#its unlikely that anyone will be able to act as a caregiver for me for one to two weeks post op

[mrlesbian]

being trans can be so isolating. so lonely. even with the support of some loved ones, i'm still on this journey alone.

[kryptsune]

🌼Good morning everyone and a happy Tuesday to you all! I had a lot of people ask me about my Outertale on Discord. That beat out pretty much all the other options on the poll so here we go! This is one of the larger ones because I had a lot of fun putting some of my favorite sci-fi concepts into this. I am a huge SG1 fan so you can definitely see that reflected. I admittedly am the fantasy genre girl so any ideas are welcome! I just liked the idea that the monsters in this were more than just typical monsters. DO NOT REPOST MY WORK WITHOUT MY PERMISSION IT IS NOT FOR YOUR USE. IF YOU LIKE MY WORK PLEASE REBLOG INSTEAD! It helps me so much! It makes such a difference.💙If you want more of these just let me know! It’s the only way I can gauge interest! Outertale Alternate “Nicknames” Info:  Sans: Nova- Nova is the trickster though he is mostly associated with that of Loki. Loki is described specifically as “Playful, malicious ( ok maybe not that one), helpful, and nihilistic.” He helps others in a kind of goofy over the top way. He just doesn’t take much seriously. Nova is one of the youngest. He acts very childish at times coming to question how long he has been among the pantheon. Some argue his many centuries gave him a nihilistic outlook on life or that he is too young to understand the true ways of the world. Not to say that Nova can’t be serious but he is pretty laid back. It’s one of the reasons unlike the others he doesn’t really keep his cultural ties in his design. He should have more Norse in it but nah… varsity jackets are cozy right? I mean he is wearing star shorts for star’s sake. When asked about his job he mentions, “Hey, there kiddo. Nice of ya to drop by. Been up to? Heh well got a “new” job which is pretty cool. Not as cool as Pollux but I help arrange stars. Ya know, like the ones you see in the sky you can make pictures out of? I think you humans call em… constellations. One time I made this giant whoopee cushion one. Then I lost ma job. Got a second chance though. Andromeda’s constantly watchin me. hehe no harm done though.” Both Pollux and Nova refer to each other as brothers but it is unclear if they are biologically related. Their abilities and strengths are nearly opposite and their mythos even more so. Papyrus: Pollux- The presumed older brother of Nova. Pollux is associated with Egyptology specifically wisdom. Pollux tends to be the opposite of Nova in that he takes his job very seriously. Once on earth, he was known as Thoth gracing humanity with a mechanical and architectural knowledge that astounded the world. His mind and intellect put him at the forefront of innovation making him one of Capricorn’s best and most trusted advisors. He enjoys testing the mental prowess of others using puzzles and riddles of his own design. Unlike canon Pap, Pollux cares more about balance in life. Something his younger brother seems to lack. Not all work and not all play. He is kind, helpful, and willing to give advice to anyone that is looking for it. To the little human Frisk, he is a good mentor and teacher. (Pollux has made it his pastime to create a series of challenges to prove a humans worth. If they pass then they are able to speak/ see them. No one has managed to prove themselves.) Undyne: Andromeda- Andromeda is not different from canon Undyne as she embodies the Mayan mythology. She is most closely associated with the feathered serpent Quetzalcóatl. A deity of wind and rain. Also known as life-giver. Though Andromeda tends to harken back to her more aggressive roots she has a deep respect for the King and acts as his guard. Just like Pollux she too acts as an advisor, though more on matters of security than strategy or mechanics. Such a position is where she first met Elara and to this day the two are inseparable sharing their very different cultures. Her favorite kind of anime to watch are mech-based. Alphys: Elara- Very similar to canon Alphys just as this version of Undyne is. Alphys is based on Sukuna-Biko-Na (少名毘古那) or the Shinto god of medicine and rain. Elara is still very much a scientist and one that has a unique fascination with living things. Everything from the planets, to humans, animals, and plant life. She particularly enjoys spending time in her private greenhouse creating and taking care of all of the plant life. Before the monsters were forced to leave their place among the humans she was able to collect all the DNA of the plants and animals on the planet. They are stored in a kind of ark in which to preserve them if anything threatens their existence. Elara is very traditional in her work as her medicines are derived from her magic as well as herbal substances. She is very curious however as she is not allowed to interact with the progress of humanity but rather watches from afar. This is where her love of anime takes hold. Her favorites are ones like Sailor Moon or any type of magical girl anime. She will sit with Andromeda and watch them for hours. Her demeanor is very shy at first but once she opens up she will be a friend for life. Asgore: Capricorn- The head of the cosmic pantheon he is the King as he is in the original. He is associated with Celtic mythos though he has taken on many pantheon roles in his lifetime. Ambisagrus, a god of thunder and lightning, Ancestor God, Sky God, God of Wind, Rain & Hail is what he is based on. One such role is that of Zeus whose main symbol is that of lightning and thunder. Just like the Zeus of mythology Capricorn is constantly debating his involvement with humanity. Whether that be to stop their technological advances or aiding in their lives. A large portion of his time was spent with his subjects not so much his wife Aurora who is the jealous type. Capricorn is not a ruthless leader but he does know that sometimes hard decisions must be made. Just like UT Asgore, he is kind and benevolent, however, he has a temper if you make him angry enough. His magical abilities lean more toward lighting then fire but he has that ability as well. He tasked Elara to watch over human development should a problem arise. Toriel: Aurora- The Queen to Capricorn she is known to be easily jealous. It would explain why Zeus wife Hera also shares these traits. Her Gaelic deity tie is that of Arianrhod a goddess of the moon and stars. She creates life from the stars she creates sometimes causing them to take a form of their own. They are almost like living constellations. Some say that the Queen made such life to combat her own loneliness which her Son and Husband spent time away. In addition to the stars, she is also known for being a loving mother and caregiver. In her time on earth, she used to watch over and protect children and their families. Aurora though previously jealous of her simple in the universe has come to accept and embrace it. She is kind but rather overprotective. Anyone that forsakes life will feel her wrath. Muffet: Umbra- Umbra is associated with Hindu mythology as a goddess of wealth and prosperity. Though earthly riches do not concern Umbra she still has a taste for the fine silks and gold that she once had on earth. A little about the goddess that she represents: Lakshmi’s name comes from the Sanskrit word ​laksya, meaning an aim or goal. She is the goddess of wealth and prosperity, both material and spiritual. Unlike UT Muffet, Umbra also focuses on spiritual wealth. Peace of mind. She is ever the optimist even when things do not turn out to go her way. In times of need, she is called those in the struggles of self-worth trying to bring them into a different understanding. There have been many a time when Umbra calms Capricorns quick and rash judgments, much to Aurora’s displeasure. Just as with the rest of the pantheon she is kind and helpful even with her yearning to return to the people she so loved before they were forced to the outskirts of the galaxy. Grillby: Helio- Helio derived from the sun is my OT Grillby. He out of all the characters could care less about either being a deity or an observer. He is known to be at a middle ground. He would rather live his days running a social establishment but during his time on earth, he was known for his magic. Originally he was the right hand of Capricorn being depicted as a war deity for his fiery nature. He was the general of grand armies. His armor is something he hung up long ago but if called into court he will wear it once again. Its design is very reminiscent of Roman centurions. Though depictions of him are curious since his name back then was referred to as Merlin. He was best known for his magic and alchemy and the concoctions he made during a period of time far lacking in imagination. Just like Nova, Helio tended to interfere far too often in the affairs of man though noble in purpose. He tends to be outcast among the pantheon for his past conduct but he is content in his lab mixing crazy concoctions. Everything from love potions to disguises. His forte is all about alchemy and magic. Asriel: Azicree (Azi)- Azicree or Azi for short is the Crown Prince. By monster standards Azi is still very young, however, he has lived for far longer than any human can fathom. His mother used to shelter him until he begged for his father to let him prove himself. He still acts like a child always curious and desiring some form of exploration. Much to Capricorns dismay Azi enjoys spending time with Nova and the two become pranksters in general. He tends to not do as he is told, which is why they are in this mess in the first place. His reckless behavior had him appearing to a human that begged for his salvation. The matters of life and death are ones that are not to be messed with. Those that do find their souls being tainted for all eternity turning them into something other than just a monster. 9X is an example of such tampering. Azi does learn his lesson and begins to try and shape up to be a worthy successor to his father if such a thing ever did come to pass. He studies off of all those he knows especially Pollux who is more than happy to share such knowledge. His associations are nonexistent since he was born after the times of gods. His abilities seem to be mimic based. He is able to learn about abilities and use them at will. It is rare that monsters have children and as such Azi is the little prodigy child even though there are many times he just wants to be a kid. He makes friends with Frisk very quickly and learns a lot from the human visitor. Gaster: 9X (I can’t even)- 9x (can be pronounced NYX or Nine-X) is the Gaster of this universe. He is Capricorns pantheon counterpart. In essence the Hades to his Zeus. He is the monster that everyone thinks about when darkness takes hold. He is the one that associates with apocalyptic events such as Ragnarok. He is however not evil by any stretch of the imagination. He would be better suited to be called a god of chaos. He tends to reject the laws placed upon the rest of the pantheon regardless of repercussions. It’s speculated that both Pollux and Nova were a part of him and crafted into the monsters that are known today. Nova being his more devious side which Pollux is more his intellect and drive. He has been locked away for a very long time in a prison aptly named Tartarus. His abilities are space and time-oriented very similar to Nova which makes him difficult to imprison. He, of course, has been in his cell for quite some time and it is unclear if he actually has had a change of heart or using it as a manipulation tactic. The only one he speaks with on occasion is Azi wanting to learn more about this planet they all used to call home. It is information that the others tend to not speak of. His father more so as he is afraid it will instill a yearning in his son. 9X’s genius is on par with his godly abilities such as creating artificial intelligence. Something that is not considered life. He uses Azi as a template for this new program… FLOWEY- F- Friendly L- Life-like O- Operating system W- With E- Earthbound Y- Yearning  F.L.O.W.E.Y was created by 9x and Nova with Azi as a template. He is a charismatic AI who was originally created as a helper as well as to teach the Prince about their planet of origin. Unfortunately, Flowey does not have the same reservations about disobeying his father as Azi does. Even going so far as to integrate with key and vital systems in The Capital. Flowey is not evil he just is driven to be the best help he can without regards to any type of consequences. He also feels abandoned by Nova as he was not only his creator but also his closest friend. It was why he was made. To be a companion and friend.  He helps Frisk meet and learns more about their existence. He acts like a companion. However, when Frisk becomes friends with Azi Flowey’s AI goes haywire. He begins to feel emotions he is not technically allowed to such as jealousy. This causes him to try and eliminate those threatening him which in this case would be all the monsters. Eventually, Azi attempts to program himself into the interface changing its initial programming. Some of Flowey’s previous versions:    Blookie: Nebula Riverperson: Omni Gerson: Quasar The Ursas: Ursa Major/Minor Greater Dog/ Lesser Dog: Canis Major/Minor  Character Origin/Mythos: Sans- Norse (Trickster)
Papyrus- Egyptian Undyne- Mayan Alphys- Japanese (shinto) Asgore- Celtic Toriel- Celtic Muffet- Hindu
Grillby- Medieval (Merlin) Asriel- Celtic through lineage Gaster- Greek/Roman Blookie- Western Guard dogs- Constellations (Native American) Riverperson- Greek (Charon) Gerson- Chinese (Divination/ wisdom) Background and Context: A long time ago there lived beings of great power. They could bend space and time with a simple thought and bring life to their creations. These were the gods. Ones of great benevolence but also great and terrifying power. Humanity, a primitive race just starting to understand life itself, became their focus. At first, their interaction was very rare only occasionally appearing to help but as time went on those interactions became more drastic. Their assistance and knowledge were seen as godlike to these humans. They would bring gifts and offerings to their new deities in hopes that they would look favorably upon them. That they would impart their wisdom and magic if they were pleased. In time this became more and more of a tradition. A religion built upon pleasing these deities so that their lives would be far improved but this became a conundrum for the beings. Some remained benevolent and helpful while others become greedy and wrathful. The power began to go to their minds corrupting their souls. These instances were written down in variation by the humans making up grandiose stories of fiery chariots and jealous gods. Thus mythology came into being for humanity. A way to explain the things in which they did not understand. As with each religion and deity, the monsters each became associated with a specific culture or mythos. Some being pinnacles of their pantheon and others being lesser deities molded to suit a specific task. These monsters rarely interacted with ones of their own kind but as power shifted some of them took on roles of others. One monster could have been the god of war in Greek mythos but end up also as the god of thunder in Norse. There were no limitations to their influence. One such “deity” was that of the trickster. A monster that tended to be rather childish in his ambitions jumping from pantheon to pantheon looking to lighten up his other “deities” stern demeanors. The monsters began to pull away leaving their presences in name only and occasional help but this was short-lived. It caused problems, war, destruction, and feuding powers sadly began to use their civilizations as almost pawns. Their meddling almost destroyed that which they wanted to originally protect. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The “gods” faded from existence only being remembered in myths and legends. The great prophecy of the Norse. The architectural marvels of the Egyptians. Now they reside in the furthest reaches of the galaxy. They spread out among the stars but a group of them resided in a Capital of sorts. A station at the edge of the Universe. One which no human could ever reach. The Humans Impressions: When the monsters left the humans to their own devices they worship continued long after. Eventually the magic and the miracles that had once been performed faded into history. The monsters were all but forgotten unless mentioned in mythology or scary stories. The humans never harbored any animosity toward them since they no longer believed in their existence in any form. They only understand what their ancestors depicted them as. The monsters as well don’t really have anything against humans either. All in all, they just go about their jobs and enjoy the universe, helping from time to time discreetly if need be but never showing their faces. Main Plot Synop: The plot to Outertale is very simple as it is more based around the world than it is the actual plot. It is very similar to that of the regular UT timeline with some notable differences. Once the humans reach an age of technological advancement they begin to spread out and search the stars. Some of them encounter monsters which they mistake for aliens (hilarious enough. I mean Jerry looks like an alien.) They begin to build colonies living more and more outside the reach of their own galaxy. Humans, however, tend to turn on their own creating factions within the space colonies. Some more prosperous than others. Frisk’s colony was one such beast being cut off from the other colonies as a drifter. Unfortunately, Frisk’s family was nearly non-existent and being stuck on a space colony was little to be desired. After seeing a streak of fire slamming into the outskirts of the colony. Frisk decides to investigate. They have always been the curious type disobeying orders and questioning everything. The colonies outer and more dangerous regions became their playground finding old pieces of technology. Eventually, they stumble upon a crashed ship. One that It seems too damaged to be used but it’s nothing like they have ever seen before. Everyone else on the colony considers it to be cursed.  The strange runic language is confusing but Frisk finds that there is one lone computer onboard that seems to still function. It flickers with a bright yellow light showing an almost pixelated Flower with a =) face on the screen. Over the next few days, Frisk returns to decipher the runes with the help of their new friend which they find out is called Flowey. It is a project that the curious human enjoys and for once it is nice to have a friend. Eventually, the runes are deciphered claiming some sort of teleportation capability. Once Frisk is close enough the system fires up on its own sending the human straight to the monster Capital on the farthest reaches of the universe. A place that no human has ever been.  The rest of the story is an exploration of this new environment. Frisk befriends the monsters who don’t attack first. They actually mostly want to engage with the human showing off their ability a little bit. A part of them misses the previous worship. Nova seems to take a particular interest in this new human especially when they befriend Azi. They work to help shut Flowey down only for Azi to impart his knowledge on the interface helping it understand. Frisk has nothing to return to so they stay with the monster and become Azi’s human tutor so that one day maybe the monsters can return and live side by side the humans once again. Both Azi and Frisk are almost like siblings coined the star children.

[manicpixiefilmthoughts]

Lars and The Real Girl

This is my first post and most likely going to be the farthest off the beaten path that I will go, but this movie occupies a large part of my brain so I feel the need to write about to an audience of zero. As my bio suggests, I also plan to talk about films where women are props for the male characters development. Lars and The Real Girl has a literal prop woman to assist in the lead character, Lars’ development. Lars, played by Ryan Gosling, is a man with quirks that make it difficult for him to interact even with his family who live across the driveway from him. Lars’ mother died while delivering him and his father passed a few years before the film takes place. His brother, Gus played by Paul Schneider, and pregnant wife, Karin played by Emily Mortimer, live in their childhood home while Lars occupies the garage. Karin desperatly hopes for Lars to interact more with his family, frustrating and testing Lars’ boundaries, but she is pleasantly surprised when Lars comes knocking notifying that a woman is coming over for dinner. Karin and Gus are then greeted by Bianca, the life-size sex doll Lars is convinced is his girlfriend visiting from Brazil.

Bianca is quite literally a tool for Lars to use to develop and let go of some of his past trauma. However, unlike in most movies, I really don’t mind. Although I could go on and on about how Lars and The Real Girl is the greatest depiction of empathy in film... I will hold my tongue to discuss how women, in particular motherhood, play a major hidden role in this movie.

Lars, until his brothers marriage to Karin, lacks female representation in his life. Not only does his life lack female representation but he suffers trauma from feeling responsible for his mothers passing. It is also divulged that after the passing of his mother, Lars and Gus’ father grew cold and bitter. It is no mistake then that when we are introduced to Karin, someone that actively attempts to take a caregiving role in Lars’ life, she is visibly pregnant. Lars from the very first moments displays deep concern that something may happen to Karin while she is pregnant, immediately showing his fear surrounding the concept of maternity. Bianca comforts this fear in more ways than one. Lars explains to Biancas physician, and his therapist, Dr. Dagmar that Bianca is infertile as a result of her mother dying in labor. Identicall to his mothers passing. While explaining this fact to Dr. Dagmar he expresses his deep anxiety surrounding Karins pregnancy. In addition, Lars notes that Bianca is very religious and does not feel comfortable sharing a bed with him, which is why she lives at Gus and Karin’s. Although Bianca is made for sex, in his delusion, Lars makes a concious decision to seperate Bianca entirely from sex and maternity. Bianca’s manifestation at that current time could largely be attribruted to Karin’s pregnacy and its trigger of Lars’ trauma and guilt surrounding his mothers death. Bianca served as a female figure in his life that is completely safe from the dangers he connotates with womanhood.

Biancas manifestion, whether intentional or not, creates a large female support system for Lars. While everyone at his job and church are supportive of Lars’, it is the women of his community that play the largest role in allowing Lars to let go of Bianca. Mrs. Peterson from Lars’ church, played by Nicky Guadagni, is one of his largest pillars of support. Much like Karin, even prior to Bianca, Mrs. Peterson attempted to force Lars out of his social isolation by suggesting that he asks his coworker, Margot, on a date. When Lars brings Bianca into his life, she not only advocates to the other members of the church to be patient and non-judgemental of Lars but goes as far as bringing Bianca to her volunteering position at the hospital. Mrs. Peterson is influential making sure Bianca is given a purpose. With the assistance of other women in the community, Bianca is a mannequin at the mall, a reader to children, and a model of wigs at the hair salon. While this may appear to only serve in making Lars’ delusion more realistic, Bianca being given purpose within the town makes her more 3-dimensional to Lars allowing him to seperate from his crutch. If Bianca were to remain a 2-dimensional symbol of a woman that does not possess the parts of womanhood that terrify him, Lars would would of never been able to develop a positive relationship with maternity and women in general. This newfound positive relationship can also be fed by his new network of female friends who care for him deeply.

Dr. Dagmar, played by Patricia Clarkson, also plays a major role in assisting Lars through his trauma. Lars only agrees to see Dr. Dagmar because she suggests that she monitors Bianca’s blood pressure on a weekly basis, but I would argue he is also fully concious that the purpose of the visits are to evaluate him. Dr. Dagmar firsts suggests that she helps Lars through his phobia surrounding being physically touched, but he quickly displays some willingness to open up about his past and his anxieties surrounding Karin’s pregnancy. Most of this visits consist of him sitting one on one with Dr. Dagmar in her office, an emotional intamacy that Lars has most likely never experienced with anyone, let alone a woman. Beyond being a influential woman in his life, she also radically shifts his perspective on loneliness. In one of his meetings, Lars learns that Dr. Dagmar lost her husband and that sometime she feels so lonely she “forgets how to spell her name.” I believe this detail is crucial in Lars’ development as he has a particularly negative relationship with lonliness. Growing up his father was so lonely that it largely left him unable to care for Lars. Lars also experiences intense lonliness himself. Dr. Dagmar demonstrates to Lars that you can coexist with lonliness instead of it allowing to consume your whole being, allowing him to begin to let go of Bianca.

The most important female relationship for Lars is of course Karin. Although she is a large source of Lars’ anxiety manifesting in the form of Bianca, Karin is the most influential in reforming his relationship with womanhood and maternity . Lars has never had a maternal figure, and although she is his sister in-law, Karin takes on a role of a caregiver in his life. When introduced to Bianca, Gus heavily with the concept of playing into Lars’ delusion but Karin makes it a non-negotiable. She leads the charge in rounding up support for Lars and goes above and beyond to make her apart of the family. Karin has an ability to set aside pride and time to help Lars in any possible way, an ability we often associate with mothers. While Lars is cognizant that his presence makes Gus uncomfortable, Karin makes up for it in love and comfort. One particular scene stands out where Lars is visibility frustrated because he is under the impression that people care more for Bianca than they do for him. When Lars claims that people do not care, Karin goes on a passionate rant that she ends with “None of this is easy-for any of us- but we do it... Oh! We do it for you! So don’t dare tell me how we don’t care.” Lars most likely has never experienced such an exclamation of love and compassion coming from someone in is family, and the fact it is coming from the closest thing he has to a maternal figure heavily moves him along in his journey of coping with his mothers death. This interaction marks a turning point in the film where we see Lars begin to truly let go of Bianca, ultimately leading to the moment he declares that Bianca has passed.

Lars and The Real Girl is a beautiful look on the innately human ability to possess empathy for others and ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable it is. In a sense, I have always seen Lars’ manifestation of Bianca was an act of self-compassion. I believe his brain created her with the intention of letting her go, and moving past his trauma. While I find this movie beautiful in countless ways, writing about from a lens of womanhood and maternity only deepens my love for it more. While the “female” centered at the heart of the movie is in fact an object, there is not an ounce of female objectification in this film.

[ontarioyoga]

Is Baby Yoga Harmful

New Post has been published on https://www.ontarioyoga.net/is-baby-yoga-harmful/

Is Baby Yoga Harmful

Yoga Can Be A Source Of Knee Pain Or The Ideal Therapy Here’s A Primer On Keeping The Joint Healthy On And Off The Mat

August 28, 2007

The chorus of pops emanating from Kyle Ray’s knee was his first clue that his body wasn’t happy in . It was the end of a relaxing yoga class in Louisville, Kentucky, and the teacher had instructed everyone to assume a seated position for some chanting. Sure, Ray’s knees had acted up on occasion, but he’d gotten himself into Lotus before and was confident he could do it again. He slowly nestled his left ankle into the crook of his hip. Then, grabbing his right calf, he used his arm strength to muscle the top leg into position.

“The noise was awful,” says Ray, 31. A second later, a quick, sharp pain shot through his knee. He gingerly unfolded his legs. After class, it was all he could do to hobble home and place an ice pack on the swelling joint. It took six months for him to be able to walk without pain. Although his knee pain did subside, Ray still frets about the stability of his knees and generally avoids knee-taxing postures like .

A Viral Video Shows A Russian Fitness Instructor Swinging A Newborn To Give Her A Workout How Dangerous Is That

Many new moms turn to yoga to get themselves and their children in shape. But a Russian fitness teacher living in Egypt is trying to push the trend beyond prenatal yoga and mommy-and-me classes. The instructor, Lena Fokina, made a “baby yoga” video that went viral this week showing her swinging a 2-week-old baby by her tiny limbs, even flipping the infant over her head. Is this an innovation that will help parents raise stronger babies, or simply child abuse?

This is a form of abuse: This video clip is absolutely “horrifying,” says Linda Marsicano at . This “so-called Baby Yoga” looks certain to “dislocate a limb or two!” Fortunately, it seems highly unlikely that “swinging newborns” will catch on in the U.S. — “to me it looks like child abuse.”“Baby Yoga: You have to see this horrifying video! Plus Mommy & Me yoga classes”

It is not as scary as it looks: Lena Fokina “isn’t actually hurting the baby,” says Sasha Brown-Worsham in , just swinging her “with highly controlled, almost circus-like motions.” This is just a “slightly amped-up version” of workouts many moms do with their newborns.” I wouldn’t try it, but Fokina’s a pro, and she’s doing this to help the child, not hurt her.“Chill out! Baby Yoga with Lena Fokina looks fun”

In Assessing Product Information I Rely On Scientific Sources And The Expertise Of A Medical Doctor

To begin with, I have been researching consumer product ingredients since 2012.  I dove into this subject because I was looking for non-toxic products for my newly born son.  Do you know what I discovered?  First, that manufacturers’ claims often do not mean much.  And second, that as consumers we should take responsibility for raising our own awareness regarding product materials and ingredients.

So, using three university degrees and my bank analyst experience, I started doing research.  The scientific sources I use are comprised of reports from Cosmetic Ingredient Review Panel, the European Chemicals Agency, PubMed publications, the Scientific Committees on Consumer Safety, and so on.  I also use the EWG Skin Deep database, despite its flaws.    Plus, functional medicine doctor Myrto Ashe, MD, MPH, IFMCP reviews medicine-related information in my posts.   

As a result of my commitment to reading ingredients, large consumer goods companies seek my professional counsel on their products.  And to find out what documentary they interviewed me for, visit my page.

Baby Yoga Can Give You Better Rest Increased Flexibility And A Happy Baby

After nine long months, you’re delighted to have a sweet baby to cuddle and love. But a new baby means a new schedule, and you may find yourself with less time to focus on your health. It’s important to find an exercise regimen that is gentle enough for your body but is also challenging and exciting.

Whether you’re new to yoga or were a committed participant before you had your child, baby yoga is an excellent way to get you on a structured postnatal wellness path. “We recommend baby yoga for anyone who is looking for a healthy, playful bonding activity to do with a new baby,” says Lauren Chaitoff, co-owner of New York City children’s yoga studio Yogi Beans and contributor to .

Check out these nine reasons to do baby-centric yoga that will have you and baby feeling great in no time! 

It’s a Great Bonding Experience With Your BabyMom and baby programs focus on both of you. “We modify traditional yoga poses so that moms can practice yoga while holding and rocking their babies,” states Laura DeNino, baby yoga instructor at the Yoga House of Charleston. The result is time dedicated to bonding. 

You’ll Be Able to Ease Back Into YogaUnlike high-level adult yoga classes, child yoga acknowledges the changes that a new mom’s body has been through. You’ll work with your recovering and changing body instead of against it. 

So grab that yoga mat and find a baby yoga class near you. Your body and your baby will thank you! 

Care directory

Itsy Bitsy Yoga For Babies With A Parent/caregiverages: Newborn To Pre

Itsy Bitsy Yoga is a calming and nurturing yoga practice filled with ways to enhance bonding and make babies happier and more comfortable in their bodies. This class contains dozens of unique yoga postures designed specifically to soothe and support the development of a baby’s body. During  the BABY Itsy Bitsy Yoga class, babies are mostly lying on their tummies, backs or in a parent’s arms. For parents and caregivers, this class provides a special time to bond with and learn about your baby’s emerging personality. Most of the yoga we do in Itsy Bitsy Yoga is for the child, but you will learn breathing and relaxation techniques and possibly practice some yoga yourself.

With or without yoga experience, Sweet Pea Yoga will teach poses and techniques from the Itsy Bitsy Yoga® program that:

Promotes parent-child bonding in a relaxed environment.

Improves your baby’s digestion and helps her sleep longer and better.

Calms a fussy or crying baby almost immediately using IBY Magic Poses™.

Helps you to understand your child’s developmental patterns.

Encourages your child to develop a healthy body, a confident self-awareness, and a happy spirit.

Fosters nurturing moments in and outside of class with special IBY Rhymes.

Benefits of Itsy Bitsy Yoga® for BABIES may include:

Better and longer sleep.

I Recommend A Cork Yoga Mat Instead Of A Polyvinyl Chloride Yoga Mat

Other popular mats nowadays are TPE yoga mats and eco-friendly yoga mats.  I have tried them and described my experience in my Eco-Friendly Yoga Mats: Safe or Toxic? post.  You will also learn what TPE material is.

So, after trying several yoga mats, I ended up with a sustainable cork yoga mat by .  What I like about this biodegradable non-toxic yoga mat is that it is thick, not bulky, and not slippery.  In fact, it has rubber backing against sliding.  I also like the unique design of this non-PVC yoga mat, which contributes to my general feeling of ease.  Read my review of the Scoria yoga mat to learn more about it.

Baby Yoga: 10 Reasons You & Your Newborn Should Consider Practicing

Doing Yoga with your baby has a lot of health benefits, and there are many reasons why you should give it a try.

Yoga: the great mind, body, and spirit connective activity. Despite yoga being very popular, many are unaware that those invaluable connections can be explored outside of one’s inner self. In fact, mothers who practice yoga with their newborns can experience an entirely new type of connection among a variety of other great and positive benefits.

RELATED: 15 Moms Who Should’ve NEVER Worn Yoga Pants

In addition to getting comfortable in one’s new mom role, moms are often trying to get comfortable in their new mom’s body and get adjusted to their new mom hours. There is a pretty good chance yoga can help with all of that. Read on for more ways to get that mom and baby  on.

Rumor: Video Shows A Woman Wanted By The Fbi For Torturing A Baby

  Video shows a woman wanted by the FBI for torturing a baby.

REAL VIDEO; INACCURATE DESCRIPTION

    Although what’s depicted in this video is real and strikes most viewers as highly disturbing and dangerous, it isn’t a unique circumstance nor is it illegal, and the woman shown in the video isn’t “torturing a baby for fun” nor is she wanted by the FBI or other U.S. law enforcement agencies.

What’s shown in this video is the controversial back in January 2011. The video embedded at the head of this page is more of the same, showing another instance of an infant’s being put through a “dynamic gymnastics” routine.

As CBS News reported of the original video in 2011:

If you haven’t seen it yet, the video, which comes out of Russia, shows a woman tossing, twisting and spinning a baby in midair. She never lets go of the child’s arm, but the images of a child being tossed around like that are pretty jarring to an American eye.

The baby yoga guru is Lena Fokina, a 50-year-old Russian who lives in Egypt teaching yoga, free-diving and “dynastic gymnastics” .

Fokina said baby yoga helps children have more mobility, freedom and independence and has been practiced in Russia for three decades. “They are early readers, singers, talkers, swimmers. You haven’t seen anything like it anywhere!”

The blog also wrote of that video:

In Russia, parents pay to bring their children to Lena Fokina and have her put them through “baby yoga” routines:

And, although it is legal, it is highly controversial.

Is Tpe Material The Answer For Producing Sustainable Yoga Mats No

A while ago, I got a ThinkSport yoga mat as a present from a family member.  Since another non-toxic blogger had researched the product and gave it the thumbs-up, I relaxed.  Obviously, there was nothing else for me to do but to practice yoga.  Then, while holding my pose, I took a deep breath on the mat.  It smelled of toxic chemicals.

It Is Crucial To Use Credible Sources In Evaluating Pvc Yoga Mats

For starters, I have been in the product safety research business since 2012.  Both my MBA degree and financial analyst experience have been of great help in the field of research.  Nowadays, due to my expertise in this area, manufacturers and online retailers hire me as their product research and development consultant.  I was also in a documentary that you can learn more about on my page.

Using credible sources is crucial in evaluating product information, so I do not rely on marketing claims.  Instead, I read Cosmetic Ingredient Reports and PubMed publications.  Additionally, I go to the European Chemicals Agency and the Scientific Committees on Consumer Safety databases, to name a few.  The EWG is a useful tool, too, but you must learn to use the Skin Deep Database the right way. 

Several years ago, when I did my first research on PVC yoga mats, I concluded that I should avoid PVC products.  I was definitely glad that I did not own a polyvinyl chloride yoga mat.  However, when I revisited the subject, I discovered articles by the chemical industry extolling the virtues of PVC.  After reading them, it is easy to conclude that PVC is one of the best materials created by humankind.  From every angle – environmental, production, safety, application – they described vinyl as an ideal material for every area of our lives.  But to formulate my opinion about product safety, I look at independent sources to get a well-rounded view. 

The Life Cycle Of Pvc Yoga Mats Produces Dangerous Byproducts

According to the European Chemicals Agency, vinyl chloride – the main ingredient in PVC – is a human carcinogen.   Thus, the first report of liver cancer induced by vinyl chloride was in 1974 .  Since then, new research has demonstrated the carcinogenicity of VC to other organs and at lower concentrations.  I have no scientific evidence that one can get cancer from regular yoga sessions on a polyvinyl chloride yoga mat.

Additionally, one of the concerns with PVC is the generation of carcinogenic dioxins, byproducts of the manufacturing and disposal processes.  Thus, the EWG rates  10 out of 10 due to high cancer concerns.  

Because PVC is not biodegradable, the only way to get rid of it is to burn it.  When burning, chlorine produces dioxins that end up in soil, fish, animals, water, air, and, ultimately, in humans.  Dioxins are persistent .  As a result, they may cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, and interfere with hormones. 

Therefore, US Environmental Protection Agency regards dioxins as highly toxic persistent organic pollutants.  And the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants emphasizes the importance of limiting the processes that produce dioxins.

I think those are good reasons to avoid PVC yoga mats.  Clearly, we cannot get rid of all plastics, but let us do what we can by making informed decisions.  So, what yoga mat do I use?

In My Opinion The Best Exercise Mat Is Scoria Cork Yoga Mat

After having no luck with ThinkSport and Jade Harmony, I was excited to try one of ’s sustainable yoga mats. 

This biodegradable non-toxic yoga mat is made of cork and has a natural rubber backing against sliding.  Also, it comes in two thicknesses , is not bulky, and is not slippery.  It does have some smell, but it is minimal, and it rolls well. 

I really like this yoga mat!  It is comfortable, has a unique design, and makes me feel good.

You can learn more about it by reading my review of Scoria yoga mats.  So far, it has been the best workout mat I have used.  You can purchase it on the Scoria website.  It is a Canadian company, but they ship to the USA without any taxes and duties.

Yoga More Dangerous Than Previously Thought Scientists Say

Yoga is more dangerous than previously thought and causes as many injuries as other sports, a study has found. 

The 5,000 year-old Indian discipline is said to boost physical and mental wellbeing, and celebrity fans include Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen – as well as David and Victoria Beckham.

However, in a recent study yoga caused musculoskeletal pain – mostly in the arms – in more than one in ten participants.

The scientists behind the research, which was published in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, also found that the practice worsened over a fifth of existing injuries.

Professor Evangelos Pappas, of Sydney University, the study’s lead researcher said: “Yoga may be a bit more dangerous than previously thought.

“Our study found the incidence of pain caused by yoga is more than 10 percent per year – which is comparable to the rate of all sports injuries combined among the physically active population.

“However people consider it to be a very safe activity. This injury rate is up to 10 times higher than has previously been reported.”

International Yoga Day 2017, in pictures

His team assessed more than 350 people who attended yoga classes at two studios in New York.

Yoga is an increasingly popular complementary or alternative therapy for musculoskeletal disorders, with millions of people practising worldwide.

At a glance | What’s in a yoga class?16 photographs that prove we’ve reached peak yogaAbout | A-list yoga crazes

Baby Gymnastics: Russia’s ‘potentially Dangerous’ Therapy

Oleg Tyutin is a psychotherapist, but for the past 20 years he has been practising a different kind of medicine.

He trains young mums like Victoria Kurzina to do the kind of exercises with their babies that would spark an outcry in the West.

Mr Tyutin holds Victoria’s baby by the legs, so that little Pavel is dangling upside down – and swings him gently from side to side like a pendulum.

Then, like the game of cup and ball, he swings the baby up towards him and catches him in his chest.

Pavel is just 17 days old.

The Russians call this dynamic baby gymnastics.

The practice is legal in Russia and widespread. There are believed to be hundreds of practitioners across the country.

Oleg maintains it gives babies a head start in life.

“When they’re born, babies are very tense,” Oleg explains.

“They’re frightened by the wide, open space around them. This procedure helps a baby adapt to their new surroundings. It makes infants more open, more sociable, more relaxed. It also helps them develop more quickly.”

After lesson one, Victoria doesn’t feel confident enough to have a go herself.

“It’s a bit frightening really,” Victoria admits. “A specialist – well, his hands are confident, he has all the experience, he knows what to do. But I’m still at the learning stage.”

Lubricants In Plastics Reduce Friction During Processing

Apparently, there are external lubricants and internal lubricants.  While the former reduces friction between the PVC and the processing equipment, the latter work on the PVC granules .  It looks like there is no way for PVC yoga mats to work around these either.

“With PVC, typical external lubricants are stearic acid and its calcium, lead, cadmium, and barium salts, myristic acid, hydrocarbons such as paraffin wax, and low molecular weight polythene and certain esters such as ethyl palmitate… Amongst internal lubricants used for PVC are amine waxes, montan wax ester derivatives, glyceryl esters such as glyceryl monostearate, and long-chain esters such as cetyl palmitate.”  

Among these, my concern lies with lead and cadmium salts for the reasons I stated in the heavy metal section. 

Plasticizers Make A Polyvinyl Chloride Yoga Mat Flexible

First of all, a plasticizer makes plastic flexible, resilient, and easier to handle.  Therefore, a plasticizer is crucial in PVC yoga mats. 

While the most common plasticizers are phthalates, many products boast that they are “phthalate-free.”  This is because phthalates have a bad reputation as endocrine disruptors .

So, is a phthalate-free polyvinyl chloride yoga mat safe? 

Well, I encourage you to always ask what the manufacturer uses instead of phthalates.  For example, other plasticizers are adipates, glutarates, sebacates, phosphates, polymerics, trimellitates, and epoxy compounds.   The good news is that none of these seems to be as toxic as phthalates.  However, they may have limited safety data, meaning that they do not know enough about their safety yet.  And most of the time manufacturers do not tell us what they use instead of phthalates.  So “phthalate-free” may sound good, but it may not mean safer.

Trying To Foam Roll A Muscle That Hasnt Been Warmed Up

Timing with foam rolling is important because if you spend too much time in a single area, there is an increased risk of bruising or injury. The risk is especially high when this is done on what’s called a cold muscle. This is essentially a muscle that hasn’t been properly warmed up before doing physical activity.

Foam rolling a muscle that has not been warmed up is preferable to static or dynamic stretching, however. Foam rolling is actually the first recommended step in warming up to exercise.

The risk associated with foam rolling too hard is similar to the risks associated with massage-bruising. If you experience this after rolling, ice can be used to comfort the area, however, any sort of swelling, loss of function, range of motion, or strength indicates that you should see a doctor immediately.

When you begin rolling a cold muscle, you should always start with softer pressure in order to avoid further damage or inflammation. When you move the roller too aggressively over a cold muscle, you run the risk of damaging muscle tissue which could make muscle aches even worse. Instead, keep the roller still, and maneuver your body gently in order to give your body the time to generate heat and further warm-up, which leads to the loosening of tense points.

Is Baby Yoga A Good Activity For You And Your Child

Categories Kids and family

To put it simply, yes, baby yoga is bound to be helpful to both you and your child on different levels.

For them, it’s more on the physical spectrum that aids in their development, while for you it’s finding the time to relax and decompress as well as help your body deal with postpartum stress, be it physical or mental.

Baby yoga at its core is nothing exceptionally complicated. Yoga poses range from the simple “tummy time” and baby massages we’re all used to doing with our kids, all the way to special yoga poses that include both mommy and baby.

The general idea behind it is to help kids who are facing difficulties in development due to the modernization of baby gear, as they too have started to suffer from becoming “lazier.”

Focusing On Certain Areas Of Your Body For Too Long

It goes without saying, but some areas of the body might have more pressure than others. With that being said, you don’t want to overdo it on any one spot by staying focused on it for too long. The recommended time to roll any one area would be 30 seconds to one minute.

30 seconds should be spent holding the muscle over the roller all while applying consistent pressure. 30 seconds can then be spent exploring dynamic pressure on the area. Dynamic pressure means that the foam roller is moved, as opposed to applying static pressure by just holding it in place.

It’s a good idea, to begin with, static pressure and then move to dynamic pressure. A great way to conduct this is by keeping the roller in a single place as you twist from side to side, moving your body across the roller and up and down the length of the muscle that you’re focusing on.

What Is Tpe It Is A Mix Of Undisclosed Ingredients

In the meantime, thermoplastic elastomers .  Do these sound like proper materials for eco-friendly yoga mats? 

According to the British Plastics Federation, there are seven main TPE groups available commercially.  For example, one of the most common and least expensive ones is Styrenic Block Copolymers.  To clarify, these are based on two-phase block copolymers with hard and soft segments.  Thus, the styrene end blocks provide thermoplastic properties, and the butadiene mid-blocks provide elastomeric properties.  Considering its properties and areas of application, I venture a guess that some so-called sustainable yoga mats are made with this kind of TPE.

If we look at the individual chemical polymers, this is what we will see. 

First, they produce styrene in industrial quantities from ethylbenzene and use it to make plastics and rubber.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer .  

Second, butadiene is a chemical that they produce from petroleum and use to make synthetic rubber.  The Department of Health and Human Services, IARC, and EPA classify it as a human carcinogen .

Based on this, I am skeptical about TPE.  If a manufacturer describes their yoga mat as made of TPE material without specifying the ingredients, I interpret it as lack of transparency.   In short, TPE is a blend of undisclosed synthetic materials that have not been proven safe. 

Are TPE eco-friendly yoga mats biodegradable?  No. 

You would expect sustainable yoga mats to be biodegradable, right? 

Heat Stabilizers Prevent Pvc Decomposition By Heat

To begin, stabilizers in plastics prevent environmental effects of heat or UV light and mechanical degradation during processing and use.  The available heat stabilizers for PVC are organotin compounds, antimony, organochlorines, lead compounds, and cadmium .

First, the organotin compounds in PVC are mainly mono-butyltin .  This evaluates their toxic effects on in vitro human cells.  All three had a negative impact on human cells.  DBT and TBT revealed the most toxic effects even at low concentrations.

Second, antimony enhances the flame-retardant effect of chlorine in PVC.  In 1990, the state of California added antimony oxide to the list of carcinogenic chemicals , antimony may damage fertility or the unborn child.  Also, it may cause cancer, harm breastfed children, and damage organs through prolonged or repeated exposure.

Third, organochlorines are synthetic pollutants to humans.  Thus, many organochlorines are linked to endocrine disruption or cancer in experimental assays .  Like antimony, organochlorines enhance the flame retardancy characteristics and the impact strength characteristics in PVC.

Heavy metals in PVC yoga mats

These substances in your polyvinyl chloride yoga mat can enter your body through skin contact and inhalation.  In addition, they may contaminate your body via ingestion of the dust containing heavy metals. 

And cadmium is linked to reduced mineral density in bones, preterm labor, kidney disease and damage has classified it as “carcinogenic to humans.”

Baby Yoga Promotes Healthy Development And Bonding

As a parent, your main priority is to keep your child happy and healthy. But you may need a chance to relax, too. Baby yoga is a healthy, engaging way for caregivers to bond with their newborns, tune into their cues and de-stress. Babies are “natural yogis;” you may have noticed your infant doing yoga poses already.

“Baby yoga is all about bonding with your infant through stretches, lots of tummy time and high-energy activities to help with the baby’s developmental path,” says Patti Ideran, OTR/L, CEIM, a pediatric occupational therapist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, who is also a certified educator of infant massage and a certified instructor of baby and toddler yoga. “I really look at this class as preventive medicine.”

It is well understood that yoga is a great way for adults to de-stress, but babies also benefit from participating.

The Problems Kids Face That Baby Yoga Helps Solve

The so-aptly dubbed “container babies” who end up spending more time in strollers, car seats, baby swings, and similar are the ones who suffer from the laziness problem the most, in the same manner that we adults do nowadays.

They start being a lot less active, which leads to their metabolism slowing down, in turn ending up making colic a more frequent occurrence from the digestion problems that come alongside it.

There’s also the problem of this inactivity causing delays in the baby’s developmental cycle, as well as issues caused by abnormal head shapes due to constantly having it rest somewhere.

All of these get properly sorted out through the application of baby yoga exercises; this way your little one then gets to enjoy a healthier lifestyle.

Frequently Asked Questions About Yoga For Babies

Is yoga safe for babies and tots?According to pediatricians and nurses, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” Itsy Bitsy Yoga® is safe, gentle and very effective when done with proper instruction. The parent is responsible for carrying out all of the baby’s yoga movements until the baby can walk. In the more active Tots Yoga program , parents are there to support and assist their toddler into yoga poses whenever necessary. Parents can also enjoy the time practicing yoga poses, while letting their child imitate and explore yoga on her own two feet.

How do I know which class is right for me–Baby or Tots Itsy Bitsy Yoga? If your baby is not yet crawling class so you won’t need to switch levels mid-session.

What if my baby cries during class?Crying is one of the ways babies express themselves and vocalize their needs. Just take a breath, center yourself, and attend to your baby’s needs. A wonderful benefit of the Itsy Bitsy Yoga program is that you will learn a number of the exclusive IBY “Magic Poses” which can literally calm crying in seconds when practiced with the right intensity.

What if my baby is hungry during class?We encourage you to attend to your baby’s needs at any time during the class. This is an environment supportive to both breastfeeding and bottle feeding parents. Out of respect to the potential allergies of other parents or children, we request that you not bring solid foods into the classroom.

Baby Yoga Video Is Real And Real Scary But Safe

January 20, 2011 / 12:06 PM / CBS News

Yes, the yoga baby video is real and really terrifying, at least to watch. But is it safe for baby?

If you haven’t seen it yet, the video, which comes out of Russia, shows a woman tossing, twisting and spinning a baby in midair. She never lets go of the child’s arm, but the images of a child being tossed around like that are pretty jarring to an American eye.

Some speculated the baby wasn’t even real, but Nathan Thornburgh, a former Time magazine editor who blogs at , says he tracked both baby and baby swinger down for a chat.

The baby yoga guru, writes Thornburgh, is Lena Fokina, a 50-year-old Russian who lives in Egypt teaching yoga, free-diving and “dynastic gymnastics” . The baby, he says, lives a few hours outside of Kiev, Ukraine, was only two weeks old when the video was shot, and is doing just fine two years later.

In fact, Fokina said baby yoga helps children have more mobility, freedom and independence and has been practiced in Russia for three decades. “They are early readers, singers, talkers, swimmers. You haven’t seen anything like it anywhere!!” she told Thornburgh.

Baby Yoga Woman Is Back With New Video: Unsafe

March 2, 2012 / 4:46 PM / CBS News

In 2011, Lena Fokina shocked the world when a video of her twirling and slinging his two week old baby from side to side went viral. She’s back again, swinging a new infant in a new video by Barcroft TV.

Last year, Fokina told the Dadwagon blog that the dynamic gymnastics practice — which was dubbed baby yoga — gave children a boost in life. Other Russian parents echoed her sentiments, saying their children walked and swam earlier.

Still, many viewers were outraged, prompting YouTube to take the original video down because it was in violation of their policy of “shocking and disgusting content.”

Baby yoga video is real and real scary, but safe?

Barcroft TV’s new video, uploaded March 1, 2012, catches up with the 51-year-old yoga guru as she teaches parents in Dahab, Egypt the art of baby yoga. She’s still dangling the infants by one arm or leg, while the children wail in glee or sheer terror, depending on who you believe.

Reasons Why Baby Tossing Is Good For Your Baby

Baby tossing spans the globe, from harrowing rooftop rituals in India to gymnastics training in Russia to baby Yoga studios in California and New York. Don’t be afraid to take your babies and toss them around, horseplay and otherwise push your limits with what you feel is a responsible level of baby tossing for your baby.

WARNING: THIS POST IS AGAINST EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER LEARNED!

While we don’t advocate stressing babies or doing anything that endangers babies, many new parents have no idea that there are major health benefits to tossing and turning babies. We’re told repeatedly not to shake or toss babies, so we thought we’d look around and see what people are doing to thumb their noses at doctors’ advice.5 facts that baby tossing is good for your baby:

Doctors say horseplay with kids is good!Some are going on the record to say that it’s about time we accept the good in horseplay and start baby tossing. The Art of Roughhousing includes the the testimony of doctors who say “rough-and-tumble play can nurture close connections, solve behavior problems, boost confidence, and more.”

Dynamic gymnastics in Russia makes babies happyIt’s hard to deny the sheer joy and pleasure in this next video. “Gymnastics with Jaromir” demonstrates a tradition in Russia that some advocates say help train many of the best Olympians the world has ever seen.

Parents Should Beware Of Shaken Baby Syndrome

The supposed benefits of the so called  are certainly doubtful, and the possible dangers are far more evident. Experts have long warned that inflicting unnatural and very vigorous movements on young babies can in fact be very dangerous and can be classified as child abuse.

We know that Shaken Baby Syndrome is a condition that can be caused by intentional shaking of a baby. It can cause internal bleeding of the brain and/or the retina, swelling of the brain, visual impairment, motor impairment and even cognitive impairment to varying degrees.

The type of injury to a baby from shaking is quite distinct from injury that occurs due to falls, trauma or impact, and will typically have no outer signs of the injury but the kind of damage that can occur can be fairly extreme and could even be permanent.

The Benefits You Get From Attending Kids Yoga

As I’ve mentioned earlier, it’s not just your little one who reaps the benefits of yoga, you will too.

Whether you’re a new parent or not, chances are that you are going to be struggling with postpartum stress and potential postpartum depression.

Taking baby yoga classes will help you deal with these in a warm, friendly, and accepting environment filled with like-minded individuals.

Whether it’s the other new moms who came here for the same reason as you or the certified yogi who’s there to teach you, it’s a place where you can get in touch with serenity and let your troubles melt away – at least temporarily.

A place where nobody is going to mind if your baby has an accident mid-session or starts feeling uncomfortable or crying for any reason. In fact, they’re more likely to help you out than anything.

Plus, it lets you expand your social circle and share advice with all of these other new mothers and the yoga teacher.

Your active little yogi may even foster some new friendships with the other kids. Anything is possible, as long as the kids yoga class is kept nice and interactive.

Now, I haven’t personally attended any of these baby yoga classes yet, but have managed do delve deep enough into it that I’d definitely give it a shot if hubby and I ever intend on expanding to baby #3.

That said, a couple of my mom friends who introduced the concept of child yoga to me in the first place described the experience they had for their first time at the yoga studio:

Is It Safe To Do Bikram Yoga During Pregnancy

Bikram yoga or hot yoga is fast gaining popularity all over the world.  This type of yoga takes place in heated rooms with high humidity.  Bikram yoga has many health benefits that are attracting more and more people. A better heart, improved physical fitness, reduced stress- all are pros of doing hot yoga.

However, there is a debate on whether bikram yoga is safe for pregnant women. Some people believe that the high heat and humidity required for this yoga can prove harmful fir the fetus. It can also harm the mother. This type of yoga is quite rigorous and might physically harm the mother and the baby. Pregnancy is a crucial phase in every woman’s life. It is important to know all about the benefits and risks of doing bikram yoga during pregnancy.

How Many Times A Week Should You Do Hot Yoga

As often as possible, the more you practice the more you will see progress and results. For good results regularly practice 3 times per week. For life-changing results, 4 or more times per week. Professional/amateur athletes cross train with Bikram Yoga 1-2 weekly.

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Baby Yoga What Is It And Why Should We Care

We explore the ins and outs of sharing a mat with your mini.

Melanie Dimmitt

When presented with the notion of yoga for babies, I scrutinized it as I would a designer diaper bag. A lovely idea, in theory, but do I really it? Amid the plethora of mommy-and-me offerings – music classes, French lessons, sign-language… even Salsa dancing – why choose yoga? Babies are naturally bendy, are they not? It isn’t called a ‘happy baby’ for nothing. However, on closer inspection, there’s more to baby yoga than child’s play .

First things first. What is it, exactly?

Baby yoga tends to mean one of two things – an adult yoga class that you bring baby along to, or yoga that is actually for your baby. In a parent-focused class, bub takes the role of spectator-slash-adorable-prop.

“The babies lie on a blanket in front of the parents’ yoga mat,” explains Neelu Shruti, of Love Child yoga studio in New York. “Throughout class, which includes upper body stretches and glute strengthening, we will include baby in poses such as ‘push-up kiss baby’, or hold baby while doing squats, lunges or abdominal exercises.”

Love Child studio’s Baby & Me Yoga class incorporates restorative poses and sequences well suited to new parents – so long as they’re okay with the occasional flow interruption and not-so-silent Savasana.

But there are, according to Neelu, ample reasons to abandon your landslide of laundry for a class such as this.

We’re listening.

Now… will a yoga mat fit in my new designer diaper bag?

Limit Babys Activities To No More Than 15

Most yoga classes are between 45 minutes to an hour. That’s fine for mamas, but that length of time is too much for babies. While a baby is more than welcome to have some tummy time or sit and babble happily away while you perform additional, restorative or strength-building poses, your baby should only be actively doing yoga for 15 or 20 minutes. Anything more than that can overtax his/her already busy and developing body.

The Yoga Instructor Should Be Certified

Certifications and credentials are always a good thing to verify when trusting your well-being – and your baby’s – to someone else’s expertise. However, yoga certification should be an essential “prerequisite” before enrolling in a class. 

First and foremost, the instructor should be trained and experienced in teaching parent-and-baby classes, understanding which postures and holds are safe, and which aren’t, to keep your baby safe. Your safety is also a priority. Your connective tissue is still very elastic from the hormonal changes that took place to accommodate pregnancy, labor and delivery. Postnatal classes should support that, keeping you safe from stretches or postures that could lead to potential strain or injury. 

If you find out your baby isn’t as into the classes as you are and you opt to take a yoga class on your own, make sure to inform the instructor you are XX weeks postpartum as s/he will probably amend certain poses for you until you’re body is further along in its recovery.

Is Any Yoga Harmful For Corona Patients

Health Sciences

Coronavirus affects the respiratory system causing damage to it. The virus targets our lungs and restricts its capacity, thereby, causing breathlessness. Yoga like Pranayama – an easy and rhythmic breathing exercise can help in improving the breathing and our psychological well-being. It helps in strengthening the entire respiratory system along with our immune system. A person’s maximum speed or breathing out air and low blood oxygen levels can be remarkably improved with the aid of yoga exercise. Blood oxygen levels are an important marker in determining the severity of the infection in patients.

According to a research study conducted by the Harvard Medical School, practicing yoga can modulate our stress response system. Yoga can have soothing effects and help to flush our negative thinking that can be linked with anxiety and depression .

Yoga just not gives us the physical strength to defend against Coronavirus, but also provides us with emotional stability and mental balance to negotiate through this tough period of crisis.

Benefits Of Postpartum Yoga For Mothers

It helps ease new parent jitters. Get started by attending a class taught by a trained instructor — it’s a safe and structured way to engage with your baby.

It’s a little TLC for your body. Any kind of yoga gives you an opportunity to nourish and care for your body through focused stretches and mindful breathing exercises, which is especially important after carrying a baby for nine months and then giving birth!

It stretches and strengthens the muscles that need the most TLC. The gentle movements and mindful breathing that are integral to yoga boost abdominal strength and activate the pelvic floor muscles, which aids recovery from giving birth, while classic poses — from upward facing dog to cobra — help open up the shoulders and chest you rely on for all of the rocking and cradling you do in the first few months with your baby.

It helps you meet new moms. After baby is born, you might not have as much time for socializing. But it’s reassuring to talk to other mothers who are going through the same experiences as you are. Yoga class provides a safe and nurturing environment for new parents to discuss worries and concerns. You’re not alone!  

It helps you and your new baby bond. Yoga is a healthy, playful activity you can enjoy together. 

Ten Reasons Yoga Might Be Bad For You

Ten Reasons Yoga Might Be Bad For You

Ten reasons yoga might be bad for you isn’t a list of reasons not to do yoga. It is intended to encourage people to do yoga consciously, with a specific eye on what their body needs in the moment, but also, possibly more importantly, what the body needs to age well. I often say in classes that I teach that what your body can get away with in your 20’s, 30’s and 40’s might come back to haunt you in your 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

While I love yoga for the workout it provides, it should be more about building a vessel that accepts and cultivates the breath in pursuit of a long healthy life. From my perspective you need to approach your practice as a means to change, rather than reinforce, long held conditioned patterns. Certainly, exercising is better than not exercising – and very important for everybody –  if you are doing it incorrectly it will not be good for you.

1.            Forward Head Posture And Headstand

2.          A Tucked Pelvis And Tadasana

It is essential to our pelvises.

3.            Having Excessively Loose Joints

4.            Carpal Tunnel Syndrome And Downward Dog

If you are doing downward dog with heel of the palm flat on the floor, rather than creating a tunnel for clear passage of the median nerve to travel through to the hand, you can actually make the problem worse. shares an affective technique for creating space in the carpal tunnel.

5.         Weak Core Muscles And Wheel

6.            The Shoulders And Chaturanga

8.            Opening the Chest and Breathing Abdominally

A Polyvinyl Chloride Mat Is Not A Non

To lay the foundation, let us look at the essence of PVC.

Polyvinyl chloride, commonly called PVC or vinyl, belongs to the group of chloropolymers.  They produce chloropolymers from alkenes by replacing one or more hydrogen atoms with chlorine.  Polyvinyl chloride is the third largest-selling commodity thermoplastic after polyethylene and polypropylene.  Imagine that more than 40 million tons of PVC are produced worldwide every year .

Further, the raw materials for PVC come from salt and petroleum.  First, they produce chlorine by electrolysis of saltwater.  Then, they combine chlorine with ethylene obtained from petroleum to form vinyl chloride monomer .  Next, they polymerize VCM molecules to form PVC resin.  Finally, they compound PVC resin into PVC compound.  During this process, they combine PVC with additives which determine the properties of the products, e.g., color, clarity, and flexibility.

All PVC materials use functional additives which include heat stabilizers and lubricants.  Additionally, they use plasticizers to make your polyvinyl chloride yoga mat flexible .  Potentially, PVC yoga mats have all these additives, so let us talk about them.

Applying The Wrong Amount Of Pressure

Foam rolling should only be used when applying the correct amount of pressure, not too much or too little, or it may not be able to repair the damaged muscle tissue correctly.

Beginning at a medium speed may be the most effective at relieving tension, without causing too much strain on the muscle. That being said, it may take a while for the muscle that you are focusing on to relax. This will also change depending on the area of the body you are focusing on, because some muscles have trigger points, or may get tighter than others.

Different muscles will have varying degrees of tension, so it’s important to listen to what your body needs, and apply pressure accordingly. It can be difficult to tell the correct amount of pressure, however, it shouldn’t feel comfortable to do, especially with certain trigger points.

However, if you’re feeling no discomfort, you may not be applying enough pressure. Excruciating pain is not good either and communicates that you must lessen the pressure. Also important is not going too fast over certain sections, because this could lead to a lack of enough pressure.

Is Rubber Better Than Tpe It Depends

After my disappointment with ThinkSport yoga mats, my research led me to Jade eco-friendly yoga mats.  When I received the mat, it had a smell, too, but not as strong as the ThinkSport mat.  Despite its excellent properties – non-slippery and thick – I did not like it because it still smelled after several weeks.  

According to the website, all Jade’s sustainable yoga mats are “made with natural rubber and contain no PVC or other synthetic rubbers.”  However, the description also says that the mats contain both natural and man-made components, and the precise components are proprietary.  In my correspondence with the company, Jade revealed to me that “these other ingredients are necessary to give our mats their properties .”

Additionally, Jade states that their yoga mats contain no heavy metals, ozone-depleting substances, PVC, TPE, phthalates, and formaldehyde. 

It sounds good, but what bothers me is that there is no proof of any of those claims.  I requested third party reports from Jade that would confirm the statements above.  When I get them, I will update this post.

Flexible Muscles Vs Flexible Joints

To properly assess this safety issue, a distinction needs to be made: flexibility in joints is a different matter than flexibility in muscles.

Joints are where one bone connects with another bone. Joints are held together by ligaments. They are further stabilized by muscles and tendons. As Dr. James Garrick, M.D., orthopedic surgeon and Director of the Sports Medicine Center at Saint Francis Hospital in San Francisco, states in his book, Peak Condition:

Ligaments have some elasticity. They can stretch a bit, but if they stretch over about 10 percent of their length, then they are like Saran Wrap — you stretch it too far and it stays that way. It won’t go back.

The job of ligaments is to help hold a joint in alignment, yet still allow for normal range of motion. If a ligament is over-stretched, then it is unable to stabilize the joint as well as it did before. The joint becomes more vulnerable to injury unless adequate muscle strength is developed to compensate for the extra looseness.

If the ligaments are stretched sufficiently — either from a sudden impact — the joint will be injured. There will then be inflammation and pain in the joint, for inflammation is the body’s mechanism for stabilizing the compromised joint.

Therefore, in yoga or any other activity, care should be taken never to stretch the ligaments. Dr. Garrick states in another of his books, Be Your Own Personal Trainer

What Do We Wear And Take To A Class

Parents and babies should both wear loose, comfortable clothes that are easy to move around in. Jogging bottoms, loose t-shirts or vest tops are ideal.

For babies, I would recommend a sleepsuit with a short-sleeved vest underneath. Sleepsuits are comfortable and easy to whip off when needed.

During the baby massage you will have to take off the sleepsuit, hence the need for a vest. Some babies don’t mind being only in a nappy, whereas others hate it. Both of mine did when I took them to massage classes!

Most classes will tell you what to bring when you book a place, but a towel and/or a yoga mat will most likely be necessary. Some classes will provide the mat depending on where you go.

Many classes take place in a village hall or similar, where the floor can be cold and hard, so a mat is essential. Having somewhere warm and soft to lie your baby down is vital. Babies won’t relax if they’re not comfortable.

I’d also recommend bringing some water. It looks like gentle exercise and it can be taken slowly. However if you’re a newbie or trying to get in shape again, it’s going to take you a little while to get back into things!

Exploring The Benefits Of Baby Yoga Beate ChungCertified Yoga Instructor

Beate has taught yoga as a certified instructor in the US for over 7 years then she moved to Taiwan in 2010 to open her first yoga studio.

Baby yoga doesn’t seem to be as familiar a term as yoga itself, but more and more parents are seeing the benefits of yoga as a form of exercise that can help them bond with their little one while promoting the development of their babies’ gross and fine motor skills. This practice comes with many physiological benefits. It also improves social interactions among new parents and their babies. Let’s have a look at the benefits of Baby Yoga!

Is It Safe To Do Yoga With My Baby

There are so many reasons why doing yoga with your baby is a fantastic idea. In addition to getting you out of the house and into the world of mamas who are on the same journey as you, taking a Mommy-and-Me type yoga class is a sweet way to bond with your baby outside the confines of the normal daily routine. 

Additionally, yoga is a safe, healthy way to speed up your postpartum recovery. It strengthens core and pelvic muscles, and rebuilds strength, flexibility, and balance in your post-pregnancy body.

That said, safety is always always the top priority for you and your baby. Check in with your OB before signing up for a class. Most physicians recommend postpartum moms wait at least six to eight weeks before getting back into an exercise routine, and you may need to wait longer than that depending on your labor and postpartum recovery process.

Yoga safe and fun to do with your baby as long as you adhere to the following conditions:

Getting To The Root Of The Problem

First of all, the number of people practicing yoga has increased, which explains some of the increase in the number of injuries. It does not explain the situation entirely, however, because not only do there seem to be more injuries than increased numbers of participation can explain, but also there is a wider variety of types of injuries, especially for the knees and lower back, as reported in the above article. So what else has changed in the last ten years?

For one thing, there has been a great increase in the popularity of heat-based and power types of yoga, which tend to be fast-paced and to foster a certain degree of competitiveness. There are also a lot more yoga teachers with little or no formal training stepping up to meet the demand for these classes. More and more yoga students in power and hot yoga classes are getting injured more readily as they push the limits of their bodies with little, if any, regard to safety.

Lorraine Kreahling stated that some physical therapists question the value of excessive joint flexibility, saying that it can lead to inflammation and pain. Some asanas that require extreme bending of the knees such as squats and sitting backwards on folded knees were particularly cited by a sports medicine doctor as examples of postures that are most likely to cause tears in knee cartilage. This naturally raises the question of the safety of Vajrasana and similar asanas.

Ways To Protect Your Knees In Yoga

1. Avoid Hyperextending: When joints are overly mobile and flex too far back, they’re hyperextended. In the knees, hyperextension often occurs in poses in which the legs are straightened, such as Trikonasana , putting an unhealthy tension on the ligaments. If you’re prone to hyperextension, keep a slight bend in the knees during standing poses and keep your weight evenly distributed among the four corners of your feet. In seated forward bends, place a rolled-up sticky mat or towel under the knee of the extended leg or legs.

2. Start With Your Feet: Proper alignment through the feet is the key to building strength evenly in the ligaments on both sides of the knee; when all the ligaments are equally strong, the kneecap glides effortlessly up and down and the cartilage doesn’t get worn down. Separate your toes and press actively through the four corners of your feet in every pose, even inversions. If your feet are out of alignment, your knees are going to suffer.

3. Keep Your Knees in Line: When moving into deep knee bends, such as Virabhadrasana II , first align your bent knee over your ankle, then draw your kneecap in line with your second toe. Maintain awareness in your back foot, pressing down evenly, while lifting up from the arch of your front foot. “If you let the arch drop, the knee falls inside the big toe, and you’re set up to suffer a number of different kinds of overuse and acute knee injuries,” says Angela Smith, a professor of orthopedic surgery.

For Your Baby Stretch Sense Sleep

Babies are extremely limber and this dexterity can help them perform basic yoga poses with ease. Obviously, the stretches are guided by an instructor or the parents. Yoga can help the baby sleep in more regular intervals, and the stretching and posing foster the baby’s gross and fine motor development. The practice has also been found to be effective in promoting better digestion, preventing constipation and relieving colic in infants.

For Yourself Touch Attach Connect

Aside from the physiological benefits, baby yoga fosters deeper emotional attachments between the parent and the baby. Throughout the exercises, the parent holds and touches the baby and the sedation of touch helps strengthen paternal or maternal bonds. The sensation of touch also promotes circulation, which gives both the parent and infant feelings of calm and relaxation. Parents who enroll in baby yoga classes are also given the opportunity to socialize with other mothers and fathers and discuss “new parents’ stuff”. The classes are also great places for babies to interact with other infants for the first time.

You Asked: Can Hot Yoga Be Harmful

Does Yoga change your body?

Although practicing hot yoga is safe for most people, it can cause some people to overstretch, and suffer from dehydration. In extreme cases, it can lead to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. To practice hot yoga safely, drink plenty of water, ease yourself into classes, and leave the room if the heat becomes too much.

Can Being Too Flexible Be Harmful

In When Does Flexible Start to Mean, Lorraine Kreahling asks, Does too much stretching cause injuries?

Ten to twenty years ago, when I was teaching yoga in San Francisco, one rarely heard of people being injured from practicing yoga.

During this time I worked both as a chiropractic assistant and in sports medicine research. To the extent that we saw yoga injuries at all, it was usually something that would be caused by going into or out of an inversion inappropriately. But even that was rare.

Recently, however, I’ve heard that the sports medicine clinic where I worked now treats yoga injuries more regularly than it did ten years ago. What has changed since then?

Yoga During Your First Trimester

Whether you have never practiced yoga a day in your life, or you are a dedicated daily yogi, this post is for you! You both have something wonderful in common. You’re newly pregnant and creating a beautiful life inside of your miraculous being. Yoga is a great exercise during pregnancy as it relieves stress, aches and pains, connects you to your baby inside, and allows you to discover a new strength and power from within. Check out our post about the benefits of prenatal yoga .

Before practicing any type of exercise, it is always important to consult with your doctor to ensure that it is safe for both you and your growing baby. There are many things to consider before starting or continuing your yoga practice during the first trimester. How do you feel? What is your goal with the practice? Is this your first pregnancy? How is your pregnancy going in the eyes of your doctor? You and your doctor know your body and your situation best so it is important to take a little bit of time to evaluate what kind of yoga and how much is best for you during this vulnerably delicate time. If it is deemed safe, yoga is a great exercise to pick up if you have never practiced a day in your life during your pregnancy. It is also something that experienced and dedicated yogis should continue to practice throughout their pregnancy, especially if yoga alleviates stress and anxiety in your day to day life.

Here are some general guidelines to practicing safe yoga during your first trimester.

Foam Rolling In The Wrong Areas

While most muscles aren’t an issue, there are some specific areas you should steer clear from. One of the biggest mistakes is to roll your IT band, which in actuality cannot be loosened. If you have a tight IT band individuals should focus on rolling quadriceps, glutes, and around the knee instead.

After this, you can focus on strengthening and physical therapy designed to strengthen your glutes and further take pressure off the IT band. This will decrease the likelihood of IT band syndrome occurring.

What Should I Do After Hot Yoga

How to refuel after a hot yoga class…

You’ve just had an amazing hot yoga class and you sweat more than you thought was possible. …

Try to avoid drinking coffee, caffeinated tea or alcohol after a hot class. …

Ultimately, listen to your body and get it the proper nutrition it needs. …

Here is some more great advice on what to do post yoga practice:

16.04.2013

When Should We Start Baby Yoga

You can start baby yoga as soon as you like. It really depends on when you feel ready, especially if you’re a mum who has just given birth.

Ideally wait until your six week check-up so your GP can give you the all clear for exercising. This is important if you’ve had a C-section, or have had any postnatal complications.

Dads can take their babies whenever they like – there’s no reason to wait. It can really help dads and their babies to bond, particularly if mum is breastfeeding.

Understanding Range Of Motion

So then we must ask, if a joint has a less-than-optimal range of motion, should we do anything to increase the range of motion? This is often referred to as stretching or opening up a joint. If the range of motion is restricted due to weak and/or tight muscles and tendons, then the answer is “yes”: we do want to increase the range of motion. If the range is limited due to the body’s structure , then, the answer is “no.”

Most of us never become so flexible as to feel that our bony structure is limiting us in our ability to go deeper into a posture. Back in my dancing days, I heard that in the not-so-distant past, the U.S.S.R. used to x-ray young, hopeful, ballerina girls’ hip joints to see if they had the maximum structural capability for 180 degree turnout. It sounds as though it was a terrible system, but I have to wonder if their ballerinas had fewer injuries caused by forced turnouts — and less need for hip replacements later in life — than their non-x-ray-selected counterparts in other countries.

Muscle is elastic and is meant to be flexible as well as strong. If flexibility is not maintained, the muscles will once again shorten. They have the ability to go back and forth from being short Tendons are the endpoints of the muscles where they attach to bones.

[cryptidandwren]

OUR FETISHES ARE NO BASIS FOR A SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

In this essay we will discuss the media and social environment under which a dangerously unhinged President personally responsible for a quarter million of his people dying can come within ten million votes of winning the popular vote. You are seeing this because you follow my wife’s porn blog, so I'll skip over the part about minority rule’s role in American politics. There is nothing cute to be made of a Senate majority that represents 20 million fewer people systematically eroding reproductive rights, discriminatory protections, and twisting the federal judiciary into a visage of an extreme few. No, you are seeing this because of porn, so let's use porn to understand what is happening in The United States. Personally, I am very interested in dangerously unstable people with complete disregard for their actions’ effects on themselves and others. While it's personally undisputed that crazy is hot, this sexual preference was never going to factor into my dating decisions, because unfortunately I am within the subset of “others”. In this discussion we are also going to be talking about those on the right side of the political aisle, because what we are talking about is not symmetrical fresh-never-frozen-bug-fucking-insanity. The Republican Party started experimenting with putting its dick in crazy beginning with the Southern Strategy, and now its been balls deep in crazy for three decades. Part of the “go balls deep and nut in the worst angels of our being” strategy pioneered by Nixon and allies like the Koch brothers was to create a verdant media environment where you could choose your own adventure on talk radio or Fox News. Choice is where this all goes from “go balls deep and nut in the worst angels of our being” to “tied to a chair in a shady warehouse by the docks wearing nothing but a latex horse mask and being sucked off by one lady, one man, and an oddly enthusiastic aquarium fish.” In broad strokes people are selecting news that makes them feel good in the same way that they are selecting porn that makes them feel good, and people will become better able at determining what exactly they want over time.

Let’s start off by defining what makes something pornographic. For this there can only be one source of authority to begin our inquiry: The United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court defined obscenity as: “1) A thing must be prurient in nature; 2) a thing must be completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value; and 3) a thing must violate the local community standards.” Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973).  The Miller test is the threshold standard for obscenity. Obscenity is a classification under First Amendment law, and not all porn will pass through the Miller test threshold. At the same time Miller is the culmination of a large body of litigation over the question of how pornography, its almost always pornography, should be classified for First Amendment protections purposes. It is important to understand that this is a local standard. Which is to say that the Government’s ability to regulate pornographic or otherwise obscene speech is conditional upon local community standards. While two people fucking on the subway may be a charming part of the morning commute in NYC, or nutting to Lucky, the mascot for the Celtics, may be essential to Boston culture, both acts may be obscene in Des Moines Iowa. When discussing the internet, which we must do in this inquiry, local standards are thrown out. Additionally, Miller is a threshold standard for a certain kind of porn. For these reasons, Miller cannot be said to be controlling on what makes something pornographic. 

Fortunately The Supreme Court’s long history of litigation on the legal question of what makes pornography allows us to draw on persuasive evidence. Justice Stewart in his concurring opinion stated that he knows it [obscenity/porn] when he sees it. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 187 (1964). This rule cures the defect created by a local standard as found in Miller. Additionally, it provides a more sex positive framework with which to approach the issue, as it better acknowledges the full breadth of human sexual expression. Still, it is too subjective to provide a tenable framework, as when everything can be porn then nothing may also be porn. A synthesis of the two rules is therefore appropriate.  

The definition of porn requires a global standard, room to embrace the full breadth of human sexual expression, and some objective elements. Drawing on both Jacovellis and Miller porn is: 1) a thing known when seen; 2) a thing completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value; and 3) a thing which violates community standards. Let us now apply this new test to two fact patterns. First, HOT MILF OCTAGON DILDO WARRIOR 3 THE RESUBMITINING is a hypothetical film about mothers, although proof of their identity as such is lacking, fighting with dildos to submit or resubmit other mothers in a octagon with elaborate combat etiquette around naked dildo fights. Starting at the top, let us stipulate that this would be known to be porn when seen. Second, only the most strained and lonely freshman year Lit students could glean some scientific, political, educational, or social value out of what has been presented. Perhaps something to the effect of: “it represents the way in which an overly sexualized capitalist society pits actors against each other in abstracted combat which inevitably comes at the expense of the family unit, and the brunt of this abstract combat falls on women and or female caregivers”. Finally, this would violate community standards. Transgressiveness is hot, and you are not supposed to fight, much less with ten (10) pound dildo flails. Alternatively, there is the Venus de Milo. They would show this on PBS. It's not porn. That's not to say you can't nut to it, but any such nutting would be brought to you by viewers like you. This synthesized rule provides a practical framework to view porn broadly.  

Now that we have a definition to apply to the pornographic, let us turn our gaze towards the fetish driven hellscape that is American politics. Our politics have become run by civic pornographic tropes. These tropes exigent before the advent of social media found a newly fertile ground on Twitter and Facebook. In the same way that interest in DADDY BIGFOOT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS AND THEN TAKES ME TO CHILI’S existed before the internet, interest in a secretive government leaker trying to save children and provide life extending technology conspiracies existed before the internet. The internet simply reduces the transactional cost of finding what you are really into.   

Sex sells, but faces problems of scalability. Facebook, twitter, and all the rest sell ads. The more you are on them the more ads they can sell. Porn sells like, well, porn, but Pornhub hasn’t managed to destabilize entire governments and escalate ethnic tensions into a genocide. The problem that Pornhub has is scalability. We are closer to chimps than bonobos, so sex can only sell so far. This presented Facebook with a problem.  How do you scale up a platform designed to rank your co-workers on fuckability into something that can Grima Wormtounge everyone’s grandmother? Use algorithms to push people towards more and more specifically targeted salacious content and rely on a healthy community of amateur content creators so that there is always something available to engage anyone’s most niche interests. That the business model of Pornhub and Facebook are nearly indistinguishable are no mistake. 

To scale up one not only has to understand what porn is, but what the draw of porn is. Porn’s fundamental draw is not the sex, but the fantasy. It is fantasy without the distant mirror, or at least without an intentional one. Porn, unlike sex, creates a reality of your own choosing unconstrained by real worldly limitations and curated to facilitate the chosen fantasy. PRISON LESBIANS 4 NO ESCAPE; BUTTSTUFF FOR BAD GIRLS doesn’t have to be a dingy place standing as a monolith to a horrifying system housing those broken under the crushing wheels of a morally indefensible society of indifference, like a real prison. Instead it can be a well-lit, adequately shot, sanitized play place for beautiful people to fuck like they are in a smutty disneyworld after Disney ripped the still beating heart out of the play Chicago. Through its alchemy porn is able to transmute the real world into smutty gold. Any impurities which may have stood in the way of the fantasy drawn out and rendered golden.  

It is this same alchemy that we find at work in the so-called “new media”. GOD KING TRUMP TO KILL CHINESE DRAGON AND FREE AMERICAN WORKERS FROM THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS is no more concerned with the realities of the election than PRISON LESBIANS 4 NO ESCAPE; BUTTSTUFF FOR BAD GIRLS is concerned with The United States criminal justice system. Applying our standard to GOD KING TRUMP TO KILL CHINESE DRAGON AND FREE AMERICAN WORKERS FROM THOUSAND YEARS OF DARKNESS its pornographic nature must be:1) a thing known when seen; 2) a thing completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value; and 3) a thing which violates community standards. Starting with the first element, this exists because someone is into it. It is, like most porn, ridiculous with the benefit of post nut clarity. Secondly, no real value can be drawn from it. Perhaps a vague sense that the American working class has not been served by the last forty years of neoliberalism’s relentless pace which makes scabs out of entire nations, but surely nothing can be gleaned worth thinking about. Finally, Trump by his nature and actions is transgressive and violates nearly every social norm he's ever met. He even paid off several social norms to ensure their silence. This is porn under the Miller-Jacovellis synthesis rule.  

“Well that is only one example,” a scarecrow I just created to take down might say. Well scarecrow I've inserted in a petulant power fantasy, we will discuss yet another political pornographic genre.

 Let's look at one of the most persistent fetishes in American politics. The fetish that The United States is a meritocracy. First prong is satisfied, because this is a fantasy that exists because it feels good. In a meritocracy one would see social mobility both upwards and downwards. As a person of great quality is born to a low class they would naturally rise. Conversely as a person of low quality is born to a high class they would naturally fall. This is simply not the case. You will die in the same class or a little below as your parents. Men make more on average than women for the same work. Finally, reports of racism's demise after Obama’s election were greatly exaggerated. Much as the realities of American prisons have to be thrown out to allow for the fantasy within PRISON LESBIANS 4 NO ESCAPE; BUTTSTUFF FOR BAD GIRLS or the class and gender implications must be kept at arm's length for HOT MILF OCTAGON DILDO WARRIOR 3 THE RESUBMITINING, the realities of America’s class, gender, and race relations must be transmuted away for the alchemy of porn to take place on the American meritocracy. Element two is met, because this fantasy has no more value than those contained within DADDY BIGFOOT FUCKS ME IN THE ASS AND THEN TAKES ME TO CHILI’S. Any attempt to stratify and rank fantasies based on intellectual merit is more likely to tell us about the author of the list than to accurately rank the intellectual merits with any validity, so all fantasies must then stand on equal footing sexually or not. Finally, we must analyze the transgressiveness of a meritocracy to satisfy the third element. On one hand, this is a omnibus fetish like tits or ass in sexual pornography. However, a kind of transgressive nature does appear to materialize when POC or women succeed. Were Captain America to be cast as a black man it would surely be met with cries of, “that's not right, Cap is White, Libs ruin comic books”. When female characters fail to be thinly veiled fetish items or possess body fat necessary to make it through a day without getting dizzy are cast, one can expect cries of, “WOMEN CAN’T BE.” In this way it is transgressive for those who are not supposed to win based on their immutable characteristics rather than their talents to win under this meritocracy. It is therefore plausible to find meritocracy in The United States as a genre of civic pornography.

It is at this point that we must view those on the right side of the political aisle not as misguided by misinformation with infantilizing gaze and endless forgiveness, but as fetish enthusiasts who open conversations with what grocery store’s ginger makes the best buttplugs. People gravitate towards the news that makes them feel good, in the same way that they gravitate towards porn that makes them feel good. These are active choices to view and active choices to talk about their fetishes. It's fine if people want to read TRUMP ELECTED GOD KING OF AMERICA; TO LIFT US TO MOON BASE WITH MASSIVE COCK or PRESIDENT TRUMP LOCKS BABIES IN CAGES TO HARVEST LIB TEARS; TOO WINNING TOO HARD  in the privacy of their own bedroom. Much like sexually explicit pornography, the line is drawn when you start acting on or discussing the weird stuff in the real world without consent. 

Fundamentally, when Nixon first suggested to the Republican electorate that they had the freedom to go balls deep in the worst angels of our being, we saw a sort of sexual liberation take place. It started with veiled dogwhistles. Just the “tasteful” little “welfare queen” brand racism used to be enough, but it wasn't really what they wanted. I mean sure, BALL GAG BALLET SWAN TAINT LAKE has some things you like, but maybe GIMP SUIT’S A NUUTCRACKER; CHRISTMAS CUMS ONCE A YEAR is gonna really scratch that itch. 

We need to stop asking Republicans to change for us. This is their authentic selves, and it's awful. Accepting someone for who they are doesn't always mean forgiving them for the things they jerk off to in the supermarket in a bizarre attempt to undermine your nation's democratic institutions.    

[nothingman]

Some MRA Arguments Actually Have A Point — But Here’s Where They Go Wrong

By Suzannah Weiss

Photo credit: Pixabay

We can be angry about an issue men face without viewing it as a result of a hierarchy that puts men below people of other a/genders.

Content warning: sexual assault, genital mutilation

When I first learned about Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), a group of people aimed at giving men access to the same opportunities as other a/genders, I didn’t realize they had a reputation for being anti-feminist. In fact, a lot of their ideas seemed pretty feminist to me.

They wanted men to have the chance to be caretakers as well as breadwinners. They wanted all crime victims to be taken seriously. They wanted an end to stereotypes.

I started getting angry tweets complaining about how women ruled the world and men were oppressed.

I started getting angry tweets complaining about how women ruled the world and men were oppressed.

A few even used sexist insults against me.

I ignored them for the most part, but when I tried to engage with them, they seemed more interested in trolling me than exchanging ideas.

How could people who seemingly agree on so much become such adversaries?

At their worst, MRAs are simply looking to justify misogyny under the guise of “rights.” At their best, people with MRA-like beliefs sometimes start off from the same place as feminists — wanting gender equity — but then disagree about how to go about it.

Here are some common MRA arguments that have a point initially but take a wrong turn.

1. Male Survivors Should Be Taken Seriously

Men’s rights activists often accuse feminists of prioritizing female survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence while men get ignored. (Non-binary people are unfortunately usually absent from these discussions, even though feminists do acknowledge that they are disproportionately targeted.)

But feminists absolutely are sympathetic to male survivors. Many have spoken and written about the need to take them seriously.

We don’t believe any survivor is more important than any other, and we’re deeply concerned about the ideas about masculinity that lead people to dismiss male survivors. We want to challenge the idea that men always must be strong and can’t seek help.

We don’t believe any survivor is more important than any other, and we’re deeply concerned about the ideas about masculinity that lead people to dismiss male survivors.

If we talk disproportionately about sexual assault and intimate partner violence directed toward women and LGBTQIA+ people, that’s because they experience it disproportionately.

Thirty-three percent of women and 39.1% of transgender, genderqueer, questioning, or non-conforming people — compared to 8.6% of men — are sexually assaulted by their senior year of college.

Ninety-eight percent of sex trafficking victims are women and girls. Of all the women murdered in 2012, half of them were killed by their partners or family members, but only one in twenty men were killed by partners or family members.

And that’s not a coincidence.

The violence we experience in our own lives is a reflection of the violent ideologies directed toward us.

The violence we experience in our own lives is a reflection of the violent ideologies directed toward us. That’s why we talk about violence toward women and LGBTQIA+ people. Not because it matters more. Because it reflects a troubling pattern.

It reflects that a quarter of young people believe it’s normal for guys to pressure girls into sex. It reflects that in relationships between men and women, men are considered the aggressors while women are the gatekeepers. It reflects that college men are taught “no means yes, yes means anal.”

There is no societal norm dictating that women should invade men’s personal space, make them feel unsafe in public, and treat their bodies like objects.

There are also ideologies that lead men to experience sexual violence and intimate partner violence, like that women aren’t strong enough to hurt men and that men always want sex and are therefore unrapeable.

But there is no societal norm dictating that women should invade men’s personal space, make them feel unsafe in public, and treat their bodies like objects.

Though the outcome is equally bad, there’s a major difference between the beliefs that lead to violence toward men and those that lead to violence toward women and nonbinary people.

People believe certain forms of violence toward men can’t happen, while they believe violence toward other a/genders is normal and okay. Both these ideas stem from a societal belief in male superiority.

So, ultimately, supporting male survivors and supporting female and non-binary survivors go together.

Both require us to challenge patriarchy.

2. Fathers Are as Important as Mothers

Another common men’s rights issue is child custody and, more generally, men’s ability to play as active a role in the family as women do.

Feminists totally agree with this as well. Everyone should have a choice regarding what role they play in the family, and their a/gender shouldn’t factor into that.

Men’s smaller role in the household is also not evidence that they’re oppressed. Once again, we need to look not just at the way things are, but also at the underlying ideologies.

In fact, having more equal households benefits people of all a/genders. In relationships between men and women, for example, women whose male partners are helping out around the house are more able to prioritize their careers.

But men’s smaller role in the household is also not evidence that they’re oppressed. Once again, we need to look not just at the way things are, but also at the underlying ideologies.

There’s nothing inherently oppressive about being a stay-at-home parent or being a breadwinner. The oppression lies in the beliefs that leave women confined to the former position while men are confined to the latter and non-binary people are totally erased.

Women are deemed ideal homemakers because people expect free labor from them and don’t consider them as capable of most jobs. Men are deemed ideal breadwinners because they are considered deserving of money and capable of earning it.

There’s nothing inherently oppressive about being a stay-at-home parent or being a breadwinner. The oppression lies in the beliefs that leave women confined to the former position while men are confined to the latter and non-binary people are totally erased.

Even though its effects can be negative, this belief itself is positive toward men.

Yes, there’s also the belief that men aren’t great with children or household chores. But since childrearing and homemaking are devalued in our society, this belief is not as pejorative as the belief that someone doesn’t belong in the workplace.

How Men’s Rights Activists Hijacked The Circumcision Debate theestablishment.co

Aside from the root ideologies, the other thing that determines whether or not a family structure is oppressive is whether people have a choice. And like MRAs, feminists believe men — and anyone of any gender involved in parenting a child — should have a choice in their familial role.

3. Circumcision Is a Violation of Bodily Autonomy

Some men’s rights activists also talk about circumcision as unjust treatment of people with penises.

Once again, many feminists agree on this. Part of creating a culture of consent is not doing anything to anyone’s body without their permission, and that includes circumcision.

Male circumcision is a feminist issue. However, it is not proof that men are an oppressed gender.

Male circumcision is a feminist issue. However, it is not proof that men are an oppressed gender.

While decreased sensitivity can be an effect of circumcision, it is not its usual purpose. It’s most often done for supposed health or hygiene (which has been debunked as credible) or to honor a religion or culture. In fact, criticism of male circumcision is often thinly veiled anti-Semitism.

But female genital mutilation is performed in attempt to repress women’s sexuality, enhance men’s pleasure, and keep women from having sex outside of marriage so that they can be the property of their husbands. And unlike male circumcision, it has no potential benefits for health or hygiene and has more severe risks.

We can be angry about an issue men face without viewing it as a result of a hierarchy that puts men below people of other a/genders.

Again, we can be angry about an issue men face without viewing it as a result of a hierarchy that puts men below people of other a/genders.

4. There’s Nothing Wrong with Men

Lastly, one of MRAs’ biggest complaints against feminists — and people in general — is that they portray men negatively.

And honestly, I’ve had the same complaints about certain feminists — for example, essentialist feminists who say women should be empowered because the world needs more caring and nurturing instead of men and their wars.

That doesn’t represent all feminists, though.

I’ve personally found that most are against this kind of stereotyping. Benevolent sexism isn’t great for women either, after all, since it sets up unfair expectations and advocates only conditional respect.

We don’t hate men. We hate toxic masculinity.

Feminists acknowledge that most violence against women is committed by men, but we don’t view this as inherent or natural to men. We view it as a result of a patriarchal society that oppresses everyone — as an issue of socialization.

Men are conditioned to be aggressive and domineering toward gender minorities like women through violent depictions of masculinity in the media, pressure to act masculine in front of their peers, and expectations from caregivers starting at a young age. This doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for hurtful behaviors, though.

We don’t hate men. We hate toxic masculinity. We believe men can be better than they’re made out to be. Instead of getting defensive, men should be on board with that.

Many MRAs accuse feminists of dismissing the cause of men’s liberation.

But we’re not dismissing it. The idea that all people should have access to the same opportunities and live free from stereotypes is worth fighting for. We just don’t believe in dismissing feminism in the process.

The truth of the matter is, we live in a patriarchal society.

Just look at the numbers: Less than a quarter of national parliamentarians are women. Only 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Statistics don’t exist for non-binary people at all.The most powerful people in this world are men.

That doesn’t mean the world is fair to men. But if men want liberation from gender roles, they should support feminists, not MRAs.

Feminists are advocating for more generous paternity leave, greater acceptance of men who show emotions and vulnerability, and less pressure for men to play the “masculine” role in their relationships and families.

If you’re ready to fight for men’s liberation without putting anyone else down, we welcome you with open arms.

And while MRAs make many good points, I’ve seen their behavior get really toxic. When they talk about women like men are entitled to them and deny the existence of misogyny, they fuel patriarchy, which hurts people of all a/genders.

But if you’re ready to fight for men’s liberation without putting anyone else down, we welcome you with open arms.

In fact, we desperately need you. Just please understand that men won’t be free from gender roles until oppressed a/genders are as well.

This originally appeared on Everyday Feminism. Republished here with permission.

via The Establishment - Medium

[becomingunstuckproject-blog]

Becoming Unstuck: Entry One

I don't know when I got stuck. That's the thing about being stuck, you don't realize you haven't moved until everyone else has. Everyone I know has moved, either in a negative way or a positive way, but you can tell something has changed. I have changed in some aspects. My way of thinking has altered, I have new priorities, I have different views on life and people. But I am still caught up in the same things, the same problems, the same self-difficulties. It's like I moved away for a bit and had all these experiences, but none of them really did anything for me. I don't know, maybe my threshold for altering experiences is higher than normal,   or maybe I went to a place where everyone is the same, and nothing life changing really occurs, because its safe. Is my school being safe a bad thing? No, but it is definitely different than any state I've ever been used to. I feel normal when life is chaos, I feel normal when I'm fighting for survival. I just can’t believe I am still stuck on all the same things. The boy from high school - who no one likes and never even loved me. And it isn't like I still love him or anything, but I still crave his approval and his attention. And I may even be craving the chaos he brings me, the chaos we create together. He makes me feel, unlike anyone else I've ever met. All the boys I have met at school are very safe or not safe at all, he is the happy medium, for me, definitely not a universal happy medium. I don't know how I stop craving that, and it's not just about him. Once I find someone else, someone that makes me forget about him, I know it'll be the same problem. Because I only chase someone that makes me feel something, that creates chaos with me. My heart won't settle for anything less. So clearly, it is less about him and more about me, and I'm not quite sure how to fix it. Another thing I am not so surprised I am stuck on is my family. I have had family problems my whole life, and when I was little, I created this complex that I was the only one who could who could fix it, I could solve everything I knew I could. And very quickly, I became the mom, the caregiver, the hero. This identity has stuck with me ever since. But now, my dad is dead, I can't save him anymore - I didn't save him, I failed. I failed my sisters, my mom, my dad, and myself. Most say this isn't my responsibility, and technically, it isn't, it wasn't. But it is the identity I adopted, it is almost all I know about myself - survive, take care of your sisters, make sure mom is okay, tell dad that he needs to grow up, tell dad what he's doing is wrong. But none of it turned out the way I had planned. My dad killed himself, I couldn't save him from that, and the rest of my family has some serious issues, as do I. But we all ignore it, I try to help them but it really never seems to work, it’s like we've all given up. We never talk about anything, we just ignore it. I know I need to let them figure things out for themselves, none of their lives are in danger, and that is my biggest concern. I need to accept that they are their own people and I don't always know what is best for them, and even if I do, they are adults and they do not need to listen. They really do have any respect for my opinions anyway, even though I feel like I can help. None of them asked for help, and I need to respect that. I need to learn more about myself and learn to love myself. But how do you love something that is so empty, so purposeless. When dad died he took away my purpose, my reason for living that was forced upon me from the youngest I can remember, that I learned to love and placed my self worth upon. It's gone, no one needs saving anymore, just because people are struggling doesn't mean there is a need for intervention. They are all living their lives, figuring things out, and even though their lives are destined to be harder than most, different than most, does not mean that they need someone to save them. But where do I stand, my sisters, while they worried about our struggles, never even had to think about it before I sprung into action.  My mom, who has both helped and harmed, has problems of her own, that only she can fix. That's why I've been feeling stuck, no one creating chaos, no one to create chaos with. I feel like I've decided to create chaos inside myself - anxiety, depression, personality disorders, drug addiction. All things that scare me about myself, all chaotic things that I can fix for my own survival. I don't want this constant need to fix things, just because it was my purpose once does not mean I need to make it my purpose again. So what am I searching for? Something new, something else that makes me feel adequate, strong, needed, and special. Helping my family made me feel like a savior, like someone who was needed, like a hard worker, like I was the best. I could make tons of friends, I could get the best grades, and save my family at any second. Now I need a fix for that excitement, for that feeling of self-worth, for that confirmation that I was doing the best I could, I was achieving, I was surviving against all odds. Now what am I doing? Getting by. Not being able to do school work with out something to help me focus, and even with that doing decently in school at best. Making friends, friends whom I really love, but friends that do not understand what it means to struggle, to really live. I feel like I am on a constant search of someone to help - and it scares me, because it isn't purposeful. Someone opens up to me and I feel a rush of adrenaline, danger. I'm scared for that person, but I also feel a call to action. I anticipate how good it will feel to save them. But I am not equipped to do that, to save people I just met, to save someone who wanted to open up to me as a friend, not as a guide or a hero. But I take that position, even if we have just met, and that isn’t something that they are looking for. And that is really my responsibility. The saddest part about all of this is, when I explain this need, when I talk about how worried I am of others' well being, it makes me look caring, compassionate, self-less. I am not saying I am not caring or compassionate, but I don't think I have even considered that I may be doing it for the wrong reasons. Part of it, which I concluded early, is that if someone has a risk of dying, by drugs or their own struggles of any kind, I get an instant fear, and I realize that now that I am aware of the problem, that I knew there was a risk of them dying, that I can prevent it. That is how I felt about my dad. When I banned him from my life, when I isolated him from his family, I knew what I was risking. And not even in a in-the-back-of-my-mind-but-never-wanted-to-acknowledge-it kind of way, I said it, out loud, to my friend casually, even possibly in a humorous way, I can't completely remember the context, but normally I present something bothering me in a humorous kind of way. So yeah, I now know I am capable of it. I am capable of purposefully making someone's situation harder, knowing their life could be at risk, and never acting on that fear. Not to say the restraining order on my dad was meant to make his life harder, it was meant to protect my sisters, and gave my dad a wake up call, but I did know that it would put my father's mental health in decline. So yeah, I think it is safe to say that that fear is warranted, that I do not ever want to be in a situation where I could have helped, where I could have been the hero, and I did nothing. That is something most people will ever experience, a feeling that others could never imagine. No one even acknowledges this feeling that I have, they tell me it wasn't my fault, they tell me that I had a reason behind my actions and I did make my dad kill himself. Regardless, his death was a result of my actions, purposeful or not, I knew what I was risking, and while I hoped it would never happen, I never knew for sure it wouldn't. That is the feeling, not a feeling that I killed someone or even tried to save someone and I failed, but that I made the wrong choice, and that choice had consequences. Consequences that my sisters, my mom, me, and the rest of my family will struggle with for the rest of their lives in one way or another. There were others that could have helped, I wasn't solely responsible in this, but I am the only one who took action, a dangerous and hateful action. This feeling has silver linings however. This feeling has given me an overwhelming sense of compassion towards others,  a desire to never make choices out of spite, anger, or a hatred, like I did that day. But all of this good is rooted in fear. After some contemplation, I figure that the other side of this coin is a lack of something. With my parents, I developed this sense of self-worth, of goodness in myself,  from saving us from their destructive decisions. So now, I feel my overwhelming need to fix people, to save people, is rooted in selfishness over compassion. The desire to care is never bad, but my need to care is part of the feeling it gives me when I did. I saved them, my purpose is fulfilled, I am a hero once again, the caregiver. I don't think I will ever stop caring for people, seeing as I am a natural caregiver, and that I have chosen that as a profession. The thing that scares me is my selfishness. I need to find a new purpose, a new way to prove to myself that I am adequate and worthy. Because I am not a hero, and I do not need to be. Caring for others will always be rewarding, heartwarming, but it cannot be the reason that I accept myself. I think maybe I grew up too fast, I developed this hero complex and never searched for anything else to make me feel whole. I don't blame myself, it was a full time job, and it kept my self-worth high for a while. But now I've realized how stuck I am, how the only things that remind me that I am worth something is if a boy thinks I'm pretty or if I do well in school. Both parts of my life I have heavily focused on. This isn't abnormal, tons of girls are focused on boys and school, it isn't a bad thing. The problem with me is, if I am not constantly getting those reminders that I am pretty, that I am capable, that I am special, life feels just about meaningless. It is frustrating. Who wants to count on brainless frat boys and elderly unmotivated professors for validation? Not me. Unfortunately, just because I don't want something doesn't mean I don't need it. Not that I need this things in the way I need food, water, and sunlight, but when I don't receive these things, I become lost. My brain becomes so sick of feeling like I am not enough, like I am not pretty, like I am not worthy, that I cave, and begin to do whatever it takes for the validation that I crave. I hate this part of me, I hate that this happens. But how do I fix it, I think there is many things that I need to do. One is self-love. I'm not exactly sure how I begin to do that, or how I even will know when I have started to love myself the right way, but I know that I need to accept that I am pretty, that I am worthy, that I am adequate without outside validation. I think that starts with learning how to truly love. I know what love is, but over the course of my life, I don’t think I have ever loved the right way. I have loved fearfully, conditionally, I have loved with an anticipation of disappointment. At the beginning of one's life, they have people whom they learn love from and people they practice how to love on, their family. My parents never showed me that they loved each other. They did, for a time they were happy, but that ended, and quickly. I don't blame them, so many marriages end in divorce, but it is something that affected me. Then, a child practices love on their family. But, I watched my parents do hateful things, I watched my parents do illegal things, I watched my parents leave me, I watched my parents in complete chaos. In this way, my love for my parents was conditional, full of disappointment, and lacking respect. I loved my parents, but I knew they were wrong sometimes, and I didn’t love them when that happened. I hated them at times, I wanted them to suffer, like they made me suffer. I was constantly disappointed, abandoned, scared, and hurt of those who I learned to love from. And now, I can love, but I don't love unconditionally, I don't love without fear of the worst, I don't love with respect. I don't blame myself for this, it isn’t really my fault. But now, how can I learn to love the correct way, after years of loving the wrong way. I am an adult now, and I'm afraid it might be too late, or at least take far too long. So that's step one, learning how to love. Step two, finding purpose. This goes along with self love in some ways, but it is a different thing entirely. I need too shift the way I see myself, the way I find myself useful and worthy. Because I am no longer the hero, I am no longer the caregiver, and I do not want to live my life searching for surrogate victims, that is no way to live. I need to live for myself, I need to live in a way that isn’t dependent upon others. I need to learn boundaries. So what is my purpose? Why am I worthy? I have no fucking clue. I need to live to find out. I don’t think purpose is just something that pops into your mind one day, you turn into it, through experiences. To find my purpose, I need different experiences, I need a clear mind. If I keep living with my hero mentality, I'll miss everything else, my purpose will fly right past me while I am worrying about how to prevent another death. Another thing I need to realized is that my dad was different. Not that suicide doesn't happen all the time, but just because someone has a problem and is struggling does not mean that death is eminent. I mean I'm gonna be honest here, if I had been finding people with their lives in danger and saving them, I would be fulfilled and never have realized this problem. In this way, I am kind of creating a problem that isn't really there. So yeah, basically I am sick of being stuck and if my dad had never died, I would never have felt stuck, I would have kept being the hero. But, my dad here or not, I need a purpose in life that doesn't involve saving my family from my parents. God damn am I angry with them. They set me up for this. How could my toddler self have known that I would become addicted to being the victim, to being the hero. I refuse to let my life revolve around my childhood. FUCK THAT! It is over. It had a tragic end and it is done now. I did all I could and now I'm sitting here lost. But now, I am an adult, I am my own person, and I need my own life. My family will always be a part of my life, but the whole thing, no way. How I was raised will always be prevalent in my personality, but I need to stop constantly being fixated on it. My childhood is not my whole identity. My problems do not make up my personality. I crave to be a well rounded person with likes and dislikes with dreams and desires. I feel like my whole life up to know I have only been focused on fixing what they have done to be or on creating temporary relief from my pain. But my life isn't some preventative measure, I am not broken and I do not need to be fixed. I just need to redirect my energy. I need to learn that I am independent, that I can be whole all by myself, and that life isn't about the tragedies you've been through. I am not a sum of my traumas, I am the sum of my experiences, and I need to experience life through a new lens. In every experience, I am searching for a way to cope. I think the only way out of that is to heal. What better time to heal than when I am quarantined with essentially no new experience to learn from. So that is what I'm going to do, I am going to heal, I am going to love myself, I am going to find purpose. I'll let you know how it goes.

[if-this-is-a-woman]

Rebecca Solnit: if I were a man

By Rebecca Solnit, www.theguardian.com

View Original

August 26th, 2017

Growing up, the author joked she was the perfect son: intelligent, ambitious, independent. How different might her life have been?

06.00 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 20 September 2017 05.26 EDT

When I was very young, some gay friends of mine threw a cross-dressing party. My boyfriend at the time, with the help of his mother, did so well that a lot of straight men were unnerved; they needed to know that the lust-inspiring, simpering siren in the tight slip was not compromising their heterosexuality. I was not nearly so convincing as a Rod Stewart-ish man with charcoal five o’clock shadow, and I was a little taken aback to realise that, to me, impersonating a man meant manspreading on the sofa, belching and scratching personal parts, glowering and cursing. There was a sense of not having to please anyone and not having to be likable that was fun, but it wasn’t necessarily someone I wanted to be.

I am old enough that girls weren’t allowed to wear trousers to school until midway through my elementary school education; that I remember a local newspaper columnist arguing in a grumpy panic that if women wore trousers gender would vanish, which he saw as a terrifying thing. I have worn jeans and shoes that are good for rough terrain for most of my life, along with lipstick and long hair, and being a woman has let me walk this line between what used to be considered masculine and feminine. But I have wondered from time to time what life would be like if I were a man. By this I don’t mean to aspire to, or appropriate, or suffer from gender dysphoria and the deeper issues around bodies, sexuality and sense of self that trans people contend with.

I like a lot of things about being a woman, but there are times and ways it’s a prison, and sometimes I daydream about being out of that prison. I know that being a man can be a prison in other ways. I know and love a lot of men, straight and gay, and I see burdens they’re saddled with that I’m glad not to carry. There are all the things men are not supposed to do and say and feel; the constant patrol on boys to prevent them from or punish them for doing anything inconsistent with conventions of heterosexual masculinity, those boys for whom, in their formative years, faggot and pussy – being not straight or not male – are still often the most sneering of epithets.

Back in the 1970s, when some men were figuring out how their own liberation might parallel women’s liberation, there was a demonstration at which guys held a banner that said, “Men are more than just success objects.” Perhaps as a girl, I was liberated by expectations that I’d be some variation on a failure. I could rebel by succeeding, while a lot of white middle-class men of my era seemed to rebel by failing, because the expectations had been set so very high for them. That had the upside of more support, sometimes, for their endeavours, but the downside of more pressure and higher expectations. They were supposed to grow up to be president, or their mother’s pride and joy, or their family’s sole support, or a hero every day – to somehow do remarkable things; being ordinary, decent and hardworking was often regarded as not enough. But success was available to them, and that was an advantage – and still is. We still have wild disproportions on those fronts; the New York Times reported in 2015 that “Fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John”. Among the top firms in the US, “for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James”.

Back when my mother was alive and well, I used to joke that my problem was that I was a perfect son. What my mother expected from me was, as far as I could tell, profoundly different from what she expected from her three sons. I used to joke that they were supposed to fix her roof; I was supposed to fix her psyche. She wanted something impossible from me, some combination of best friend confidante, nurturer, and person she could dump on about anything at any time – a person who would never disagree or depart. She lived about 20 miles north of San Francisco, where I’ve lived since I was 18, and I was willing to show up regularly, including holidays, Mother’s Day and her birthday, bring gifts, listen, be helpful in practical ways, while carrying on with my own life (I’d left home and become financially independent at 17).

As it was, she resented the opportunities I had that she felt she had not, starting with college, which she was not encouraged to go to, unlike her brother. This resentment is common, I think, between her generation and mine, and in some ways she saw my career as disrupting my proper role as her caregiver, or as a caregiver generally. I knew that the acceptable escape from being devoted to her was to devote my life to some other people – to get a husband, to have kids – rather than to be unavailable because I was working and living my own life. When I was young, she would recite to me the couplet “A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life.” In her expectations was an undertone of: I have sacrificed my life to others; sacrifice yours to me.

I’m not a sacrifice, but my work was a source of conflict for others as well. I started college early, graduated early, went onward to the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where I took a degree just before I turned 23, worked for a magazine, left the magazine and inadvertently found myself a freelance writer, which is largely how I’ve earned my living these past three decades. I published a book at 30, and then another one – 20 to date.

Photograph: John Lee for the Guardian

Early on in my friendship with an older feminist writer who has written many influential books, we used to laugh about the guys we met who were upset that we had published so much. They seemed to feel that they had to be more successful than whoever they were attracted to; that somehow our creative work was an act of aggression or competition. I don’t think women approach men the same way (though a novelist once told me his ex-wife made him feel like a race horse she was betting on). We joked, “If I knew I was going to meet you I would have burned the manuscripts.” Or as I’d laugh later, “Do you think this book makes my brain look big?” Boys can be stigmatised as nerds and geeks, but they can’t really be too smart. Girls can, and a lot of girls learn to hide their intelligence, or just abandon or devalue or doubt it. Having strong opinions and clear ideas is incompatible with being flatteringly deferential.

What is confidence in a man is too often viewed as competitiveness in a woman; what is leadership in a man is bossiness in a woman; even the word bossy, like slut or nag, is seldom applied to men. A few decades ago, I knew a woman who was a world champion martial artist. Her husband’s family was disconcerted by the fact that he could not beat her up. They did not suppose he wanted to, but they presumed he was somehow emasculated by not being able to, by the fact that she did not make him feel mighty in this abominable way. He himself, to his credit, did not seem to give a damn.

As a girl, I would have liked to have my intelligence and intellectual labours regarded as an unmitigated good and a source of pride, rather than something I had to handle delicately, lest I upset or offend. Success can contain implicit failure for straight women, who are supposed to succeed as women by making men feel godlike in their might. As Virginia Woolf reflected: “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

I have met a lot of brilliant men whose spouses serve their careers and live in their shadows, and marrying a successful man is still considered the pinnacle of women’s achievement in many circles. Some of those women flourished, but not a few seemed diminished by their role as helpmeet and handmaiden, and if they got divorced, they divorced the identity they’d helped build and maintain. There have been so many women who stayed at home and raised the kids while men went off on adventures and pursued accomplishments. There still are. These straight men with brilliant careers and families – no one asks them how they manage to have it all, because we know: she’s how.

Ms Magazine’s first issue in 1972 published a landmark essay titled Why I Want A Wife. It’s an appalling list of all the things a wife might do for her husband and children, of a woman as a sort of self-managed servant. Even recently, one of my best friends told me he’s taken aback at the smiles-and-compliments response to his going about in public with his new son, as if taking care of his kid is some sort of optional special credit he’s earning. It’s as though everything fathers do, economics aside, is bonus; nothing mothers do is enough. This is one of the reasons why a woman might want to be a man (and why choosing to have children can mean something entirely different for a woman than a man, unless she has that still-rare thing: a partner whose commitment to the work is truly equal). Were I a man, or had I a woman as partner, I might have made very different choices about marriage and children.

Photograph: John Lee for the Guardian

One often hears statements implying that it’s generous of a man to put up with a woman’s brilliance or success, though more and more straight couples are negotiating this as more women become principal breadwinners or higher earners (and Leonard Woolf was exemplary in his support for his wife’s work, which outshone his own). But growing up, I knew that I was supposed to be the audience rather than a participant, or the centre of attention.

I’ve written before about men explaining things – about that dynamic in which some men assume they know when they don’t, and that the woman they’re talking to doesn’t when she does. A 2008 essay I wrote on the topic never stopped circulating, apparently because it resonated for so many women and maybe some men. The word mansplaining now exists in more than 30 languages, according to an article this year, and I realise that built into the idea is a dynamic in which women are eternally the audience. There are no signs that mansplaining is going away. An acquaintance recently told me, “A man once asked me if I knew of the Bracero program [for Mexican farmworkers in the US], and when I said, ‘Why yes, I wrote my undergrad thesis about it,’ he replied, ‘Well, I’ll tell you about it.’ I said, ‘No, I’ll tell you, fucker!’ And then the dinner party got weird.”

Like most women, even after the age when strangers demanded I give them a smile, I’ve had complete strangers come up to me to unload their theories or stories at considerable length, without reciprocity in the conversation, if conversation is the term for this one-way street. We know the reality of this from studies about how boys are called on more in school, and grow up to talk more in meetings, and interrupt women more than men.

In the 1990s the artist Ann Hamilton gave her students lightweight 4ft by 8ft sheets of plywood to carry around everywhere they went for a week. The exercise made them conscious of navigating space; they were awkward, forever at risk of bumping into people and things, probably offering up a lot of excuses. Success sometimes seems like that for women, an awkwardly large thing that is supposed to be in other people’s way and for which you might need to apologise periodically. The phrases sometimes used for men who partner with successful women – taking it in his stride, not put out by, OK with, dealing with, cool with – are reminders that female success can be regarded as some kind of intrusion or inappropriate behaviour.

What would it feel like to have a success that does not in any way contain failure, that is not awkward or grounds for apology, something that you don’t need to downplay, to have power that enhances rather than detracts from your attractiveness? (The very idea that powerlessness is attractive is appalling – and real.) Ann Hamilton has had a tremendous career, and some of it came from the sheer scale and ambition of her work from the outset, which seemed exceptional when she appeared on the art scene in the late 1980s. I remember all the women art students I met in that era, who made tiny, furtive things that expressed something about their condition, including the lack of room they felt free to occupy. How do you think big when you’re supposed to not get in the way, not overstep your welcome, not overshadow or intimidate? Ann wrote to me when I asked about that plywood assignment long ago: “I am still trying to break the habit of apologising for myself – even though I have little hesitation in asking for help on projects – asking for myself brings out the old, ‘Please excuse me.’”

Hillary Clinton during the presidential debate. She has talked about facing hostility at law school from men. Photograph: Julio Cortez/AP

I know things are changing, and younger women have different experiences, but women older than me have horrifying stories to tell, and we are not out from under that shadow. Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says of her arrival at law school in the 1950s, “The dean then asked each of us in turn to say what we were doing at the law school, occupying a seat that could be held by a man.” Hillary Clintontold an interviewer a few years ago about meeting with similar opposition in the 1960s, from the young men who’d shown up to take the law school admissions test at Harvard when she did. One even accused her of being homicidal in her ambitions: “If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.” He didn’t imagine she had a right to compete; or that the place that neither had yet won was no more his than hers. It’s not just trouble at the top: women plumbers, electricians and mechanics have told me about being treated as incompetent, intrusive or both in their field.

It isn’t hard to find contemporary horror stories of women who can’t wedge a word in edgewise at meetings, have their ideas taken up by others, don’t get promoted as they might if they were men, who get harassed and groped or, in the white-collar world, not invited to the executive bonding sessions. This year Silicon Valley has been haemorrhaging workers’ stories of sexual harassment and discrimination, and the gist of many is that the tech companies tolerate harassment more than they tolerate people who report it. Even this month a Google employee, in a now infamous screed, insisted that the deeply unequal landscape of Silicon Valley’s white-collar jobs is due to nothing more or less than men’s superior capacity.

We still have a long way to go. A young woman enrolled at a women’s college told me this summer she was thrilled to be in an intellectual habitat where no shining young men were going to dominate the classroom conversations the way they had in her high school; walking home across campus at 3am without thinking about safety was another pleasure. (Women do engage in sexual assault, but in numbers that are minute compared to those of men.) Women are targets in the online world, too; in a little experiment on Twitter last year, the journalist Summer Brenner borrowed her brother’s profile picture and turned her first name into initials – the harassment she had experienced online dropped to almost nothing. Women may aspire to be men just to be free from persecution by them.

If I were a man… I didn’t want to be someone else so much as I wanted, from time to time, to be treated as someone else, or left alone as I would be if I was something else. In particular, I’ve wanted to be able to walk around alone, in cities, on mountains, unmolested. You can’t wander lonely as a cloud when you’re always checking to see whether you’re being followed, or bracing yourself in case the person passing grabs you. I’ve been insulted, threatened, spat on, attacked, groped, harassed, followed; women I know have been stalked so ferociously they had to go into hiding, sometimes for years; other women I know have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, stabbed, beaten with rocks, left for dead. It impacts on your sense of freedom to say the least.

A small part of my consciousness is perpetually occupied by these survival questions whenever I’m outdoors alone, though there are a few places I’ve been – Iceland, Japan, extremely remote wildernesses where bears were the only menace – where I felt I didn’t have to think about it. Solitary walking is where a lot of writers – Wordsworth, Rousseau, Thoreau, Gary Snyder – got a lot of their thinking and composing done; I have, too, but it got interrupted both from outside and from this internal monitor, always thinking about my safety. I know that my whiteness tips the balance the other way with this; it lets me go places that a black person can’t, and the short answer to what my life might be like had I been born black would be: different in nearly every imaginable respect.

There are many stories of people cross-dressing not as self-expression, but for practical purposes, just as there are of people of colour passing as white. Deborah Samson and Anna Maria Lane are among the women who fought against the British in the revolutionary war dressed as men, and more women did the same in the Union Army during the civil war. The novelist George Sand used a man’s name to traverse the literary world of 19th-century France and then men’s clothes to traverse Paris. She wasn’t just hiding out from harassment, but putting away the treacherous shoes and yards of fabric that made it hard to walk through a city that was rough-surfaced and filthy. She traded those fragile things in for solid boots and sturdy clothes in which she could roam confidently in all weathers and times of day and night, and loved it. Sylvia Plath, born a century later, wrote in her journal when she was 19 that, “Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

Supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked at law school what she was doing ‘occupying a seat that could be held by a man’. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Not a little of the stuff women wore, and still wear, is an impediment and a confinement. Some women evacuating the World Trade Center on September 11 did so barefoot, lacerating their feet because their shoes impaired their mobility. What is it like to spend a lot of your life in shoes in which you’re less steady and swift than the people around you? Some women wear tight clothes that hamper free movement, fragile clothes, clothes you can trip over. These garments can be fun and glamorous, but as an everyday uniform they’re often incapacitating.

Trans people have been remarkable witnesses to how differently the world treats them when they transition. I have read many stories of a woman finding that she no longer has the right of way but will be bumped into on the street; a man finding that he is no longer interrupted. Gender shapes the spaces – social, conversational, professional, as well as literal – that we are given to occupy. Who we are, I realised as I co-created an atlas of New York City, is even built into the landscape, in which many things are named after men, few after women, from streets and buildings – Lafayette Street, Madison Avenue, Lincoln Center, Rockefeller Center – to boroughs – nearby Paterson, Levittown, Morristown. The nomenclature of the city seemed to encourage men to imagine greatness for themselves as generals, captains of industry, presidents, senators. My collaborators and I made a map in which all the subway stops in New York were renamed after the city’s great women. Last year, when I discussed it with students at Columbia university (named after Christopher Columbus, of course), a young woman of colour remarked that she had slouched all her life; that in a city where things were named after people like her she might stand up straight. Another wondered whether she would be sexually harassed on boulevards named after women. The world is an uneven surface, with plenty to trip on and room to reinvent.

I like being a woman. I love watching and maybe smiling at or talking to kids I run into in parks and grocery stores and anywhere else; I’m confident no one will ever take me for a creep or a kidnapper, and I know that it would be more complicated if I were a man. There are more subtle advantages about the range of expression I’m allowed in my personal relations, including in my close, supportive, emotionally expressive friendships with other women – and, through all my adult life, my friendships with gay men, many of whom who have boldly, festively, brilliantly broken the rules of masculinity and helped me laugh at the gaps between who we are and who we’re supposed to be. Liberation is a contagious project, and growing up around people who took apart and reassembled gender helped liberate even a straight woman like me.

So I don’t wish I were a man. I just wish we were all free.