Words    Words    Words

• 1 ebear // Dec 9, 2008 at 10:01 pm

  I punch back.

• 2 MacAllister // Dec 9, 2008 at 10:02 pm

  HAHAHAhahahahHAA!

  Me too.

• 3 rone // Dec 9, 2008 at 10:22 pm

  Why wait?

  I guess women euphemizing their periods is the analogue to men naming their dicks.

• 4 Kleio // Dec 10, 2008 at 12:16 am

  Only pagans? You have more restraint than I.

• 5 reesa // Dec 10, 2008 at 12:43 am

  ebear: Oh dear, if that’s not in someone’s fantasies yet, it probably will be.

  rone: perhaps. I think my desire to punch comes at least as much from irritation at such euphemisms as from any expectation that I should be somehow uplifted by bleeding out every month.

  kleio: well no, I’d save a hypothetical punch or three for anyone who wants to discuss the meaningful joys of womanhood.

• 6 Doctroid // Dec 10, 2008 at 5:10 am

  Oh that is so very amusing. Almost as amusing as “I want to punch a Jew in the mouth”. Or “I want to punch a black person in the mouth. Or “I want to punch a woman in the mouth”. How very very droll we are!

  Bigot.

• 7 morriganson // Dec 10, 2008 at 8:06 am

  rofl

  pretty funny.

  some neo-pagans tend to overboard on the “goddess” thing.

  bigot? i don’t think so

• 8 CapnMarrrrk // Dec 10, 2008 at 9:07 am

  There’s a huge difference between the having the urge to punch an annoyance in the face and actually doing do.

  Plenty of people bug me, I often fantasize of ripping my blathering sister-in-law’s tongue out of her head and beating her with it, but that doesn’t mean I hate her, she just bugs me. It’s not like I’m actually going to DO it.

• 9 Nolly // Dec 10, 2008 at 10:21 am

  You have read “Even the Queen” by Connie Willis, right? I think this thread would be incomplete without a reference to it.

• 10 Lewis Himelhoch // Dec 10, 2008 at 12:51 pm

  Not being pregnant when you don’t want to be would seem to be worth celebrating.

• 11 skzb // Dec 10, 2008 at 12:56 pm

  Lewis: Good point. Every time I get kicked in the balls, my first thought is how glorious it is that I am sexually functional.

• 12 Meghan // Dec 10, 2008 at 3:56 pm

  I don’t mind the euphemisms – although “moon time” implies a 28-day cycle, which few women I know have.

  However, people who tell me that I should rejoice at my womanhood – and am less of a Pagan for not doing so as I writhe in agony – can die a horrible, crunchy death.

  Also, skzb@11 – you’re my hero.

• 13 schmwarf // Dec 10, 2008 at 5:18 pm

  skzb@11: Wow! You must have a disciplined mind in the immediate post moment of the event.

  From experiance my first thought is, “that fuckin hurts and its about to hurt a fucking whole lot more in the proceeding seconds.”

  I’ll might take up your advice and track down Amanda from high school and thank her for making me self aware that I was a man (one with an up and down voice at the time, albiet). I think the worst thing about the whole experience is explaining to the principal in an clinical manner how her “knee touched my testicles” and him saying in a deadpan voice, “so you were in a lot of discomfort then, were you?”.

• 14 Lewis Himelhoch // Dec 11, 2008 at 2:53 pm

  Being assaulted makes me want to respond to the cause of the assault, not some unconnected
  group. She should be mad at the evolutionary process that made us self aware, hairless apes that reproduce sexually instead of simple single celled organisms that reproduce through fission.
  Why get mad at misguided people who follow an outmoded belief system?

• 15 Christian Severin // Dec 12, 2008 at 5:11 am

  @Lewis Himelhoch@14:
  Here, lemme help you: Apparently she’s less annoyed by the whole “bleeding coupled to sexual reproduction” business than by people who tell her in flowery words that she should revel in this expression of her womanhood (cf. her comment no. 5 up there).

  Or, to use your words: when “misguided people who follow an outmoded belief system” waffle about your suffering being suffused with meaning, do you get mad at your suffering or at these people?

• 16 skzb // Dec 12, 2008 at 7:18 pm

  Thanks Christian. I was at a loss.

• 17 Lumpy // Dec 13, 2008 at 1:38 am

  I went to school at a place where I actually heard one woman tell another that it was unacceptably patriarchal to spell “womyn” with a “y”, that being the male chromosome.

  I still have not figured out how to pronounce “womxn”.

• 18 Siun // Dec 13, 2008 at 10:13 am

  Lewis: perhaps you might address Reesa directly rather than turning her into a third person in her own thread?

  self aware indeed

• 19 JP // Dec 16, 2008 at 9:55 pm

  Emily Litella had a way of cutting through the euphemisms on this subject.

  Generally, pseudo mysticism is not a good approach to dealing with any life process. People who think it is would not be harmed by getting a little sense knocked into them. Or so it seems to me.

• 20 Budro // Dec 17, 2008 at 9:41 am

  I find as I get older that I’m much less tolerant of other people’s bullshit while at the same time I’m much better at ignoring it.

  Reesa: your original post made me think of how my wife felt when she first started breastfeeding – she wanted to punch all the liars who said what a wonderful, beautiful, emotional fulfilling, tender thing breastfeeding was, while in reality it was quite painfull. For the entire 2 years she did it. Letting down is not fun, and having a small toddler bite your nip is not fun either…

  A little bit of realism never hurt anyone.

• 21 TheDarqueOne // Dec 20, 2008 at 10:52 am

  I am probably going to regret this post but oh well… First let me say that I am not trying to ignore or minimize what you go through every month Ressa.

  Pagans understand what Science eventually figured out: Attitude and how you approach anything has a huge amount to do with how you feel about it. So call it a Curse and you suffer worse, I think that is simple enough for everyone.

  And for those of you who will naturally scoff at what I have to say you might want to consider this little tidbit. I have been associated with various Pagan Communities for decades now. I have been lucky enough to know quite a few pagan women very well.

  And of all the women I have known, the Pagan ones suffer the least during their periods. Fewer get cramps, fewer get bitchy and hostile, and most go through it with very little outward sign that they are anything other than normal.

  Perhaps you will just say ‘oh that is just luck of the draw’ but I do not think so. Basic psychology is on my side as well as experience.

  So maybe… just maybe, the Pagans have the right idea, outmoded beliefs and all.

  Darque
  (-)

• 22 jennifer // Dec 20, 2008 at 1:58 pm

  @Darque: when you use your personal experience and belief system to ‘talk down to’ anyone, over any topic, they will react poorly. Claiming that paganism leads to bodily acceptance, peace, joy and longer orgasms is as silly as saying that Hinduism leads to enlightenment, pearly white teeth and happiness.

  Also, and this is just a thought, before you make assumptions about Reesa’s personal belief system, you might just want to, I don’t know, ask her for clarification before jumping off the deep end?

  The original content of the post seemed to me to be that when people use flowerly over-sentimental language to tell a person in pain to ‘accept it as a beautiful part of life’, it tends to irritate and annoy the person in pain. Just because it is most often pagans who say such things, and therefore engender the need to punch them, does not mean that pagans are inherently wrong/bad/evil/whathaveyou. Fluffy bunnies can sometimes be rather annoying.

  Goddess knows, I’ve wanted to take out my vaginal distress on a handy fluffy pagan a time or two. Revel in this!

  Hope you are well, and that you don’t take internet discussions too poorly.

• 23 Cynthia // Dec 20, 2008 at 2:00 pm

  Darque, there are a lot of women who try to suffer silently. After all this is a regular occurence and complaining never gets you much sympathy. As for your observation, even if your premise is correct, it is just as likely that only women who don’t have miserable periods are attracted to Paganism.

• 24 Goat // Dec 27, 2008 at 8:50 pm

  reesa@… 0? – Had you any idea of the debate you’d spark with this one? Because I took it as a “You know what grinds my gears” style of offhand comment, not to be read into too deeply.

  Doctroid@6 – Saying “I want to punch a woman in the mouth” isn’t funny? Man, it seems I am behind the times. (I’m teasing guys, no need to flame me, :-p)

  Lewis@14 – “…misguided people who follow an outmoded belief system?” Ouch man, just ouch.

  jennifer@22 – LOL, fluffy bunnies, bane of reesas and legitimate pagans alike. I could write a diatribe about fluffy bunnies, but I’ll resist that urge. And yes, I just pluralized reesa.

• 25 Reesa // Dec 29, 2008 at 3:12 pm

  Goat – Definitely not! I was asked to post it by Steve, who thought it was a funny offhand comment I made during the uncomfortable portion of my last menstrual cycle while reminiscing about some of my experiences on the fluff end of the pagan spectrum, and was quite surprised at some of the responses.

  Multiple reesas, on the other hand, are likely to be much more terrifying to the populace. Although it would solve some nagging problems I’ve been having for years about existing in more than one place at the same time…

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