Yes, I’m cribbing from r/againstmensrights again, but this is really too good not to share. Legendary Men’s Rights Crank DavidByron2 offers a little biology lesson to his comrades on the Men’s Rights Subreddit. I’m sure this will be news to a lot of you gals as well.
Only modern day women have monthly periods. In history women were more or less permanently pregnant until they hit menopause or died. When you’re pregnant you don’t get periods. Modern women choose to have periods instead of being permanently pregnant. That’s a choice given to them by men, even while men still have to continue with their historic gender roles of protecting the no-longer-always-pregnant women.
Huh. Never mind that birth control of various sorts has been around since time immemorial. And while most methods of birth control were a bit less than reliable until the twentieth century, various cultures have used extended breastfeeding to successfully ward off pregnancy. So no, women were not permanently pregnant until the smart mens came along and selflessly gave birth control to the women.
There are a lot of men who really do think that a woman’s access to birth control, or womens’ reproductive health care in general, is theirs to grant or withhold. And it is downright terrifying when the man who thinks this is in fact a womans’ health care professional and he is right about that.
I and my sister both require, for different but entirely valid reasons, our Pap smears to be done under sedation. We actually once had to visit a (male) womens’ health professional for this procedure who for whatever reason decided to be a massive a-hole about it. He forced my mother to recount the story of my sister’s sexual abuse over and over and over again, took people who came in after us before us, and every time we thought maybe he was actually about to do his job? Nope, he just wanted to force us to justify yet again why we wanted him to do something he obviously had no intention of doing without a pound of flesh. This went on for literally hours. It was as though he hoped if he made it hard enough, wait us out, we’d give up and go away.
He continued to be bewildered by me having a Mirena despite not being sexually active at the time it was inserted. No matter how many times I explained that it was used to suppress unhealthily heavy periods, prescribed AND SUGGESTED TO ME by my male GP, he just could not stop asking “but WHY would you want the Mirena if you did not have a BOYFRIEND?” as though if he just asked that question enough, I’d suddenly realize that I had no business using a Mirena unless a man was squirting sperm into me on a regular basis.
My sister has Downs’ Syndrome, Tourettes and a few other health conditions. I have autism, cerebral palsy and hypoglycaemia. Because of the sedation we’d both had to fast, and since this guy delayed as long as possible, my blood sugar was low as hell and I was stressed out to the max by his harrassment of both me and my mother. All three of us were physically and emotionally exhausted and while my sister did not know exactly what was wrong, she knew something was up (even she pointed out ‘Hey, no fair!’ when yet another person who came in after us was taken in before us).
We did in fact end up getting the procedures done at the last possible minute before they closed for the day, but not in time to prevent a massive panicky meltdown from me when I was finally pushed too far when I was told that after all that faffing about, it might be too late to do the procedures today and the whole farce had been for nothing. A mełtdown the coward left his female assistants to deal with.
Oh, my gosh! Why did I read this? That awful article about his “baby mama” and how he forced her to give birth his way.
And Jenny, OH! I’m so sorry you had to go through that! I hope you gave him what for.
Jenny, that is terrible. So sorry you encountered that asshat under those circumstances.
Jeezus, Jenny, that is awful. Men like that have no business going into gynecology, EVER. There ought to be some kind of procedure to weed them out before they specialize. Why so many of them gravitate to it is a perversion I’ve never understood.
Apropos men giving women periods/birth control, thought you all might appreciate the story of how the Pill came about:
So, yes, men gave us the Pill. At the behest of two rather important, influential WOMEN. Who knows how long it would have taken if these dudes had been left to realize, all by themselves, that gee, maybe women would buy this if it guaranteed them no baybeez?
Also, Carl Djerassi strikes me as the kind of dude the MRAsshats would absolutely HATE.
My partners (and a guest) were confused by my staring at the screen in gawping insensibility: I had just read that quotation. When I read it aloud to them I saw the stunned, slack-jawed, face I’d been making.
The rational mind just shuts down when it encounters that much concentrated stupid.
Yeah, that’s it for me for Time and Newsweek magazine. There’s been far too much privileged, racist and misogynist asshattery in these magazines for hte past few years for me to feel at all comfortable reading them anymore. They seem to be failing at all the -isms. They’ve always been conservative magazine but did they switch Editors or something? Is that the reason for all these stupid articles they keep having?
I have endometriosis and my cramps are killer (or were until I found a no-periods form of BC), but I’d still take a monthly uterus-full-of-knives experience over childbirth. Among other things, I’m much less likely to die of a period.
Or at least they wouldn’t, because those were the Good Old Days when women knew their place, etc.
I love how he acknowledges that women having kid after kid may not even make it to menopause – and yet it’s apparently men who are disposable.
The mods don’t have any control over content. Althugh David does have access to the mod account, you’ll probably have better luck emailing his personal account (click the image of a red head at the top of the page, or email futrelle at wehuntedthemammoth dot com).
OK, I’ll just come out and ask: what was the horrible article in Time?
Kootiepatra: Was it the one by Camille Paglia? It was pretty awful. That’s kind of her schtick.
And she’s way, way, way behind the times with scientific progress if she thinks Kraft-Ebbing is the authority on human sexuality.
Jenny, hugs if you want them, and the Lego Walk for Doc Asshat.
Also, as someone who has pushed two people out of her uterus, fuck dudes who think they get to have any opinion on pregnancy. Fuck dudes who fetishize pregnant women. Fuck dudes who deny women birth control. Fuck dudes who think women are walking uteri. And especially fuck all those dudes who went on tha labour simulator. Women have been saying that something that you can’t experience is awful, but you can’t just take our fucking word for it, you have to actually pretend excperience it? WTF is wrong with you? And all the dudes who *now* believe labour is awful, really, you need to learn from *men* about how painful labour is? Fuck you all.
And there, right there, is my daily act of misandry, in addition to my continued misandrist eccentric celibacy and stating “I hate all men” upon waking every morning.
Just a quick PSA: Menstrual blood, like all bodily fluids, is considered a biohazard. Sending it through the mail is illegal. (Fake blood would be just as bad, because of course they’d need to determine that it was fake.)
Photos, on the other hand, are fair game.
this is really off topic and weird and I apologize if the answer to my question is “no” and it’s inappropriate but: did someone from here recently post a link to a tumblr about… uhm… critiquing penis pictures? I don’t know if I got this link from here somewhere or from a different forum so I wanted to ask.
god, that sounds so weird. I somehow got to this tumblr page and some guy who submitted a picture there wrote that he had always thought about that kind of picture as an expression of masculine aggression but that the tumblr changed his mind about that. I found that really beautiful.
RE: Jenny
Urgh, I hear you on the asshole OB/GYNs. I got a surprise anal exam when all I wanted was HBC and wasn’t sexually active. That was FUN.
Seriously. Cis dudes? STFU about pregnancy and birth control.
RE: Tyra Lith
did someone from here recently post a link to a tumblr about… uhm… critiquing penis pictures?
That was me! I am glad to have er… en-penised your life further?
According to the World Health Organization, 289 000 women died from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth in 2013. And for every woman who dies in childbirth, around 20 more suffer injury, infection or disease – approximately 10 million women each year.
Seriously, assholes, stop talking about things you don’t understand.
@LBT: oh, yeah, thanks for that xD it looks like a very positive website to me, on first impression. 🙂
Oh, Jenny! I am so sorry that your family had to deal with such an asshat!
Also, regarding the OP, this guy has obviously never heard that some women menstruate while pregnant. That was always a fun one to explain at a prenatal visit.
RE: Tyra Lith
critiquemydickpic does us all a valuable service. May they protect us all from godawful dick pics in the future.
@ Jenny, I’m very sorry you went through that, I hope complaints were filed.
What horrible, horrible alternate universe does this guy come from? I mean, I know that this has already been adressed in this thread, somewhere, but what mis-informed Hell world formed this person’s BS ideas about history and society? How does someone reach adulthood and still be so horribly, horribly wrong about so very many things? Does he sit around all day imagining the most BS, misogynistic bafflegab he can come up with so that he can frame his narrative about how teh ebil laydeez haz enslaved teh poor menz? And why does he think being pregnant is such a f***ing cake walk? I’ve been preggers a few times and it bloody sucks! I love me some babies, but I am never going to let one grow inside of me ever ever again! How far away from our universe does this jerk actually live?
lowquacks, yay for Bobby joining the household!
Cat pictures are at least as much part of the mission as mocking misogyny. We must never forget out duties to the Furrinati!
Jenny, I’m so sorry you went through that – it’s horrific, and seconding blahlistic, I hope complaints were filed. That shitbreath shouldn’t be practising medicine at all.
Did that guy say what I think he said?
http://i.imgur.com/onOi58X.jpg
Kitteeeesssssssssss! <3
Did someone mention (dun dun dun) KITTENS?
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not to mention that getting pregnant doesnt always happen instantly. a woman has about a 1 in 4-5 chance of getting pregnant each month. women were certain to have a few periods inbetween pregnancies even with regular sex. people also had more fertility problems back then because there were no antibiotics. silly man.