green

Hah! You both fall into Green's camp. I have never found children to be sufficiently interesting that I wanted to spend more than a couple of hours around them and I actively dislike babies. I do like adults and old people. I was always like this, even when I was a kid myself. And I knew all my life that I never wanted children of my own or even a husband. I did, however, want boyfriends, a house, my own money, and the opportunity to travel. I liked the idea of having a lot of variety in my life. I was able to have all these things; I was lucky. I am lucky, too, in that I have landed up with a good man and live in a kind and stable relationship. I am 57 now and I have never, ever regretted my choice not to have children.

Gadget, I agree with you. I do think that it is best for kids to be raised in a stable environment with an on-site caregiver and that this individual should ideally be the kids' parent. And I think that women often prove to be better psychologically equipped for the job than men. I am kind of a conservative grrl on this issue. I do believe that kids have a better chance in a two parent home and I think they do much better when they are not farmed out to a nanny or daycare. But, I was an atypical kid growing up in the 1950s. I wasn't cut out - I still am not - for family life. And I have met many wonderful heterosexual men who are very, very maternal. (For that matter I have met many gay women who were more maternal than I am!) I personally owe those feminists a lot! A healthy society is one which permits people to live to the best of their personal capabilities. You sound like a fortunate woman. It is obvious from your posts that you have never found yourself in a position where you were cornered by the lowered expectations of your parents, your mate, or your church. You are intellectually gifted, financially fortunate, and you are having a great time raising your kids. This is good stuff but you are who you are and you live where you live. Other women who live in other parts of the country may well still be getting different messages from their churches, their families, and their men. And it was certainly no fun growing up grrl during the 1950s.:phanvan

As a fellow Canuck, I would say that I am personally inclined to agree with much of TommyO's assessment. Religious beliefs are not expected to play a direct part in our politics. Such religious/political pundits (i.e. Pat Robertson) as you have south of the border do not exist up here. We simply do not have the Canadian equivalent. Indeed, our current Prime Minister is an acknowledged Christian and this may have lost him a lot of urban votes in the recent election. He has a minority government. I believe that most Canadians take the approach that one's religious beliefs are a personal thing and should be left that way. We don't like to interfere with each other without being invited; we find it terribly impolite. Though most Canadians probably are believers, I would be inclined to say that our national character is one informed by secular humanism. The issue of God and belief is never, ever introduced into the business of politics and governance. In fact, should a Canadian leader try to introduce such chat, he would be shredded, he would be torn apart by our media! In this respect Canada is much closer to Europe than to her southern neighbour.

I grew up during the 1950s and 1960s. When I was very, very young I was an angry kid and terribly jealous of my brother. I was a tomboyish kid and did not, you see, want to grow up to be a wife and mother. I wanted to have my father's life; it looked much more interesting and glamorous. He seemed to have much more freedom, and much more control over his life, and respect, of course. My father had a lot of respect. He was a real estate broker and so he seemingly came and went as he wished. My mother cooked only those dishes which he liked and bought only those clothes of which he approved. It was he who controlled the money and it was he who understood the arcana of the world of business. Why, he actually read the financial section of the newspaper! On the other hand, my mother's life was made up of many small items. That she was a stunningly competant woman took me many, many decades to recognise. Around the time that I was entering university militant feminism was entering hitting its own stride. I, for one, sure did profit from it in my own life and I am certain that this movement has assisted both men and women to better acknowledge that inside each one of us resides some characteristics and interests which have been traditionally assigned to the opposite gender. This movement has freed women up to engage in careers, activities, and lifestyles that once were considered to be unavailable to them. It has also freed up men to involve themselves in more nurturing roles. Neverthess, the movement did become too, too doctrinaire. Women who did want to stay at home and look after their families found themselves being dissed for opting to follow a 'traditional' path. We have moved far beyond the feminist movement of the 1960s-70s and much of what the feminists were on about in those days seems both shrill and mind-numbingly doctrinaire now. I don't think that there are many young women who style themselves as feminists these days. They don't have to, do they?

One Grrl Army

Okay, I'm gonna add it back in, grrl. :biggrin1: Ovaries with Attitude! I'm glad that you liked it.:rose: I don't know why I deleted it. It's too bad that DrewsLou isn't Canadian; I would have suggested Lucki Canucki.

I will only sleep in a very baggy very fine cotton nightgown or nightshirt. These are getting to be quite hard to find. Everyone buys pajamas these days. And there are a lot of synthetics out there.:rose: I can't wear anything on my lower half; it quickly crawls up and into my arse and then I have to haul it out again. And I have sensitive skin and am usually too hot! Even in winter, I always have a fan on. I used to sleep nekkid when I was younger and much, much thinner but now I am embarassed. :omg: I also have high thread count bed sheets now that I am an old fart. It's the least that I can do for myself, eh.:rose:

Whether Danielle has Asberger's or not is one issue. An entirely separate one is this: what do you get out of seeing this girl? It doesn't sound like much. She sounds altogether irritating. Maybe it is time to move on.

I've read about Temple Grandin and found her to be fascinating. She developed a method by which cattle can be slaughtered more humanely and she has Asperger's. The article I read about her was written by Oliver Sachs and was published in The New Yorker some years ago. It is worth mentioning here that Oliver Sachs has written quite a lot about Asperger's and other neurological differences found in people. His method is to spend time with individuals who are different and then profile them. He is a neurologist himself as well as a wonderful writer. I also find your post fascinating, kyethra, for your situation is so unlike my own and, for that matter, most of our species. I can certainly understand why you must feel like a cultural anthropologist most of the time. I also found your story about the correct time to discuss cannibalism interesting; I, too, was kinda interested in the subject and the neurological disease which afflicted that particular tribe. And now I really want to read the book which Temple Grandin co-authored.

Please don't wear any of these garments. They are very old-fashioned as well as being kinda fattening. I remember very big women wearing these in the early 1970s. It is best for us to Celebrate our weight losses, I think. Why don't you get a couple of loose tops run up for yourself in denim? You can get a few pockets sewn in at the same time.

Gaming Grrl Rolling Mama Slickest Chick Roller Chick RollR Grrl

Yah, that mother gave me the creeps!

Eventually we all end up dead. Then we are beyond worrying about it. We are beyond everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly, so to speak. I find the thought of death frightening at times, comforting at others.

I've spent some considerable time reading through this thread and now I am gonna add my own two cents into the coin collection. Colton, I think that the approach which you have taken with your younger sister is excellent. There has been this pattern of early pregnancies in your family and your kid sister, who is now sexually active, has come to you for help in managing her sex life. You are being proactive. She is on the pill and she is being innoculated against HPV. This is all to the good. I also believe that although we all want to believe that our husbands, boyfriends, and children are behaving themselves sexually this really ends up being a matter of trust. People do screw up and sometimes around and people do lie. This is why we must all concern ourselves in this business of conducting personal risk value assessments. As for you, Gadget, it strikes me that your risk management skills are excellent and that you are doing a fine job of protecting your children but it is always possible that one of your decent, clean-living, and carefully raised children might be conned by someone who only says that he is cut from the same bolt of cloth. People will lie, sometimes out of a deep sense of shame, but when it comes to sex and STDs these lies can have unexpected consequences. I think that the only possible argument against this vaccination is that we have no idea what the really long term affects might be. Other than that, a chance to protect women against possibly contracting cervical cancer...well, that looks pretty good to me.

I don't think that the individual who started the thread should have the right to delete the entire thread once other people have committed their time and attention to it by posting on it and/or simply voting in a poll. I do think that we should all retain the right to delete our own posts, however.

Yah, tell me about it!! There I was, eleven years old, I had breasts and horrible menstrual cramps and even then I knew I didn't want to have kids. I never, ever did find a doctor who was willing to spay me. Oh, ugh. I guess I was kinda lucky. I went through menopause shortly after I hit my 40s.:clap2:

This business of abused women is a tough issue for all of us. Tough minded modern women often find it hard to relate to these women unless they acidentally find themselves in the same place, that is to say, in thrall to a man who is controlling to the point of being abusive. Though it is certain that there are men who are anxious to be dominant and who are also strongly anchored to a religious code of behaviour, it is also certain that it is men, and certainly these men, who will easily find reinforcement for their misbehaviour in their religious teachings, and it is this which serves to alienate the modernists from the fundamentalists, regardless of belief, be it Christian, Islam, Jewish, or founded in any of the more esoteric beliefs. At the same time this issue of abused women is certainly a divisive one. There are many of us who think that the logical, indeed the normal, move for any hard up against it woman is to take charge of your own life by walking out, cutting your losses, and remaking your life. Green tends to fall into this proactive group. Her own temperament leaves her unsympathetic to any behaviour that carries the pathology of victomology and of passivity. Nevertheless, there are a lot of women and their kids out there who are living in victims' ville and we must wonder where these people came from and what we can do for their kids. Just to let you know where Green is coming from vis-a-vis this particular issue, you should know that she kinda dresses to the right. She saw her husband and a colleague and friend of theirs, a man of colour, be hung up to dry on sexual harrassment charges by a former friend. This was a long term friendship which had gone sour. The deal was that the complainant was a woman and she complained that this was all about sexual harrassment. Green herself explained to human resources that the individuals involved had been friends with each other for the past 15 years and that the children of one of the two injured parties had been calling the woman who was crying wolf auntie for well over a decade. It is important that we never unthinkingly hand out power, be it to the left or to the right. Our responses should never, ever be thoughtless, eh.:phanvan All the same, whether you or Green can find it in your hearts to deal with one of these women, they do exist and they do need help.

Big thanx from Green to Ousooner for clearing this up!:biggrin1: It occurs to the sneaky Green that you Americans could both protect and assist each other against judgemental and obstructive PCPs by taking the following approach: The individual who wishes to be approved for surgery posts his/her home area on the home state site and requests fellow members for assistance in locating a, well, fat issues sensitive PCP in the local neighbourhood. This information can be communicated to the individual in need either in the form of a PM or a public post. (The home state site, by the way, can be found by looking under USA on this site.) As we all know, medicine is still an amalgam of art and science and thus we are subjected to the personal biases of the individuals who treat us. We are often helped by our medical practioners but sometimes we find that we are both humiliated and blocked from treatment. This site permits us to help each other and it is a really fabulous resource on oh so many levels. Nevertheless, I would urge anyone who is receiving grief from their local PCP to post on their state site about this and as a corrollary I would urge all American posters to periodically take the time to visit their local state sites. Who knows? There maybe someone in your neighbourhood who is looking for your PCP. By the way, up here in Canada we still call 'em family docs or General Practioners. This does not narrow our chances of having bad ones, however.:phanvan Neither kindness nor humiliation carry passports, eh.:think

Thank you, BJean, for your post on breast cancer. Knowledgeable posts are fun! We all get to learn from each other. Some of you may not know that Jewish women who have their roots in Eastern Europe have a significantly higher chance of developing breast cancer. It's a genetically linked issue. And here is another depressing bit of information: if all the women in your family have developed breast cancer the odds are dreadfully high that you will, too. I knew a woman who fell into that category. She was receiving mamograms quarterly for this reason. Less than a month and a half after she had been declared clear she could feel a lump. And don't forget that men can develop breast cancer, too, even though this is less common.

Uh, you are undoubtedly right.... I think I remember that it was women who breastfeed.

I never felt guilty about it. I felt fortunate that I was able to take advantage of modern technology for a situation which I was unable to control on my own. I viewed, you see, my weight gain as being akin to having diabetes or from suffering, as I do, depression. Now, depression runs in my family and is a genetic thing. We all know that obesity is a result of overeating plus genetics plus the modern lifestyle. In the case of some of us there are further complicating factors. I am really happy with this technology. I have lost weight and I feel much better about myself even though I am still not a Hollywood grrl. And I paid for myself; it was money well spent.

Yeah, I remember reading this article. It noted that nuns tended to have the lowest incidence of cervical cancer and women who were sexually very active had the highest incidence. Another article which came out around the same time, this one on breast cancer, noted that women who had children tended to have a lower rate of breast cancer. After reading these two articles I thought to myself, Oops! Also noted in another article around this time was that Jewish women tended to have a lower rate of cervical cancer. It was surmised that this was because their men are circumsized and therefore cleaner. Less foreign material is being dropped off at the cervix. If my memory serves me, all three studies were made at least 2-3 decades ago.

I enjoyed it, too. Bush was much funnier than the paid comedian. Thanks for posting this.

You Lotus Land folk were paying your dues behind the bad weather awhile back when we easterners were wondering whether we would even experience winter. It was lovely autumn weather in southern Ontario until mid-January. Now the weather here is pretty damn cold!!! Brrrrrr!

This is going to sound dumb but what is a PCP? I see this on a lot of the American posts and I have been curious for quite sometime now as to what a PCP actually is.