An open thread for personal stuff, continuing from here.
As usual for these threads: no trolls, no MRAs, no I’m-not-really-an-MRA-buts, don’t be mean.
Categories
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The Mammoth
Quoting Skye ‘cos zie said what I was going to and I’m lazy:
Thanks for the support in the other thread, all!
I’m just going to leave a donation of hugs via the pillow-net (Saruman my faithful Great White Shark Pillow is a great hug dispatcher) for all the issues cropping up. I’ll be wishing for the best for all of you!
Mouse, glad to have helped!
Yeah, CBT is good but pricey. I was able to claim it on Medicare (the Australian one) and get a bit of a refund, but I’d hate to be trying to pay for it as a student. Even on a working wage it was painful.
Magpie, hi!! Good to see you again!
That hat is adorbs. As is the moustache. I like the way he’s got the hat tilted to ever-so-slightly suggest a slouch hat. Wonder if the ad’s from before the war started, or after?
I hope things start looking up soon, Strivingally.
Thanks, Skye. I’ll be “up” again whenever the barometer is. And hugs and good thoughts to everyone in need of them. Kittehs, too:
Best wishes, strivingally.
Oh hey, I’m a moron. I’m making pumpkin “pie” soup.
I somehow forgot about a paper towel in the pumpkin when I started dumping everything in. Thought all the cream had curdled into a block of cheese when i opened the lid. 🙁
It also sucked up all the steam, apparently. All the vegetables inside seemed raw even after an hour and a half.
@Skye
It was really scary 🙁 we’ve been best friends our whole lives, and she had offered to be a surrogate for me if I wanted a baby, since i’m sterile. She swiftly reconsidered after that pregnancy. I did not blame her in the least. I moved in with her and her husband for a few months to help them with bills and help her with life. It wasn’t a fun time, but her son is an adorable little sweetheart, and none of us would trade him for anything. We just don’t want her to go through that again any time soon.
ryeash, I’m glad if it helps at all. You don’t need to feel guilty for having needs, and you honestly *can*not* help but to have needs. We all have different needs at different times and I will repeat, though not verbatim…take care of *your* needs, and fuck anyone who clutches their fucking pearls and crying alcoholism because if they care more about what you are using to insulate than they do the fact that you need to insulate they are not doing any good for anyone. Those people suck. And I give them this.
And thank you everyone for Demerol and hugs and well wishes. I’mn going to have an all about me post again. I made myself cocoa because I needed a soothing hoe beverage and it’s too late for coffee and I’m out of tea and I wanted something with milk or cream, but not just milk, and I’m out of vanilla so I added peppermint extract and I tipped in too much and my drink is bitter and I can’t even taste that it’s chocolate and someone make me a damn soothing hot beverage. *cries*
*I’m
*hot
*weeps with embarrassment*
:: sends the absolutely perfect Platonic flask of hot cocoa to Shaun, with vanilla not peppermint ::
:: goes to sleep because she has a funeral (for a co-worker’s parent) to go to tomorrow ::
:: also adds Demerol to the barrel in case it’s still needed ::
If anyone still need comfort from the furinati, have a newborn hedgehog
:: now really goes to sleep because she was lying before ::
::sends Shaun hot chocolate::
(I must say a soothing hoe beverage sounds intriguing.)
Does anyone whose name may or may not be Fibinachi want to versify another Russian song for me?
(Just in case Fibi does appear via Katz’s summoning) I did leave son stat-like advice in the other thread. It may not be what you were hoping for. Also, pretend the < and > things showed up as respectively…
(Crosses fingers for HTML to succeed this time… Curse you, inequalities!)
Nope. Fail. Le sigh.
Versify? da, that I would!
And thanks, contra, I’ll have a looksee.
( ps: you have to include ; after the lt and gt so you get > ir < )
Well, since I was summoned I want to add my few dublones to things. I feel I have something insightful and relevant to add to this discussion, and will lead with my most significant point:
@Falconer:
Baaabbiiiiiiieeeeeeessss they’re so cute and growing so fast and wow babiiiieeees.
Ahem.
————–
Now for the less insightful and eloquent :b
@Mouse:
Improv classes are a gift from the high heavens when it comes to social anxiety. Everyone goes specifically to act silly so it should all be okay and not too awkward. If you’re a student, maybe there’s local drama clubs that offer? Other things I recommend: public speaking classes, comedy classes, acting in general, presentation seminars ( universitie tend to offer these for free ) and lectures by others. That last one is to get used to being in crowds and to see people present stuff so you can steal their tricks. You can also consider elocution classes, since they teach you to talk to people kind of by implication.
I used to be massively socially shy, inept and nervous without really the ability to talk to anyone. I lay the blame on bullying – essentially, I was always assuming no one would want to hear what I had to say, or would do bad things to me if I drew attention to myself. Also I was nervous and shy.
The trick, to some degree, is to acknowledge that people often do not actually have any preconceptions about who you are and won’t know anything about you until you start talking. No one can read you mind. No one can actually know for sure that you are nervous or worried or what’s going through your head, and that realization might help you because it means people aren’t really going to make many guesses or assumptions about your behaviour if you’re flabberghasted and tonguetied and stutter. They’re just going to… Politely wonder if you’re okay.
Also, people are, on the whole, polite. Shouting and rage and angry visectudes are not normally what’s going to happen! The worst possible consequence of a social faux pass is going to be that people maybe think “huh, that was weird”. That might seem basic, and it is, and its also the truth. Worrying less about the potential outcomes of the concersations I had with people went a long way towards taking the edge off my personal anxiety.
Finally, talking to people is a skill you can learn. It just takes practice. Try saying something about the weather to a busdriver, then going from there.
Just don’t jump straight into /giving/ talks to people on a desensitisation theory. Or at least, that radically failed for me.
At uni we had seminars of about 6 people and 2 profs in Honours. One person would read out a prepared essay, and then it would be discussed round the table. The first two times I had to do it, I found it difficult, but one of the Prof’s clapped me reassuringly on the shoulder and told me it got easier with practice. 2 seminars after that, I was spending every seminar crying quietly in the corner whilst people kindly ignored me. I just could /not/ do it.
On the plus side, I wasn’t shamed for it, and no-one made fun of me. Sometimes it is good to know that if you fall apart totally, it can be okay.
Oh, sorry if that was the implication. I was writing with the assumption we always appended a mental: “… Because what I am suggesting worked for me”. I guess I don’t think if it as a sensitivity thing, I think of it as a skill I may or may not have. Exposing yourself to sonething to deaden your responses seems a bit harsh! Don’t do that :b realizing you’re the kind of person for whom Social Stuff In Some Circumstances just doesn’t work is a perfectly viable response!
By all means, if something really does not work for you, refrain from doing it.
Sounds sort of shitty, though. That’s kind of peculiar, they just ignored you while you cried? Uh… Okay. I guess that’s one paedological approach you can take. Hope that seminar wasn’t too long or dreadful.
I’ve got a problem I haven’t really spoken about on the internet at length for. Or maybe it’s a dilemma.
I haven’t written about them on my blog because I know some of the MRA dudes I write about come on there (if they’re Eron Gjoni, they’ll even search their own names) and I don’t really want to share myself being vulnerable and religious with them. It’s not really their buisiness & I don’t want to hear a bunch of bad faith questions about circumcision in the comments thread.
The dilemma is that for eight weeks I’ve been dating an Orthodox Jew and I’m considering converting to Judaism myself. (I’m Episcopalian.)
I’ve always been interested by Jewish worship and holidays and I find the culture attractive; I have since I was in high school. Being from the southern states there aren’t many Jews and I’m acutely aware of the idea that the whole world could be as homogenous and bland as Southern Christians in the bible belt. I like Judaism because it seems to connect with God in an ancient and very intimate way (a lot of the stuff you do is in the home, with your food, in your daily manners; it’s not like you go to shul (aka synagogue) once a week and you’re cool.)
Yet despite my passion for the rituals and blessings and Hebrew lessons, I’m conflicted about what conversion means giving up and I’m especially conflicted with converting to Orthodoxy per se. I know it’s the classic blend but there’s this one off note that’s bothering me.
The problem I have with Orthodoxy is that there’s this pattern of rules and double standards for women’s behavior that just come off as laughably sexist, yet my boyfriend insists they’re not. For example, there’s separate seating for men and women in the shul. The women sit in the back rows or up in a mezzanine, behind this pretty partition called a mechitza. Some are lattices, others are glass. Some you can see through and others not. It’s become symbolic of all the other rules which also rankle me, which I’m just going to list now:
Women aren’t allowed to sing the Torah in shul. Women ought to dress modestly (whatever that means) and speak quietly both within shul and without. From the moment a woman is aware she’s menstruating to like 3-5 days after bleeding has ceased, she’s considered niddah (lit. to be seperated) and is not allowed to touch her husband or other adults. A woman is not supposed to masturbate while niddah, or maybe at all (you know, restrained feminine sexuality and all that.)
Once you’re sure you’re done menstruating you go to this ritual bath called a mikveh and immerse yourself in this hot tub of rainwater. This is very fun and spiritual, like a spa day; except one must also mikveh their dishes before serving food on them, so I feel compared to a vessel. It seems like I’m one of my own meat plates, all smeared with blood and unusable until I’ve been re-purified. Despite that, I’ve agreed to honor this request and not touch my boyfriend while I’m niddah.
Only this is also not really ideal. Unmarried women shouldn’t visit the mikveh at all, ’cause they’re not supposed to be having sex. I don’t know what benefit it is for Gentiles to mikvah themselves; the whole process seems engineered to get you pregnant rapidly. Also, married women are supposed to cover their hair.
My boyfriend can insist with a straight face that it’s actually because women are stronger in faith that they’re treated this way; because we’re so much stronger in faith that men prevent us from physically approaching a Torah scroll or from singing its holy passages in public. Because if we did we’d just fucking blow everyone’s mind with our pretty feminine voices, is more or less the reasoning. Because we’re so much stronger in faith, women are kept literally in the back corners of the shul. I’ve also noticed that women often have to leave the shul during worship and go into the hallway to calm a fussy baby; that’s a direct interruption during the time men get to spend learning & increasing their faith. Is it because women are so much stronger in faith that they deserve to have their prayers interrupted like that?
My boyfriend and I argued about this a lot in the past week, and it mostly ends with my boyfriend re-asserting that he doesn’t personally think these things, doesn’t know the exact reasoning, we should learn it together, I should keep an open mind etc.
If it were up to me we’d compromise and go to a Conservative shul with mixed seating; but he insists Orthodox Jews are the only real Jews (which is kind of a feature of Orthodox anything.) I keep pulling my punches around him, unwilling to cut to the heart of what he’s saying for fear of hurting his feelings. He’s had rabbis mansplain all this to him his entire life and honestly believes that Orthodoxy just seems sexist; but that if I understood it from their perspective it wouldn’t be.
Logically then if Orthodoxy is the only right way to practice Judaism, then these sexist features are not just distasteful throwbacks but necessary elements or desirable features in the religion.
So can I accept this, or acknowledge it without becoming a part of it? Do you guys think that conversion means accepting these things as dogma? Would the braver thing to do be to convert and then complain about the mechitza? It really is this one thing, or set of things; I just can’t believe institutional sexism is necessary to correctly worship God. Should I accept it? Despite my issues with sexism in Judaism I’m still attracted to the faith and practice its rituals.
If anyone here is looking for a fun time-sink, as well as an excellent analysis of why Fifty Shades of Grey, and Twilight, are misogynistic, then visit here:
http://www.snarksquad.com/2012/05/fifty-shades-of-grey-chapter-1-my-eyes-are-totally-rolling-in-exasperation.html
But don’t eat or drink while reading, or you’ll have to replace your keyboard and possibly your monitor.