no boys allowed in the room!!!!

that's what i mean about how these things (what we carry) divide us -- it makes me sad
maybe someone can write a war novel about it and call it "the things we carried" :)

i just meant on a lanyard because i frequently 1) lose my keys and 2) have to carry them everywhere at work

I liked that article! Generally I have on my person:
-change of clothes for baby
-change of clothes for boy
-nappies, mat, cotton pads, nappy disposal bags
-hand sanitiser
-baby paracetamol
-plastic fork, small plastic tub
-wallet
-keys
-large muslin
-sun cream, sun hats
-dummies
-several snacks
-3 x sunglasses
-plastic bags
-2 x water bottles
- lip balm
- wipes, paper towels
- a small child

The few times I go out BY MYSELF oh God the luxury
-wallet
-keys
-lipbalm
-phone
-tissues
-a spring in my step

What’s a dummy?

pacifier

It's so hot I'm wearing skirts a lot right now and half of them don't have pockets and it's a total ballache

Bag contains:

- sunglasses
- lipstick
- keys
- wallet
- various charger cables
- a portable charger
- usually a couple of Carmexes & some other lip balms
- water (metal keep cool type bottle)
- a number of sanitary products
- paracetamol
- headphones (Bluetooth)
- my plenue
- spare pair of earphones & adapter in case I am ever caught on the hop on public transport heaven forbid
- big hairbrush
- folding hairbrush with a mirror
- mascara
- at least five sachets of salt and sugar that I never use, why do I even have these
- glasses case & lenses
- tissues
- face wipes

Despite the obvious evidence to the contrary, I don’t consider myself to carry “a lot of stuff”

My sister has recently taken to going bag-free and just carries a card/keys/phone on her. This is too far for me, but I do this on holidays & it’s so freeing.

i hate wearing things around my neck

At work we're meant to wear a proximity fob for the doors plus our ID badge on a neck lanyard and I haaate it because when I walk up and down the corridors the fob bounces from tit to tit with each step and, well, nope. So I just stuff them in my pockets.

I think I am at both extremes of the carrying stuff debate, bcz every day I drag a rucksack ridiculously full of I don't even remember what to work, so heavy and full and so many things like empty shopping bags and once-useful bits of paper and spare socks and pills and sanitary products which have rattled around in there for so long that they're distinctly on the unsanitary side now

but if I go to town for a few hours to see a gig or meet a friend for lunch I quite often don't take a bag, just fill my pockets (keys, wallet, phone, tissues, maybe a hair tie - though my wallet is p bulky and I like a good supply of tissues so I do end up with conspicuously bulging pockets, NAGL I guess but then being me is generally NAGL so I don't really care) - I do sometimes feel a bit weird and underprepared meeting my good lunch friend who always has a massive shoulder bag and then I rock up with just 4 jeans pockets and maybe a jacket pocket too

What if when you needed a tissue, someone else had one for you and you didn't need to carry them? What if when you had a headache, you said, "Hey, does anyone have an Advil?" and someone did?

i wonder if i thought i could rely on anyone else to have the things if i would carry less stuff around.

????

After all these years, you are my people. YOU KNOW ME. You know that I love being the person who has sunblock and clean plastic cutlery and a salt packet and a highlighter and dental floss and a gluten-free snack bar in my bag. I can embrace that.

But you know what I find interesting? When I put essentials in my pockets (when my clothes have pockets which is another topic) and I go out hands-free...I feel more masculine. In a good way--a performative way--I hope it's okay to say, kind of in a butch way? I'm pretty sure I read as femme to ppl bc I'm comfortable wearing dresses and being "cute" but inside I don't feel particularly femme, and getting my wallet and my keys out of my jeans pockets makes me feel like I'm doing a whole other thing.

.I feel more masculine. In a good way--a performative way--I hope it's okay to say, kind of in a butch way? ... getting my wallet and my keys out of my jeans pockets makes me feel like I'm doing a whole other thing.

yeah, it kinda is? I mean, that's who I "was" for about a decade -- though unless it was stupid hot I would keep these things in the pocket of my coat/leather jacket -- for many years I had a chain wallet, even. It was definitely a time when I had a significant amount of gender dysphoria ... though more like confusion and other things that I'm not going to get into but ... it definitely highlighted the differences between mens and womens clothing that I think I ranted about 10 years ago on ilx, lol.

I got this oversized kelly green hoodie with thick white pullstrings and have been feeling my billie eilish. I have been wearing it all the time and just carrying an id and small changepurse in my hoodie pouch when i go out (it's cold here). I love it, you can't even tell if I am wearing a bra or not so I don't.

lol

“Think twice about everything you want to put in your bag,” said Ben Nickel-D’Andrea, who writes about flying first-class with his husband, Jon Nickel-D’Andrea, at No Mas Coach!, part of the BoardingArea blogger network. The jet-setting couple once flew to Morocco for nine days with only carry-on bags and backpacks. “Fully get rid of the ‘just in case I need it’ category,” he said. “If and when you need it, you can buy it.”

Well sure. I went to Portugal for 8 days with a carry-on suitcase and a backpack too, including a lot of food. Where's MY New York Times article?

https://www.nytimes.com/guides/travel/how-to-pack-a-suitcase?fallback=0&recId=1OT7TIFF6lFeFhlAZU5uWU6kkgI&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=NY&recAlloc=home-desks&geoCountry=US&blockId=home-living-vi&imp_id=227027590&action=click&module=Smarter%20Living&pgtype=Homepage&redirect=true

I had a 35L "city" backpack and my purse for 17 days in France this month. I had to do laundry once. I lost my comb halfway through though.

F had to carry home my wine though in his carry on.

It's interesting that it took 2 people to give the nyt those packing tips.

Anyone else have endometriosis??

This is a special kind of hell. I just had surgery to get it scraped off and it was on my lungs. They couldn't get it all.

That Cut piece is so weird, like, is this an American thing, that men carry nothing?

In London, especially on public transport, the bags of men are a constant nuisance. A few briefcases (briefcases have evolved to have a strap over the shoulder these days), loads of messenger bag/record bag type things, and the ever present BACKPACK. Seriously, it's easier to count the men on London transport that do not carry bags. And yes, the bags come attached with all the baggage of masculinity and its discontents - the size thing (they're supposed to take them off their backs and put them on the floor between their legs, to drive home the point - but often they don't) - the whole thing about never, ever, ever paying attention to other people's space, and just swinging your backpack around and other people (especially anyone who doesn't look like a cis man) is expected to jump out the way and adjust themselves to the size of your enourmous backpack.

The issue is not about preparedness, the problem is entitlement. Mens bags, in London, are another way for men to take up space intended for others. (Bags sprawled out across adjacent seats at rush hour.)

What I always find weird about these thinkpieces and their resultant discussion - where someone notes A Difference between Male-Coded Behaviour and Female-Coded Behaviour (whether it's carrying bags, or language, or occupying space, or cleaning up messes) is this assumption, that because the Male-Coded Behaviour connotes Status, that the solution is for 'women' to start emmulating the male-coded behaviour?

Weirdly, the title on the tab is "If men carried purses, would they clean up?" Generally, isn't cleaning up after yourself a good thing, a sign of maturity and consideration of others?

On the piece itself, it's "Men know it's better to carry nothing". How is it better to carry nothing? If you spill your coffee, is it good to just leave it, because someone else will *always* clean up your messes, or just not give a damn about whether someone else sits in it, because being free, and unencumbered (and inconsiderate and overentitled) is ... such an amazingly good thing?

This is completely weird, how a piece about "wouldn't it be good if everyone cleaned up after themselves, not just those classed as women" gets turned around into "carrying less is good". Anyway!

Endometriosis is supposed to be the most painful thing on earth, like, worse than kidney stones.

(For a while, they thought I had it, but 'luckily' it was 'just' fibroids.)

I'm sorry, that sounds really unpleasant and shit.

Generally, isn't cleaning up after yourself a good thing, a sign of maturity and consideration of others?

OTOH, delegating things to other people is a classic masculine virtue. And by "virtue," I mean power play.

Today I am wearing a much "girlier" dress (pink and green gingham) than I am accustomed to. And I am doing because of the *possibility* that I will see That Man from my office building's gym at the ice cream social the building is holding this afternoon. Who says change is an intrinsic good?

I'm a special case who has endometriosis but NO pain. It's weird.

That sounds terrible even without the pain. How did you find out about it?

The whole underlying reason men won't clean anything up is a whole other grander issue that I think deserves it's own library.

On the piece itself, it's "Men know it's better to carry nothing". How is it better to carry nothing? If you spill your coffee, is it good to just leave it, because someone else will *always* clean up your messes, or just not give a damn about whether someone else sits in it, because being free, and unencumbered (and inconsiderate and overentitled) is ... such an amazingly good thing?

This is completely weird, how a piece about "wouldn't it be good if everyone cleaned up after themselves, not just those classed as women" gets turned around into "carrying less is good". Anyway!

This is food for thought, thanks for that.

Maybe a good framing for thinking about "preparedness" and the sometimes-burdensome role of having and providing solutions, is...the community can support the individual, for a changing value of "individual," because sometimes you need a tissue and sometimes you have a tissue. Is it fair to say that tension is generated when certain groups of individuals are always benefitting and never providing?

But I definitely wouldn't get mad at women who are typically fixers for everyone else, getting to feel however they feel when experiencing the benefits of not accepting that role. I don't think that's the same as saying, "It's good to be served by others without being accountable to them."

That Cut piece is so weird, like, is this an American thing, that men carry nothing?

Tbh most Americans drive cars so they can have several suitcases of stuff in there at no inconvenience to themselves.

But in my experience in NYC, sure, lots of men carry a backpack or a briefcase or even, among certain demographics, a tote bag. But some men carry nothing, where as you NEVER see a woman with no bag(s) at all. Wow. Like ever. Wait now I'm going to have to look more intentionally when I'm on transit!

OTOH, delegating things to other people is a classic masculine virtue. And by "virtue," I mean power play.

idk, i feel like it is, and it isn't? Because another classic masculine virtue is the "I am going to do everything myself because I am the hero and no one does things as well as me" ... the opposite of delegating. It's actually something that came up in conversation with a friend about a cis-male colleague ... the context was changing organizational behavior and structure based on a "dismantling white supremacy" framework (i think in orbit also read the source text) ... that also is totally relevant to most power imbalances in terms of cis-white-men and members of marginalized groups (though also, power imbalances in general -- I have seen it go on between cis white men, I have seen it go on between women, with no men in the mix).

Anyway, the backstory with the "dismantling white supremacy" checklist text -- my friend had told me about their issues with this organization, where this guy is more or less the person in charge. And I thought, well, they do have a point. Maybe I can find something "official" that has concrete tasks and stuff -- kinda like a checklist with tips and stuff -- that we (the people in the organization, which includes the friend) could address, so it isn't just "this person being negative and complaining" -- so some other unrelated friend had posted this document, and I was like, "Oh, I think this is good. Because the friend who complained also has issues w/r/t race with the organization" ... like this will be something everyone could accept as being useful. ... So, then ... my friend sends the document to the cis-male colleague ... and he gets super defensive. Basically, he responds in the stereotypically bad cis-white male way. .... And I was super angry. #1 because this guy was a dick. #2 because he was a dick in exactly the way my friend expected he would be a dick, and I had been in the habit of defending him in the "he's not that bad" type way #3 because it's standard human behavior, regardless of gender -- like the opposite of trying to be "our best selves" that is one of the goals of a certain movement in social justice circles. ...

Anyway, I forget who (many years ago i think) mentioned wearing bike shorts under dresses in the summer to avoid thigh chafing ... thank you, wonderful ilx femme, I have put this into practice, and it is great.

oh the friend in this story is a genderqueer POC

I’m at the point where I wear bike shorts under skirts and dresses all the time if I’m not wearing tights — apparently kids do it and afaict I’m doing it too. Even though it means wearing another garment, I feel so much more free! Having my undies out feels definitively not-good unless I’m at home chilling.

I am unable to locate a specific article but it was basically about how men are able (willing) to delegate/manage in the workplace but completely suffer from mind paralysis when it comes to their household which is why women have that work fall on them.

I almost bought some of those thigh chafing bands that kind of look like garters but then thought they would be annoying if they didn't stay up. xpost

xp - in terms of my work experience, the best/most frequent delegators tend to be women.

my experience has been that men tell subordinates what to do, and women ask for help

But I definitely wouldn't get mad at women who are typically fixers for everyone else, getting to feel however they feel when experiencing the benefits of not accepting that role. I don't think that's the same as saying, "It's good to be served by others without being accountable to them."

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Thursday, 25 July 2019 16:39 (yesterday) link

OK, sure, I get what you're saying here. Like, "I refuse to be placed in the mummy/nanny/caretaker role by default" is a really powerful assertion.

Honestly, it's not about whether man and/or women or anyone else can or cannot delegate or manage, it comes down to whether one views domestic labour as work, or something that just magically happens. In an office, it's obvious what is Work, and therefore it can be viewed as a thing to be managed or distributed. But, because things like bathrooms being cleaned and bins being emptied happen after hours by invisible hands that none of the managers are in charge of managing... (think about how often cleaning services get completely outsourced from organisations - into the realm of Not Work.)

This was going round my social media feeds a few days, about the myth of the Great Male Genius and how the space for him to work is created by the invisible work of others (mostly women).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/woman-greatest-enemy-lack-of-time-themselves

This is an endless debate, that becomes more and more salient with the political crises of our time. "We" have always, since the dawn of thinking, treated the most pressing political issue as "Who governs?" It isn't. The most pressing political issue has become "Who cleans up?" which is salient in everything from the micro of who takes on household domestic labour, to the global, from Flint's water supply to Global Warming:

https://itsherfactory.substack.com/p/who-cleans-up-vs-who-governs-pt-1

(If someone thinks that 'who cleans up?' is an unimportant question because it's always 'someone else' then frankly that person is not fit to govern.)

(think about how often cleaning services get completely outsourced from organisations - into the realm of Not Work.

oh definitely! The times when I worked in a place that had a cleaning service (as opposed to small biz or non-profit where there was no budget for cleaning, and we had to do it ourselves), it was awkward for me. Like, I definitely have a certain ... embarrassment ... about being in a position where I am being served. On a related "girl things" note, this is why I feel icky about the idea of getting manicures or pedicures or having someone else cut my hair. I am fine at bars and restaurants for the most part, though the places where the servers come around too frequently to ask if I/we want something, sometimes that feels awkward to me, because it feels "too subservient"? Basically, I feel like I focus a lot in my interactions with people/social situations on power imbalances, and I tend not to be comfortable with them in that setting.

i am totally the same -- i have never enjoyed -- have even been repulsed by-- the idea, much less the act, of being "pampered" or "taken care of" and i always chalked it up to being a self-reliant only child rather than being a girl but i honestly don't know the real source of many of my eccentricities because there are...so many :-/

i had a real "wow i AM a weird woman in a bar" moment the other day when i was trying to socialize after a show. i'm teetotaling thanks to a recent illness and i had attributed my weird feelings to that at the time. a few days of weird feelings later and i finally realized -- get ready for it -- it's not me, it's not my forced abstinence from alcoholic beverages, it's my period. i wonder what percentage of my total life depressive feelings are attributable to my period. i don't wanna know tbh.

also fwiw having said that ^^ i would like to publicly state that i have an inclusive view of this thread and womanhood in general. one need not have a uterus (crampy or otherwise) to pass through these doors; i often wish i didn't have one myself :)

sorry to hear about the endometriosis, homo II -- that sounds horrifying tbh and i am glad you are not in pain

The way I look at those things - getting manicures, house cleaners, haircuts- is that I’m
A) contributing to the economy
B) paying someone to do something that I’m not good at/don’t have time for/etc, the same way someone pays me to dye clothes, because most people don’t know how/don’t have time to dye their own clothes, even though technically everyone could dye their own clothes

also fwiw having said that ^^ i would like to publicly state that i have an inclusive view of this thread and womanhood in general. one need not have a uterus (crampy or otherwise) to pass through these doors; i often wish i didn't have one myself :)

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera)

speaking as an inclusively defined woman, i can't see how it would possibly be a problem or delegitimizing for a woman to talk about her period. womanhood is diverse and covers a whole range of experiences; there are hundreds of millions of women who don't menstruate.

the only way it's a sore spot for me is knowing that menstruation has been used by men to delegitimize women since pretty much literally the beginning of history. i'm married to someone with a uterus and menstruation is obviously bullshit, but the misogynist anti-menstruation narrative is so baked into our culture that i daren't mention it.

Basically, I feel like I focus a lot in my interactions with people/social situations on power imbalances, and I tend not to be comfortable with them in that setting.

Multiply this by about 1000 and you have Britain and the reason we have such inconsistent service (and customers) in our restaurants etc
When I moved to the US I instantly realised what a good server was and why it was important.

yeah i am happy accepting services like haircuts bc i need them (though the hair washing is always embarrassing for me, prob bc someone is touching me) and am absolutely not repulsed by the services themselves (i enjoy beautification rituals in general)
it's a weird thing i think i absorbed from my parents but idk why or how or to what purpose

I'm so fucking done with periods. (Menopause currently giving me one every 3 weeks at the moment.) I've heard that there is some (off-piste, I forget what it's called) treatment for the menopause which basically involves low dosage T gel, and I'm wondering if I can just figure out the magic words to get the doctors to give me that, both to sort out the menopause shit, and also to avoid having to go through the whole UK gender clinic hell or am I just being a sucker for medicalisation when everyone tells me that T is magical 'make your life better' juice because there is no such thing?

WRT hairdressers and grooming, my main question is, is this person being adequately remunerated for what they are doing? It's one of the few areas where I can be in control of making sure they get properly paid, through tipping or whatever?

Currently having hair woe because I had finally found a stylist who 'got it' (her brother is gay - does drag etc - so she was quite familiar with queer signifiers) and was willing to give me exactly what I asked for. She has now left that salon. I booked an appointment with a different hairdresser, and I had forgotten - it was back to being a *fight* for me to actually get my hair as short as I wanted, have as brutal a clip as I wanted and she kept trying to feminise the haircut (and even asking her to go back and do the shaving a second time to make it right, she still managed to not do what I asked). ARGH. I have found out where the other stylist went, but it's a totally different neighbourhood... if I'm going to go that far to get a haircut, I might as well go into town. People keep telling me to go to Open Barbers in Shoreditch, as they specifically advertise that they *want* to work with queer, trans and gender non-conforming people. Maybe I should try that?

I may be unattractive in many other ways, but for the past 2 solid years, I have had Good Hair, which has made such a difference to how I feel about my gender and everything else. I just can't face going back to having to fight to get what I want on my head any more. What do I do?

Go to Open Barbers, they might be entirely new to you but at least they’ll get where you’re coming from & be able to sort you out properly.

i would like to publicly state that i have an inclusive view of this thread and womanhood in general. one need not have a uterus (crampy or otherwise) to pass through these doors

agreed! also, some menstrual problems are related to hormones -- and a trans friend pointed out on fb -- some trans/non-binary people actually have/are taking these hormones, so -- anyway, welcome rushomancy to this long-running thread

Oh aside from physical pain of cramps and dramatic inconvenience of blood flow, my real period probs are all hormonal. Intense and hormonal.

Technically, this is the "no boys" thread? I don't know that it's ever been about ~womanhood~, big tent or little tent. Just a place free of cis masculinity.

Many, many trans people *have* uteri, and how we deal with them is all over the place. I'm tired of pretending like 'never talk about uteri or having them' is some trans-dictate. It's funny how no one ever goes on the Gays thread and tells them that it's transphobic to talk about dicks all the time. But hey. It's almost as if ~trans discourse~ can be warped to disparage cis women for failure to attain impossible, contradictory perfection just as easily as ~feminist discourse~ can.

Also, I had forgotten, how having hair styled like this exposes one to all kinds of delightful homophobia on the Tube. I thought we left that shit in 1987, but it turns out not. I'm so tired. Or maybe that's just blood loss or hormones from PMT.

As if the world is trolling me, this popped up in the newspaper this morning:

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/jul/28/looking-for-mr-t-the-politicisation-of-testosterone-and-toxic-masuclinity

It just got me thinking about how differently hormones are politicised.

I think that most people on this thread could read that article, and understand that the discourse discussed in the piece (the whole "men are being feminised by losing T and this is a crisis because ~being like women~ is the Worst Thing Ever" philosophy)is deeply, intrinsically misogynist. Right? But I rarely see this kind of testosterone/male-genitals/manhood/masculinity discourse problematised for how transphobic it is. Coz it really is.

Yes, I see this internal policing kick in, when AFAB people talk about hormones and periods, and how that sometimes leads us to have feelings about our bodies, our selves / genders, or even 'womanhood' in general (whether feeling connected to femaleness or disconnected through dysphoria), that we immediately kick in and make some kind of trans-inclusive statement.

Do you ever see (cis) men doing this, when they engage in testosterone-slash-manhood-discourse?

I don't know which way round I feel about this. Like, obviously, it's GOOD to be trans inclusive, and it's actually good to check in with those around us and make sure trans and non-binary people don't feel excluded by body talk. But it starts to feel like extra labour expected of the AFABs that is never expected of the AMABs, when they start discoursing about the old testosterone.

Sigh. I have plenty of other interests, but this is the only one I ever seem to talk about on ILX any more. That kinda sucks.

Anyway, I'll stop killing the thread now. Bye!