Separating the men from the boys

The other day, I read an excerpt from Mindy Kaling's new book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Mindy Kaling's hilarious, so of course the excerpt was good. In it, she talked about the importance of dating a man, rather than a boy.

Until I was 30, I dated only boys. I'll tell you why: Men scared the shit out of me. Men know what they want. Men own alarm clocks. Men sleep on a mattress that isn't on the floor. Men buy new shampoo instead of adding water to a nearly empty bottle of shampoo. Men make reservations. Men go in for a kiss without giving you some long preamble about how they're thinking of kissing you. Men wear clothes that have never been worn by anyone else before. ...Men know what they want, and that is scary. 

What I was used to was boys.

Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who "totally knows how to cut hair." Boys can pack up their whole life and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have "gigs." Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys can talk for hours with you in a diner at three in the morning because they don't have regular work hours. 

But they suck to date when you turn 30.

So the concept of differentiating men from boys has been in my mind a lot lately. Cue the latest post by The Frenemy, who is also hilarious and good.

There’s this guy standing in front of me right now-adult, able to buy his own toothpaste, knows his jeans size in inches. This guy has totally lost his shit somewhere on the corner of Metropolitan and ‘maybe we should have taken a left’, and it’s technically something I said but not my fault. I’m standing here, looking around frantically at the six-pack of the kinds of hipsters that say they’re hipsters, so are therefore just dudes wearing hats. I’m eyeing them like maybe I’m the one that should be embarrassed, because my friend is going LA LA LA I don’t want to HEAR you and I have to keep on moving, coaxing him out of the moment like a dog.

Okay! I won’t bring it up anymore. Can we just get our hands on some ‘artisan what the hell is artisan’ burgers now and you can stop singing?

All I had said was that I was on my period. This is around the time that he started acting like a child, and it’s not his fault. 9 times out of 10 idiots, it’s this: you tell any adult man that you’re on their period/he’s got the maturity level of Dave Coulier in Full House, he can react in the ‘nana nana poooopy’ kind of way and we just accept it. He’s a baby, we think! I better stop being such a lady and shut my mouth!

...For the men- if you want to be an adult about it, you nod when I say that I have my period. You nod like an adult and you move on. Once a month, blood is shed from my uterus because I am not pregnant and I’m not having a baby squeeze out of me any time soon. It does not pour out like the river.It does not shoot out of my vag like a squirt gun filled with Kool-Aid, and it A THING THAT HAPPENS and you shouldn’t be grossed out by... Do not look away at tampons, do not wince at the word uterus. If you’re a grown-ass man who wants to stick his grown-ass parts into any woman, you better be respectful enough to acknowledge that the things her body does are normal and fine and not gross. I know you’re not all like this, because I know some real cool guys. I tip my hat off to you and your uterus respect.

I mean, I don't want to hog all the good quotes here, so go read the whole thing. I have yet to read a Frenemy post where I didn't LOL at least once.

Personally, I remember one of the first times I told a guy I had my period. He was my boyfriend, and I'm pretty sure I told him straight up. He was like, "That is awesome! I couldn't even tell! This is one of the many reasons why I love you--you're exactly the same when you have your period! You're not even grouchy or anything! That's awesome!" Ahw. <3

What's that tampon doing next to your penis?

So on the Ms. Blog, I came across this new machine that simulates the pain and bleeding of menstruation.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/09/26/if-men-could-menstruate/
http://www.sputniko.com/works/sputniko/menstruation-machine

The inventor of the machine seems to be posing the question, why should women menstruate at all anymore. To me the question seems less cultural and more biological. It's true that it's a womanly thing to have, you know those menses, for me however, the pills that down play your menstrual cycle seem biologically bizarre and I don't trust them.I'm probably completely wrong, but it seems unhealthy to me to NOT menstruate every month. Also, I really really appreciate my body telling me for absolute certain that I am not having a baby right now. It's almost like a courtesy call from my uterus. "*Ding* Not this month". I don't feel I am culturally attached to having my period, and I think it's something that should be discussed freely and openly without people being embarrassed, but I don't know if that extends to having a machine that simulates the process.

I find the idea of this machine really bizarre as well. Not that I think it's necessarily a bad product and don't mean to blast it at all. I find the idea of it intriguing. But it seems to make menstruating into a novelty, which is not an experience that goes along with female menstruation. It's something that happens all the time, whether you like it or not. Is there any real reason for someone to wear this machine? I can't see a real justification. Because it's not like it can possibly simulate ALL of the symptoms of menstruation. Example: I get itchy during my period because of my hormones, does this machine make you itchy? I think that claiming that it simulates menstruation as an experience is a little misleading. I love my period and all the things that go with it (even the bad ones, because when they go away it's all the better) but I don't know if I would want my boyfriend walking around thinking he knew what menstruation was like because of a machine that he wore for a week or so.

The thing that weirds me out the most is that it actually bleeds as you can see in the video on both links. Where is the blood coming from? Who/What's blood is it? What if the blood touches me? I mean, I'm okay with my own blood, but mystery blood, not so much. And if it is your own blood (which I think would be better) how do you get it, is there a needle like a diabetes finger pricker? I guess this machine leaves me with more questions than answers ultimately.  I do think it's an interesting idea as I said, and can certainly help get discussion going, which is always a good thing.

What Men Think of Menstruation at The Frisky

omg, this column made me laugh too many times to not share it here.

Men don’t really think about menstruation, because we don’t have to think about menstruation. We don’t have uteruses. Male genitals are embarrassingly simple. Our junk is a Speak N’ Spell. A woman’s private parts are more like an iPad. ...

It is difficult to empathize with biological functions that are radically different to your own. How would you feel if a man’s penis molted once a month and we had to apply copious amounts of salve to our raw member? You’d try to be understanding as best you could, but you wouldn’t really understand. But I bet you’d respect our space and our strange lizard wangs. Men don’t think about menstruation. But we know the best way how to deal with it: with a healthy amount of respect.

Go read about face rain and baby space pods and lust spawn. It's all very cleverly written.

A Reasonable Compensation

It's immature, but I do enjoy a good rage comic:

h/t to Memebase

Real quick round up

• A University of Miami study suggests that women have less contact with male family members--fathers in particular--while they're ovulating. The study looked at phone records of women's calls with their fathers. I guess I thought this was interesting because I talk on the phone with my dad pretty regularly, and sometimes we'll talk for a couple hours, and other times I'm more just like, "Yep... well... bye." Now science will support these sentiments!
• An article about menstrual synchrony, or why women living together tend to cycle together. I have a feeling that any woman who've ever lived in a dorm while not on birth control probably knows exactly what I'm talking about here. IT'S REAL.
• I just heard about this book--The Modern Period. I want!!
• Moon madness! We all know that menstrual cycles can be at least somewhat synced up with the moon, but did you know that there have also been correlations drawn between the moon's phases and time of birth or bleeding crises during surgeries??
• Mr. T tampon case. Hellz to the yeah.

Buck Angel's his-terectomy

Are you all familiar with Buck Angel, The Man With A Pussy?

Briefly, from his wikipedia entry:

Buck Angel is an FTM Transsexual and adult film maker. He received the 2007 AVN Award as Transsexual Performer of the Year, and works as an advocate, educator and lecturer.

I'll admit I don't know a ton more about him, but I understand that's he's a pretty vocal advocate/educator in the trans community. One of my facebook friends pointed me to this entry on Buck's tumblr (careful, pictures NSFW) about getting a hysterectomy.

So many people have been asking me why I am finally getting this operation, and why I haven’t already had it.

Well I never felt like I needed to do this. The chest surgery was way more important for me. I never felt like my uterus and ovaries made me feel less of a man. I never saw them, and the testosterone shut them down. Also my doctors in the USA said that unless something was wrong, I did not need to remove it. I had regular check ups and they never saw any reason for me to get this surgery.  

Until I got an infection in my uterus! What happened was that the use of the testosterone over 15 years started to make my cervix and uterus atrophy. The cervix basically closed and so anything inside my uterus could not get out. 

...So here I am now going into surgery because of the fact that the doctors basically had no idea what long term use of testosterone does to the reproductive system! 

...I always said that there was no reason to get a hysterectomy. Well now I am saying something different. I don’t think you need to do it right away, but if you plan on staying on testosterone longer than 5 years, I would recommend looking into getting this done just to eliminate the chance of this happening to you.

There's so much [unnecessary] focus in our society about the body parts of trans people, but it seems that there hasn't been a lot of consideration for those parts that are on the inside. It's scary to think of all the unknowns that come with hormone replacement therapy.  I wonder if this is an issue that affects a lot of trans men who are taking testosterone long term.

The surgery was a few weeks ago, and Buck has posted an update since then, saying that everything went well.

Is there a killer inside YOU? Let's find out!

Lately there's been lots of bad news coming around regarding abortion. There's the US House of Representatives voting to defund Planned Parenthood,  racist propaganda billboards, and a variety of bills being introduced in South Dakota, Iowa, and Georgia with frightening grey area surrounding the basic human rights of abortion providers and women in general. There is much to be said about all of this, but I will refrain because others have already said a lot much better than I could.

What I want to post about here is the campaign launched by Devery Doleman in reaction to a bill being proposed in Georgia. In short, Georgia Representative Bobby Franklin has sponsored a bill that would require all women who suffer a miscarriage to prove that the miscarriage included "no human involvement" (whatever that means). This is of course in addition to outlawing abortion, which Rep. Franklin chooses to re-frame as "pre-natal murder".

Devery has posted her letter to Rep Franklin at Tiger Beatdown, in which she writes:

Dear Representative Franklin: 

I need your help. I need your Uterine Investigatory Crime Unit and every bit of biological lady-part know-how your degree in Biblical studies and Business Administration from Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, can bring to my case. I’m scared, Representative Franklin. Because I think – I think there is a killer inside me. The killer is MY UTERUS. Help me stop it before it kills again. 

...I’m trying to do everything right: I have the ClearBlue Easy Fertility Monitor. I stand on my head after sex. I even wore a red muu-muu while we did it with a picture of Faye Dunaway as Serena Joy taped to the headboard! And then there’s that period of suspense when I think I am with child: the metallic taste in the mouth, the dizziness, the rage out of nowhere, the yen for a salt lick. But turns out it was just hateful old PMS. The killer has struck again. 

...Your proposed law declares that “[prenatal murder] does not include a naturally occurring expulsion of a fetus known medically as a ‘spontaneous abortion’ and popularly as a ‘miscarriage’ so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.” I’m so confused, Bobby! Don’t you see? The event is happening inside me which would seem to indicate that this particular human, aka ME!, no matter what happens, no matter what I eat, breathe, say or do, is deeply, deeply involved! 

...I can’t take this uncertainty any more, so if it’s okay with you, I’d like to start sending you evidence right away. There’s still a bloodstain on our mattress pad, I have a bunch of old period underwear, and I’m happy to bag and send you my tampons next week if the killer strikes again. Usually I go through an OB Super once every 2 hours the first couple days so there will be ample material for your lab to analyze to determine what in the hell is going on here and to help bring the relevant parties to justice.Help me, OB-GYN Kenobi – I mean, Representative Franklin. You’re my only hope.

Her idea is taking off within the blogosphere. Jill Filipovic at Feministe has posted her own letter, which includes:

As I’m sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs –Georgia citizens! — naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens — and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths. 

To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself. 

Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell.

The campaign therefore encourages women to send evidence of so-called potential pre-natal murders to Representative Franklin to be investigated. This evidence is best presented in the form of used tampons and pads, as many miscarriages present themselves in the form of a heavy period when the murderer, er, woman in question hasn't even yet realized she was pregnant.

If you would like to submit your evidence (just pictures! As Jill says, "we can’t actually send used tampons through the mail — sending bio-hazardous material to an elected official can get you in BAD TROUBLE, so don’t do it"), here is Representative Franklin's contact information:

Rep. Bobby Franklin
401 Coverdell Legislative Office Building
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
Phone: 404.656.0152
Fax: 404.656.5562
bobby.franklin@house.ga.gov

I will say that my gut reaction to this idea was very positive, as it appeals to the punk-rock vulgarity of my youth (ha), and is a bold statement. Even so, I gave some careful thought to posting about it here. This is arguably pretty vile and disrespectful, but you know what? So is the bill.

Menstrual intercourse

I have this article here. I can't decide if I like it or not. It's a guy writing about having sex during a woman's period. I like it and don't like it at the same time.

Now, I know which side of the fence I fall on on this topic. I do not like having sex during my period. Not only do I feel completely gross (my oil glands go into overtime), I also find that my vagina is much less receptive to any kind of stimulation during that time. However, I think it's great if couple's decide to engage in this act. I can see it as a very bonding kind of act.

The guy writing this article seems to be all for it, and I like that he supports whatever decision a couple decides to make, and even offers alternatives to actual intercourse. I like some of the euphemisms he uses like "closed for maintenance" and "seducing vampires". I like his general attitude toward this whole taboo act.

However, some of the points he makes seem to be towing the line between being awesome, and being a closet misogynist, like this sentence here about blow-jobs "The fact that she completes this act of lovemaking and accepts a part of her man into her body makes her a woman worth keeping (of course, not if you're paying her by the hour)." or this gem "or are engaging in casual sex with the bucktoothed girl that helps you get rid of a load or two every now and again"

Even with these little jabs at womanhood though, I feel like he has a pretty good attitude toward the taboo menstrual intercourse. Most people aren't even willing to talk about it, much less give you tips (I like the diaphragm tip, anybody know if you can have sex with a Divacup in?) on how to enjoy it, even if you think it's a little gross.

So keep on keeping on, Mr. Strovney, but watch how you speak about women a little more carefully.

A Date With Ryan

New campaign from Stayfree. It's slightly creepy, but also ridiculous enough to make me laugh.

Read better thought-out opinions and watch the other (quite similar) videos at The Globe and Mail.