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UPDATE: Oops. Turns out this dude’s post was satire, posted to a Facebook group mocking mansplainers.
By David Futrelle
More misogynatomy for your misogynatomy files! I don’t quite know how the British tabloids (The Sun, The Mirror, Metro UK) got to this story before I did but STOP THE PRESSES, there’s a weird angry dude on Facebook who thinks cis women get periods because cavewomen didn’t eat meat. No, really.
I was going to try to summarize his, er, logic here but I honestly can’t, so let’s just let him explain.
You got that, vagina-havers? You get periods because WE HUNTED THE MAMMOTH BUT APPARENTLY DIDN’T SHARE ANY WITH YOU.
PS: Once again, big thanks to everyone who’s donated in the pledge drive! If you haven’t yet, click here!
H/T — r/BadWomensAnatomy
Next blog title: WE PROOFREAD THE BULLSHIT.
(Works in both past and present tense!)
Re: Raw Broccoli
Cooking the stuff makes the nutrients in it more absorbable by our guts.
And easier to our teeth.
And less farty.
So, eating raw broccoli is okay, but nutritionally eating it cooked makes more sense.
And then there’s people like me: Two or three florets of cooked broccoli makes my guts explode. Raw would be horrible.
Thanks, IBS!
Re: Williams sisters
They’re athletes who have an army of doctors, personal trainers, and nutritionists at their beck and call. Also rich.
Makes it very easy for them to eat a balanced diet that is also raw vegan…
@Naglfar: Thanks for the link to Cliff Pervocracy. I’ve been going through his “Cosmocking” series of posts where he takes the piss out of Cosmopolitan magazine. Deservedly so, IMO: honestly, up till now, I never realised how awful that magazine was, with its casual transphobia, kink-shaming, slut-shaming, and generally perpetuating negative stereotypes about women (“say one thing and mean another! That’ll keep him guessing! GURL POWER AMIRITE”) It’s like it’s written by MRAs, or MRAs get all their talking points from reading old issues of it in their dentists’ waiting rooms…
@ Ledasmom
It is not unusual. I skipped about 6 months worth. Then had a couple of really bad ones, then that was it. Thank the FSM. You’re almost there.
Just remember that menopause doesn’t guarantee a lack of ovulation at first. My dad was born when his mom was 46 years old—and after she’d had no periods for more than a year.
My job? When do the paychecks begin to arrive in my bank account?
“Add femininity” to what? I need a clearer job description.
Slunch is a combination of supper and lunch, right? Maybe I’m holding my gut and whining because you don’t allow employees slunch breaks. I know Trump is president but that’s still illegal.
No pay, muddled job description, no slunch breaks: three strikes! Buddy, you’re out. PS: You’re not funny.
OT: Meanwhile, in tech, the founder of the free/ open source software movement, Richard Stallman (aka RMS) is in hot water over his comments defending Jeffrey Epstein. An apology (sic) posted by Stallman for his comments is the most prevaricatingly not of a not-pology you will ever read in your life (“boo hoo I’m so sorry if you misunderstood me! It’s not my fault you’re all too irrational!”) and some of his earlier comments are even worse; he actually plays the closest thing to a non-ironic use of the “ackchooooooly, it’s ‘ehebephilia'” card at one point. RMS has a long history of gross comments and behaviour towards women in the community, which his defenders are– of course, because they are terrible people too– excusing on the grounds of him being non-neurotypical. Fuck you, being NNT does not make you an asshole.
More OT:
New Reporting Claims Brett Kavanaugh Did Touch Yale Classmates With His Penis—Twice
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/brett-kavanaugh-sexual-misconduct-new-york-times.html
This is my nowhere-near-surprised face.
@Kat:
To me, “slunch” is when you’re too busy/tired/ disorganized/ spoons-deficienct have discrete meals, and they all just merge into one long undifferentiated grazing session spread out over the entire day.
Illustration:
http://cassandracalin.com/visuals/comics/2017-11-25.jpg
(Source)
@Cat Mara
Cliff does have some questionable views on certain issues (he’s a bit obsessed with guns, he occasionally says some rather antifeminist stuff), but over all he’s rather hilarious. It’s a shame he quit updating the blog (but still occasionally updates his Tumblr). Cosmocking was my favorite part.
When I was about 10 years old, I had a very fuzzy understanding of how sex worked and I was curious, but since I never had any real sex ed and my parents never told me, I thought the best way to learn would be to find one of the magazines and read it. Thankfully, I never was able to get my hands on one, and years later when reading Cosmocking I realize simply how lucky I am that I never read it. It would have been horrible advice and would have probably messed up my sex development even more than it originally was.
@Knitting Cat Lady:
Two whole heads of kale? Is this meant to serve one person? For how many meals?
Sort of related: I used to work with a man who, every day for God knows how long, ate a spinach salad for lunch. Eventually, he began to suffer from kidney stones. His doctor finally linked this to the trace minerals in the spinach building up in his body over time.
I suppose, file this under the concept that anything in excess is bad.
I didn’t know that uncooked broccoli & other cruciferous vegetables could aggravate thyroid problems. Like so many middle-aged people, I’m hypothryoid.
Whilst I do occasionally go raw for various reasons; there are risks associated. Raw doesn’t necessarily mean untampered with. Apart from the various pesticides, there are practices such as waxing apples and gassing oranges to improve the colour.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-are-the-12-dirtiest-fruits-and-veggies-in-your-fridge-2018-04-13
@Naglfar:
You dodged a bullet there for sure.
It reminds me of when I was a kid; like you, I had some pretty strange ideas. My parents, who were quite open-minded on these things (especially for 1980s Ireland) even bought me a Ladybird book on “How The Body Works” when I was around 7 or 8, complete with luridly-coloured diagrams of the human reproductive system. However, the actual process of sex was (possibly out of coyness, or a fear that kids might actually try to do it before they were physically ready) described in such an abstract, passive way that I think for a while I thought it was an involuntary reflex– like, if you slept beside a woman, your willy would just wake up at some point and find its way inside her of its own accord ? (You’re all welcome for that mental image, by the way)
Later, when I was about 12, my school did have a proper sex ed class (though, of course, described as a “personal hygiene” class or something similarly euphemistic) though by that stage I’d probably seen enough discarded old porn mags in bushes to realise that, yes, sex was something you did while conscious. But I knew women in university who went to schools run by religious orders where the nuns told them crap like if they were ever to sit on a boy’s lap without, say, a telephone book between them, they might get accidentally inseminated ? I hope they were exaggerating but like I said: 80s Ireland…
@Cat Mara
When I was young I had a children’s encyclopedia and I read the pages about sex, which had pictures of reproductive organs but didn’t describe sex other than “a man gives an ejaculation of sperm to a woman in her vagina,” which I thought meant that he had to go to a hospital and get sperm drawn like blood, then inject it into her vagina. I assumed they were both awake, though. The encyclopedia was a medically accurate source, but it still took me years, until I started reading romance novels as a teenager, to understand that there was sex for reasons other than procreation.
The closest I got to a sex ed course was in 5th grade we had a health class once a week that mostly talked about not smoking but occasionally the teacher would show us diagrams of uteruses and testicles without ever describing how they worked. The shockingly high teen pregnancy rate where I grew up was probably very indicative of the quality of sex ed.
The worst Cosmo ‘sex tip’ I ever saw was: put a doughnut on his dick, then eat it off.
@Dormousing_it:
That salad is for one person for one meal.
You see, if you only eat raw fruit and veg, and don’t it nuts, grains, or pulses, you are left with low energy density foodstuffs.
So, to get all the energy you need, you need to eat very large volumes of food.
As in ’12 bananas for lunch’ volumes.
This kind of eating leaves you macro (protein & fat) and micro (B12, selenium, everything else) nutrient deficient.
If you want a good take on those ‘diets’ from a vegan perspective, look up Unnatural Vegan on YT.
She used to be raw vegan and has ripped the dangerous advice she used to give into very tiny shreds.
As well as the dangerous advice of other vegans.
Re: Broccoli
I would love to be able to eat raw broccoli. There’s something about it that makes my mouth and throat itch really bad, but whatever it is must end up being cooked out because I can eat it cooked just fine. The same with cauliflower and asparagus.
@Knitting cat lady:
That’s kind of what I thought. I think I’d wind up with jaw problems, from chewing all those veggies. Only partly kidding…
I once went on a vegetarian smoothie diet. It wore out my blender. I didn’t have the sort of high-powered blender required to pulverize greens like kale, etc. I will say this – I had more energy, and felt more alert.
This bit, among some others, smells very trollish. Like, knowing exactly what feminists hate about you.
“At most”?
In the usual misogynist context, this would presumably allude to the idea that stone age women didn’t fully feed themselves, and were often subsidized by men. But what could the men provide, if not meat? Clearly, when the women weren’t gathering enough berries, they must have subsisted on sunlight and dewdrops.
Nice to see that Cliff’s tumblr is back up. The ways of algorithmic moderation are mysterious.
IIRC, when he quit Cosmocking several years ago, it was partly because Cosmopolitan was actually starting to catch up with feminism.
@Lumipuna
I thought it was simply because he stopped regularly updating The Pervocracy blog. The last Cosmocking (coincidentally the one I quoted from) didn’t say anything about that, and he stopped updating the blog altogether not long after. Plus, if you take a look at the website, Cosmo is still a long way from being feminist.
The Cosmarxpolitan parody series (slightly NSFW) is much funnier.
Idk if Cliff still has any connections to WHTM, but at one point he hosted a meetup (back when WHTM was still called Manboobz).
I loathe broccoli. To a weird extent. The smell and taste make my blood just curdle. Even the sight makes me a little uncomfortable.
Not getting sufficient calories can cause a euphoric effect. At least for a time. One of the reasons starvation diets can be so addictive is that you chase that original high you get and never catch it. It’s like a drug. People mistake that initial boost of energy as a sign of increased health, but it’s a trap.
One of the many reasons I despise the “wellness” industry. They literally tell people that eating disorders are healthy.
@WWTH
I feel that way about cauliflower. My grandmother used to always roast it and it nauseated me to see and smell it.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
This. I’m of the opinion that anyone going on a very restrictive diet without medical need is flirting with an ED.
Take my gran’s sister. She eats exactly 5 food stuffs. Don’t ask me which.
She also does not eat any salt at all.
Combine that with ‘detox teas’, which are mostly a diuretic and laxative combined.
End result: She almost killed herself with hyponatraemia.
Also, people who say they are allergic when in fact they just don’t like something? May every step they take fall one a D4.
(TMI warning)
Around 2005, I flipped through several issues of Cosmopolitan (US edition, not the local one), for the purpose of low-grade sexual titillation, and in a poorly planned attempt at seeing things from women’s perspective. Back then I was already rather well-educated on sex, but not much of a critical feminist reader.
Out of probably several “sex tips” that might have been applicable, I randomly tried one in my own masturbation. It worked like a charm, and I still use it often. It’s about grabbing and lightly pulling the scrotum during ejaculation, to make the orgasm feel more intense.
HOWEVER, I don’t think this is something you could or should try to pull off (sorry) on another person without detailed communication. The whole sexual communication thing is where Cosmopolitan most famously fails.
So men hunted the mammoth but didnt share any of it, including with their children, at least the female ones…
So unlike any species Ive ever heard of, there is some sort of- undiscovered by science or history- distinction in which women (read: afabs) are all secretly herbavoires but for all of recorded history and prehistory have eaten meat, so they developed a disorder blood forms a spongey protective barrier in the uterus is actually not supposed to be there, that egg is supposed to just go swinging and rattling around to make tougher men-children I guess.
I guess anyone who doesnt or stops menstruating is secretly eating impossible burgers and any vegan meat eaters are frauds.
This obviously also had to also apply to all menstruating mammals I guess? Like Bats? and apes and even dogs?
Also am I on a different planet yall bc “raw” broccoli is a normal staple in veggie trays for parties/snacking at home, you dip it in ranch.