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Weekly Open Thread with Sidesaddle Showjumper

tigtog

Mrs Esther Stace, who was one hell of a horsewoman in 1915, is the host of this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

A woman riding sidesaddle clearing a high competition jump in a showground. There are men beside the jump watching her in admiration of her skill.
Mrs Esther Stace, from Yarrowitch, riding sidesaddle and clearing a record 6’6″ at the Sydney Royal Agricultural Show, 1915 (supplied by the Walcha Historical Society) | (Public Domain) via Wikimedia Commons

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

44 thoughts on Weekly Open Thread with Sidesaddle Showjumper

  4. I finally set up an appointment with a therapist. On the one hand, I felt kind of sad because she asked me if I was seeking to gain a letter of recommendation so I can start transitioning, but I said no because my current life circumstances make transitioning difficult if not impossible. (I just know that most of my family members are going to freak out and do whatever they can to stop me.) On the other hand, at least I actually made the appointment. I’ll be going this Monday.

      1. Seconded. Ally, I have had very different issues from yours, but finding a good therapist has changed and perhaps saved my life more than once. I hope you have a similar, very positive experience.

        1. I can’t say that seeing a therapist will be a life-saver in the same way it has been for you. But one of the reasons I want to see a therapist is that I’ve been trying to solve my mental health issues for the past 4 years all by myself, and it hasn’t worked out so far. I really do feel like I’m at the end of the line now, so it’s good that I finally made an appointment. Even the comfort in knowing that I’ve done so is enough to allay my latest thoughts of self-harm.

    2. Also, in other awesome news, I’ve finally learned how to set up a PHP environment, so now I can start learning PHP at a much faster pace and gain a more useful knowledge of server-side development in general (so far my only experience with server-side development has been through Ruby on Rails). To most people, what I’ve learned how to do is trivial and unimportant, and I understand why. But to me, this means a lot because it means that I’m not a complete nobody among IT folks. And that matters to me not because I feel the need to be counted as an Elite Programmer but because it’s like a step towards a decent job – so I can finally transition and live on my own. I connect things in my life in strange ways, but at least it helps me cope.

  5. Okay, here’s a question (or maybe a peeve):

    I’ve been hearing about pedophiles in the (Roman) Catholic clergy, but all I ever hear about is the _boys_ they molest.

    Are there no cases of priests (or whatever) molesting girls? Or does it happen, but the media don’t consider it worth reporting (because who cares about _girls_ getting raped, anyway? )

    (Just want to know if I have a right to assume the worst here….)

    1. I’ve actually seen a number of stories about priests (and nuns) sexually molesting girls, as well as boys — often in schools, orphanages, etc., maybe more stories like that in Europe than here?

      But I do think there are more cases of boys being molested simply because there’s generally been more access to boys (in choirs and such places). This is from Wikipedia, and refers to a study in the USA:


      The report stated there were approximately 10,667 reported victims (younger than 18 years) of clergy sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002: Around 81% of these victims were male. Female victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests tended to be younger than the males. Data analyzed by John Jay researchers, shows that the number and proportion of sexual misconduct directed at girls under 8 years old was higher than that experienced by boys the same age.

    2. More boys may be molested, but the media shows its homophobic and misogynistic ass by ignoring girl victims. Boys being raped by men is unnatural, unlike girls being raped. Yanno…thats just nature. Bonus is getting to portray gay men as pedophiles. That way people can feel justified about kicking them out of boy scouts, making teaching positions difficult and preventing adoptions. And of course, upholding the status quo that women exist as holes. Its a win win for bigots.

      1. Yep, exactly.

        I’m an ex-Catholic. I like to call myself a “recovering catholic.”

        Our parish priest molested girls. Nobody ever cared till he died, and some had the nerve to say that since it was heterosexual molestation, it wasn’t “deviant.” I also noticed a strong pattern of girls and their parents being very easily gas-lit, because everyone knows little girls make shit up!

        When students and others ask why I left the Church, I cannot answer because it sends me into sputtering rages.

        1. some had the nerve to say that since it was heterosexual molestation, it wasn’t “deviant.”

          Wow.

        2. I definitely noticed that pattern in the Canadian press when the abuse was first making news in the late 90’s. At first there was roughly equal mention of girls being abused, but soon after the media jumped on the cases with boys with a real shock at the supposedly extra-shocking thought of men molesting boys. Then stories about priests molesting girls disappeared entirely.

          Some time around 2005 a high school classmate of mine (also named Scott) entered Catholic seminary college and molested a five year old girl. Press hardly noticed, stuck to stories of priests one or two towns over molesting boys in the 1970s.

          I miss that back in the 1990s, at least the awful rape-culturey gendered assumptions and double-standards were overtly spelled out in print. Now the press acts the same, but journalists don’t know or don’t admit why they do it.

    3. In Australia at least, there is some coverage of girls being molested. Partly that’s when their families fight for them and don’t let the crimes be ignored, and partly it’s because of the Parliamentary investigations and Royal Commissions into abuse that have given them more chances to be heard.

  6. [Content Note added by mods at author request: discussion of gendered slurs]

    Erk! Venting time needed – I have had an overload of internet douchery this week. Currently in a final year sociology unit looking at care organizations. The second week delves into the impact feminist theory has had on these organizations. A full two hour lecture, plus a 25 page reading has outlined with very clear reasoning (backed by statistics) that women are over-represented in caring roles, particularly women of colour and working class women, and under-represented in management roles. Which should be obvious to anyone who has ever lived in the world, ever. The theory is then that women are both a) socialised to take on nurturing roles and are seen as naturally more suited to these roles and that b) women are undervalued in society, therefore caring roles are poorly paid and offer little in terms of actual influence or social status. Again, none of which should be ground-breaking news to anyone.

    But of course, on the discussion board (I study externally) the responses to the readings are basically ‘See? Women have always done these sorts of jobs! They are just better at it! And some old white dude said they are better patients, therefore must be better carers, duh! And my grandma loved being a nurse! Also, childbirth creates bonds which means women are just naturally going to be better carers! Evo-psych somethingsomething! Plus, women could totally be doctors or CEO’s if they want. Look around, there are tons of rich women, I even know one!’

    Gah! On top of that, my 17 year old brother is insisting on continuing to become an MRA, and constantly puts up facebook posts like ‘All women are liars’, and “If a girl is slut, I will call her a slut. Just being honest’, and claiming that feminism is wrong because not being able to hit girls is totally unfair if girls can hit guys? It is comforting to see many of his teenage female friends being able to eloquently argue back with that, but it totally sucks that they have to, and it totally sucks that my little brother is a misogynistic turd.

    /rant over (for now).

    1. The theory is then that women are both a) socialised to take on nurturing roles and are seen as naturally more suited to these roles and that b) women are undervalued in society, therefore caring roles are poorly paid and offer little in terms of actual influence or social status.

      a) is a given. I’m not sure b) is as self-evident as you think it is, because it makes a claim of causality when the reason that caring roles are compensated the way they are is multi-causal and has a lot to do with supply and demand. Of course, if you have any studies that say otherwise, I’d be interested.

      1. the reason that caring roles are compensated the way they are is multi-causal and has a lot to do with supply and demand.

        Can you elaborate on the “supply and demand” part?

      2. Of course, if you have any studies that say otherwise, I’d be interested.

        The documented “glass elevator” effect on men who enter these caring professions and are compensated with money and more powerful positions at a much higher rate than their equally qualified and far more numerous female peers strongly suggests a link, as does the way that women flooding into a profession is linked to a drop in its compensation and prestige (humanities academics, for one example).

        1. Yup, what EG said. There is a lot of research into this effect, among other contributing factors, which I linked to in my study group, but I guess I assumed most people in this space would be pretty familiar with these social mechanisms and the feminist critiques of them.

        2. One of the most glaring examples of gendered pay disparity in the professions is veterinary science (in Australia at least, although I believe it’s widely paralleled throughout “the west”). When I was growing up it was an extremely masculine profession and very high income/status. Then women started entering the field, and for no apparent reason the income growth per annum started decelerating, and these days VetSci is still one of the most competitive degrees to enter from high school as it has been for decades yet now women dominate veterinary science graduates and the income growth has not kept pace with that afforded engineers, compsci grads, or medicos (just to mention a few).

          Speaking of medicos, another interesting example is the status of the medical profession in the old Soviet Union (which carries on in today’s Russia) compared to the status of medical doctors in capitalist countries. Medicine in the USSR was marketed as a profession primarily for women, and for no apparent reason this profession’s pay rate was pegged at a much lower level than other professions marketed in the USSR as being for men, when in the rest of the world medicine held higher status than those professions.

          So yeah, tell me more about this “supply and demand” explanation you find so convincing.

        3. Yeah, I’m not arguing with any of that. You don’t need to convince me sex discrimination exists; I said ‘multi-causal’ for a reason. The original assertion was:

          women are undervalued in society, therefore caring roles are poorly paid

          Hopefully the distinction is clear? You’re arguing a point that isn’t at stake.

          So yeah, tell me more about this “supply and demand” explanation you find so convincing.

          I can’t tell if you’re strawmanning (that is, pretending I claimed supply and demand accounted for the entire discrepancy, when I obviously did not) or genuinely think supply and demand doesn’t affect price. Both are ridiculous, albeit in different ways.

          In any case, the salaries of most caring professions’ are fairly tightly correlated with the amount of people entering the field, as compared to the total number of available jobs. As you pointed out, it’s not a perfect correlation, and some of the difference is due to sex discrimination, which is why I said it’s a multi-causal issue.

          Then women started entering the field, and for no apparent reason the income growth per annum started decelerating

          One apparent reason is that when women started entering the field, the number of total people entering the field went up, since it wasn’t a male-only profession. More supply = lower prices. Another is sex discrimination.

          People. I’m not denying sex discrimination exists/matters/affects outcomes; that would be absurd. I voiced a question about a claim that appeared (you can tell this because I said things like “I’m not sure,” instead of YOU’RE WRONG).

          Chill.

          1. Then women started entering the field, and for no apparent reason the income growth per annum started decelerating

            One apparent reason is that when women started entering the field, the number of total people entering the field went up, since it wasn’t a male-only profession. More supply = lower prices.

            I don’t know how it works where you are, but veterinary science is a tightly regulated field of study in most countries, and the number of places offered by veterinary science faculties wasn’t increasing, just the proportion of women gaining places in those faculties and eventually graduating. So morethe supply of new veterinarians was remaining at the same rate, while the rate of salary increase was not. So the supply/demand equation doesn’t work here, because there’s an inelastic supply.

        4. Chill.

          I’m curious. When was the last time saying that to anyone actually worked? Probably never. It’s about the same as the famous “lighten up!”

        5. Chill.

          I’m curious. When was the last time saying that to anyone actually worked? Probably never. It’s about the same as the famous “lighten up!”

          It’s fair to say that it’s more of a statement about one’s analysis of the conversational dynamic than actual advice.

        6. Conversely, while the number of male oriented oil field jobs here rose, the salaries increased. So this is an example of more employees equaling more money. In a field thats very male dominated.

  7. sorry mods- I meant to add a CN for gendered slurs in my post that is currently in moderation. Would it be possible for you to add that on please?

  8. I just got done with my first therapist appointment. I feel so relieved. I was nervous at first of course, but I was able to open up to her completely in the very first session. She was very easy to talk to, and she was nice enough to reduce my fees significantly. I can tell that she was a wise choice. Thank you all for your help and support in getting me to this stage of self-care – especially Donna, who helped me find trans-friendly therapists in this area.

    1. I am so glad to hear that it went so well! I think that’s wonderful.

      And you’re very welcome. Any help I can give you, or others in your position, is my pleasure. I remember quite well what it was like to be 19 years old and trans, back at a time (the mid 1970’s) when it seemed that there was no possible way of finding other people in the world like myself, and that there was nobody in the world who could possibly understand or accept me. Thank God the world has changed since then, enough that nobody should really have to have that feeling again.

  9. Omg. I have been sucked into an argument with Terfs who dont understand how transphobia can also be racist and full of colonizer privilege, on top of just being hateful, bigoted and wrong. One of them actually proceeded to tell me what my NDN beliefs are, how they are rooted in strict gender roles and how I’m mean for calling her a racist colonizer. Shes even going to provide me with links about Native American beliefs surrounding 2 spirits. Which, for tge record, is not a word my tribe used.

    1. Well one apologized for the racism, at least. The others are essentially telling me im playing the race card, and excusing the racism because it came after I called them racists. ( yeah. I know. )

    2. I’m afraid to ask, but I’m curious as to where you got into such an argument. Then again, TERFs seem to be everywhere these days.

    3. It’s fascinating that 98% of the vocal TERFs seem to be white middle-class women. I know there are exceptions they like to trot out in order to try to insulate themselves against charges of racism, but it’s pretty overwhelming.

    4. [Content note: transmisogyny]

      I know a trans woman TERF on Tumblr who has made similar arguments, blatantly talking over NDNs and generally proving to be extremely racist and colonialist. It’s not only racist but it’s also distressing for me because trans women TERFs know exactly how to use my fears and insecurities against me.

      1. Wait, how can a trans woman be a TERF? Wouldn’t she be excluding herself? I know there are a handful of TERF sympathizers among trans women — people who seem to think that if they curry favor sufficiently with TERFs by attacking other trans women, they will obtain the ultimate validation of being accepted by TERFs as women, unlike other trans women. Except it never works.

        What they all have in common is monumental stupidity. I never engage with them. I’m tempted sometimes to feel sorry for them. But I don’t give in to that temptation.

        1. Wait, how can a trans woman be a TERF? Wouldn’t she be excluding herself? I know there are a handful of TERF sympathizers among trans women — people who seem to think that if they curry favor sufficiently with TERFs by attacking other trans women, they will obtain the ultimate validation of being accepted by TERFs as women, unlike other trans women. Except it never works.

          [Content note: transmisogyny]

          The main reason she’s a TERF (I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to mention her name here because she also likes to dox trans women she dislikes) is that she thinks it’s wrong for AMAB trans women to “invade” women’s spaces because they are “biological males” who have male privilege. She and her fellow trans women TERFs consider themselves to be “assimilated” trans women. You know, a step above “other trans women” like us.

          Also, she likes to bully trans women who refer to their bodies as female. I remember her having an argument about that (not going to look for it, sorry) and it was really upsetting.

        2. Well I was too mean to them so they’ve cried into their pillows and flounced out. Heh.

        3. Oh for God’s sake. Do they include themselves in that category of “biological males”? Do they exclude themselves from “women’s spaces” and believe themselves to have male bodies? Or are they special snowflakes?

          What people like that usually mean by “assimilated” is that they’ve had genital surgery. (Of course, trans women like me who’ve had genital surgery, and are every bit as “assimilated” as they are and probably far more, don’t get their approval either. Why? Because we disagree with them. It’s a classic a priori argument, just like those made by the TERFs themselves.)

          Ally, people like that (and the HBS’ers, who believe essentially the same thing) are a relic of the 1990’s and usenet. They’re dwindling in number, fortunately. And although I don’t believe believe for a moment that homophobes are really self-hating closeted gay people themselves, I do happen to believe that transphobic trans women, for all their bluster, really are, for the most part, fundamentally self-hating and insecure about not being perceived as women, and make themselves feel better by attacking and disassociating themselves from others. Like the one who calls herself Jennifer Usher, now known as just jennifer or some such thing, who has been disgracing herself on the Internet since at least as far back as 1997! And is, in fact, monumentally stupid. Not one of them is worth your left pinky toe.

        5. Oh for God’s sake. Do they include themselves in that category of “biological males”? Do they exclude themselves from “women’s spaces” and believe themselves to have male bodies?

          [Content note: transmisogyny]

          Yes to both. I have seen trans women TERFs argue that trans women who call themselves biologically female are “deluded” and say things like “Well, isn’t it true that we transition so that we get rid of our male biology? Why else would we transition?” They also assert that they have no right to be in women’s spaces. And beyond that, they ridicule trans women who claim to have been abused by trans men because trans men are just “confused teenage girls” who couldn’t possibly have any male privilege.

          I would rather argue with an MRA than a trans woman TERF. The first time I saw trans women TERFs talk amongst each other on Tumblr about how “enlightened” and “pro-feminist” they are for supporting our own oppression, I couldn’t handle it. I am a trans girl who has spent a good chunk of her time reading up on trans issues, and even I found myself feeling scared and confused when I saw them deliberately misgendering their fellow trans women and talking about how trans women who show any signs of defensiveness are just as “macho” as men. It makes me upset to think about how much more abusive and hurtful their words would be if I were some more impressionable trans girl with only a rudimentary knowledge of trans issues. I’ve dealt with enough emotional abuse in my life – I certainly don’t need more from people who are supposed to stand with me.

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