-why/

(I mean, why we even have to have a "this is why you're single" and go "WOW, those reasons are sensible" instead of "because you old and ugly and a total bitch who the fuck would love you (buy these products to make you less hag-like)" usual crap.)

I guess I semi-accidentally went on a date on Sunday and jesus h christ, that was just such a crash course in "why I don't date", especially why I don't date hyper-masculine heterosexual dudes, like, after hanging out with an amazing friend on Saturday, I just felt like "you know what, I'm just going to hang out with my friends for the rest of time, that is so less stressful on my nerves."

You can get used to (in a good way!) a certain level of understanding and familiarity with topics. Where you don't have to explain over, and over again, what "non-binary gender" or something like that means. Because it is fucking exhausting to have those conversations over and over, with people in the ~world at large~, and you do get to a point where, in your private life, you do not want to have to have those kinds of conversations any more.

I mean, I suppose it went well enough, considering. But it's just frustrating when you try, delicately, to explain the complexity of non-binary gender, and non-binary sexuality, and someone just collapses it down to this single-dimension "oh, you're a lesbian." And, y'know, no. I am not a lesbian. It is somewhat more complicated than that. But, I guess, if dude is so black and white binary thinking that he's going to reduce it down to "you're a lesbian", then fine. I'm a lesbian. Even if that's the opposite of what I said. Maybe that will stop him trying to touch me in public. (Though I don't really appreciate dude shouting same in front of my neighbours, around whom I am very, very private.

Sorry, this is not really the place, is it, and this is not the topic we are on, I just needed to kind of express some dissatisfaction in some way. :-(

While I do think it serves me well to speak more confidently in my job, just FYI I don't think "leaning in" is the answer to women's woes in the workforce or society, nor do I think that speaking more confidently is some kind of panacea. Nor do I think that the problem with society is that women don't speak confidently, particularly given that doing so often gets women (and especially women of color (and the more intersectional identities someone claims, the riskier it is to deviate from the manner of business communication deemed appropriate for your presentation/station)) labeled as difficult or bitchy or manly or whatever else for doing so.

It's just something I've been trying to work on in my professional life and I felt drunk with confidence (and beer).

I mean, it's definitely a conversation to have and like I said, it's something that I think is good for me to do right now but my experience as a cis 41-year-old nice white lady with a law degree and a closet full of "gender appropriate" business clothes is far from universal.

You know, there's a lot to be said for communicating clearly and confidently, and removing qualifiers, and learning to negotiate clearly and effectively, and that whole "negotiate like a dude" thing has some good points to it.

But that is not the whole of the story, because many times, when a person-who-is-read-as-female does "negotiate like a dude" (i.e. clearly and with confidence and without qualifiers) the chances are non-negligible that she will be punished for being "not feminine enough." So it can be a real lose-lose proposition. You can be as confident as you like, but if the person at the other end is ~threatened by confident, clearly negotiating women~ the whole thing is still not going to work. (And it's still somehow going to be seen as the woman's fault.)

So, y'know, I advocate that it is a good thing to learn, and still a good thing to do. But "women changing" without men changing in complement is not the magical solution to sexism.

So it's great that you do it, carl agatha! I am not trying to diminish your strategy, which sounds great, and positive, and good.

(In short, I was agreeing with you. Sorry, it's just too hot to think here!)

Completely OTM.

That's the problem with pretty much every "how to succeed in business as a woman" book/article out there. They assume everyone has the credibility afforded to able-bodied cis white women with an acceptable gender presentation when that is absolutely not the case.

Speaking of Being Female While Working, let's play Bingo!

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jul/30/10-sexist-scenarios-women-deal-work-ignored-maternity-risk-everyday-sexism

1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8, for sure.

6 was a recurring sketch on Smack the Pony, which I thought was a satyrical joke until it happened to me repeatedly (more often than not, not in the workplace TBF))

Where is "important email/meeting invitation goes to all the men in the team and none of the women, even if it affects everyone or it's their specialist subject"?

Keep getting that one here. Don't know if it's more annoying when you know the sender genuinely thinks you don't (need to) know/do anything in that "oh, you exist. what do you even do here anyway" kind of way, or when someone important asks how come you don't know about this thing "everyone" has been talking about for weeks, do keep up there.

My new boss is actually a woman and so far manages to get in on all these conversations by seniority so I was sort of wondering if there was a suitably tactful way to say "hey, we feel a bit ignored sometimes, so if you ever find yourself being the only woman at the table please could you ask yourself if there's anyone else who might be useful to have there?"

PS I found recent fertility talk and the pill/moods talk interesting and relevant to my recent concerns, just my replies got way too tl;dr or tmi and I deleted them, but thanks - thanks in particular for the pill/moods/side-effects article. I might come back to them when I feel, uh, pithier.

Realized that I haven't talked with any of my girlfriends outside of responding to texted pics of their kids in months. (Aside from the irl visit two of them made to visit me in June) and it's bumming me out so much. I don't feel bad about my life, but I miss relating to them so much that I can barely stand it. Sorry for emo-bursting but I had to put this somewhere and there's nowhere else I could put it.

<3

thanks
i just wrote out and deleted a long blabby post but just thanks :)
i appreciate it and hope everyone understands that i don't expect my friends to be able to have time for me, i simply lament that i feel like they're slipping away (geographical circumstances don't help) and it bums me out.

oh man

while i was in europe i got to go to zurich, where my oldest bff lives, and our other close friend from high school came over from the UK where she has lived for the last 5 years or so. the 3 of us haven't hung out together in 10 years, and bc of the time zone thing, we really talk/skype. they're also not really facebook/email type ppl so our contact times are few and far between.

the first day and half together was fucking MAGIC - we talked non stop for over 9 hours before finally going to sleep, then spent the next day in our pjs, still talking, eating junk food, watching a movie and braiding each other's hair/painting each other's nails. i was so happy, the kind of happy i haven't felt in a long time, bc i don't ever get this kind of girl time anymore.

then on the 3rd day the subject of weight/body issues/diets/food came up and jesus fucking christ. the things my bff was saying were just awful (she is slim, has a conventionally bangin' bod, has basically always been within 5lbs of the same weight as long as i've known her, doesn't have food issues or body issues). it was so depressing to hear the things coming out of her mouth. i tried to reason with her but she thinks fat people are basically lazy and that it's as simple as calories-in-calories-out.

tbh it tainted the last day and half i spent with my friends, and i was kinda glad to go back to paris :/

*rarely skype or talk

xxpost - i meant to follow up my corny symbol with actual words but lol i spaced & look like a dork now ha

LL I know it's not yr nature but I want you to know that it is so right to want yr friends to have time for you

to me it is unavoidable, natural & you are 100% allowed to have those feels even if they feel mean or needy!

which is to say as a person on the interwebs that an occasional blabbing about yr needs as a human in the world is welcome & perhaps necessary & not necess delete-worthy

not that you need permission etc

short version: that feeling sucks & i can relate

^^^