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.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
@ Katamount;
… ahhhh, shit, there for a second I’d forgotten we were going that direction…. (and in that one second, we lost THREE MORE “unalienable rights”)
When the movie came out, I took my (then) partner and my brother’s widow to see it… I’d recently re-read the book, and I told them this was “Heinlein at his best”, and probably a lot of other undeserved hyperbole… during the movie, I sunk further and further into my seat, as my companions looked at me like I had the critical faculties of an axe-murderer….
re” The Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts:
This is old stuff.
There have been plenty of apps around to “track” women’s cycles.
For men the best thing is to stick to your own business.
Oh, now, STOP that… we do that, we won’t have any more bigotry… THEN where will we be….
@Otrame
Some male fiction writers from the past that you can read without them being sexist as balls include Henrik Ibsen, Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum.
And then of course there are a shitload of women who wrote without sexism, often specifically about the ways that women got shat on by the sexism of their time.
Gtfoh with that “all fiction written before 1980 is sexist so it’s ok” attitude. Even if that were true, it wouldn’t put the work beyond criticism, because reading shit from a sexist PoV can be exhausting.
warning: expect misogynists to get their tit in a wringer over THIS… (please pardon my gratuitous sexism in the metaphor — it is intended sarcastically)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/us/berkeley-gendered-language-ban-trnd/index.html
Lord. Okay then, I expect men to wear LED signals every single that indicate their levels of testosterone. I also expect people experiencing hangover, constipation, anemia, or even just a bad mood to wear the appropriate signal.
On a more beautiful note, I remember reading that courtesans in Paris in the Belle Époque did in fact carry and wear red camellias at public events to signal to clients that they were having their menses and were not available for the evening. (Carrying red camellias at any time then became inappropriate for “respectable women.)
@weird Eddie
They’ve been getting all twisted out of shape over stuff like that since…gosh, the 80s? I remember we changed a bunch of documentation to say things like “firefighter” or “law enforcement officer” and they pitched a fit.
La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas has the red camellia thing. I haven’t yet found a reliable source that attests this was done outside of fiction.
Regarding Heinlein: Never read the guy’s work, but what I take from that quote is that men have no business complaining about women’s behavior when it deviates from what men think is appropriate for women. It’s like how female candidates can’t be “too” feminine lest they be seen as weak and soft, but yet are derided and denigrated as man-imitating, unfeminine, castrating harpies if they’re “too” assertive, aggressive, and confident. Whatever women do, it’s the wrong thing.
Re: Red camellias; Diana Vreeland’s grandmother warned her against carrying red camellias at her débutant ball for this reason, but of course, being Diana Vreeland, she carried them anyway. ?
I was very slow on recognizing subtext in the fiction I read when younger. I missed Poe’s use of unreliable narrators and Lovecraft’s racism, for example.
But reading “Time Enough for Love” by Heinlein, even I noticed how often beautiful, sexually available red-headed women show up in his fiction. Especially if they’re making babies with the protagonist.
There’s some evidence for hormonal cycles in cis men too. Testosterone levels definitely fluctuate over the course of a day, but studies trying to determine if there are cycles with longer periods have run into reproducibility problems. But maybe cis men should wear these magic LEDs too, just to be safe? Sauce for the gander, etc. ?
@AsAboveSoBelow
He writes a decent stick and is worth the read, in my opinion.
Stranger in a Strange Land is considered his magnum opus, though I’d not put it in his top 20. Starship Troopers is worth the read just so you can slap the damned fools who’ve only seen the movie. My personal favorite of his is Friday.
Just avoid “I Will Fear No Evil.” (Not for any broader reason, I just really, really, really hate that book. 😛 )
I’ve only seen the film, and haven’t read the book. Does that make me a fool?
Perhaps we can accept that media doesn’t have a god given hierarchy, where books are better than movies are better than tv shows, hmmm?
It seems to me that griping about how the book is always better positions people who have the time, the inclination, and the ability to read as the arbitors of how to value entertainment.
But what do I know? I’m a fool who has only seen the film.
*arbiter. One day spellcheck will work on this browser!
If anyone were to ask me, “hey, kupo, should I read the starship troopers book?” My response would be “if you’re expecting any of the positive aspects of the film to be represented in the book, then I wouldn’t recommend that. If you’re just looking looking for a book about space war tech, sure, go for it.”
Also, not everyone enjoys reading. Not everyone has the time or energy to read. Not everyone has access to books or reading devices. Books and reading devices don’t always make their content accessible to people with low vision, dyslexia, or the myriad other traits that can get in the way of reading.
Edit: and watch the comments policy.
Prith kDar – I am not a huge fan of spiders but that may be the cutest spider video I have ever seen. Thanks for sharing it!
OT, but have you heard about the latest one of the Fulvous Fuhrer’s Nuremberg rallies?
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a28433271/trump-rally-send-her-back-ilhan-omar/
I doubt it will be long before the Stochastic-Terrorist-in-Chief inspires another one like the MAGAbomber.
Add that the concentration camps are already up and running and it is looking very scary for America right now …
On the other hand, even corporate-owned mainstream media are starting to use words like “fascist” and “concentration camps” to refer to him, his rallies, and his “detention centers”:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28434608/trump-rally-ilhan-omar-send-her-back-fascist/
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/
Maybe the most disturbing thing here is that most alternate-history fiction where the Nazis won had it happen by their beating America to the bomb. Even the Star Trek episode “City at the Edge of Forever” went that route to explain why delaying the US’s entry into the war prevented the Federation from existing.
What happens if Nazis come to power again and this time they already have the bomb?
I tend to get hangry, especially if someone has delayed my meal by being stupid and making a mess for me to clean up. What color is code for that?
@Jen: Thanks for that. Seems that Diana Vreeland liked red. A LOT.
@Better safe than sorry
For you? Definitely. For the love of the Great Goddess, you and your kind have promised us for a long time that you would say goodbye forever. But you don’t. You hang around and you hang around and you hang around just to harass us. Go go go go go go go.
David: your cats’ illiteracy is what they want you to believe.
My cat took a second to stare at my phone when I scrolled over that image.
She knows.
And doesn’t give a shit, because she’s a cat.
The only thing I’ve read by Heinlein is Farnham’s Freehold, which has a side plot where a middle-aged man and his son’s girlfriend end up together. It was the social Darwinist aspect as well as the misogyny that made me go “hmm”: see, the older guy is resourceful and tough so he gets the sensible (and hot) younger woman; the son doesn’t because he’s weak.
I dunno if it’s all that serious, or that major a work: the main plot is about nuclear war transporting people into a parallel world (which totally is what would happen).
It had the best cheesy/trippy cover art, though! I don’t know if you can see it well in the picture, but there’s this irregularly patterned geometric floor that makes me smile: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/537054324291991271/
On the post topic, sort of – I keep track of my own MENSTRUAL CYCLE in my print calendar by drawing a little square (not, alas, a period) on the day it starts.
I don’t have serious issues with periods and I’m not trying to get pregnant – it’s just so I can predict when the next one will start.
In my paper calendar, I also write down how many hours I sleep each night, rounded to the nearest half hour. Google Calendar gets my other schedule stuff, but I’m wary of letting Google have my sensitive biological data…or would it be more character-revealing that I actually write down how many hours I sleep? 😛
But data is fun!! and then I get to see what makes me sleep better and how long I sleep if I’m not stressed out (7 hours per night, but my average night’s sleep is closer to 6.5).
…Speaking of which, it’s almost 1 AM here. I should actually sleep and not just talk about it 🙂
Some employers are already gathering data from period-tracking apps (likely in order to discriminate against women who might or intend to conceive…)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/10/tracking-your-pregnancy-an-app-may-be-more-public-than-you-think
OT @ BTD and Kestrel:
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I was worried about arachnophobes being troubled because I didn’t warn them, but I didn’t know it would embed instead of just link.
Peacockspiderman has many other videos of various species doing their awesome dances, including a compilation of 51 species set to Stayin’ Alive. Also recommended is A Peacock Spider Christmas which has Christmasy things edited in to hilarious effect. 😀
Most amazing is that these spiders are reeeeally tiny, like pea-sized. So extra props for the macrophotography!
(Sorry, I’m done now, no more spiders)