veronica_rich (
veronica_rich) wrote2006-04-25 10:26 pm
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Flabbergasted and Utterly Aghast
This is a tale of one woman's confusion with the state of the world - well, scratch that. The state of my own country, specifically.
I've known a certain LJ friend in real life for several years, since she was a teenager - we'll call her N. She's like my second younger sister. Sooo, I know quite a bit about her medical history, including the fact she suffers from an almost-continual period. There's blood, clots, cramps ... you get the picture.
When she was about 19, she told me her doctor determined she had a condition which made her more susceptible to uterine cancer than the average woman, but that she couldn't have a hysterectomy until she was at least 21. After she turned 21, I figured she'd rush right out and have it removed, but she said her doctor wouldn't do it. This flabbergasted me, especially since I know N has no interest in being a mother and has a very REAL interest in being rid of pain and the inconvenience of continuous bleeding. I thought perhaps she hadn't made herself very clear to her doctor; why else would he refuse to remove an organ giving her so much trouble? This is the 21st century - there's hormones that make it quite easy for a woman without a uterus to continue with life as normal.
It wasn't until I had surfed the Internet a few more years and was exposed to a wider world that I understood N was not alone, and I realized it wasn't a misunderstanding that has kept a malfunctioning, renegade organ in her body at least six years longer than normal: It's plain old sexism.
How do I figure? Today alone, I've had to read four posts on my LJ f-list from frustrated women pulling their hair out over the inability to get doctors to listen to their reasons for wanting tubal ligations, IUDs, and other forms of birth control. This isn't the first day I've had to read this, and I know it won't be the last.
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of me and every other woman being treated like a uterus with a hairstyle. Worse yet, I'm tired of this bullshit coming from other women! A man who tromps all over a woman's rights - at least I can safely presume he simply doesn't know what it's like being female, and I have a hope of educating him. But a fellow woman - that's fucking treason, sister.
I'm tired of hearing "we can't do that because we might get sued." Well, guess what? Viagra makes men see blue! Not that that's stopped many of them. Viagra can KILL some 70-year-old, and yet, not only can other old farts keep getting it, they can have it paid for by the same insurance that WON'T cover birth control, abortions, tubal ligations, OR mammograms until age 40. (Because we all know no woman under age 40 has ever died from breast cancer.)
I'm tired of my body and the bodies of my female friends being treated as shrines for The Almighty Clump of Cells. Yeah, women can gestate babies. Yeah, they're the only ones who can do it. Many men - and far too many women - act like this is some unfair advantage women have in biology. Well, let me tell you what: I'd happily trade it tomorrow for a body that doesn't bleed at least once a month for days at a stretch for 40 years. Do you know what a menstrual cramp feels like? Imagine someone getting their hands inside your lower intestines, SQUEEZING AND PULLING AND TUGGING AND FOLDING THEM FOR SEVERAL HOURS STRAIGHT. At least.
I'm tired of the dominant cults in this country - Catholicism and various branches of fundamentalist Christianity - having more say over what happens to my body than I do! I say FUCK YOU. You want control of my body? Fine. Feed it. Keep it in clothes. Keep it properly examined and medicated (I haven't had health insurance in five years because it costs too fucking much). And while you're at it, don't require me to work, pay taxes, and be sure to properly lobotomize me, because contrary to the opinion that drives this sort of behavior, I DO POSSESS A WORKING BRAIN. (No, I don't have a penis to house it, but I've managed somehow for almost 34 years with that handicap. Incidentally, if I did have a penis, I'd have little to no problem getting the little tubes from balls behind it snipped. No, there's no sexism in regulated medicine.)
I'm REALLY really tired of pharmacists who won't dispense properly-prescribed birth control or the morning-after pill, because it goes against their beliefs. I've been in the workforce since I was 15 years old - nearly 20 years now - and I've had to do a LOT of things for customers and clients that I personally wouldn't do myself. I've had to help people do things I don't even believe in - legally speaking, of course - in the interest of getting a paycheck that is a mere fraction of what a pharmacist gets to take home at the end of the week. Wah, cry me a river - fucking just shut up, suck it up, and save your prosthelyzing for Sunday (or Saturday) morning.
This trend of treating women like they don't know which end is up is demoralizing, demeaning, and illogical. To ban abortion, for example, is to treat every woman the moment she gets pregnant like either a child to be ordered around or slave property to be watched and controlled at all times. She who is forced to gestate against her will is no longer a person, but an incubator. She who is kept from having a harmful, inflammatory LARGELY UNNECESSARY body part removed to improve her health is basically being told her life isn't worth the shit that comes out of it.
Apparently it's okay for us to work, pay taxes, and contribute to society, but not to govern our own life choices. And I find it wholly ironic that legislators and religious folk have no problem treating women like they don't know much when it comes to their own bodies, but they're instantly acceptable to raise the next generation once they roll out of the birth canal. But as I stated above, what really twists the knife is hearing any or all of this bullshit being seriously spouted by fellow women. I mean - damn.
Of course there is no organization to this. It's a rant, bitches. There's a lot more I could say. But do I have to?
(EDIT: Because this thing is getting more traffic than I expected, I removed my friend's specific tag; I'll just call her N for her privacy.)
I've known a certain LJ friend in real life for several years, since she was a teenager - we'll call her N. She's like my second younger sister. Sooo, I know quite a bit about her medical history, including the fact she suffers from an almost-continual period. There's blood, clots, cramps ... you get the picture.
When she was about 19, she told me her doctor determined she had a condition which made her more susceptible to uterine cancer than the average woman, but that she couldn't have a hysterectomy until she was at least 21. After she turned 21, I figured she'd rush right out and have it removed, but she said her doctor wouldn't do it. This flabbergasted me, especially since I know N has no interest in being a mother and has a very REAL interest in being rid of pain and the inconvenience of continuous bleeding. I thought perhaps she hadn't made herself very clear to her doctor; why else would he refuse to remove an organ giving her so much trouble? This is the 21st century - there's hormones that make it quite easy for a woman without a uterus to continue with life as normal.
It wasn't until I had surfed the Internet a few more years and was exposed to a wider world that I understood N was not alone, and I realized it wasn't a misunderstanding that has kept a malfunctioning, renegade organ in her body at least six years longer than normal: It's plain old sexism.
How do I figure? Today alone, I've had to read four posts on my LJ f-list from frustrated women pulling their hair out over the inability to get doctors to listen to their reasons for wanting tubal ligations, IUDs, and other forms of birth control. This isn't the first day I've had to read this, and I know it won't be the last.
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of me and every other woman being treated like a uterus with a hairstyle. Worse yet, I'm tired of this bullshit coming from other women! A man who tromps all over a woman's rights - at least I can safely presume he simply doesn't know what it's like being female, and I have a hope of educating him. But a fellow woman - that's fucking treason, sister.
I'm tired of hearing "we can't do that because we might get sued." Well, guess what? Viagra makes men see blue! Not that that's stopped many of them. Viagra can KILL some 70-year-old, and yet, not only can other old farts keep getting it, they can have it paid for by the same insurance that WON'T cover birth control, abortions, tubal ligations, OR mammograms until age 40. (Because we all know no woman under age 40 has ever died from breast cancer.)
I'm tired of my body and the bodies of my female friends being treated as shrines for The Almighty Clump of Cells. Yeah, women can gestate babies. Yeah, they're the only ones who can do it. Many men - and far too many women - act like this is some unfair advantage women have in biology. Well, let me tell you what: I'd happily trade it tomorrow for a body that doesn't bleed at least once a month for days at a stretch for 40 years. Do you know what a menstrual cramp feels like? Imagine someone getting their hands inside your lower intestines, SQUEEZING AND PULLING AND TUGGING AND FOLDING THEM FOR SEVERAL HOURS STRAIGHT. At least.
I'm tired of the dominant cults in this country - Catholicism and various branches of fundamentalist Christianity - having more say over what happens to my body than I do! I say FUCK YOU. You want control of my body? Fine. Feed it. Keep it in clothes. Keep it properly examined and medicated (I haven't had health insurance in five years because it costs too fucking much). And while you're at it, don't require me to work, pay taxes, and be sure to properly lobotomize me, because contrary to the opinion that drives this sort of behavior, I DO POSSESS A WORKING BRAIN. (No, I don't have a penis to house it, but I've managed somehow for almost 34 years with that handicap. Incidentally, if I did have a penis, I'd have little to no problem getting the little tubes from balls behind it snipped. No, there's no sexism in regulated medicine.)
I'm REALLY really tired of pharmacists who won't dispense properly-prescribed birth control or the morning-after pill, because it goes against their beliefs. I've been in the workforce since I was 15 years old - nearly 20 years now - and I've had to do a LOT of things for customers and clients that I personally wouldn't do myself. I've had to help people do things I don't even believe in - legally speaking, of course - in the interest of getting a paycheck that is a mere fraction of what a pharmacist gets to take home at the end of the week. Wah, cry me a river - fucking just shut up, suck it up, and save your prosthelyzing for Sunday (or Saturday) morning.
This trend of treating women like they don't know which end is up is demoralizing, demeaning, and illogical. To ban abortion, for example, is to treat every woman the moment she gets pregnant like either a child to be ordered around or slave property to be watched and controlled at all times. She who is forced to gestate against her will is no longer a person, but an incubator. She who is kept from having a harmful, inflammatory LARGELY UNNECESSARY body part removed to improve her health is basically being told her life isn't worth the shit that comes out of it.
Apparently it's okay for us to work, pay taxes, and contribute to society, but not to govern our own life choices. And I find it wholly ironic that legislators and religious folk have no problem treating women like they don't know much when it comes to their own bodies, but they're instantly acceptable to raise the next generation once they roll out of the birth canal. But as I stated above, what really twists the knife is hearing any or all of this bullshit being seriously spouted by fellow women. I mean - damn.
Of course there is no organization to this. It's a rant, bitches. There's a lot more I could say. But do I have to?
(EDIT: Because this thing is getting more traffic than I expected, I removed my friend's specific tag; I'll just call her N for her privacy.)
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And the fun doesn't end when you have a kid - no, indeed, evidently one's not enough. It's hard to find a doctor to do a tubal and/or hysterectomy when you don't have at LEAST two kids. Pardon me while I go slam my head in my closet door.
About lawsuits ...
What it boils down to is effectively controlling a large segment of the population. I'm not sure it's even a male-female thing - it's just a good way to try to get an iron grip on the choices of the majority population, cloaked in the guise of compassion and "decency." Plus, study any aristocratic society: The small upper class requires a massive poor, poorly educated lower class to work their factories, buy their products, and shit out their soldiers.
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We need the Rapture to happen right now. Please.
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You have stated it as plainly as it can be stated. That's because once the fetus is birthed and is no longer an undeveloped, undifferentiated mass of cells, there's no question that a woman can get in trouble for killing it - so she's still under social control. It's about controlling the fetus's host, not protecting the fetus and resulting child. Same goes double for all those people who make an excuse for incest and rape fetuses - if life is sacred from conception on, then ALL life is sacred from conception on, hypocrites.
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Seriously, I'd have more to say, involving all sorts of, "Word!" and the like, but you've summed it up better and angrier and more beautifully than ever I could regurgitate in comment form, so I'll just be sitting over here, plying my
goddamn uppity uterusmagickal sacred baby box with chocolate until it settles down.no subject
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You've read "The Handmaid's Tale" I assume... That's what you end up with if you extrapolate from now and things don't improve.
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The word "feminist," like "liberal," has gotten a dirty rap from those with the most to gain from their ideals being sullied. It's convenient how people forget it was a bunch of liberals who gave them their basic daily rights, and women don't understand the earliest "feminists" simply wanted to be treated as though they were actually as intelligent as they men around them thought they themselves were.
Agreed!
You, miss, win the internet.
I completely side with you on the whole "christianity needs to get its goddamn hands off my rights" thing, and in fact everything you said above; far too long we've been buffaloed by their xenophobic, self-righteous, illogical bullshit. There is no reason why they've stayed in power as long as they have, none. That post is easily one of the most cogent statements on the rights (or lack thereof as the case is around here) of women in our country I've read in a long time. More people need to get their heads out of their asses and realize just how ridiculous our treatment of women has become.
Major props. I wish there were more people like you and my girl who used their goddamn heads and stood up for what's right and just, and not what's accepted.
Re: Agreed!
Some people are great action-mobilizers; others rant well. I fall into the latter category. I'm not saying I never write a letter or call a congresscritter, and I tend to tell people in person what I think about particular issues, even if mine is an unpopular opinion. But I confess I'm much better at simply organizing my thoughts and saying "Here's what is pissing me off," though I try not to rant too often or it'll lose its effectiveness.
I used to think it was stupidity that kept people from understanding the logic of treating all adults equally. Now I realize that's only at work in some cases - in others, there are people expending a massive amount of effort and energy to ignore what their consciences and brains must surely be telling them is right.
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Mind if I link this on my LJ?
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As for vasectomies ... um, yeah. Did you read today's locked
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Too, my anger at the medical profession is ... mixed. I understand individual doctors have very high malpractice premiums and risk lawsuits when they do things that aren't strictly devoted to saving a life in immediate danger. The problem is, this is the same broad profession that readily allows any woman with enough money to get her breasts enlarged, or a facelift, or her thighs vacuumed out - and nobody can tell me these are *small* surgical procedures. (I have a friend who had her breasts reduced years ago, and I remember the recovery period. It wasn't pretty.)
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stealing your icon
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Sweden is a basically non religious country so we don't have that sort of influence here. And it seems like I should be grateful for that.But what we do have is a regression back to the old ways of thinking, as in; oh, a female, let's do her.
Sweden has been on the top ten list of equal thinking but that is no more. Over the last years women have been reduced to a *move between kitchen and bedroom* level again. Which is scary. Especially considering the amount of gang bangs performed more and more often here. This is a small country, very much so, so everything is very much noticeable.
One positive thing is that women are usually treated with care and respect when visiting a hospital here.Could be a leftover from the 60's with the Swedish sin and all the STD's, but still it's functional. Not perfect but working. Our pharmacists do hand out what is on the prescription without fussing. So far, I might add. We have an anti-abortion movement growing, thankfully quite small, but it's there. And no one can tell what what will happen in the future.
The world is wrong sometimes. I have two kids of my own but children is not the way to prove your worth. And it does not prove your worth as a woman. As a milk machine, yes, but not your human value.
Speaking of removing organs: I brought the subject up at the last visit at the doctors since my mum and my aunt both have had uterus cancer. I want it gone to be safe. But I've had two kids and that should be enough protection.I can't have the package removed. And I really want to, with the cramps and the pain and the mess and the risk for cancer.
And here I was to promote Sweden. I have to rethink.
Hang in there, sisters
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Beautiful!
A way I might suggest to get your rants out there (as long as they are public) is Techonrati. I've linked my LJ to them.
http://www.technorati.com/
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But thanks for the link, I'll check it when I have some time!
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Seriously. I talked with Dee today and since her daughter's a doctor, she explained a couple of things. First off, doctors are really hesitant to fix a woman because too many have come back and sued later on. The problem I see with this is the women themselves, acting like little children (and getting the rest of us lumped in with them, thank you), and juries which award the settlements, clearly believing the women who had these procedures done must have done so at gunpoint, or some other such foolishness.
As a corollary of this, doctors won't perform the procedures now - according Dee's doctor daughter, who recently ran an OB/GYN clinic - because the premiums on their malpractice insurance are already terribly high, and the risk of lawsuit is too great.
Second, she said any messing around with a woman's plumbing interrupts hormone production/delivery and makes that woman's life uncomfortable (as in menopause). I don't think she was trying to "bingo" you, I think she was just seriously trying to point out reasons doctors might genuinely have for not performing these procedures. MY point, however, was that someone already in misery WITH the malfunctioning organs surely wouldn't feel any worse for having them taken out. She didn't argue that, but does wonder why no doctor will help you, unless your insurance just doesn't cover it and they're worried about not being paid.
She also pointed out there are GYN specialists who don't deal in obstetrics. My guess is that these people would be more willing to perform such a procedure, since they have no direct interest in making you use your uterus.
(On a side note, would you like me to take your specific moniker off this post in an edit? I can, if you want. It was just a rant and I didn't realize so many people would read it ...)
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Hear, hear.
Just thought I'd add, though, that this attitude is not confined to Christians or the Right. See here (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007140.html#007140) - a woman is deprived of the only medication that eases her condition by the FDA, due in part to pressure by Public Citizen, the organization Ralph Nader founded.
The issue here is people - of any political or religious stripe - who believe it is OK to violate your sovereign right to control your own body, "for your own good" or otherwise.
Thanks for your rant. I hope everyone who reads it becomes a little less tolerant of anyone's attempt to impose their will on the bodies of others.
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What cracks me up are pharmacists who refuse to give out the morning-after pill because it'll end a pregnancy, but are okay with handing out regular chemical birth control to prevent one from beginning. Um ... the morning-after drug is simply a hepped-up, concentrated form of the birth-control pill. You get the same effect by taking a bunch of your Ortho-Cyclin (sp?) ahead of schedule.
Where are the pharmacists who refuse to fill a Viagra prescription? Or morphine/other pain medicine for a post-surgical patient? Or Prozac for someone who has proven to have a happier, less pained existence by its carefully-prescribed usage? A pharmacist's job is to fill the doctor's prescription and to act as a safeguard against improperly prescribed medication - a true pharmacist proves their worth by catching an error on the doctor's part in type or amount of drug prescribed, NOT in contradicting the doctor's or patient's intentions in any other way.
Sorry, I got off your FDA point there. But it's the same principle, sort of. Other people trying to impose moral values over legitimate science.
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I love you.
Your rant is very timely, as well. Considering what I've been through myself the last few weeks, if you remember my posts. *sigh*
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After reading both your rant and the comments that have been left so far, I must say that there are things I agree with...and things I really don't.
On the main point, that a woman should have the right to have her uterus removed/other procedures with the same effect, I agree. That's definitely a case of it being your body and your choice.
On abortion, though, I must disagree. "She who is forced to gestate against her will is no longer a person, but an incubator"? Unless it was a rape, she is not being "forced" at all! People talk about a woman's choise to have an abortion, but how about this--how about the woman's choice to use birth control, or to, say, not have sex? Shocking concept, I know. And yes, Christian here (or "Christian", if you must), and I do believe that all life is sacred from conception. Killing a fetus is like killing a baby...but I'll leave off.
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What about a married woman who doesn't want children? Or does she have no choice in the matter because she's married and it's her duty to have children? Tell that to my friend Tammy, who recently married and has no interest in giving birth or adopting.
What about when birth control fails? Condoms break; the Pill is less than 100 percent effective. But then again, I suppose a woman taking charge of her own sexuality outside of marriage is just a slut who deserves what she gets, eh? (I notice you say nothing about a man being held to the same standard.)
I do believe that all life is sacred from conception.
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Unless it was a rape, she is not being "forced" at all!
Ah, here comes the hypocrisy. If you say all fetuses are sacred, then no pregnancy can be terminated because ... well, they're all sacred. But if you feel a woman who was raped and doesn't want to be pregnant was forced into it - well, you've got yourself quite a dilemma, there. All I can say is I'm certainly glad that *I* believe in letting each woman make her own decisions. I'd be kept quite busy playing God, otherwise.
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In my county...
I don't see what's so hard about that. If you ask me, it's moralizing, not legitimate concern. Waivers are for protection from liability.
I think people just like to beat their chests and moralize. Makes the little ones feel bigger...or something. ;)
Cheers!
Re: In my county...
Re: In my county...
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Not much else that can be added to that.
Except that if I had those cramps for several days, I'd have something removed too. If sympathy pains ever turn into multiple day stretches, oh yes. Something will get removed from someone, that I'm sure of.
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"Sympathy pains" annoy me. It's just worry like anything else, people! (And they do NOT feel as bad as the real thing, men.)
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