so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?
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I'm thinking abt that pretty fall leaves embroidery pattern post and about how like... it is categorically a repost, it's a reupload. right? a thing that is generally disliked. but because it's credited, it's genuinely boosting the artist in question.
and it could ALWAYS be like this. reposting content could ALWAYS be a symbiotic relationship, but because sourcing back to the original creator of something is so uncommon, it's just easier to ask people not to repost it at all. and people still don't understand the difference. or they'll go to the effort of cropping out usernames/signatures to repost something, which is More Effort than literally crediting the creator of something you liked enough to want to repost.
Like. I literally don't actually care if my own shit gets reposted, you have to understand. I just don't want it STOLEN. But "do not repost" is easier to write on my art than "you can repost this, but don't alter the image/remove my signature, don't you dare write 'credit goes to the artist' because that is not credit, please link back to my original post or someplace that you can actually find me. please use an actual link/url instead of writing a non-clickable link of my username, because making it text instead of a clickable link cuts the number of people who will go to the effort of visiting my own page in Half."
All those aggregate themed accounts, those fuckin annoying as hell instagrams and facebook groups that are like "body positive art we love wamen 💕 hashtag feminism" and then MASS-STEAL plus sized art created by women, if pages like these that always go and steal my older self-portraits and other works... If they just put a link to my prints of those pieces in the text of those posts, or, fuck, my commission info page? I would literally be living on the moon right now. I would have a house on the moon
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"Battle of Alberta, right? It was my first game: Calgary, Edmonton. We would play them in the preseason, and you know—trying to make the team I'd always be asking him to fight in preseason, always. I'd be runnin' my mouth—like, tryna fight the biggest, baddest guys, tryna make an impression.
And he would never fight me. He'd always tell me, like If you make the team, I'll fight ya. You don't have to worry about that, but I'm not fightin' ya preseason. And I totally respect it, I'm not gonna chase him down. It is what it is. He's established—I'm looking for my chance.
So I get called up, we're playing Edmonton in Edmonton: Battle of Alberta. [He's] over there on the other side, and it's like the coolest thing ever... you know, the buildup was crazy 'cuz I knew if the opportunity presented itself—if the game went the way I hoped it would, I would get an opportunity to fight him.
I remembered in warmups tryna skate by the redline initially just kind-of gettin' a feel for it—to see if I have to say something or whatever... He's got no bucket on, his big, bald head is glarin' around, he skates by the redline with the biggest smile on his face, and just gives me the biggest wink...
At that moment I knew Okay, he remembers. It's gonna happen at some point.
We were up 1, I think it was 2-1 going into intermission or whatever—Oh, no, I think it was 1-1 and we had just scored so the position I'm like Yeah, I don't know if I can fight him now because we have the momentum and we're winning the game. I don't want to lose a fight, then we lose a game and now I'm, like, never getting a chance again.
You kind-of gotta play the game within the game like [...] there's an opportunity to fight, and there's an opportunities where you shouldn't fight. Things weren't looking good, then they score and now we need a spark. I'm like Fucking perfect.
I just skate by their bench and I'm like It's time, big boy! He jumps out, we line up, and he goes We squarin' up or we goin' right away?
I'm like I'm not fuckin' squarin' up with you right now! We're goin' right away!
Drop em, we go right away, grab each other. I know he's a lefty so he's gonna let go—let's go of my right arm before he throws one. I threw one. Big boy went down, he jumped back up pretty quick. I don't know, I tell people all the time, I'm like I would've been in the league fuckin' 2 years earlier if there was good footage of this fuckin' fight!
For some reason—For some reason, the cameras cut out. I don't know if [he] had his cousins working the cameras or something that night, or if they're in the video room or what happened.
That was my first NHL game.
It's funny 'cuz Chucky was there—Chucky's there and he knows, he saw, he always laugh when I say that I would've been in the league earlier 'cuz he knows how things like that go. You get a little bit of energy and buzz around ya, and then kind-of momentum takes you a little bit further but unfortunate[ly], I missed that opportunity but I don't regret a thing.
[...]
The opportunity was there, I just—unfortunately, for whatever reason, the Hockey Gods said not yet." (Ryan Lomberg reminiscing over his first NHL game/fight) (x)(x) (please go watch the second link to see lombos giant smile as he tells this story jfc)
and other genuinely bonkers things to say about a hockey player in your first fight... like why did this need to be said like that...what
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