By David Futrelle
Attention vagina people! Turns out your regular vagina processes are disrupting the efficiency and well-being of everyone you work with, in that every time Aunt Shark Week stops by for a visit you get all crabby and start fights with everyone else.
That is, in any case, the worry of one Reddit dude — who has, happily for us, provided a solution to this problem: Have working women (sorry, “females”) wear some sort of LED device to warn everyone else they’re on the rag! Or maybe, like, a red necklace?
Foadsf, well aware that his idea probably wouldn’t go over too well with anyone, not just the “females,” posted it in the Unpopular Opinion subreddit, where it proved so unpopular with the subreddit’s mods that it was quickly deleted. (I found a screenshot in the NotHowGirlsWork subreddit and tracked down the original.)
I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt made to express my solidarity. I mean, as a cis dude I don’t get periods, but there are certainly days when I’m in a terrible mood. A t-shirt with some helpful slogan like “I’ve got a case of the grumpies,” or “Havin’ a cranky one!” could do wonders for office morale here at the Mammoth Institute, or at least it could if my co-workers weren’t just a couple of cats who cannot, as far as I can tell, read.
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There are physical states besides PMS that make you cranky. Tired, hungry, hot, cold, in pain, etc. Why not have a complicated color coded system of lights where we all flash whichever one applies?
@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
Oh my God. Please don’t pick apart my grammar. Sorry I used the wrong goddamn tense.
And I completely disagree that the was a talented storyteller. But then, I find writing characters well to be an extremely important part of storytelling.
While I wouldn’t want to show it to anyone and I hate to give misogynists credit, I would love to own a device that would tell me what the hell was going on with my menstrual cycle. I would ruin less underwear.
weirwoodtreehugger: turn off the house lights, add a bit of techno and you could have yourself a nice office rave going on there.
I once worked for a company with a majority female staff. One of the male supervisors actually kept track of his employees cycles.
@ kupo;
Apologies.
I agree about the character depth, and Ol’ Man Dan sucked in that respect. I’m not much of a Heinlein fan, but I guess what I remember of his storytelling was the Ananog era of the 50s/60s. I ran with a grade school crowd of techno-nerds simply glued to the space program, and the sci-fi novels thereabout.
Females with sensitive menstruation should share their monthly calendar with colleagues
Certainly my menstruation is sensitive, just like the rest of me.
submitted just now by foadsf
Oh . . . is foad from San Francisco? And that means I might run into him on public transit?
Toasted? No one’s going to raise a glass of bubbly to your brilliant idea.
Aww, so nice to encounter a male commenter who’s super respectful of female human beings.
So very true. I once reached up under my skirt and into my underwear, pulled out my bloody tampon, and flung it at a male co-worker who asked me the time. (Sorry if that turns you on, foadsf.) So I certainly understand what you’re saying. Good point.
This is a great idea. And maybe something similar for the male human being leaders who are so tense and edgy that they get us into wars for no good or moral or even legal reason. I’m thinking maybe a scarlet letter acronym: WBAWCIGHAC (Would Be a War Criminal if Given Half a Chance).
More respectfulness. I’m melting with gratitude.
weirwoodtreehugger sez:
Plus we could all do something like this whenever we meet another person in the corridors:
It’s worth noting that Heinlein was born in 1907—seven full years before WWI began. Dude had his issues, no question, but he was pretty damned progressive, considering. Certainly a hell of a lot more progressive than his fiction might lead you to believe, because he had to get his stories past editors like John W. Campbell…
@kupo
*sigh*
Yes, of course Heinlein was a sexist. So what? Please name me one person writing in those days that wasn’t.
I forget which of the Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts said, “Purity is for water, not human beings,” but I agree with it, if only because when you demand purity from humans you are asking the impossible.
I can’t help wondering. In your mind, should people not read anything written in the past? Who would you recommend we read from the 40s-70s, or, honestly, at any time in the past, who wasn’t sexist. Name one.
@Cubist
Exactly.
He was more than a little libertarian, too, which is a considerable sin in my book.
However, while he was a sexist, he was not a misogynist. Those words are not interchangeable.
So….that quote is sexist. So we don’t need to praise sexist people on here for their sexist reductions of half of the population’s hormonal fluctuations. Nor do we need to shrug off sexism (or racism or what-have-you) because of the time period it came from.
JFC, where did I tell anyone what to read? Fucking quote me on it. I can’t point out sexism on a fucking feminist blog now because your sci-fi author hero is untouchable?
Really?
He had an ingrained prejudice against women. Are you claiming he did not?
FFS, when did it become wrong to call out misogyny on here?
Strongly suspect that Heinlein would have given the current American flavor of Libertarianism a big horselaugh as he tossed it in the dumpster. One of his earliest published stories, Lifeline, was about a lone inventor who created an infallible method of predicting anyone’s date-of-death… and how the insurance industry tried to harass and sue that man out of existence. The judge in the story had some pointed remarks about how it wasn’t the government’s duty to ensure that rich people stay rich. Not exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from people who presuppose that Big Business Can Do No Wrong, you know?
Remember, we’re talking about a dude who predated AmLib by a few decades; it may not be prudent to presume that the current connotations of the term “Libertarian” apply to him. As for Heinlein being a misogynist, Spider Robinson has something to say on the subject (and if you have any interest in Heinlein, the entire rest of the essay is worth reading):
I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as “smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am.” In his latest book, Expanded Universe… he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts.
So foadsf, have you just been reading La Dame aux Camelias/Camille ?
@Squash
That sounds horrifyingly invasive, how did he know unless he stalked the bathroom?
@Prith kDar
That video made me unreasonably happy and laugh so hard. Plus, I would be down with didgeridoos playing out the PA every time I walked down the hall.
Spider Robinson’s writing displays a lot of the same weird pseudobenevolent sexism as his late mentor’s. I wouldn’t necessarily trust his objectivity on this.
@cubist
What “requirement” is he talking about? Wtf does that mean?
I once wore multicoloured leds in Edinburgh during the festival while I was cycling. That was fun.
But hey, why leds for bleeding times? Why not just a symbol (red triangle perhaps) or a lovely red outfit like a handmaid?!
I inhaled all of Heinlein’s books when I was a preteen, back in the 60s/70s. I am pretty sure reading those was what made me unjudgmental of others’ sexuality, but even at that age, I realized the shallowness of the female characters.
Back when I was still having periods, the time just before and 3 days into it would be the times I was able to assert myself. This worked well at work, but was totally discounted by the person I was married to (well, until I divorced him).
Wait–aren’t these some of the same jackwagons who swear they can smell a nearby Va-jj?
With a sense of smell that acute, you’d think they’d “catch wind” (as it were) of any passing coworker @ the appropriate time of month 2 steer clear, but, hey, wha’do I know?
PS: if I’ve already been ninja’d by a previous poster, I apologize, but I haven’t read all the comments.
Tangentially related to lights/LEDs for staying visible at night, I remember seeing a kid on my bus route who had a backpack with one of those Ampelmännchen reflective keychains.
I only recognized it because I had read the Wikipedia article for Ostalgie, which is nostalgia for East Germany. The article has an image of one of the iconic Ampelmännchen (little crosswalk man), who was the crosswalk signal shape unique to East Germany.
I thought the keychain was really I looked up how much one of those keychains cost. 7 Euro! That’s like 15CAD for a piece of reflective plastic! Bloody capitalism! Grrrr!
That Spider Robinson quote seems pretty sketchy to me. It is possible for a misogynist to respect his wife. Lots of bigots make exceptions for the people who are close to them. It is also not “female chauvinist” to hold women to different standards than men. That’s one of the classic ways misogyny operates.
re: Heinlein, beloved media and “blatant-isms”
One of the things I loved about Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs Women” series was her contention that we CAN love media even though it is problematic. It is, however, incumbent on us to recognize the problematic aspects of that media, and to avoid “defending the media in spite of” the problematic aspects of it.
Regarding Heinlein, and to an even GREATER extent, Spider Robinson, yeah, they both had definite problems with women, and those problems are inherent in their writing. Heinlein always had to describe his characters physically, and, for example, Belle Darkin (Door Into Summer) was “… streamlined for about Mach 3… displayed frontal-mounted radar housings…” … Wyoming Knott’s (Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) description, while it DID have a definite bearing on the story line, was very objectifying.
Robinson’s treatment of Rachel in the Callahan’s trilogy (sorry Spider, there’s three of ’em, it’s a trilogy) was frankly unforgivable. A considerable amount of Spider’s defense of Heinlein (cited above by cubist) hinges on a distaste for what would later be called “Political Correctness”… again, I really loved the Callahan’s stories.
One of my favorite Heinlein stories was Starship Troopers. Though not so much misogynist, as there were almost no women characters, and his treatment of Carmen Ibanez was (as I remember) pretty good, the book had an undercurrent of fascism which Heinlein treated as “just another way of running a society”. It would have been easy for him to call out the fascist ideas, but he chose not to. I can, if I choose, simply accept THIS as literary license, but I choose, instead to call him out on it. Nonetheless, I still like the story, and it does have a great deal more depth of character than Moon, Double Star, or some of the others (to my eternal shame, I never read Stranger.)
Starship Troopers, incidentally, earns MY nod for “Movie Which Demonstrates Most Effectively That The Screenwriters Never Read The Book”….
Regarding Heinlein as a “product of his time”, as Otrame and cubist argue above, does that, then EXCUSE the bigotry? We read Darwin’s work on evolution and natural selection, and we are aware of Darwin’s ill feelings toward some of the indigenous peoples he encountered. We DON’T excuse the bigotry as a product of the time period, though.
… and wow, did I ever take us down the rabbit hole….
@Weird Eddie
I’ve watched a couple analyses of the film Starship Troopers and I think the most cogent one was the idea that Paul Verhoeven made the movie as if it was an artifact of a right-wing fascist future and presented it the world, as if saying “This is the kind of movie that a fascist society would make.” A vapid teen love triangle with three perfect-looking white people. Unflinching praise of the state. No actual conclusion of the conflict being portrayed. Even in the infamous shower scene, the naked young people don’t even get horny for a second, they just talk about how awesome citizenship is. In 1997, before 9/11 ramped up the militarism, nobody knew what to make of it, but now everyone’s like “Yeah, that’s where things are going.”