In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

A pile of young meerkats snuggling together in a dusty landscape

Open Thread with Meerkat Pile

tigtog

A pile of snuggly meerkats feature for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

A pile of young meerkats snuggling together in a dusty landscape
via Pixabay

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.

29 thoughts on Open Thread with Meerkat Pile

  1. Out of hormones, and I can’t get a refill or even visit my clinic to ask for a raise in dosage because it would be too difficult for me to do so without my dad finding out as I’ve been staying in his vicinity since Monday. My uncle is also angrily lecturing me about being lazy and not taking my life seriously for not having a job, even though my mental health renders me unable to work these days. He is the same uncle who emotionally abused me when I was 12 and 16. Currently I’m hiding in a certain room of his house so that he doesn’t try to talk to me. I’ll be okay, but I’m really scared anyway. You can blame that on the abuse.

    If family is all that matters, as they always say, then I feel more comfortable believing nothing matters.

    1. I’ll try to leave soon, hopefully by this Monday. It’s just that my paranoid mind is telling me that showing any eagerness to leave will make my dad and my uncle try to run after me. I hate my fucking mind so much.

    2. Sorry about the alarmist tone of that comment. I’m doing okay now, just very anxious and feeling unsafe. But it’s late in the evening now and no one is trying to talk to me, so I’m safe.

    3. Hey Ally,

      I hope you’re feeling better this morning. I buy into the idea that family is the only thing that matters, but I don’t buy into the idea of common blood defining who your family is. Big hugs.

      2. Today was a trainwreck but I’m feeling better now. Tomorrow morning I’m going back to my place.

  3. Macavitykitsune – I don’t know if you still participate in the commentrariat here, but I wanted to tell you that I hope that everything in your life is going well. You are an intense, powerful, no-bullshit, eloquent writer dripping with talent. Feministe doesn’t feel the same without you.
    I wish you all the health, peace, prosperity, and awesomeness that you can handle. Good luck with university!

  4. I’d like to start a thread to discuss ANYTHING BUT QUAKERISM. DonnaL, gratuitous_violet, Pheeno, Asia, and anyone else bewildered by the utterly weird “convert to Quakerism” thread, is invited to talk about something else.

    Here’s my “something else”: the Swedish duo First Aid Kit has released a song called “Wolf,” and to me it seems to be highly ripping off amazing artist and First Nations activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, who wrote the hit “Starwalker“. Am I imagining things or is this too much.

    1. I have not heard either song, but I am in complete favor of this thread! My something else is the terrible twos. What evolutionary purpose is this stage supposed to serve? How can I keep my brain from melting out my ears?

      1. heh, I really didn’t have the heart to continue that one, because telling a flaming atheist that they’d make a good Any Denomination is just too bewildering.

        Once I am not at work I will listen to those songs, because power relations in creative theft are really interesting. But I’m mostly showing up to grumble about my flu. I hate my tonsils right now.

        On a fun note, I still had to go to work today, so I’ve been gargling salt water at regular intervals and carrying a little bag of salt around with me. When it fell out of my pocket, a student was like “OMG is that cocaine?” I really didn’t have the heart to tell her “no, dear, coke looks nothing like that!”

        2. I’ve been gargling salt water at regular intervals and carrying a little bag of salt around with me. When it fell out of my pocket, a student was like “OMG is that cocaine?”

          I had uvulitis earlier this year (If you’re scratching your head, you’re like me as I had never heard of it before either.) It’s basically an infection of the uvula which caused it to swell up and get all gross, thus making swallowing difficult, etc.
          Anyway, so the doctor gave me antibiotics, some pain meds and told me to gargle with salt water three times a daily. I took some grey sea salt, put it in a mortar, and crushed it with a pestle, and then left it sitting on the bathroom sink, so it would be available for my thrice daily gargles. The next day my wife asked me what was in the mortar and I told her it was salt, and she said she had tasted it and thought it was salt, but at first she assumed it might be some drug I was crushing up, which is why she tasted it in the first place. So I was like ‘please don’t stick your finger in something you suspect may be drugs and taste it. You don’t know what it could be, and if it is drugs you don’t want them in your mouth.’ She replied with ‘that’s what they do on TV.’ And my wife is a very intelligent woman, and not just in an absent-minded professor type of way, she is normally extremely sensible.

      2. It’s so funny how in child development, “self-differentiation” really just means “being a giant Id monster until I figure out other people don’t just exist to do what I want.”

      3. I have not heard either song, but I am in complete favor of this thread! My something else is the terrible twos. What evolutionary purpose is this stage supposed to serve? How can I keep my brain from melting out my ears?

        EG, do you have a two year old? I remember a discussion we had (I guess over two years ago,) where you really spoke from the heart about wanting to have a kid, so if I somehow missed that announcement, the congratulations big time, I’m so happy for you. However, if I’m misinterpreting your post about ‘terrible twos,’ then disregard everything I just said.

      4. I’ve heard of the “terrible twos”, but even though I have two kids (21 & 23, at the moment*), I don’t think I’ve ever encountered them.

        Not to say my kids were easy (my preferred phrase is “high maintenance”), but I didn’t notice them being any more (or less) difficult when they were two than when they were one or three or ten. I had pretty much learned the three P’s — Patience, Persistence, and Pick Your Battles — by the time my older one was six months old, and they’ve served me well ever since. (They’re also good for dealing with people at work.) I also learned to throw away all the child-rearing books and ignore all the well-meaning child-rearing advice, since none of it worked on my kids.

        * That’s years, in case you were unclear.

    2. Your first paragraph made me chuckle for quite a bit! I don’t think I’ve ever been more annoyed by QUAKERISM before. 😉

      My niece is two and she is a cutey though – although because of her I’ve had the song Let it go in my head all week!

    3. Matthew, there was ONE RULE… 😉 (but I know right?)

      I enjoy pretending two-year-olds are mystic visitors from another world, like aliens or tomb sprites. This allows me to take their meltdowns with slightly more grace and distance but still delight in their strange ways. Today I saw one cry: because the dishwasher wasn’t open, because it had been opened for him, because he climbed in the dishwasher, and because he was gently removed from the dishwasher. Perhaps he was upset because he wanted to merge with it. What will this banshee ambassador do next, I wonder.

      1. I love that way of seeing two-year olds! 🙂 That is such a cute story too.

        I don’t see my nieces that often, but when I do I love how intense all their emotions are; their happiness, excitement, curiosity, even anger at having to go to bed. I hope I can still enjoy this if my partner and I decide to have children one day. I think I shall try and keep your habit in mind! 🙂

      2. The few times I’ve interacted with that age group. I’ve also pretended their another species. It seems to make their desires a lot simpler.

        Evolutionary, I think it’s a caregiver test. Only the children with the most attentive caregivers survive to reproduce.

      3. The few times I’ve interacted with that age group. I’ve also pretended their another species. It seems to make their desires a lot simpler.

        Evolutionary, I think it’s a caregiver test. Only the children with the most attentive caregivers survive to reproduce.

  5. Not many nice things have happened lately, but at the very least, I went to buy snacks from a 7/11 and got a total of $7.11 for my purchase. Things like that make life worth living.

  6. I heard about this on the radio this morning. I couldn’t help but smile.

    The 165-piece Research Institute features a female paleontologist, chemist and astronomer. The box cover shows them mixing chemicals in a lab, building a T-Rex model and peering through a telescope.

    Lego lovers can still purchase the $19.99 set, but there is a 30-day wait, according to customer service representatives. It was released Aug. 1.

    Could the new female figures be a response to the scathing letter — which went viral over social media — written by a 7-year-old girl?

    “I love Legos,” Charlotte Benjamin wrote in a note that was re-tweeted more than 3,000 times.

    She complained that the girl toys were, well, very girly.

    “All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, and even swam with sharks.”

    Lego responded that is developing new male and female figures.

    Coincidentally, the hugely popular “The Lego Movie” was released in February, about a month after Charlotte’s passionate plea.

    It turns out that one of the key characters is the beautiful yet capable rebel Wyldstyle, who despite being Batman’s girlfriend, saves Emmet from Bad Cop.

    The Research Institute set follows other recently created female Lego characters, such as a surgeon and astronaut. Last year, Lego produced its first female scientist, a character who could attach new pieces to minifigures that lost their legs.

  7. Really pissed off this morning…

    Every morning at the shelter, I sit in my car doing my hair, listening to the radio, and enjoying a little time to myself before I go to work. There is a rule at the shelter that you can’t sit in your car. I have been approached by all of the security guards at one time or another about sitting in the car. I tell them I’m about to leave for work, they say “No problem!” and leave me alone. Sure enough, I’m gone a few minutes later and don’t come back until the evening.

    One security guard, however, makes it his business to harass me every freaking morning. He pull up in his golf cart and stare at me until I finally look up and see what the fuck he wants. Then he tells me to get out of my car. I’ve tried being cordial and explaining to him, but he never listens and talks over me: “Ma’am, you need to get out the car.”

    “Well, I’m leave for work – ”

    “Get out of the car, ma’am.”

    “I’m just about to – ”

    “You can’t sit in the car. You have to get out.”

    He’ll even go out of his way to harass me and ignore his regula duties – i.e. security and safety: A couple of days ago, a woman whose car was parked next to me started screaming that it had been broken into. Her son was trying to calm her down because she wanted to call the police. She tries to get the guard’s attention, and what does he do? He ignores her and rolls up to me in my car. “Ma’am you need to get out of your car.”

    “Do you not see her yelling about calling the pol – ?!”

    “You can’t sit in the car.”

    Today, he was back again. I’m in my car, minding my business. He came around once and told me to get out. I ignore him because at this point, fuck him. He drives off. Meanwhile, I’m watching two small children get into their mother’s car by themselves and start playing. They scamper away just as he comes rolling up to me. He says, I shit you not:

    “Do you have a problem doing what you’re told?”

    …O_o

    ….OH HELL NAW!

    But I don’t go off on him. I do tell him that had he been paying attention to his job, he would’ve noticed those two kids playing in that car parked directly in front of me. He tells me if I don’t get out the car, he’ll remove me from the premises. So, I got of my car, went inside, and wrote a grievance on his ass.

    The staff there knows that I have never had any problems with them or with the other residents. EVER. They know I keep to myself and mind my own business. I’m not going to be harassed and talked down to just because I’m homeless.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I need my Xanax.

Comments are currently closed.