no boys allowed in the room!!!!

i got voted onto the board of the GRCA (girls rock camp alliance) this year (which is a huge trip for me by itself) - it's amazing how many camps there are, and new ones popping up all the time. camps in peru, sweden, iceland, poland...

S. Henn1es -- whom we were talking about at that bar just got a significant music grant and I thought of you! I'm glad we finally met! Next time, we will make time for thrift shopping and jam session.

yeeeess
to follow up on that convo - i got a new bass pedal (single, not double) and it has made a lot of difference, so glad i bought it! also i bought the floor model so i got 10% off :)
also just heard about the abovementioned grant
how about that!!

feel like i need to tell someone this

i just went out to a show where i saw this really tall metalhead dude who had young damon albarn's face?? its possible someone specifically designed this as an elaborate hologram/trap to bring me down

haha! i know that feeling.

oh my god guys i just want to say i love maria bamford and i loved lady dynamite
and related a little too hard to it

i need to watch it, i really love her

http://www.theonion.com/article/man-entirely-different-misogynist-online-real-life-53328

^^this cracked me up, after years of being told "he's different irl" about dudes who are dickbags to me online, this is basically exactly the picture i imagined of them irl

omg i love that the location is chattanooga because that little burg is a hotbed of nazi-cosplaying trolls tbh

oh man i have been on a 'long form' improv team since jan. that is me and 6 dudes and one other woman
already established before i was in it
tbh when i first started on the team i was like 'YOU GUYS CAN'T JUST LIKE MAKE ME A MOM IN EVERY SCENE'
they know i am an sjw feminist whatever
anyway i can't tell if i just need a break or if i am like 'fuck the dudes on this team' but i want to quit this team even tho i love doing that untrendy ol' 'prov

- a dude was drunk calling/texting/messaging to say how much he loves me, how he is in love w/me, would do anything for me, feelings NOT reciprocal, would not stop even tho i was very clear in saying, unflinchingly,'that s not ok please stop' --- apparently he has been doing this to every woman at the theater for like 2.5 years...why not give deal w/him if he is a known problem ??

- the one like BIG rule in improv is basically 'don't straight up shoot the fuck down everything the other ppl set up' aka 'yes, and...' --- i came on as a character in a scene and the guys on stage said, 'oh she's crazy don't listen to anything she says' and i said, like trying to keep it a real reaction, 'stop gaslighting me,' and they said, 'we're not gaslamping you' 'i said gaslighting' 'right we're not gaslamping' like the perfect little synecdoche of being on this team, getting gaslighted about the word 'gaslighting'

- we did a show 2 weeks ago which our coach said was 'the only show he was ever ashamed of' because it was 'a half hour of shitting on women,' which was true...and not fun to be the woman representing that in scenes, like...no really bad stuff you hear about like being a literal sex object on stage but just getting called stupid, fat, ugly, in every scene...a running gag where a guy barfed after everything i said or every time he looked at me...a scene in which a guy was comparing the other woman to an oreo who had been licked too many times...how i tried to deal with this (bcz you can't walk off midshow and just be like 'fuck this'), is i did a scene as robert plant talking to the oreo guy, saying i loved comparing women to objects like cars so maybe he could help me write some new songs, and THAT hurt everyone's feelings...gosh,,,'i'm a feminist, i wasn't trying to objectify anyone'

typing this all up i am definitely like 'oh yeah i should just peace out'

fuuuuucking hell those dudes are really on some 10th grade level ish

no shame in peacing out of that nightmare

Some thoughts: I think that not just peacing out but rage-quitting would be totally justified. But, when you go...

1) call or email the other woman and see if she's up for some 2-person double act comedy riffing

2) if the coach was that embarrassed, hit them up, to see if they know any ppl who are not ütter buffoons who would be up for starting an actually funny improv group?

Hey girls. Some catch-up:

1) Looks like my Mum beat cancer. Yay! She's coming to spend Christmas with me (well in a fancy hotel near me).

2) so it turns out fibroids are only the second worst pain a human body can produce. Number one? Kidney stones. Ow ow ow ow ow.

3) has the thread talked about the Ghostbusters reboot? Like at all? Specifically, on a level of 1 to Garden Party at Sissinghurst, how gay are we for Dr J Holtzmann? I did not know it was possible to somehow combine Lesbian Hair and Physicist Hair but fuck yeah can we get some radioactivity in the air for you and me, baby?

Abbs it's hard enough to find and join stuff like that without it constantly shitting all over you, it's like they've taken that away from you which is totally UNFAIR but agree that it would be good to see if you can find something without the douches?

B: 1) great news!
2) I have indeed heard that. Hope you get it sorted soon.
3) not seen but my friend wrote a big rant on facebook about 'I don't know why it's being lauded as a feminist statement' which I didn't think it was (also don't judge things on marketing) but she found it UNFUNNY

Despite it being a one-joke affair I am enjoying @manwhohasitall on twitter and while I'm at it I think some of this thread might enjoy @paprbckparadise

ABBZ -- re: harassment -- there's an org here that is trying to spread to other cities and may be of some help to you. i read about it in the local weekly and here is their website http://www.goodnightoutcampaign.org

re your troupe members -- idk what to do but to commiserate. the people i have been playing with are great, but we were a last minute add to a show on wednesday (i didn't look up who else was playing before agreeing, it was my first time playing a real nighttime show with this band, i was excited!). when i found out the names of the other bands i was kind of disappointed and depressed (i am sparing details because this is a public forum but you know how to find me for deets) anyway, the result was that 2/3 of the other bands we played with talked about their dicks on stage. they did not make any conversation whatsoever with any of us off stage. (personal policy: as far as talking about yr dick goes, talking about it from the stage prevents your audience from being able to respond if they'd prefer not to hear about it and therefore is not acceptable. in face to face conversation, a person would have the opportunity to respond.) on the upside, i have never seen or heard of any of these people before and don't expect to ever see them again.

glad to hear about your mom branwell! it's good to hear positive stories about people crushing c_____r instead of the other way around

hey thanks y'all, i have like 3 other teams i am on that do not make me angry so i will just stick to them

B'well, grats to you and your mom! <3

"I did not know it was possible to somehow combine Lesbian Hair and Physicist Hair but fuck yeah can we get some radioactivity in the air for you and me, baby?"

I want to BE her oh my jod.
I came into gbusters w low expectations but it blew them out of the water. so fun and funny and exciting! and what a unique disturbing bad guy! i laughed so hard! and i loved the times square scene, seeing emmanuelle and what not in the background....very awesome

i loved leslie jones so hard, people made it sound like she was gonna be 'boo a madea halloween' but she was just a fucking awesome woman is what

also just to say some positive stuff in my silly world of provs, here is an indie team we made that i am v proud of: https://www.instagram.com/p/BI0RZ8zjDjo/?taken-by=tucsonimprov

we did kind of weird scenes (we're all just weird people) and then ended them by someone coming out like rod serling finishing a twilight zone episode, summarizing the scene and adding an ironic twist/punchline. our walk on music was the theme from suspiria. people kind of don't know what the fuck is happening at first but after we get a lot of praise. and it's just fucking fun. and all our injokes are about mayor de blasio and not our failed sex lives.

i got asked to do a panel on being a woman in comedy!!!

i said 'nothing says 'women are funny' like a panel discussion'

then i asked if i could just pee on a photo of christopher hitchens

then i said yes

then i asked if i could just pee on a photo of christopher hitchens

<3 <3 <3

the inevitable moment when the new boss goes straight to a male member of the team to ask him how to set up the laptop and to give the first "what we do here" speech, thus starting the next cycles of assuming:
- the dudes know most about what's going on
- the dudes are most helpful and should be the first call for finding things out and keeping in the loop about new developments
- the dudes are friendliest and good to chat with during breaks and maybe go drinking with
- the dudes are keen and smart and should be given the most new interesting tasks
- the dudes accomplished previous new interesting tasks and should be given more new interesting tasks as they're the ones with new skills and a track record for interesting task success
- the dudes should get training for their new interesting projects and go to conferences and get given money for everything from furniture through software-as-a-service subscriptions to major new hardware, and the women should get none of these, and everyone should just wonder more and more why we bother having these women around because their skills are out of date and they're not engaged with the wider community via conferences and they haven't done an interesting new project in years
- oh hey we need someone to get promoted, that should definitely be a dude because dudes are friendly and keen and smart and know what's going on and look at their great track records!

sorry, I just needed to get that rant out of my head in case the new guy does actually ask any women anything at any point and I accidentally blurt a chunk of it out instead of answering

also apparently I am several months behind on the "no boys" thread, so 1. congrats Abbott, hope the panel went well, you are awesome for telling improv jerks where to go; 2. excited about everyone's GR! news, inspiring; 3. sorry Branwell I did not see your news, I hope things are still looking good though I guess you prob won't see this, good vibes to you <3

bingo aps
hope it was just a one-off and your boss is decent

Missing this thread these days, these times.

same, even though i've always read much more than i posted

otm

hi

I thought about bumping this thread many times. Hi!

I have more white hairs now. Maybe I'll end up with a cool white streak in front?

i had a gross period thing happen a couple days ago.

what happened?

i realized that there weren't any ILTMI threads about menstrual subjects updated in the past couple years

https://medium.com/@emmalindsay/why-does-dating-men-make-me-feel-like-shit-12c25e539021#.2v7n6pql0

When I was dating women, and when I was not dating, I didn’t really stress out about my appearance. Sometimes I looked good, sometimes I looked bad and I feel like I had a fairly objective sense of the whole thing. And, even when I looked bad, I was ok looking bad. It didn’t really bug me. Which is sort of what makes this whole flood of emotions particularly puzzling for me. Since when do I care about not being pretty? And, when I looked in the mirror this morning, I didn’t even look that bad. I was able to see, in an objective sense, that my hair was fine (strangely, better than normal) my skin was fine. In another time or place, I would have looked in the mirror and thought I looked hot.

So, what the hell is going on?

I personally do not find myself in this situation with my current 3-yr relationship with a man. I actually feel liberated from thinking about my body much or wondering how men perceive me because I don't care about the ones other than my bf and he doesn't put any of this on me. In general tho I thought a lot of this article rang with the bell of truth.

Glad for this thread revive. I've been feeling like women are less present on ilx generally, but maybe it's just the subset of threads I follow. Anyone else feel this? It's like ilx has gotten more bro-ier along with, well, 'merica.

tbh one of the reasons i didn't bump this thread was because i thought very few women (aside from myself and a handful of others) were here anymore ;_;

^^^^^yes, me too!

i get ignored enough on a regular basis that i figured it would make me overly sad to be talking to the wall here

I read politics threads obsessively now but I feel less of an urge to actually contribute, which tbh seems to be every other woman too because I can't remember when a non-dude posted in a politics thread. (Sorry to the women I'm invariably forgetting.)

I did have a kind of women's salon at my newly furnished pad last Sun. Only about 4 women came but it was very fulfilling. I want to host women's events regularly now.

I'm here and I don't know why I don't post :/

Shit I'm just glad to hear some of the XX/otherly chromosomed women are still around! It felt like there had been a mass exodus and somehow just a handful were sticking around for whatever reason.

i post in the dumb tv & action movie threads mostly, same as always :D

I'm still here too. Feel like I don't post all that much but I don't know how accurate that is (or indeed how different from the norm, I think I've always been fairly quiet until I start brawling on poll threads).

I'm going through some stuff to do with having a female body but it's really boring to talk about so I won't
it's not the menopause

i am hosting an all-woman jam next sunday, looking forward to it
so far i think 4 people are coming for sure, aiming for 6

including me

I found that medium article interesting, thanks io

I have thoughts about it but they are all barely formed and incoherent and I'm not sure the internet needs to know them

which is how I feel about most things lately, so not so much ILX posting (except for the 7000 times a week I get cranky about my job or my commute and post to the irrationally angry or stupid coworkers threads)

but I am always glad to see this thread on New Answers, hi everyone, hope you're doing OK

eh ok here goes re that article

as an unattractive woman, who is not good at doing traditional woman things including looking good, dressing nice, doing my hair, not being fat, I tend to assume that anyone who puts up with me for any length of time must by definition not be very interested in that stuff, so my longer-term relationships have existed in a state of "I actually feel liberated from thinking about my body much or wondering how men perceive me" (-- in orbit)

but quite often, after a while, even these apparently me-accepting dudes start to drop hints about my weight, about how surely there must be some sport I'd secretly love to take up because surely everyone has some longing to run marathons and swim the channel, about how it looks nice when the salon straightens my hair (to which I fill in the subtext "and I look a bit more like a normal woman for the rest of the day"), etc

on one level it's disappointing, when you feel safely shame-free around a guy and suddenly, bam! shame bomb. but on the other hand maybe I am just oversensitive to hear these things as shaming? I mean maybe they really are just gentle encouragements to try new things, be healthier, or w/e