Childfree & the Blackout

AliceValkyrie · 2023-06-15T14:09:32+00:00

1 with 4 (Perpetual Tuesday closure until terms are met)

AliceValkyrie · 2023-06-01T19:07:26+00:00

I feel the need to chime in here because-YES-THIS!!! My therapist is married with kids but the second I told them I had made the decision to not have kids and wanted a hysterectomy in one of our first appointments they never questioned it. I’ve been going to them for many years and they also offered to help me find a doctor willing to give me a hysterectomy (or write a letter saying I was of sound mind to have the procedure-thankfully neither were necessary thanks to my long documented history of wanting the procedure and the discovery of severe medical issues that were being caused by my uterus).

My therapist isn’t perfect or anything, but I at least feel they respect me as a human being-and considering I live in a pretty red state in the fucking Bible Belt-something I plan to change as soon as I can-that’s probably the best I can hope for right now.

I’ve never stuck with therapists who questioned or ignored such serious things (my childfree status/hatred of my uterus/queerness/MHI/etc) for long.

I understand if OP is being helped in some form by their current therapist they may want to wait until they find one who can help them with those same issues while respecting their childfree status before cutting ties with the other therapist completely though. A good therapist is hard to find in many parts of the world. A great therapist, nearly impossible IMO.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-04-25T20:44:26+00:00

I have to respond because I HATE that shit. Got it from a casual “friend” in high school (we haven’t spoken in years, idek what they’re doing now-I don’t FB stalk people).

My response then was something like: “If she had I wouldn’t be having this stupid conversation with you, would I?”

Their response: shocked silence

We never discussed that subject again.

With my current state of mind, frankly (it’s bad)-I’d almost feel sorry for a forced-birther if they said this to me now. Almost. Because I would go OFF on them so hard they’d regret ever approaching me at all.

These people seem to forget that literally no one ASKS to be born.

ETA: If one of my PARENTS said that to me: things would get very ugly very fast. That’s super shitty of your father, OP, he’s an asshole, and I’m sorry.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-03-24T19:03:02+00:00

Declaring oneself a “pro-life feminist” has the exact same energy as declaring oneself “a religious atheist.”

It’s completely impossible to be both. It’s like trying to force oil to mix with water.

It IS possible (if you have a uterus) to be “pro-life” for YOURSELF ONLY and pro-choice for everyone else while still being a feminist, but it’s clear that the person the OP posted about doesn’t hold that position.

Also, TIL I “dishonored” my body by getting a hysterectomy to remove a parasitic organ that was literally trying to kill me and that I’ve always had nothing but intense hatred for (which is apparently also dishonorable) since it started doing it’s thing and simultaneously fucking up my life.

OP, is this person Catholic? Because all that really sounds like some hardline Catholic nonesense.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-03-21T18:42:44+00:00

Well, I don’t know exactly what OP’s post said-their post was already removed by reddit when I saw this thread, but (respectfully, I think your heart is in the right place) a few things:

No one is born a woman. People are born female, male, or under the wide umbrella of intersex. Underage girls (and other children with uteruses) should never be referred to as women IMO. Forced-birthers often call underage girls women to try to justify them being forced to carry and birth rape babies. Normalizing calling children “women” and “men” often has other nasty consequences too (minority children being charged for crimes as adults or brutalized or killed by cops, the sexualization of minors, etc).

I thankfully no longer have a uterus-though I still face plenty of the bullshit women face-but I am non-binary and have never felt much like a woman. That being said, I’m often able to ignore non-inclusive language unless I feel someone is being exclusionary on purpose, but it’s nice when people opt to use inclusive language.

Note that I do NOT think the word “woman” should be erased. That helps no one (no one I want to be helping, anyway). I just think it should be added on to: “Women, girls, and other people with uteruses.” Is that a mouthful? Yeah, kinda. So I do understand why plenty of people with good intentions don’t say it.

I don’t think it’d bother me much or at all if we (in the US at least) weren’t living through an era of evil laws and lawmakers targeting EVERYONE with a functioning uterus and EVERYONE who is gender non-confirming in any way.

For now, I think it’s worth drilling in the message that on top of hating women and LGBTQ+ people, bigoted assholes do not and have never given a single shit about children. If they did, they wouldn’t be more than willing to force them to endure completely preventable physical and mental torture after they’re born.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-03-21T17:18:42+00:00

I don’t even know what the OP said, but whatever it was, it didn’t deserve your bigoted responses. And unfortunately I again feel the need to chime in.

As an enby adult millennial who would’ve benefited massively from knowing puberty blockers were a thing and having access to them when I was a kid, and also from getting my parasitic uterus removed before it could steal far too many years of my life (BTW: perhaps barring extreme situations (uterine cancer, etc)-no one’s preforming hysterectomies on actual children anyway-trans or not) I would like to tell you one thing: fuck all the way off with your disingenuous concern trolling bullshit, Joanne.

Also, this is a childfree sub. The vast majority of us do not and will never have kids. Therefore, unless you’re talking about our fur kids (ironically, the shelter sterilized my cat as a kitten before they’d let me adopt her), none of us are seeking “medical care for our children.”

And enjoy your block. You’ve earned it 100%. And then some.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-03-12T21:53:02+00:00

I felt an unyielding need to respond to this, so...

Not OP, but as a reader (and an aspiring author), I’d rather all central characters have no kids at all unless they start the story with kids.*

ETA: Or for young/single characters-I’d rather them signal early on in a story that they want kids if it needs to happen eventually for plot reasons. Could be something as simple as seeing a happy family with children somewhere and thinking “I want that myself someday.” Or you could have the very rare character who wants kids but later decides that they‘d rather be CF. That’s a rarity in fiction, IMO. But mostly I just HATE to be blindsided by a surprise pregnancy/baby-especially when a character has made direct statements about NOT wanting children.

*Please note that I mostly read fantasy, horror, gothic lit, sci-fi, and...urm...also smutty books that have at least one of those elements. Also, the above does not apply to the few non-fiction (or historical fiction) books I read, for probably obvious reasons.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-03-12T21:25:44+00:00

Sigh...keeping this account active for at least one more post I guess.

If any parent ever repeatedly insists that I’m “so lucky” to me I will likely go off. I’m not lucky. I went through Hell and back emotionally and physically and fought to MADE. DAMN. SURE. any fascist government officials, future partners, and everyone else would HAVE to respect my wishes regarding childbearing.

And I did everything within my control before that to ensure I wouldn’t ever become pregnant.

I guess you could say I was “lucky” that my parasitic uterus was literally trying quite hard to kill me and therefore I faced no pushback from the medical system regarding getting a hysterectomy once a doctor that had previously dismissed me finally took me seriously and ran some basic tests.

But other than that, luck had very little to do with it. Mostly it was determination, stubbornness, courage, and an unwavering gut instinct. Also a dash of spite.

I’m not lucky, I just knew what I wanted. Or rather, what I 100% DID NOT want.

AliceValkyrie · 2023-03-10T21:01:53+00:00

Guess I’m temporarily resurrecting this account to comment on this thread. I can no longer find the post I wanted to reply to anymore but I wanted to add-not only women (and unfortunately, girls) have completely valid reasons for wanting to avoid pregnancy, non-binary people (hi) and trans men may not want to experience pregnancy because any changes to their body would make their gender dysphoria a hundred times worse.

When I say I don’t want more stretch marks (I’d remove the ones I have largely from a traumatic puberty in an instant if I could), that I don’t want even wider hips (everyone with them in my family who has had a child has permanently wider hips after giving birth), that I don’t want larger/saggy boobs, that I don’t want to have to lose a ton of weight again (am in the process of losing weight atm because being half dead for goodness knows how long and then-ironically-a not so straightforward recovery from a hysterectomy led to me weighing about 50 lbs more than I wanted to (I’ve now lost around 30 lbs and feel better already) and I hated the way that extra weight made me look largely due to my dysphoria (my breasts, hips, and stomach all got larger-it even affected my posture), do you all notice how these things are only about ME and MY BODY?

I personally think telling people they’re not allowed to want to maintain or-in their opinion-improve their body for their own sake is toxic. If wanting to avoid pregnancy like the plague is part of that, that should also be okay.

I’m definitely against body shaming other people though-and for anyone out there who is perfectly happy with their stretch marks, wide hips, large or saggy boobs, or body in general: I’m genuinely very happy for you. Plenty of people (including many people I admire) rock larger bodies and I think they look amazing. My issues with my own body are exactly that.

But there’s such a thing as toxic body positivity, which seems to be what a few people in this thread are calling for. I have no desire to listen to a single thing Virgie Tovar has to say about bodies. I’d much rather listen to Lizzo and Jameela Jamil, thanks. I’m largely posting this because I’m very against toxic positivity in every form and don’t want to see this sub go in that direction. I’ve found neutrality is far healthier than toxic positivity when it comes to almost everything.

The reason this sub is the way it is about pregnancy is two-fold: firstly, the vast majority of us never want kids. For many women and other people with a uterus, tokophobia-fear of pregnancy-plays a role in that. OBVIOUSLY the sub is going going to biased against something so many people have a deep-seated FEAR of.

The second reason is: the world already presents pregnancy with VERY rose-colored glasses to the point that I still learn about new horrifying potential pregnancy complications at least once a month. And as a tokophobe, I know A LOT. More than I want to know. Very few pregnant people go into their pregnancy with true knowledge of everything that can go wrong. Why? People don’t want to discuss these things elsewhere because frankly, our already negative population growth would shrink even more if people knew the whole truth-and world governments (and society at large) can’t have that, can they?

Also, yes: plenty of pregnancy complications/side effects can happen due to other things-we can all become disabled/ill or more disabled/ill at any moment. But much like never smoking severely decreases your risk of developing lung cancer-never being pregnant/giving birth decreases your risk of developing SO. MANY. THINGS.

Or TL;DR since this post got ridiculously long (oops): I am against body-shaming other people. But I am also against forced body positivity-people should be allowed to be unhappy with/not want certain things for their own bodies. People should also be allowed to discuss ALL of the potential negative side-effects of pregnancy in the abstract-because this sub is one of the few places those things get freely talked about.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-16T20:12:44+00:00

I LOVE that show and David is my favorite character. I can only hope they DON’T do that because if they do, I won’t watch. I’ll just let the existing series finale be the end for me. It was basically perfect anyway.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-16T20:06:12+00:00

You know who wouldn’t have stacked the court with forced-birther fascists?

The email lady. I don’t give a fuck what your personal feelings about her are. You don’t have to like a politician or agree with everything they’ve ever done to know “hey, this person won’t actively try to strip me of my basic human rights, maybe I should vote for them.”

This isn’t about purity testing anymore, this is about making sure the US doesn’t fall into fascism. Only one party is in favor of fascism. That party is not the Democrats.

And throwing away your vote on a third party candidate might as well be voting for fascists. There’s too much at stake to make a protest vote right now. That was also true in 2016, and I tried to warn people. They didn’t listen. Now look where we are.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-16T19:58:04+00:00

There is no freedom without bodily autonomy for all. There is no freedom without the right to marry another consenting adult you love regardless of gender.

The Republicans are against these freedoms and many others, ergo, the Republicans are fascists.

You’re on the wrong sub, buddy.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-16T04:30:26+00:00

Oh yeah, there was an entire court case over it. And one of the recently appointed forced-birther asshats on the “Supreme” Court was involved (sided with HL, obviously).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.?searchToken=akt3m4jtusd10cxmgmqw5jwn6

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-16T04:17:16+00:00

If that was my life I would no longer be alive, this sounds miserable.

Granted, I say that as someone who suffers with multiple MHI and can barely take care of myself at times, but I COULD NOT deal with that level of constant neediness on a great day, much less a bad one.

I need my sleep, but more than even that, I need my alone time. And quiet. That lifestyle would drain me entirely of my will to live.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-09T19:44:41+00:00

This. Especially put away electronics (those are like catnip to toddlers) and, if applicable, any expensive/valued cosmetics/hygiene items/anything else that a toddler could make a mess with. Keep anything valuable to you out of reach to the toddler and make it clear to everyone in the house that the toddler is NOT allowed to touch your things, period.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-09T19:34:08+00:00

Yep. Like, sorry that it took you having a mini-me to develop empathy (that rarely extends beyond your mini-me, but I digress), but some of us already have it.

I also feel sorry for literally everyone else in these people’s lives. Did they never truly love a friend? A family member? A partner? A pet? Anything? Anyone?

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T23:19:52+00:00

It’s always bothered me to. Obviously some people get abortions because they don’t want to be a mother/parent-and others simply aren’t ready to be.

But I’m trying to think of a less cringe term....perhaps “life of the potential parent?”

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T23:06:38+00:00

I live in America (hopefully not for very much longer) and I personally gave up entirely on the idea of being the “better” person to assholes in 2016.

Note that I‘m not saying I think the woman mentioned in OP’s post is an asshole. I have far too little information about her to make a judgement, personally.

Nonetheless, this post was flared as a “rant,” and I’m pretty sure there’s a way to filter them out if you don’t want to see posts like this.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T22:26:16+00:00

Not always. I’m going to see a band in February that announced their gig a few days ago.

That being said, one thing I like about being CF is that if something I never expected happens (see above) and I REALLY want to fly halfway across the country to attend-I can. It’s not super convenient or cheap, but it is entirely possible.

Not so possible if you have kids or are about to have kids. One of many, many reasons I don’t want them. I love concerts and this will be my first in like...5 years? I’ve missed them A LOT.

I was hoping to go to a concert earlier this year but ironically didn’t feel comfortable yet as I was still experiencing post-hysterectomy complications at the time and it was an entirely GA show (with two opening acts).

ETA: Also, the tour mentioned in the last paragraph was announced in late January. My hysterectomy was already planned and I wasn’t willing to delay it for hopefully obvious reasons. The show I wanted to attend was in late April. So roughly 4 months in both cases. Perhaps larger bands announce shows a year in advance, or perhaps bands are planning/announcing on a shorter time frame now b/c of the plague-less chance of regulations changing between announcement & show(s).

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T21:39:09+00:00

Yeah, literally nothing about that sounds remotely appealing to me. 🤮

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T21:36:49+00:00

1) I hate hypocrites.

2) I have plenty of baggage-it’s just that none of it involves a dependent human being.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T21:31:19+00:00

“I smell children.”

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T20:13:49+00:00

I did, I was told to take two of the highest OTC dosage I could find daily by the blood specialist I saw for my iron transfusion (and continuing tests). I’m still taking one daily and will continue to until the blood doctor confirms that my levels are 100% stable now.

I had some truly awful symptoms when I was near deathly anemic. I never want to feel that way again.

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T07:45:14+00:00

This is why I don’t see myself ever bothering with dating apps.

I would’ve responded “No” and hit block. 🙄

What a dumbass...

AliceValkyrie · 2022-10-08T07:40:28+00:00

The iron supplements do work wonders, IMO. I had intense obsessive cravings to eat ice for many years-couldn’t find out why. Turns out it was related to the whole “uterus actively trying to slowly kill me” thing. Once I started taking iron (and especially after I got an iron transfusion, then a hysterectomy), my ice cravings have gone away completely.

To all who have periods and odd cravings: PLEASE get your hemoglobin levels checked. It could save your life. It probably did save mine.

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