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

Open Thread with Cat and Chicks

Living together! A cat who ‘adopted’ thirty chicks on a Chinese farm featuresĀ for this week’s Open Thread. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

a tabby cat with white belly and white socks lies on a patterned surface surrounded by snuggly baby chickens
Cat And Chicks Living Together – via Cute Overload

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.


21 thoughts on Open Thread with Cat and Chicks

  1. Serendipity alert: went for a walk around the lakes/ponds of Centennial Park this morning, and saw (and fed) my first ducklings of this spring. Seeing the baby waterfowl is always a highlight – there should soon be goslings and cygnets around as well.

  2. TW: trans-bashing, racism

    My transition is finally progressing to the extent that strangers perceive me very differently now. Some of them act like they’re threatened by my presence. I am noticing a lot more subtle and overt hostility from others. I get more stares and glares, and generally sense that most people either are afraid of me or would hurt me if they had the right opportunity. (Kind of like the white nationalist man I incidentally met in the store today, who gave me a threatening stare.)

    I mean, it doesn’t help that my outfit is typically comprised of dark oversized hoodies and sweatpants. But even if I wore different clothes I’d be treated similarly because I’m a visibly butch lesbian regardless. It’s something I’ll just have to get used to, but at the same time I can’t ignore the fact that I’m vulnerable to racist trans-bashing.

    I’m especially worried about corrective rape because I probably won’t be left alive if someone does that to me. I need to learn more evasive tactics. Currently the only things I have going for me are 1) that I can run faster than anyone else I know and 2) that I’m not afraid of doing things like poking someone’s eye or attacking vulnerable spots. But of course there are dangerous people who can overpower and manipulate me no matter what. Maybe I shouldn’t even try to escape if this kind of thing happens to me, and instead try to show no signs of resistance.

  3. @tigtog

    You really have a knack for coming up with the most interesting photos for your threads. No matter how each one is you seem to out do yourself with each new photo.

  4. Snow.

    And with snow comes people complaining about snow (myself included)

    People posting pictures of snow on Facebook with “holy shit” captions.

    And snow tires.

    Sigh.

    Yay Canada.

    1. When I lived in Jasper AB, the snow thrilled me in oct. Nov and Dec. By January I was over it. By April I was actively fucking hostile towards it. The most snow we ever have here in west Texas lasts a whole day, if we’re lucky. Mostly, it melts by the afternoon and we get one maybe two snow days a year. A few years ago it snowed on Christmas day and was 80 on New years.

      1. I never look forward to it. my house is not well insulated, I hate being cold and I live in a town with a lot of hills so I need snow tires if I want to get anywhere (getting stuck on main street at a red light, multiple times, sucks).

        Last year, with all the polar vortex shit, we had the worst winter we’ve had in years. The snow banks were as tall as the 12 foot fence around my property. Sometime in March, my boyfriend, who had been stuck dealing with all the snow removal since I was laid up after surgery, looked up the symptoms for battle fatigue and found he actually met all the criteria except for having actually been in battle.

        Plus we both deal with seasonal affective disorder. So winter is not a happy time around here.

        1. I was basically cold and hungry the entire 2 years we lived there. There was no Mexican food and I require Mexican food to exist. I swear, every place that offered Mexican food either 1) must have never encountered Mexican food so had no clue or 2) offered Pace picante as hot sauce. Pace is disgusting and I could use it as eyewash, its that NOT hot. None of the stores had any of the ingredients I needed to make my own, either. So I craved Mexican food the entire time and then had to deal with the cold. I was the only one with a license, so I learned to drive in that shit via the thrown in the deep end method. It was beautiful and in some ways I loved it, but in others I was pretty miserable. I think I may have experienced some SAD, but didn’t realize it at the time. It’s not normal for me to break down over not finding tortillas that weren’t flat godawful store bought shit.

  5. I’m on an airplane on my way back from a work trip to New York that was absolutely exhausting. I cannot wait to be home. Life has been too much for the last few weeks.

  6. Recently, I didn’t leave my apartment for one entire week. I spend most afternoons napping with my cat. I haven’t had any luck finding a job. All of which explains why I haven’t been commenting much lately.

      1. Me too. I have had weeks when I realise that my only ‘outings’ have been to the park (which is right beside my building) with the dogs. And the corner shop (which is en route to the park). I am happy to be teaching some language classes as it gets me out of the house for a couple of hours a day, even if the pay is bad!

    1. Staying inside is the most sensible option at the moment, it really sucks out there…you’re not missing much. (I was referring to the harsh weather, not life in general- then realised it could be taken both ways.

  7. Fair warning, this is definitely in the vent/rant category. The older I get the more I realize how ignorant I am, I have only just become aware of how many unnecessary hysterectomies are being performed. In the UK, a government sponsored study estimated that 70% of all hysterectomies were medically unnecessary and for the US I’ve seen an estimate of 90%. One in 3 women over 60 have had a hysterectomy in the US. ONE IN THREE??!!

    This is female gynecological mutilation disguised as medicine.

    Obviously there are cases of absolute necessity and cases where women are only too happy to have a hysterectomy as a means to resolve gynecological issues but having had two friends now who were given total hysterectomies and oophorectomies for benign uterine fibroids without being informed that there are alternative treatments to hysterectomy and without realizing, prior to surgery, that they would be losing perfectly healthy ovaries and being plunged precipitously into menopause because the surgeons/gynos thought they “might as well, just in case” and after all “you won’t be having any more children and you don’t really need them any more”, I am utterly scandalized.

    Maybe I am suffering from a bit of tunnel vision, but I cannot believe that there is not an enormous public stink about this. What does it say about the incipient misogyny of the medical profession that women’s bodies are treated with such appalling disregard. My first thought, and after reading around a few forums I realize that its the exact same thought that has occurred to many woman who have either been given an unnecessary hysterectomy or had to fight tooth and nail not to have one, is that if fibroids were a condition that afflicted the male penis there is no way in hell that the default treatment would be to lop it off. There is no equivalent applicable to male reproductive organs for the brutal (and by the by, the jokey nature of this little saying is a big red flag with fucking misogyny written all over it) policy of “if in doubt, take it out”, they make damn sure they have histological confirmation of malignancy before they resort to the scalpel.

    I am in a towering rage (SOTBO)

  8. In re: to the murder of my friend,

    Nothing drives the point home quite like making a statement to police. And I am no fan of cops. But I also am not going to let that get in the way of doing whatever I can to make sure that the courts get it right, if it can help even one of her loved ones feel even slightly more at ease.

    I think I’ll be heartbroken forever, either way.

    I’m contemplating submitting a guest post. Would any of you be interested in reading that?

    1. I would as well. I’d also appreciate any ideas about action items we can take, if you have them and are willing to share.

      1. Okay, so I’ll definitely put something together. The hard part will be actionable items. I’m not sure what those might be, but I definitely want to put my research cap on and see if there’s any information available about things that are being done or can be done to prevent IPH(intimate partner homicide).

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