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fishingboatproceeds:

Oh my, yes.

maureenjohnsonbooks:

Ok Auntie MJ,

My roommate/best friend and I have the serious issue of not understandingwhy menstruation is something that we’re supposed to be ashamed of oruncomfortable with when we have zero control over it. I don’t understand whywe’re supposed to be grossed out by the fact that we have no control of when we
start, how much we bleed, or how long it lasts. Why are menstrual products so
expensive when condoms are often free or very very cheap and very easily
accessible?? It is something that makes me very angry and frustrated. Like my
roommate is 20 and only just started having her period regularly and she gets
made fun of all the time because she never had to deal with it before so she’s
just now learning….This is just something that I know a lot of girls struggle
with and the struggle doesn’t end when you grow up. I’m 20 and it’s still a
problem.

— 
ramblingsofahopefulwriter

Dear Hopeful,

Be of good cheer! Auntie MJ is here and she is MORE THAN HAPPY
to discuss this. This entire answer is going to be full of period facts and
period fictions and personal period stories.

The history of menstruation-hate is long. I am not an expert
on the subject, but I know it goes WAY BACK. Certainly there are instances in
the Bible referring to it, and explaining that that is the time of the month
when women are “unclean” and have to go sleep in a different tent. There are, I
am certain, places in the world where even now women are made to go somewhere
else to sleep when menstruating. But it goes far beyond where we rest. It’s
seen as (one of our many) weakness and problems and something that makes us
unfit to old certain jobs and is generally used as an excuse for prejudice
against us. Also jokes. Except the jokes are not funny if we make them because
gross, right? How dare we. (Tina Fey tells a story about this in Bossypants.
She had a lot of trouble getting a sketch about classic pads into the show
because a lot of the men were just very, very uncomfortable and didn’t
understand why it was HILARIOUS. Which it is. You can see it here.) 

When you first get the news as a kid that this is about to
happen to you (if you are one of the people it will happen to), it can be a bit
of a shocker. My reaction was something like, “Wait, what now? Every month? Actual blood? What?” The reason is actually
awesome. People who menstruate have at least some of the required equipment to
make other people. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can, or that you have
to or want to or anything like that. It just means that some or all of the
parts are there and that the factory is doing its thing.

Periods cannot be compared. Every one is its own unique
thing. While there aspects that are generally the same from person to person,
there are many variables as well—frequency, duration, amount, pain, tiredness,
hormonal changes, emotional changes. The range of what is healthy and normal is
vast. If you have questions about what is healthy and normal, speak to your
doctor. Some weird period behavior can be a sign of a problem. I found this out
when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. I had no idea what I was experiencing
was not normal, because I’d always had my
period, and my period was its own thing. “Do you bleed heavily?” I was
asked. I shrugged. I’d never measured it. “Well,” he said, “do you have to put
down a towel or a blanket at night?” I laughed and said, “Doesn’t everyone do
that?” Not everyone does that. But a lot of people do! (My most recent
breakthrough: our dog is now fully housetrained and we had a huge pack of puppy
wee-wee pads just sitting around. I was wondering what to do with them and then
I had a Lightbulb Moment and now they go right into the bed. I feel like a true
household pioneer for working this one out. THIS WORKS. TRY IT FOR YOURSELF.)

My point is, as long as your doctor says that medically what
is going on is fine—it’s fine. And even if it’s troublesome, it doesn’t make
you weird. There is no judgment on this. There is no Ms. Period Contest in
which your period will be judged. Who are these people making fun of your
friend for getting her period at twenty? I have serious questions about this.
Send them here. I need to Speak To Them.

While a period can be messy—in the sense that any liquid
spill can be messy—it is not dirty. Springing a leak is annoying. Some people
feel soul-crushing embarrassment when this happens. I cannot feel you how to
feel about this, but I can tell you I certainly will feel nothing but empathy
on your behalf. I will tell you something that happened to me only a few months
ago! I was AT A REALLY FANCY DINNER and the period came from nowhere like a
WEASEL in the NIGHT! I didn’t even know it was happening. For once, it gave no
sign. I had a Strange Feeling That Something Was Wrong. I carefully reached
around and confirmed my suspicion. I realized that I had likely taken out the
chair I was in, which luckily was made of wood. I continued to talk as normal
while I made a detailed plan of the room in my mind and figured out how to get
from my seat to the bathroom while keeping my back turned away from people as
much as possible (try doing this in a crowded restaurant). This involved a lot
of sliding along walls to politely stay out of the path of imaginary waiters.
When I got to the bathroom, I realized the extent of the damage. Things were
bad. My outfit was ruined. I texted a friend at the table and asked if I could
borrow her sweater. She came and brought it to me and spent the rest of the
night cold. I managed to clean the chair. The cloth napkin, well, that came home
with me. I figured it was no longer any use to the restaurant. The skirt was a
lost cause. Of course, there is always the matter of making the IMPROMPTU arrangements in the bathroom.
We have all had to MacGyver our way out of this situation. ANYTHING WILL DO.
(Note to TV executives: one show I would watch FOR SURE would be PERIOD
MACGYVER in which someone gets their period in increasingly awkward situations and has to build a pad out of whatever is on hand. You could start with the
usual suspects like paper and cloth and build to more exotic items, eventually culminating in someone stopping a bomb from going
off by using their period. I would watch THE HELL out of that.) 

I continued the rest of the dinner as though nothing had
happened, because really, nothing had. I tell this story because I have NO
PROBLEMS with this. IT HAPPENS. You can borrow my sweater to tie around your
waist. And thank you to everyone who has lent me a sweater or coat to tie
around mine.

As to why period items are not free and available
everywhere—ask the patriarchy. In the meantime, they are one of the most needed
items in shelters and YOU CAN DONATE THEM because they are really needed!

People who use periods as prejudice against individuals who
get them are being gross and ignorant. “But!” these ***holes say, “periods make
you crazy! That’s why women can’t hold office! They’d blow everything up!”
Period-havers, usually women, have been handling business and being rational
for millennia while dealing with sometimes major hormonal flux. Warmongers and
bomb-throwers and civilization destroyers (often men) are…oh right. No, no. Do
go on. I was listening. There was just a wonderful bird over your shoulder and
I was looking at it. It’s gone now. Don’t look for it. It flew away.

Some emotional fluctuation is common. THIS IS TRUE OF ALL
HUMAN BEINGS.

In some cases, periods can cause serious states of mental
distress. Here’s another fact to blow your mind: serious states of mental
distress are found in ALL SUBSETS OF HUMAN BEINGS. Many women have been
pathologized for their period-having because jerks have also been around for a
long time. Much of this prejudice was spread by experts, some of whom also
believed that the uterus moved around the body like some kind of spider. Some
just thought the period must be bad because…

…because? Period? Because women? Because must be?

Guess what, chumps. The fact that you have a vague sense of
unease about my period is balanced out by the fact that I don’t actually care.
I wish you well in your travels through your own notions, but I have reality to
contend with and a pad to built out of nothing but a wrench, two feet of fishing
rope, and these bomb parts.

You’re doing fine. Period.

Love,

Auntie MJ

theprettygoodgatsby:

my favorite part of hamlet is at the beginning when they see the ghost of hamlet sr for the first time

and the guards are like “Horatio, you go talk to it! You went to college!”

and Horatio is like “Yeah! I did go to college! I will go talk to the ghost!”

like. where did horatio go to college. did he go to ghost college

maureenjohnsonbooks:

fancakesforbreakfast said:

DearAuntie MJ: I’m living at home with my parents, and while I’m very politically
liberal, my dad is the kind of conservative who could have his own show on FOX
news. I’ve asked him repeatedly not to talk about politics around me, because
it makes it hard for me to have a close relationship to him, but he tells me I
shouldn’t get so invested in the conversation. I’ve tried leaving the room when
he starts talking politics, but now my family thinks I’m isolating myself too
much. What can I do?

 My dear fancakes,

 Auntie MJ understands what you are talking about quite well.
She grew up under similar circumstances. She still gets the email forwards. She knows.

As an adult,
you get a whole new set of choices about who you want to deal with and how to
do it. When you are a teenager, your home is your home. Your parents are
(probably, though not in all cases) in charge and paying the bills. You are a
family. How do you deal with this when the
calls are coming from inside of the house? And it’s not your phone?

First, a disclosure: Auntie MJ is not of the Fox news
persuasion. I am using Fox News as a category because you mentioned it and it
is a vehicle that explicitly states certain views in a fairly consistent
manner. Individual people and even political parties can vary in their stances.
Fox is a mouthpiece with talking points and an editorial style and practice. As
a piece of rhetoric, it is quite a marvel—the news equivalent of a party
magician in a shiny cape doing some close-up magic learned from YouTube and the
back of cereal boxes. Yet, amazingly, people seem to be watching and saying,
“HOW DID A QUARTER ACTUALLY COME OUT OF MY EAR? ARE QUARTERS MADE IN MY EARS?
IS OBAMA MAKING QUARTERS IN MY EARS?” And the magician says, “Yes, it must be
the case that Obama is making quarters in your ears.”

It must also be said that all parties and all sides use
rhetoric tricks and techniques. Someone who has a different political leaning
could simply insert the name of a media outlet they assume I must like into the above illustration. I will use the only Latin
quote I know and like and carry around in my head: Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. “Why do you laugh?
Change the name and the story is told of you.”

All sides in any heavy, bombastic argument think the other side has
swallowed a whopper and must be super dumb. This is something we learn
immediately if we ever read the comments on any news article, which we
shouldn’t do but do anyway.*

So everything I said in the above paragraph is both
something I believe and the illustration of me falling into the very trap I am
about to suggest should be avoided. Or if these things are impossible to avoid,
you just need to know they’re there and know they’re a trap.

So here are my specific tips for living in an ideological game
of Mousetrap. 

We don’t actually
know what other people are thinking, unless they tell us.

Just because someone appears
to hold a certain set of beliefs does not necessarily mean they do. Also, you can’t assume people hold certain views, or
that they subscribe to every single view that we think are part and parcel of
“that kind of person.” So, things may not be all you think they are? Maybe? Leave a space in your mind to be
surprised. I have been surprised by some of the turnarounds in my own family.

Okay, but sometimes
people do tell us what they’re thinking, and we can’t quite process it.

The discussion in the United States right now
(and many, many other places) is about identity. Racism, homophobia,
xenophobia, the rights of women (and the nature of gender itself). There are
many issues in which religion is used to make laws that change and limit the
rights of others. This is heavy, sticky, tricky stuff. It involves serious
questions about identity, about history, and about the fundamental nature of
right and wrong, about redistribution of power.

It’s also not new, none of it. Humankind seems to be in a
pretty constant state of wanting to burn someone or imprison someone or start a
war with someone because they disagree about some matter of what it means to be
human and alive. So much of it boils down to fear. So much of it boils down to
seeing people as other. There’s always a “they” and “they” do things that “we”
don’t do or don’t like and “they” can’t do that.

Compassion never fails. Compassion doesn’t mean just “being
nice” or “going along with things” or allowing bad things to happen. I believe
that all these –isms and phobias cause suffering, so the compassionate thing is
to work against those things. How this is done is a matter of intense, ongoing
historical debate. (There have always been moderates and bomb-throwers and
speakers and warriors.)

A house is likely too small to contain these kinds of
actions. These things need to play out over a larger field. Having this all
going on in the living room is hard. It doesn’t sound like you are trying to
change the world. It sounds like you are trying to change the channel. I have
been there, and here is something that can work. Ask, politely, if maybe the
topic or actual television channel could be changed, because you find it hard
to have a productive conversation. Then, instead of just going to your room—do
something nice. Take out the garbage. Do the dishes. And don’t do it angrily.
Try to just do them calmly. This shows good faith. Instead of saying “I want
you to do this” and then leaving, you present yourself as a loving and
reasonable person. This may not work from the very first go, but keep at it.
This technique can work and has worked for me. When someone sees that you are
really trying to be kind, they will often be more receptive to what you are
saying.

We can love someone
and not want to be them, exactly.

People are complicated. People make mistakes. Our families
are our families. We are none of us perfect. I may not always agree with my
family, but I remember that they did not always agree with me, either, and yet
they still loved me unconditionally. Love really does trump all. It doesn’t
mean you have to agree. When something happens at home you really can’t deal
with, look around for a sign of the love. These signs are never as far as you
think. Something you were given. Being tucked into bed when you were small.
Being taken care of when you were sick. I hope these things happened to you. I
bet they did. Think of them for a moment.

You are responsible
only for you.

We can’t jump on other people until they agree with us. Right
now, you are building yourself and your views. You can channel your frustrations
into good things. Take the time to read and educate yourself. Make yourself
into what you want to be. And realize that these things that annoy you may be the things that spur you to act.
I am almost entirely a product of the annoyances and disagreements that
littered my teenage years! (See any of my rants about my high school. If you
can’t find one, just come over and I will rant about it for a while.) I am very
thankful for these experiences, truly.

Chicken noises also
work.

My friend H. Krimble used to live with someone in college
that he absolutely could not stand.
Seriously. He couldn’t take it. He used to sit outside the building at night
and stare bleakly at the windows and consider sleeping in the shrubs outside.
Then he discovered that he could just imagine chicken noises whenever the
person started talking. His whole attitude changed! I didn’t think anything
could be that easy, but I tried it and it totally
works. So if you feel something coming for you that you’ve heard before and
really can’t take, run the chicken noises in your head. It makes you happy, and
when you are happy, you can be more compassionate. When you are more
compassionate, you develop stronger relationships. Am I telling you to ignore
things? I am telling you that you may simply have to ignore some things,
especially repeated things or things you can’t change, like the state of the
economy.

Sometimes, you just have to do the chicken noises.

I hope this helps. Good luck out there.

Love,

Auntie MJ

* The job of 24 hour news is to engage, inflame, and
alarm. It’s designed to keep people watching. To preserve your sanity, it’s worth learning some rhetorical
devices and fallacies. Here is a great chart of the fallacies, which you can
print out. This will help you understand what kinds of techniques are being
used and see the argumentative forces at work. It gives you something to do
when you are just sitting in front of the computer, quietly steaming.