of dislocation & graceful unravelling

feministfilm:

sunneinsplendour:

So this is a post that has been a long time coming, ever since I started tracking the Betty Draper tag basically and was exposed to a whole new level of vitriol that I didn’t think a fandom - whom I always used to consider pretty classy - was capable…

I just started watching Mad Men and I’m only in the middle of Season 3, so I’m not sure if my opinion would change as Betty’s character is further developed. Also I have not explored any Mad Men fandom type forums at all and only had a few discussions about Relevant Issues regarding the show.

That being said, in re: item #1, “Betty Draper is a bad mother” - as yet in my viewing experience, I haven’t labelled her a “bad mother.” Partially this might be due to my own childhood; I was raised by parents who were not necessarily opposed to shouting at or spanking a kid for disciplinary purposes. It didn’t happen often, but it was a thing that happened. (At the same time, my mom raised hell when she found out my Kindergarten teacher was smacking me around.) And although I wouldn’t spank my own kids, I don’t personally feel that what I experienced was all that detrimental in the long run, despite the fact that it would be defined as abuse nowadays, technically. (And also despite the fact that surely some people will say I’m messed up for thinking what happened to me is not messed up, when taken as a whole. Whatever, unabashedly confessional y’all.)

So far as I’ve watched in the series, there have been many tense moments where Betty is mean, cold, or curt to her kids. I actually thought this was kind of a brave thing to be showing on TV (though I am loathe to describe a television program as “brave”) because I read it as a kind of authenticity. I mean, you have the cheerful 50s mom Leave It to Beaver-esk stereotype — all of which is covered in the linked commentary. But still today, regardless of our privilege of 20/20 hindsight into how messed up the past was, this stereotype of the happy mother joyously sacrificing everything for the sake of her angelic children is still all the rage.

Motherhood-as-a-concept is made out to be this life-changing experience where despite all the sleepless nights and poopy diapers and stained clothes and hurty tits (not to mention finding time for the rest of your life and maintaining sanity and being an individual person with thoughts) — you are so happy, so so overjoyed, and it is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You (tm). Which I wouldn’t argue with per se. I have experienced the feeling of overwhelming love for one’s child and it is a thing that is real. But then there are the other realities of cleaning up messes and crying and losing your mind and being exhausted and also at the same time, making sure to always have something grateful to say about the joys of parenting and always have a happy face. These are the things I haven’t experienced and this is part of what terrifies me about eventually raising a kid… what happens when I mess up? There’s a lot of pressure to Not Mess Up around your kids because if you get angry you will RUIN THEM FOR LIFE.

So to me, Betty Draper’s character as a mom offers glimpses into a kind of parenting that can be a real thing. Not the kind you’ll see on cutesy Facebook posts or photo albums. There are going to be days when the parent is tired and snaps at the kids. There are days when the parents can’t take it anymore because as precious and beautiful and amazing as children are, they can also be hellish. I know this because I used to be a kid and I was kind of an asshole sometimes. Parents don’t become perfect and infallible after having kids; they’re still human and they still have to deal with their human shit while also being responsible for a smaller human. Life doesn’t stop being difficult forever simply because something allegedly miraculous happened to you once or twice.

I once read a story — I think it was in Breeder but I will have to go and search to confirm because I’m not totally certain — that was about how when a woman gives birth, she will undoubtedly (due to emotions as well as the rush of hormones) feel this overwhelming, universal rush of perfect love for her newborn; this helps in the initial attachment and bonding process. The author of this particular birth story wrote that after hours of laboring, squatting and on all fours, when her baby was finally born, the mother’s first thought was to eat her child. Like some kind of atavistic wolf instinct. I’ve never read another birth story like this. You don’t want to tell people about that feeling; that shit is weird and inappropriate. The mother was troubled by these feelings and regardless of her doing all the right things and being a good mom/caretaker, she still felt like a freak because Parenting is Hard and it wasn’t all cupcakes and rainbows. She loved her kid fiercely, but raising an infant for her was a lot of craziness. I loved that story because it was honest as shit. I don’t want to hear about how having a kid made your life perfect and amazing and everyone should have teh babiez it is the best!!! I want to know about the real human shit so that I don’t have to constantly fear that I will totally fall short of this unattainable magical standard of motherhood simply because I am a lady who can caretake and feel beauty and joy and overwhelming love but also who sometimes feels tired and sometimes gets angry and sometimes just doesn’t have time for the bullshit and needs to be left alone every now and then to think. Is there something wrong with still wanting to be a person while you’re caring for another person?

/TV SHOWS THAT MAKE ME THINK ABOUT SERIOUS ISSUES.

ETA: Case in Point: WHAT HAPPENED, MOMMY?

peripatetic (ramble)

Most of my writing comes from my 1.7-mile walk home from work at night:

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personal experience with pms post

katydidnot:

have you guys ever read the thing about that (feminist) woman who realizes PMS is in a large part a socially constructed disease, and then her cramps ~magically go away~? i’m not going to find that, but this post is pretty much the opposite of that. 

so i never really took concerns about emotional aspects of PMS seriously because i was dong an asshole thing of “not listening to women” and figuring like, “this is not a thing that noticeably happens to me, it must not be common”—um, so, yeah, all of that is pretty ridiculous. i think a lot of the other reason i didn’t take it very seriously was because my parents used to tell me when i got upset around my period i was “just being moody because of PMS”, so i put more stock into PMS being like “a way of dismissing lady feelings” than like, a real thing necessarily in most cases. 

but in the past like, at least six months i’ve been having like a tiny DEPRESSIVE EPISODE in the week before my period, every month, without fail. the extent of this varies from like, freaking out in a manner that seems very similar to major depression, from what i understand of it from reading articles/talking to friends with depression (ie: lying in bed crying with no real reason/being completely unable to get up and do something i know i have to do) to feeling generally inadequate at things i do (and also crying a lot) to just being in a really bad mood (in a “i am really unsure why these things are making me upset” way)

i don’t really know if i should talk to a doctor about this or not? i’m not entirely sure about how it’s treated—i’ve heard that low doses anti-depressants are sometimes prescribed, but really i’m not interested in that for something that affects me for like, roughly 2-4 hours once a month. 

Well damn, GOOD FOR THAT FEMINIST LADY. I’ve never read that but I guess I wouldn’t be surprised.

The effects of your cycle can change over time based on things like age, diet, stress levels, and whether or not you ever get pregnant, or terminate a pregnancy, or miscarry, or have a baby. When I was younger I used to get The Worst Cramps and week-long periods and doctors kept prescribing me stronger and stronger pain pills, which I would of course eventually develop a tolerance to and then they wouldn’t work. I decided to stop that and after a few months either my natural remedies were working or my cycle had just changed on its own.

Now my cycle is like: 2 weeks of feeling neutral, 1 week of feeling, um, “excitable”, a few days of crying at the drop of a hat, a few more days of neutral, and then period, which is one very painful day when I ought to be allowed to stay in bed and eat chocolate, and a few slightly irritable days.

I have a lot of lady health zines with different ways of reducing menstrual pain or managing PMS-y emotions. Some things that have worked for me are: raspberry leaf tea, chamomile tea, peppermint tea, less caffeine, no smoking cigarettes, yes smoking other kinds of cigarettes, no red meat, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, no dairy (except chocolate helps me a lot?), and drinking lots of water and peeing a lot. Also hot showers/baths (soap/bubbles not recommended personally), heating pads (or you can put a flat rock in the oven for a bit and wrap it in a towel!), back and shoulder and thigh massages or even light petting (affectionate comforting touches), and getting off. Physical exercise also seems to be helpful even when I feel like my insides are falling out; sometimes a walk around the block feels great when I overcome the initial discomfort.

As far as medicine-medicine, sometimes different kinds of hormonal birth control can help regulate emotions and reduce pain, if you’re into that sort of thing. (I don’t use bc because I have LADY ISSUES about it, but it works for many others!) And there are anti-anxiety type drugs that can be used as-needed for the moments you’re feeling poopy (I use Ativan/Lorazepam in very small doses).

But as for my personal not-necessarily-solicited opinion regarding managing or regulating emotions, especially as related to periods/PMS, unless it’s, like, severely, intensely, dangerously affecting your ability to enjoy life… why not try to accept/embrace? Personally I relish the opportunity to be able to exist in an emotionally-heightened state of being for those few days, even if it means I’m going to be crying over an advertisement on YouTube or something. I think it’s pretty interesting that chemical changes occurring in my body can make me feel differently about everyday stuff, and also because I track my cycle I am usually aware of some hormonal reasons why I might be in a certain mood, so I can accept it and appreciate it and be all analytical and shit. It sort of gives me a chance to look at things in a way that I might not easily be able to during a neutral time. I don’t look at it as like, “EXCUSE ME, I’M JUST PMSING, PLEASE DISREGARD MY LACK OF RATIONAL THOUGHT,” ‘cause if I maintain awareness then I know it’s just another facet of myself anyway. (Also personal disclaimer: I’m so stressed and burnt-out these days that I am EXCITED that I can still cry about things or get angry or moody, so that’s where I’m coming from.)

And PC blog disclaimer: Not saying my way is better, just saying it’s better for me…and a potentially helpful opinion to consider in re: Katy’s question.

katydidnot:

gopfuzz:

mystickynotes:

katydidnot:

SO i wanna discuss “punk bathrooms as a way of keeping an implicit male space” today because it is a topic i have been thinking about a lot. this discussion is kind of like, gender-binary-y, but i assume it works the same for all female-bodied people without like, a go girl or other similar…

GO GIRL?!?!?!?! I’ve never heard of this. It’s awesome! Also, yes! The bathroom situation last night SUCKED so i’m glad you wrote this post. I was standing in the bathroom looking around being like…. uhmm? Then, I was considering using it anyway and just hoping that someone didn’t barge in whilst I was mid-toilet-hover when immediately after this thought, Brian walked right in through the unlocked door and I was like OK NEVERMIND.. so yeah, this is a thing that is not fun.

 There really is no excuse to not have a lock on the bathroom door! As a person who lives in a punk house, the reason there is rarely toilet paper is not because it is an implied “male space”, it is because we are poor kids.  Look at our kitchens, our rooms, our floors…they are fucking gross. I’ve actually made a huge point to try to keep the doors locking and TP available.  I had a party once where someone took 8 ROLLS of toilet paper, threw them into my shower and pissed all over them, ruining them all.  One of my favorite behaviors I have seen pop up lately has been bringing a roll of toilet paper and using that as your donation if you can’t afford to pay any cash.  It helps everyone and I guarantee it will be softer than the sand paper we usually buy. :]

right, i figured a no-toilet paper problem is to some degree out of the hands of the people in the house (like, what are you gonna do if people steal all yr toilet paper? that is not your fault) and usually when there is none i assume this is the reason. i feel like there are ways around this—like keeping a supply in another room and replacing throughout the night so someone doesn’t just up and take it all (or pee on it all)—but this does not exactly sound like a big breakthrough so i’m sure you’ve thought of that before/do this. 

BUT i mean, i gotta argue perpetual no toilet paper means it’s a space that’s more accommodating to dudes than girls, thus making it an implied male space. i don’t think that’s like, an intentional act to keep girls out or anything like that, but the space generally being more habitable to dudes can implicitly do that, even if it’s explicitly unintentional/something you’ve never really thought about. (and yeah, there are other reasons why there would be shitty bathrooms like you said, but the intentions/reasoning behind it don’t really change the outcome of the situation) 

but anyway, the plush palace bathroom is the least gross of the few i was thinking of (because sometimes there is EVEN SOAP! and if there is not soap, there is soap in the kitchen which is RIGHT THERE! huge leap forward in the world of punk bathrooms) 

i’ve never heard of the “toilet paper as donation” thing but that sounds like an important thing to encourage. 

P-Fuzz, I applaud your efforts & also sympathize with you re: party-people using TP for destructive pranks. This happened at Spillage sometimes on purpose (throwing it into the ceiling fan) and by accident (oh I’m so drunk I just knocked this whole roll into the toilet hurr durr). TP donations are a great idea, too!

I think it’s important to note how Katy specifies the lack of TP as creating an implicit male space rather than an explicit act of “no girls allowed.” I brought up this discussion with Colby and his response was like, “well, that’s not a purposefully sexist act per se but it kind of shows that if there are more men running the house, it’s easier to ‘forget’ that women might have other bathroom needs.”

While I was living at Spillage, there were long stretches of time where I was the only female at that house, and there were some Serious Bathroom Issues which I eventually just gave up on and ended up peeing in a cup in my room during the last few months before I moved out. I was usually the only one who bought or acquired toilet paper even though, yes, we were all poor kids, but it seemed like I was often the only one considering the fact that some people who use the bathroom here might need toilet paper. If there was no TP or if the toilet seat was broken or the toilet wouldn’t flush, dudes have the convenience of just being like, “oh well, I can piss standing up/in the bathtub/outside, PROBLEM SOLVED” whereas for a lady such as myself this kind of minor inconvenience was instead a Dilemma and I ended up being solely responsible for finding a solution that would work for myself and any other female visitors, just because… no one else really had to think about non-male pissing requirements.

But also at least regarding my Spillage experience, I think some of this is partially related to the apathy I’ve encountered in so many punk houses. Even though I noticed that sloppiness in a communal living arrangement seemed to be more of a “dude thing,” it’s not totally exclusive to dudes; I lowered my living standards a lot during my three years in a punk house because it was so frustrating to try to give a shit but then be living in the midst of a chaotic situation 24/7. It becomes so easy to stifle the urge to care.

I would do “social experiments” sometimes to see how long it took for other roommates to take action on household issues. Like we once went three months with a non-flushing toilet until finally I freaked out and spent $2 at the hardware store for a replacement part and fixed it. Or we’d run out of toilet paper and people (myself included sometimes!) would just use coffee filters or pages from the Flagpole. Or I’d refuse to take out the trash sometimes and it would just pile up and spill onto the kitchen floor, or I wouldn’t wash the dishes so everyone would start eating off of cardboard. We lost the lock (and the doorknob?) on the bathroom door and rather than getting a new one, devised all kinds of ingenious ways to shut the door (elaborate pulley systems, pencils stuck into the doorjamb) and I eventually found the lock clogging the sink trap (WTF).

That’s the weird thing about communal spaces… that environment can be just as conducive to negativity and apathy (someone else will take care of it) as it can be to positivity and action (let’s all do this thing together!). Maybe moreso apathy, but that’s ‘cause I’m old and bitter.

Also Katy, I don’t mean to detract from your point by bringing Punk Rock Apathy into the discussion, but this happens when I relish the opportunity to ramble about my Spillage daze — the issues are kind of entangled to me. It’s still kind of relevant, though, because there is the Thing about the girl/housemom ending up shouldering the major responsibility of housekeeping and that stereotype happened a lot with me at Spillage to the point where I just decided to stubbornly embrace the strongmom image (as opposed to what I felt was “giving up” by embracing the filth) but it was definitely a THING where I would try to round up Cleaning Days and then later worry that I’m being perceived as a megabitch for wanting to have the dishes washed. I know this doesn’t happen at all punk house spaces but it happens often enough for me to notice,… but that’s kind of a whole ‘nother discussion entirely. P-Fuzz, by the way, Plush Palace was one of the cleanest punk houses I’ve seen! I never did use your bathroom, though. Post-traumatic.