Kinda Judgy

What it says on the tin

According to Autostraddle and Dr. Lauren Rosewarne, Hollywood Thinks Your Period is Scary. In her new study, Rosewarne argues that the media’s portrayal of menstruation is traumatizing teenage girls. She analyses a broad selection of media including movies and sitcoms to get a sense of how popular culture is talking about periods.

Summing up Rosewarne’s findings, Autostraddle writes:

Hollywood sucks at representing Aunt Flo. “The regularity, normalcy and uneventfulness of real life menstruation is rarely portrayed on screen. Instead, it’s treated as traumatic, embarrassing, distressing, offensive, comedic or thoroughly catastrophic,” argues Rosewarne.

…

And as a result, “girls in real life are viewing menstruation as a hassle, women are happily filling prescriptions to make it go away, men are mocking it, loathing it and rarely understanding it,” according to Rosewarne. And we need a whole study, analysis, and book about it because it’s so entirely normal for us to do so. How many women do you hear berate their period, dread it, complain about it, tell horror stories?

At kindajudgy, we’ve been menstruating and talking feminism for over fifteen years, so I asked team members what they thought of the article and of Dr. Rosewarne’s findings. 

I think that writer sounds like she’s never had to have a fucking bunch of doctors up in her crotch for her shitty fucking nonstop period. Or started at 8 years old. Or has actual cramps.

If it happened to dudes, there’d be a cure for it. Fuck this “natural, womanly cycle bullshit”, fuck dismissing that most women don’t like regular, leaky pain. I believe women’s pain is real. If I had a daughter, and she got her first period, hell yeah, I’d let her come home early. I’d make her a cake if she wanted to. And if it made her feel better, I’d let her have a half-glass of red wine.

Menstruation gets a lot of air-time at kindajudgy, because to many of our members, they are traumatic, distressing, and extremely painful. To some women, menstruating may be empowering, but we would happily “fill prescriptions to make it go away.” We would like to see more research put into figuring out how to lessen the impact of menstruation on women’s lives, and more effort put in to teaching medical professionals to treat women’s pain seriously and sensitively. Most importantly, we would like both researchers and journalists to report on menstruation in a way that avoids making sweeping generalizations about women’s experiences and providing justification for the professional disregard for and dismissal of many women’s actual real-life suffering. 

Stay home. 

Stay home. 

Cupcakes. So indulgent. A little cake, a little sugar, a little over-the-top décor, and you’ve got the ultimate treat.  But presentation is important, and if the cupcake isn’t presented just right, it won’t seem like anything special at all. Please ignore the refined sugar, flour, and artificial colouring behind the curtain. Packaging can make a great-looking cupcake look professional, and a mediocre-looking cupcake look pretty awesome, so why not go all out? The creator of the packaging above writes: Want to package up some to give away?   One of my favorite ways to package up single cupcakes is to put them in a small clear plastic cup, put the cup in a bag, tie with a ribbon and call it good.  SO simple, and makes transport a breeze. Cute & simple, sure, but those little plastic cups aren’t actually recyclable in many jurisdictions, and those little plastic bags are recyclable in even fewer locations. Chances are, the scrap of ribbon that holds it all together so beautifully will go straight into the garbage, too.  That’s a lot of waste for a cute little something that will ultimately be devoured. 

Cupcakes. So indulgent. A little cake, a little sugar, a little over-the-top décor, and you’ve got the ultimate treat. 

But presentation is important, and if the cupcake isn’t presented just right, it won’t seem like anything special at all. Please ignore the refined sugar, flour, and artificial colouring behind the curtain. Packaging can make a great-looking cupcake look professional, and a mediocre-looking cupcake look pretty awesome, so why not go all out?

The creator of the packaging above writes:

Want to package up some to give away?   One of my favorite ways to package up single cupcakes is to put them in a small clear plastic cup, put the cup in a bag, tie with a ribbon and call it good.  SO simple, and makes transport a breeze.

Cute & simple, sure, but those little plastic cups aren’t actually recyclable in many jurisdictions, and those little plastic bags are recyclable in even fewer locations. Chances are, the scrap of ribbon that holds it all together so beautifully will go straight into the garbage, too. 

That’s a lot of waste for a cute little something that will ultimately be devoured. 

love-your-suit: blasphemina: “Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.” -Patrick Stewart

love-your-suit:

blasphemina:

“Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”

-Patrick Stewart

(via fannishbehavior)

(I love to hate) glee!

No, this isn’t about this week’s episode, “Prom-asaurus.” I haven’t watched that yet. This is about last week’s episode, “Choke,” which failed to deal with the issue of domestic violence with any seriousness or sensitivity at all, and the absolutely kick-ass job Autostraddle did calling that shit out. When I’m too enraged to be articulate, I turn to other people who are also kinda judgy. 

This pretty much sums up why most of the time, glee is the captain and crew of the fail!boat:

See, we mock after-school specials ‘cause they’re so insistently sentimental, so trite and cliche, so void of irony, so absolutely committed to the “cause” in question — but they’re like that for a reason, and it’s ‘cause Serious Issues are indeed Serious Things and you can’t constantly make wacky jokes at the expense of fat people, disabled people, immigrants, people of color, women and gay people and then suddenly come down hard on one arbitrary type of risky joke each week. I’m all about edgy progressive offensive humor that shocks and discomforts people, but executing such things consistently requires better artists than the ones making this show.

Click to the entry to read all about how incredibly idiotic it is that:

  • LGBTQ characters sit in on lectures about how this shit is unacceptable, but the issue of same-sex violence is never addressed.
  • Girl characters get lectured on how they shouldn’t take that shit, but boy characters are never lectured on how they should treat their partners well. 
  • The character who is in abusive relationship gives her man a second chance. Which is, yeah, realistic, but also not really something that we want to encourage. 
  • And much, much more!
Quoth Autostraddle:

But for a show trying so fucking hard to deliver a message about No Tolerance For Violence Against Women in the most simple terms ever to an apparently elementary-aged audience, this complicated “resolution” feels irresponsible because it’s not as simple as the rest of the language employed around domestic violence in this episode. It opens up a big can of worms I’ve got a feeling will spend the rest of the season crawling around silently. Within the context of this episode, and of the Healing Lady-Choir and Beiste testifying that her life has been “saved” and ending with a group hug, her return to Cooter could be seen as a peaceful resolution to anyone who doesn’t already ‘get it.’

THIS.

If you’re generally good at BS’ing, it means you don’t hang around people who are smarter than you.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

Game of Thrones would be so much fucking better without all the violence against women and children. In that respect, it’s very much like real life. 

(Source: lieutenanthawkeyes)

Fuck. This. 

Fuck. This. 

Peeps. I do not get it. 

Peeps. I do not get it. 

“Our roomy teepee is the perfect place for peewees to powwow.”

What the ACTUAL fuck is this? For $159, today’s nostalgic parents can buy their young fry everything they need to “play Indian” from Land of Nod. In 2012. 

“We bought this Teepee for our 4 year old and 2 year old and they love it! Whether they want to play Cowboys and Indians, Hide and Seek or even a nice quiet place to read a book or take a nap. This adorable Teepee comes with endless fun. Awesome product, great price and we definitely recommend it.” - Customer Review

Playing Indian (and Cowboys and Indians) is completely inappropriate. No self-respecting teacher or parent should be buying crap like this, no matter how well made it may be, and no matter how much it may remind them of their own halcyon days. In Arlene Hirschfelder’s words: 

All of this seems innocuous; why make a fuss about it? Because sports trappings and holiday symbols offend tens of thousands of Native American people. Because these invented images prevent millions of us from understanding the authentic Indian America, both long ago and today. Because this image-making prevents Indians from being a relevant part of the nation’s social fabric.

Halloween costumes mask the reality of high mortality rates, high diabetes rates, high unemployment rates. They hide low average life spans, low per-capita incomes and low educational levels. Plastic war bonnets and ersatz buckskin deprive people from knowing the complexity of Native American heritage—that Indians belong to hundreds of nations that have intricate social organizations, governments, languages, religions and sacred rituals, ancient stories, unique arts and music forms.

C’mon, parents. You should know better.