Discipline is the art of not betraying yourself. – Marcus Aurelius
It happened again. A woman I know, in a local rec center locker room, apologized for taking her shirt off in front of me. Sorry?! What are you sorry for? We’re in a locker room, I just got out of the pool, you’re just going in, what you just did was perfectly normal, and expected! Sheesh. She laughed. I rolled my eyes.
Please, ladies, women, dames, broads, girls, chicks: stop fucking apologizing. And, I promise to try to do the same. Yes, I do it too, though not for engaging in acts and behaviors that are perfectly consistent with where I am and what I’m doing.
When do I apologize most frequently? Well – are you sitting down – I find myself, still, adding an “I’m sorry” in conversation before expressing an opinion. Gaaaaaa!!!
It’s maddening, and it’s a betrayal of myself. I read and I am well-informed on a variety of subjects – not all subjects, for sure – but, politics, government, world affairs, women’s rights, where almost all the guns being used by gangs in Haiti to terrorize their fellow citizens are coming from (Florida, of course)…and more. Cars, no. Chemistry? Oh hell no. How to slow cook a side of beef? No, but I can and will google it if the need arises (it won’t).
“I’m sorry but I think” – why do I do this? I do this because for decades it pissed people off (starting with my mother) when I presumed to know that the fuck I was talking about. Male teachers. Male fellow town board members, peer male classmates and male professors. And yes, a few women along the way, women who help uphold male standards (it’s better to be silent, ladies, when a man is speaking, and all the rest of the time, too!) and my mother’s point of view. Ah, mother.
And, I think, I have come to believe, that apologizing makes it worse, for me but also for them, as it inflames them. Why? Because at bottom, they know (my mother absolutely knew) and I know, and they know I know, that I am not sorry for being better informed, quick, articulate, and very likely sharper!
How dare you?! How dare she?! Oh, I dare.
Deborah Tannen’s book You Just Don’t Understand (published in 1990) instructed me years ago to never, ever couch an opinion or a statement of fact in any way when discussing any subject with a man-thing as anything other than a declarative statement. Do not hedge, do not ramble, do not, for Goddesses sake, apologize. State your opinion or fact as boldly as you can, and move on, and believe me, I have tried. There’s just this thing that happens when I see the anger in their eyes, the surprise in their faces, surprise and outrage that the women, the girl, is speaking at all, is allowed to speak. Who let her in here? What is happening?
I shrink. I start to hedge. I feel myself beginning to sweat. Then I start to get angry, which is not good, but is also 100% understandable because why can’t I speak my truth, whatever it is, and not be talked over or ignored (this is all bringing me flashbacks to being in public office, can you tell?!), or worse yet contradicted by someone who hasn’t a clue or worst of all have my idea or opinion repeated by a man and taken seriously when I said the same damned thing 10 minutes ago and was totally ignored?!
Deep breaths. A dear friend said once that discipline was knowing what you want. I want, and need, to be able to live with my self-respect intact, and without apology, without hedging and hawing, bowing and scraping to a real or imagined ‘higher power’ who is very easily pissed off, it seems, by my speaking my truth, because my truth is mine, and sometimes it’s even the actual truth.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. – attributed to Marcus Aurelius
It is raining, raining, raining. The sky is falling, falling, falling. I never, never, never. Saw this would happen, happen, happen. As in any flooding, flooding, flooding. The earth is breaking, breaking, breaking. All the sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, kneeling. Inside the loss and anger kindling. Set forth the burning, burning, burning. On this earthly star shining, shining, shining. Then we lost our footing, footing, footing. Again the falling, falling, falling. Into a nightmare running, running, running. On black horses riding, riding, riding. Through darkness in the raining, raining, raining. Then there we were standing, standing, standing. On the grassy hump of dawning, dawning, dawning. Over the mountains rainy, rainy, rainy.
The clouds leaned down to sing.
*from American poet, playwright, and musician Joy Harjo and her longer work, Cloud Runner. Harjo, of New Mexico, was US poet laureate from 2019 – 2022, the first Native American to hold that office; you can read more about her here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_Harjo I took over a public office – a leadership position – after flooding in 2011 caused by Hurricane Irene devastated my region and community. I dreamt of floods for a long time after that horrid day, when the rain kept falling, falling, falling, rising high enough to cover half of the stairs outside leading up my house, flooding my tiny basement, while simultaneously wiping out over 40 homes right down the road. It takes, as I was told by a FEMA officer at the time, at least a decade to recover from the devastation of a flood event; I can confirm that as 100% accurate. And, with a warming planet, flood events, tornados in previously tornado-free areas, wild fires burning hotter than ever, and heat waves that kill tens of thousands of humans all over, my nightmares might return. I didn’t sleep through the night for at least a year after Irene. What are we doing?! Not enough.
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
*from poet Mary Oliver, of course, whose writing incorporates nature in a multiple of entirely credible, meaningful, and unobtrusive ways. I love that all of the swans in England belong to the monarch; it’s a quirky bit of British nonsense that charms me, although I am anything but a royalist! Mute swans mate for life, and 3 species of swan (who knew that there were more than one? not I!) are native to North America; these 3 species are the trumpeter swan, the mute swan and the tundra swan (also known as the whistling swan, but again, who knew?). Trumpeter swans almost went extinct during the early 1800s because HUMANS, but were brought back thanks to conservation in the late 19th c. and throughout the 20th. Do Not feed or give swans bread and crackers; salty items especially can lead to wing deformity; their main diet is grass, but they also nibble on insects and invertebrates. And do not mess with them, ever, as they are decidedly fierce defenders of their turf, and young. Okay, rabbit hole trawling complete.
To some Native Americans the swan represents grace, and the power of women to enter sacred space, as well as all our power to transform ourselves and our lives.
Did you show sparks of feminism when you were a child? This was on that gift and source of sewage called ‘social media’, this time a gift as the answers (I’ll start with my own) are fab. Fascinating. Frustrating. Informative. Don’t tell and teach girls (and people of color) that everyone is equal in ‘Merica if and when the lie that teaching is slaps us in the face every single day. All shared here anonymously except the first!
Me: I saw a film on TV about the papacy, & announced to my mother that I wanted to be pope when i grew up, only to be told (basically) that i couldn’t bc incorrect genitalia. I started noticing that women cleaned the church, arranged flowers, sang in choir, cooked for the priests, & were in fact 2nd class citizens. I left the church & started noticing similar bullshit everywhere. I was 9.
In 2nd grade 1961 catholic grade school, I refused to wear a head covering to mass. The nuns called my mom in. The compromise was that I would wear a Kleenex rather than lace. A few years later, I would not babysit. Instead I made 20x as much shoveling snow, raking leaves, mowing lawns. plenty of negative, sexist comments. Prepared me for my career as a lawyer.
If there was a boy on the playground who wouldn’t leave some girls alone after they had asked they would come find me and then I would deal with the boys. I wasnt intimidated by them at all and had a reputation for sticking up for people. I may have also helped organize a pinecone barrage against a group of boys during “the pinecone wars.”
I had a brother who was a year younger than I am. He routinely got different privileges than I did because he was a boy. This is the basis for my feminism.
I had no brothers and had no idea that women were treated differently until I started working. My mom and dad were military. I didn’t even know my mom lost her career when she got pregnant. I led a somewhat sheltered female existence.
When I was probably 8 years old, I asked my dad why women have to shave their legs. He said, “Because men like smooth legs.” I said, “Then why don’t they shave their own legs?”
I remember being angry at the Peter and Jane reading books when I was 5. (Early 1960s) Peter was playing football with Daddy in the garden while Jane was helping Mummy with the washing up. I still remember the indignation!
In 8th grade, in January 1969, it was freaking cold and we always walked to school. We all wore snow pants, or pants of some kind, & took them off when we got to school. Girls had to wear dresses. One day, my 2 friends & I decided to keep our pants on because the school was cold. We got stopped in 3rd period by the school vice principal and told we had to take our pants off. All 3 of us said no and were sent home from school. The next year, girls were allowed to wear pants or dresses to school!
As a child I listened to our Episcopal priest sermonize about how we shouldn’t allow women into the priesthood because there were already too many male priests. I kept thinking about the concept of allowing the “cream to rise to the top.” Why not have everyone interested study for the priesthood and accept the most effective? That’s when I began to phase out of organized religion.
When I was in Kindergarten I started a club to train girls to run away from mean boys. I literally had all the girls in Kinder doing laps around the playground!
My father was a high school educated man who was a master sergeant in the Air Force in OK. In The 60’s Barbara Jordan was a Black, gay woman in the House of Representatives in TX. I was 12 years old and my dad told me she should be president. He talked about her often with such respect. My dad was a feminist before there was the word feminist. I became a feminist at 12 modeling after my father.
California 1961, 4th grade. We were learning about pronouns, specifically third person singular (he, she, it) used following an indefinite pronoun (everyone, etc) antecedent. The teacher said the proper singular was ‘he’: “Did everyone bring his permission slip?” I asked, “What about the girls’ permission slips if we use only the masculine pronoun?” The teacher replied, “he implies both masculine and feminine.” I clearly remember thinking, “No it doesn’t.” I became an English major.
When I was around 15 my father said I could pick out a watch that he would receive as a milestone anniversary gift from the company he worked for. I wanted the bronze pocket watch that had ducks on the back and a long chain. He picked the princess ladies’ watch with diamond chips around its face instead. I never wore it.
I realized, at about age 10, that the James Bond character was so stupid. He know all those ladies are trying to kill him, but he beds them anyway, and now they wanna protect him? I was too young to differentiate between mysogeny and Hollywood fantasy, but nowadays, I don’t see much difference. And of course, I got the perpetual “you can’t do that, you’re a girl” bs for decades.
When I was in primary School, girls did dancing and boys played football. I wanted to play football so when it was P.E I went and sat on the football field in protest. It was 1993 and I was 10 years old.
I always wondered why I had to wear a skirt to school and why I had to sit down with my legs closed instead of being able to feel comfortable. Why was I responsible if boys looked up my skirt?
According to most adults when I was a child, I was supposed to be a “proper young lady”, neatly dressed, tucked in a corner, seen and not heard. Thank the Goddess for my Mama, who instead told me: “Girl, don’t you stoop nor bow to anyone! You stand straight and tall, and spit in their eye if they cross you!” When other people tried to make me be small and quiet, she always had my back. Thanks, Mama.
My parents were called to a meeting at my school. During the daily 5 minute visit by our parish priest, I asked why there were no women priests. I was reprimanded in front of the entire class. It was suggested that I be punished more severely at home. My parents were humiliated. They grounded me for a month.
I didn’t like that girl cartoon characters were characterized by long eyelashes and extremely feminine traits, while the boys got to be the main characters and didn’t have any concerns about being pretty, they were accepted for who they were even when they messed up.
I grew up pretty poor and had mostly hand me down clothes or home made clothes. One of the boys was making fun of my clothes in the cafeteria so I took the ketchup bottle and sprayed his white shirt with ketchup. I was in the third grade. When I told the principal why I had done it, he just sent me back to class. I swear I heard him laughing as I was leaving. No one in my class ever made fun of my clothes again.
Primary school in the late 70s, I used to train with the soccer team but “girls weren’t allowed to play”. It pissed the rest of the team off because I was one of the best players! A few years later they banned girls from the oval at lunchtime. And so the feminist in me was ignited.
These are so great, I’ma gonna do another blog with ’em. That’s all for now, tho. ROCK ON, WOMEN.
But, yup. Incompetent sperm, or, rather, compromised, geriatric or otherwise not up to snuff spermatozooa. Because research into women’s health, women’s sports, women’s anything is so much less than that done on anything involving men’s anything (for example: women’s sports and sports medicine, despite the freakish, hypocritical furor over ‘trans athletes,’ get only 6% of all sports research funding, and you know there’s a whole lotta sports research…), this recent report delighted my soul, and it’s especially a kind of good news for women who have experienced pregnancy loss.
Girl, it’s not your fault. This upends the centuries old narrative (think Henry VIII) that the inability to carry a pregnancy to term is on us, on women, on the pregnant person.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine recently released its first major update on recurrent pregnancy loss since 2012. One of the most important things it addresses is the contributing male factor, something called sperm DNA fragmentation, which is damage to the genetic material carried by sperm. Two recent meta-analyses found that male partners in couples experiencing recurrent miscarriage had significantly higher sperm DNA fragmentation levels than men in couples without this history. Higher fragmentation has been directly associated with increased miscarriage risk.
When a woman miscarries, especially more than once, the conversation inevitably proceeds along the lines of …was she too stressed? did she push herself too hard? did she eat the wrong thing, sleep too little or too much, gain too much weight or not enough, or work too much, smoke, or use drugs including those legally prescribed? The assumption that pregnancy loss is to be laid directly at the feet of the woman in question is immediate, which means women who experience the loss of, most often, a wanted pregnancy, also endure the quiet or not so quiet accusation of having failed in some way, that her body failed, or – worse – that she did something to cause it.
This painful, harmful sexist assumption is upended by the science, and this new report-slash-update. Yay. Phew. Finally. Incompetent or in some way compromised sperm is a factor. So, what causes damage in sperm? Paternal age, fever, smoking, a history of measles (!!!) or other compromising illnesses, environmental exposures, and a condition called varicocele* are all contributing factors included in the update.
The new and better guidance now says that sperm DNA testing should be always considered when pregnancy losses occur and are unexplained, especially in cases of repeat loss. The report also makes clear that this is not about shifting blame from one partner to the other, but rather is a reflection of scientific reality: pregnancy is a shared biological process, thus, any evaluation of pregnancy loss must and should reflect that shared responsibility.
For years, the medical workup for recurrent miscarriage focused almost entirely on the woman: her hormones, her uterus, her weight, her chromosomes, her lifestyle, her ‘choices’ and yep, surprise: her fault. The men in question – and their lifestyle choices as well as all other factors – were overwhelmingly left out of the conversation. This long overdue rethink and update begins to change that.
If you have or know anyone who has experienced recurrent pregnancy loss with no clear cause(s) ever found, it’s worth sharing this info, or asking your doctor about the possibility of evaluating both partners. That necessary and long overdue conversation is finally supported by the latest medical guidance. Women deserve a complete picture of what’s going on, and y’know what, so do men.
*from WebMD: A varicocele (VAR-ih-koe-seel) is an enlargement of the veins within the loose bag of skin that holds the testicles (scrotum). These veins transport oxygen-depleted blood from the testicles. A varicocele occurs when blood pools in the veins rather than circulating efficiently out of the scrotum. Varicoceles usually form during puberty and develop over time. They may cause some discomfort or pain, but they often result in no symptoms or complications. A varicocele may cause poor development of a testicle, low sperm production or other problems that may lead to infertility. Surgery to treat varicocele may be recommended to address these complications.
