An open thread for personal stuff. As always with open threads, no trolls, no MRAs, etc.
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Open Thread for Personal Stuff: Mid-August 2015 Big Shoes Edition
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The MammothAn open thread for personal stuff. As always with open threads, no trolls, no MRAs, etc.
@kupo:
The published one is here. I wrote it when I was 19, so I wouldn’t call it a perfect feminist work, but I was trying. XD It’s a strange retelling of Pretty Woman, if Richard Gere were, like, a homocidal and controlling/abusive drug lord.
The other is mxm contemporary erotica, so it’s a bit more niche. But if anyone’s into that sort of thing: Until It Hurts. One of the main characters is a Latino dominatrix drag queen, so… yeah, aha.
@paradox:
It’s good to know there are other people struggling. Luckily I did get two years of experience at the job I quit, so I thought it should be easier than it’s been. Truth is, the graphic design field is unbelievably competitive. Most of the interviews I get are for the jobs that I’m only slightly qualified for, where as the ones I’m 100% qualified for never get back to me. I haven’t looked into a minimum wage job yet because I keep getting strung along by these interviews with no progress. I should have gone into programming or something, but hindsight is 20/20.
Have you looked into a Tracfone? That’s what I have. This way I don’t pay monthly bills. I just have to fork over 40 bucks for a card every few months, and the phones usually double your minutes for free anyway. I’m fortunate in that a) I am currently living with my parents for free (though my mother keeps saying she’s going to start charging rent) and b) I left my job with some money in the bank, so I’m not destitute yet. XD
Freelancing as an artist/writer/whathaveyou is impossible. I think it’s easier if you’re making Pokemon keychains or something, but I’m not a fan artist and it’s a constant struggle to get anyone to care about original stuff.
Thanks, EJ. 🙂
@catgirl: I’d do all you can to (safely) cut that person out of your life. Never feel guilty for getting rid of someone who doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. This mess is entirely his fault and none of yours. Decent people do not initiate sex with visibly intoxicated people. He’s fighting with you about it and getting defensive because he’s trying to convince himself he’s right, but he’s not.
Hi to everyone! I’m taking a break from the kitchen for a while (till the cobbler and banana bread are done). Hubby and I have his son for the Summer and all I have time for is to lurk mostly.
N-thing everyone else who said catgirl should ditch Mr. Rapey McBoundary-Pusher pronto!
Hopefully, hubby will get the job he’s having a third interview for tomorrow! Good job-getting vibes for anyone else who’s searching for work.
Paradoxy:
Oh, THAT’S what you mean by “buy me!” after your videos. I’ve meant to ask, but I’ve been extra busy, as I said. I’ll get me a t-shirt when hubby has a job again.
Yeah, it is hard. I’ve made only two sales of stickers my entire time on RedBubble, and those were fanart stuff.
I think fanart is a great way to get people into your original work, but the hard part is getting people to pay attention to you in the first place, and that takes a hell of a lot of advertising and pushing.
Speaking of: Here’s my RedBubble if anyone’s interested in looking. [/shameless self-promotion]
You mean in my video descriptions? Though, I do have links to my RedBubble in my outro. ^_^;;
And I’d appreciate your business, though I don’t know if I have anything that’d appeal to you. XD
I’ve been playing around with RedBubble’s new products though, and I have to admit, I like the new spiral bound notebooks and hard cover journals. They look really good with patterns, and with single-image things.
Oh, as a former graphic design student myself, my tastes range far and wide. I really adore the Witches N Stitches design! Also the cookie cats.
I am being nudged by some of the conversations I read here to expand my popular culture horizons. Probably after stepkid goes back to mom’s once school starts and I have access to the web tv again. I am curious about Steven Universe and Metalocolypse in particular right now.
I’m glad you like the Witches N Stitches design! I worked super hard on it, and it’s one of my favorites! 😀
New job is going fairly well so far, in that I think I’m semi-competent at it already. But the early starts, coffee and air con is definitely making me ill.
Catgirl – that man is a shithead, and you should run away from him very quickly.
He makes you *afraid*. He dismisses your feelings and experiences. He did sexual things to you even when you said NO, when you said you felt *sick* and *drunk* and wanted to go home. He turned up at your house and crossed your boundaries. He’s already trying to make himself the arbiter of your everyday decisions, like how much alcohol you want to drink.
I know you’re a grown adult and everything but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING GOOD ABOUT THIS PERSON AT ALL AND YOU SHOULD NOT PURSUE ANY RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM. YOU OWE HIM NOTHING. Not even a goodbye, or an explanation.
delete all his contact info, and run far away.
Catgirl, I am so sorry this fucking asshole did not respect you enough to treat you like a human being. I’m sorry he is such an abusive piece of shit, and that he has already begun to abuse you*. Please, for the Love of Everything, trust your gut and get yourself away from this person and hang out with people who are good and kind and respectful towards you.
I am sending you hugs, because you are worth a million times more than that piece of shit will ever know.
*It’s up to you to decide whether you want to call what he did rape, and what you want to do with that information, but there are links in the side-bar that you might find helpful.
He did not seek your affirmative consent before he did sexual things with you, and that makes him a fucking skeevy bucket of sputum whichever way you look at it. It’s not your fault he tried to manipulate his way into owning you – He reeks of classic abuser behaviour and it is classic behaviour because it works. Even on intelligent, wonderful people like yourself.
The pattern only ever seems obvious when it’s not happening to you, and we’re always taught to be so polite to men.
Please take care of yourself, and fill your time with worthwhile things that make you happy, and don’t ever feel like you have to give even a second of your time to appeasing shitty men who make you feel like crap. You don’t need that in your life, go live free of their bullshit.
It might also be worth alerting people close to you about his skeevy behaviour, for safety, and if he comes to your house again uninvited, you might decide to call the cops. I’m worried he might be the kind of clingy abuser who won’t take “No” for an answer. Be safe, Catgirl.
@Paradox: Ooh, the pajamas are really cute! 😀 I’ve been on DA (self-promotion!) for ten years now, Fictionpress for six. They say if you work hard that it’ll work out, but that’s total bogus. I think all success is 80% luck and/or privilege, 20% hard work. I have written 21 full-length novels on Fictionpress in six years (I’m talking 100,000+ words each), and I’m not really doing any better now than I did when I put the first one up in 2009. I’m not gonna say I write as well as Rowling, but geez, I know I can do better than EL James or Meyer.
Being a creative person is really rough. Our work is what we really really love and yet so few care about it. It’s like having a baby that no one will even acknowledge or look at.
But hey, the thing you’ve got over me is that you live in Sacramento. My parents live in the boondocks in Pennsyltucky, which is probably one of the worst places for a liberal feminist to be. >_>
Hi everyone!
I’m currently trying to start dating again. I’ve taken a bit of a break from relationships after I had an awful experience with someone I wish I could just forget about. Now I’m a bit nervous of just approaching people in a bar and I was considering going with online dating but I’m not really familiar with which what’s out there. The two services I hear the most of are OK cupid and Tinder. Anyone with experience in online dating have any advice for where I should get started?
@PI
Do you do commissions? I’m in need of a graphic artist to make a banner for my youtube channel (shameless self-promotion incoming: I make videos where I analyze stories in video games! Check me out!). If you can draw video game characters, I’ll totally pay you and credit you!
Also, related to gaming, I finally finished transistor. Oh my god it’s beautiful and I was in tears!
@Moocow
A lot of people have online dating horror stories, but honestly, the all of three people I met were relatively nice and well-adjusted. I actually joined OKCupid to see what kind of moronic messages I’d get so that I could be mean to said morons, and all I got was one guy talking about his farts. There was one other who simply say ‘dtf?” and I replied with ire and he pulled the whole “OH I WAS JUST JOKING YOU SEEM NICE, HAVE A GOOD LIFE” Everyone else was either sending “HI” messages or relatively nice messages making it clear they read my profile. Maybe it’s because I’m average looking? Who knows. So that’s my experience with OKCupid. I hear Tinder is more for hooking up than it is serious dating, but it’s all in what effort you put into it. So I’d say just try it out for a few weeks and see how it goes.
(I didn’t end up dating any of these people because I realized I had no fucking clue what I was doing, so I quit doing that. But two of the three were very nice and if I were romantically inclined, the first one may have worked out)
@Catgirl
I also support the decision to drop that manipulative asshole douchbag like the sack of shit he is. You owe him nothing. Cut ALL ties, EVERY LAST ONE, tell him you never want to hear from him again, and if he chooses to contact you anyway say that you’ll track and monitor his communications. If he crosses into stalker territory you’ll have the cops on him faster than he can imagine. You don’t need to say why – in fact if you do, he’ll likely just whine and gaslight and use that reasoning against you. I’m sorry you had such a terrible encounter with him. Like others have said it’s up to you to define what he did as rape or not, but to me the whole story does reek of him taking advantage of a drunk date.
Ugh. It’s quarter to one in the morning and my brother is freaking out because my dad accidentally broke his laptop. A hinge has busted so that the screen won’t close. He’s insisting that the thing is unfixable and he’ll have to spend hundreds on a new computer (because apparently he “doesn’t do second hand”). I know little about these things so can someone confirm for me that laptop repair shops can EASILY fix hinges, for cheap? I mean come on.
@Catgirl: That sounds a lot like something that happened to me as well. I also remember being astounded at how fast I had gotten drunk that night and how disoriented I felt. Maybe there was something else involved too?
I wish you all the best and I think that accepting that job may be a perfect opportunity for you to escape his unwanted (and from what you wrote I gather also stalkerish?) presence and be able to heal. In no way should you feel like you owe him anything. Nothing. Nada!
Many well-wishes to you!
I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a sideline involvement in military fitness type stuff. We’ve got a regular company and a Community Interest Company. Essentially we’re trying to reach out to people who want to get more active but, for various reasons, are put off from doing so. We have a particular remit to reach out to women and young people.
Here’s a link to some blogging I’ve started doing (I’m so down with the kids!).
http://challengesandtraining.com/blog-2/
Any and all comments welcome.
I´m not new to being a feminist but I´m fairly new to policing my language so it would be very kind if any mistakes be pointed out to me.
Anyways, I am finishing my undergraduate thesis right now and I love being part of the academic environment but I aspire to search for a job and internship before I finish my degree because I feel like I have no experience whatsoever in working.
I also feel really, really great and it´s not just something that just happened but it has lasted for a few weeks now, ever since I had an HIV test (negative) done. At first I couldn´t really believe it, I was so used to being constantly afraid and feeling so dirty (although HIV positive people are in no way dirty!) and hating myself that it took me a while to truly feel myself again (meaning loving myself unconditionally like I did before I was raped).
The downside though is this: I love my parents and honestly believe that they are two of the greatest people I have ever met. BUT my sister is battling depression and psychosomatic disorder since years and she is so brave that she managed to take another step by going to a clinic for the first time. The catch is this: My parents have been trying to help her for years and had become exceedingly hopeless when she stopped contacting them (they live on another continent so just hopping over is not so easy ). I think they still have no idea how to handle the situation (which is mirrored in their fear of obesity).
And I know (because my dad basically told me so) that they rely on me being successful and happy and strong (and not overweight).
I have always known this since I was very small. I always knew that i had to perform well, but at the same time I felt as though that was unfair towards my sister because it put more pressure on her. I also tend to hide my problems from my family so that no one has to worry and none of them rally notice anything might have been wrong. And then I feel like my sister has enough to battle with so I don´t need to burden her.
I am the one consoling my parents and my sister. I sometimes feel that I am very responsible for the sanity of my family and that my family is split between my parents and my sister, and I´m the bridge in between.
I think what i´m trying to say is that I don´t have the “privilege” of being unstable in any way because my sister is right now.
Thanks for listening and I wish you all the best!
Sending my best wishes to everyone in a challenging situation (also known as life).
Catgirl, the other commenters had some kick-ass advice. Here’s some good advice I got once: It’s only going to get worse. I’m sorry to say something negative about someone that you had some hopes about. I know that you’ll figure out what’s best for you.
Congratulations on that new job in another city! I’m excited for you.
One more piece of advice: Make a safety plan. If you haven’t already done so, don’t give this guy your new address or the name of your new employer.
For more help with staying safe, call a domestic violence hotline.
(Here’s where you imagine a GIF of kittyz & puppies frolicking, with butterflies overhead but out of reach of the baby animalz.)
@catgirl – seconding Kat’s advice not to tell him your new address (including job address). I hope things work out better and try not to blame yourself! It isn’t your judgment that’s at fault, it’s the shitty abusive people.
@Lutzbelitx – I wish you a good break! I’ll miss you and your insightful comments.
@amadangelandme – I’m glad that the test turned out negative, but it sucks that there’s so much pressure on you. Do you have a relationship with your parents that’s open enough so you can talk to them about their expectations (maybe you can phrase it as pressure on you in general, rather than specifically THEIR expectations)? I found with my parents that discussing things calmly helps them see from my perspective, even though we often disagree. It’s too bad, though, that your parents seem to be using obesity as some sort of boogeyman. It reminds me of when my mother would tell me not to do certain mildly self-harming things (hitting my head, scratching my skin) because it “looked autistic” rather than because it wasn’t good for me. I’m not autistic, and I’ve said plenty of hurtful things to her that I regret, but still that upset me.
Go away, unfair prejudices! Flee! Shoo!
@Wanda and ParadoxicalIntention – Yeah, it’s really frustrating. For two years after I graduated I didn’t have a job except for tutoring online, which paid badly, and occasional work helping out at a library. When I did get a potential full-time job, I got fired in the second week. Last year, I’d think things like “Oh no, I’m a failure – 25/26 years old (27 now) and I don’t have a real job, what’s wrong with me?”
Partly I guess that was entitlement. At first I thought that since I had a Master’s degree (English Lit, but still) people would hand me a job of some sort.
Anyway, I have more work now, though no full-time job (or rather full-time-pay) yet, but rather three different part-time jobs.
@Catgirl
As someone who took the plunge with a person like that and badly regretted it, I urge you to cut things off. You deserve someone who will help you when you’re sick, not take advantage of you. Someone who will listen and believe you when you say you’re uncomfortable or tell them what you think is best for yourself. You deserve to be your own person and have your own thoughts and make your own decisions. You deserve someone who will be a partner, not a “boss”. The way he’s treating you is as if you exist to agree with him and give him what he wants, whether you want to give it or not. It’s a living nightmare to be in a relationship with someone like him, and it’s hellishly difficult to free yourself from it. Once he has someone there to fulfil his needs and whom he can intimidate out of expressing her own needs, he’s not going to be willing to let her get away from him. Tell him to fuck the ever-loving hell off, and keep looking for the person who will make your needs his just as you do for him. If you aren’t on equal footing, it isn’t a healthy relationship.
When I first slept with my partner, I was pretty drunk. I had already decided that I wanted to sleep with him when I was sober, though, and there wasn’t a single point where I was uncomfortable or felt like he was pressuring me into anything. However, it was also the first time we had hung out, and it was an impromptu hangout at that, so I felt kind of dirty and guilty. It was worse when he left fairly soon afterwards. I ended up confessing that I was worried about what he thought of me after that night. He asked me if I thought less of him because of it, saying that he’d done no different. He considered us at the same level, even though as a woman, I am supposed to think that I debased myself by having consensual sex with someone I wanted to have sex with. He showed me that he wasn’t the type to demand respect without giving it in return. It was that moment and that response from him which made me realize what had been wrong with every relationship before him. He saw me as a person no different from himself, and he wanted to be around me because he liked me, not because of what he thought I could do for him.
You deserve that. Everyone who isn’t an abusive shit deserves that. Abusive shits deserve to be as far away from real humans as possible. Please help this one with that by getting as far away as possible. You know you’re being mistreated, or you wouldn’t be concerned; listen to yourself. You’re not imagining things or making them out to be worse than they are. This is bad. Get out.
Speaking of creative work… I’m not sure I can upload photos here without a Flikr or Facebook or something, and I don’t have an online merchant page so I’m not marketing right now… but I did make some jewelry for a town craft show this Sunday that I’m excited about!
It’s glass beads, nothing terribly costly, but I enjoy weaving them into cool patterns. I’m still trying to figure out how to make a DNA-patterned necklace. I think I’ll use oven-bake clay for the “rods” and put wire through them before baking so that they don’t fall apart. I tried using bugle beads (two on each), but then they’d bend in the middle.
(IRight now I’m in an in-between situation where I’m not officially on vacation yet – I’m traveling a little the first week of September, yay – but I also don’t have that much work since other people are on vacation. So, I can do cool things with my free time, but I also get too lazy.)
Wanda, Paradoxical and Ej-lt really is disheartening, isn’t it? After being unemployed for over 2 years I have finally got a job. I an grateful for being employed, but the job itself is menial and far from being intellectually stimulating. I seriously can feel my intelligence evaporating. It also has nothing to do with my degree. I gave spent 5 and half years at university, 2 of those on my masters studying Criminology and I work in a fucking warehouse. 🙁 Paradoxical, I totally get what you are saying about being too overqualified and not experienced enough at the same time. It has been 3.5 years since I have graduated and have pretty much gave upon finding a relevant job. It seems employers expect us to get experience by magic-inexperienced to experienced spell ** poof** fully experienced employees! It’s idiotic. So next year I will be starting my PhD. I hope this would help get my foot in the door for tutoring/teaching work at the university while I am studying, this would help me find research work or other academic work.
@misseb47 – That’s unfortunate. 🙁 However, I have the experience these people are looking for and they’re still not interested, so I’m not sure what magical quality they want from people. I even had my sister redo my resume, and it was her job for a year and a half to fix people’s resumes, so it has to be pretty much perfect. It’s so frustrating because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. No one does, really. I’m tempted to start using a man’s name on my resume, just to see if it increases my responses. Of course, that wouldn’t do me any good cuz then they’d be expecting a man to show up at the interview. XD Thak God I’m white. /sarcasm. Also, when I do get the interview, I somehow dick it up because I get nervous and stutter a lot, and my vocabulary goes out the window. I honestly just called someone today just to set up an interview and it took me at least five tries to get out “I noticed you’re looking to fill an opening I saw in the paper”. Yeesh. I’m a mess.
It’s weird. I like to think there’s nothing wrong with me– just something inherently wrong with the system. It’s nice at least to know that I’m not alone in this. 🙂
If you wanted, you could try using your initials. But mainly, unemployment sucks and it’s a vicious cycle and I’m sorry for everyone dealing with that.
@Wanda:
I stutter quite badly since childhood, and I’ve found that the best way to deal with that in interviews is to stop, cut off the sentence, and then to point out that I have a stutter and apologise for it. People will normally leap over themselves to reassure me that I shouldn’t be apologising for it, which gives the whole meeting a less adversarial tone; and by having drawn attention to it as a medical thing, it stops looking as though I’m just a bashful nerd. Which I am, but they don’t need to know that just yet.
@misseb47:
Hugs on that. I feel you. My first real job was in an airline complaints centre, and was demeaning as hell. However, it really does help. Simply having it on your CV means people can tell that you’re capable of turning up to work every day, doing as you’re told and behaving yourself in an office environment. Those are all things that people value enormously.
In my opinion, our society puts a lot of emphasis on the idea that you need to go into the graduate intake of any company directly from university, and be whisked straight into the starting level of the career you plan on developing. Like most social archetypes, it does happen in some cases but exists mostly as a way of making everybody else feel bad about themselves and so work harder to catch up. The ranks of white collar workers, in my experience, are full of people who came to their posts via long and weird entry paths.
That said, I say all of that as a tall skinny white man who’s good at maths. Take my privilege into account.
@Catgirl:
I have nothing to say except hugs and you don’t deserve such a shitty thing, so let me please express that most ardently. Nobody deserves that sort of treatment. You sound like a decent sort, but even if you were ShittyGirlfriend McSelfish the Kitten Kicker you wouldn’t deserve such a thing to have happen to you. Don’t feel you need to take any blame, or absolve him of any responsibility for his actions.
There is much wisdom in this collective, and many people who can give wiser advice than I, so I shall cede the floor to them on this matter.