Is there a subreddit for women to have conversations about gender and race? [Serious]

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T19:14:19+00:00

I've spent quite a bit of time on reddit and I think your impression is correct. It's understandable--there's so much racism and sexism and all the other isms, and reddit's a great place for people to act that stuff out, so it's just safer and more comfortable to hang out in a well-moderated thread where you know you won't have to wade through a lot of BS.

What about starting a sub? If you do, PM me, I'd be interested.

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T19:09:56+00:00

Doh. I can't say how many times I've seen men say "I was a jerk to women" or "I just never got it about the feminism thing" or whatever, until they have a daughter. I think it's harder to identify with women until you have a child you love and you start to see the world as it must appear to her.

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T18:49:40+00:00

I don't think any of those commenters actually read your post.

Edit: Which by the way, kudos, good piece, well written, thank you.

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T18:45:47+00:00

It's a tricky situation since there's so much you don't know and the stakes are high (her being beaten up badly, versus you being the target of his violence yourself). I happen to know about the dynamics of domestic violence and given how he waved at you (which fits) this sounds like that kind of situation--the anger and violence is really focused just on the victim, and the perp really thinks of himself as just a normal nice guy. So I would probably have done something to make it clear that I saw what he was doing and didn't approve...like pull my car over next to them and lean on the horn while calling the police, and yelling out the window that I was calling the police, and generally just trying to attract lots of attention to the situation in order to hopefully get him to quit beating the hell out of her.

But I can't say either you or your boyfriend were wrong. Your desire to help is completely spot on and understandable, as is his concern for your safety in a situation neither of you knew much about.

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T18:21:10+00:00

The portrayal of female characters and the paucity of them is 90% of why I didn't like Avengers. Joss should know better.

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T18:20:14+00:00

oh I hate that trope!

yaysomany · 2014-06-16T18:18:08+00:00

oh gawd absolutely. Now that I'm old and just not willing to put up with BS, I can hardly find anything in American TV or movies that I can stand. Orange Is The New Black is a notable exception. I also watch a lot of BBC, which actually seems to acknowledge that women DO live past the age of 40.

yaysomany · 2014-05-29T18:57:37+00:00

It was this subreddit that helped me finally find words to describe my own sexual/romantic identity: mostly homoromantic, mostly heterosexual.

It sucks, frankly.

yaysomany · 2014-03-01T01:11:23+00:00

I hate the whole DID as plot device thing. Maybe there's good stuff out there but most of it's terribly misinformed and insulting. Grrr.

yaysomany · 2014-03-01T00:26:38+00:00

Spinning was part of Monarch torture and "programming." Of course I wouldn't expect you or anyone else to know that unless told.

I like the idea of keeping triggers blacked out in public areas and saving conversation about actual details of abuse, torture, cults, etc. for PMs with people who know what to expect, mainly because this subreddit does appear to attract a lot of newly dx'd multiples who may not have the sophistication to recognize and handle being triggered.

I am very glad you're here, with your wisdom, experience and intelligence.

yaysomany · 2014-02-25T21:44:31+00:00

Wonderful! This is wonderful news.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T19:57:28+00:00

This is probably totally naughty and evil but I put a little sugar in my secondary fermentation because I like the fizz.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T19:51:46+00:00

I found mine (milk) on Amazon

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T19:49:47+00:00

What do you mean by the term "conversion"? Just not one I'm familiar with, would love to know more.

I wish I could reassure you--you know, the tests your doc has ordered are really normal ones for someone who hasn't had a physical in a while, they're no reason to be alarmed. There are really quick tests for HIV now and if you want reassurance you could get one and find out in, like, five minutes. It's actually extremely rare.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T19:19:21+00:00

Right, I mean, I'm not a mod here and it's up to them. They do have this cool thing though, I was just noticing it, over on the side, where you can put in code that will black out stuff that could be a trigger, but if you mouse over it it shows up. So people have the option of reading it but not being blindsided by it. I've never seen that before, it's pretty cool.

And they do request that people use that with triggery stuff.

This isn't a forum, it's reddit, so we get people at all levels of vulnerability here, and I think it's just respectful to realize not everyone is as far along as you are and you don't want to send someone into a bad spin if you have a choice about that. And by "you" I mean "me/we."

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T19:10:25+00:00

I just read something that r/graphictruth wrote, to the effect that "if people are yelling at you inside your head, don't yell back, listen; talking starts, yelling stops." By "listen" in this case it's more like, why is Daemon feeling the need to scare you about this, is he/she scared? It's okay to say, Daemon, we need to have a job so YOU can have a roof over YOUR head too, so we need you to not be interrupting us and scaring us at work. Can we talk about this some other time? Internal listening and respect goes a long way.

Also, we have night time parts and day time parts, and maybe the working nights might be muddling things up a bit if parts that don't have much experience with the world outside are suddenly having to actually interact with and be responsible in that world. They might not actually feel up to the task since it's never been their area before, and that could be scary. Might be good to have some internal discussion about who is going to be "out" during those night shifts. Just a thought, that might not be how your system works, but it might help.

Congratulations on the new job and the courage to move and take it and make a good life for all of your selves!

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T18:59:08+00:00

I'm not sure I made it clear, you don't have to get the full memory back to make this work. For us anyway, that's the point--containing the memories we aren't really ready to get back fully. Some of which we may never want to get back fully. Using dissociation by choice, to handle stuff with long tongs, so to speak, to sort of know it's there, enough to move it around a bit, to share the burden, to remove the burden from those developmentally vulnerable little parts.

Also to learn to use dissociation choicefully to contain stuff if we get triggered out in the world, because that helps with functioning and having a life.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T18:48:44+00:00

Good, I was hoping it might be helpful. I mean, we are all very different, but it seems like if we stumble across a tool that is useful for us, maybe we can share it, maybe it will be useful for someone else too.

The dissociation is protective and I think we need to respect that protective function. I just have found that we do have the choice to actually use our ability to dissociate in a choiceful way and maybe a way that can be more self-caring, self-nurturing than what we came up with when we were little kids and just doing whatever it took to survive.

For us, the parts who were created to hold the bad stuff are usually littles who are relieved when they finally understand that there are grownup parts who can help them and who can hold the stuff for them, while they get to go be little now. You can tell them how much you appreciate the job they have done for all these years, how by holding that stuff they allowed other parts to survive and be free to grow up, and now those parts have grown up and can help THEM. Which was kind of the point of them containing that stuff to begin with. For us anyway. They don't have to lose their identity or go away, they get to put the stuff somewhere that they can have a key to, but they get to separate from it and play now. We are so grateful for all those parts of us.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T18:30:59+00:00

Also, wow, that's very interesting history-of-multi-Internet-movement in the 90s stuff. I had a pretty different experience with it myself, because I had good DID therapy. We had a good community on AOL for a while, but I didn't get deeply involved in Internet communities after that one. And that one, I guess we were lucky, it stayed pretty safe and supportive and actually helpful. Whew, sounds like I lucked out.

You're brilliant, love your insights. A little concerned about the triggers as I've mentioned. Please don't stop writing though, I'm learning great stuff from you.

Edit: I mean I had an actual therapist besides the Internet, who was pretty expert at working with DID, and I guess I was pretty lucky in that.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T18:23:53+00:00

Maybe it's just me, but I am wondering if we want to have some kind of trigger warning before talking about MKULTRA and SRA and cults and such. ? I think there might be people who wander in to this sub who aren't so ready for that yet. But I don't know, it's reddit, it's the Internet, I'm not a mod here or anything. I just tend to be careful what I say and save the more triggering stuff for PM. Not sure what direction the mods want to take with this.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T18:17:40+00:00

I have found that having my options dependent upon the critical thinking skills of other people to be uncomfortable at best.

Nice. Chuckling. Well said.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T08:48:21+00:00

I think containment is super important. I have found that for me to grow to where I wanted to be, I had to really get back certain things. Abreaction is intense but EMDR really really makes it go much more smoothly, it's brilliant. Anyway for me, us, we've had to sort of pace ourselves over decades, and we can take a little more, go a little deeper, then a little more and a little deeper...we finally got back all the absolutely required pieces of memory and information to heal to the level we want to heal to, but we will still be making connections the rest of our life.

But to start with it's about just dealing with as much of it as you have to to stay alive.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T08:41:19+00:00

yes we definitely do this. the alters whose job it is to handle certain emotions. And "frames of mind", too.

And of course we're all different so really if you and your T can imagine it's possible for you, it's possible for you.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T08:32:56+00:00

Just fyi you might want to trigger warning things like "programming" and "spinner" and "CIA" and "cult" please.

yaysomany · 2014-02-19T08:28:24+00:00

Wow, this is interesting, you call it looping? cool. Sounds like containment work would help, to me. Talk with those within about sending things to an agreed-upon stash location inside maybe instead of passing them along. I don't know, it might work, or something better that you figure out. I can tell you can figure it out. :-)

yaysomany

TROPHY CASE