92
Interesting story from work today, even more interestingly, on the heels of the recent AWWA period campaign mishap, and how I actually even commented on a couple of posts relating to that on here.
I'm a public librarian. A young teenage girl came up to the reference desk this afternoon and asked in a quiet voice, "do you guys have any pads?" Not a common request, but it does happen. We do keep a stash for this scenario so I handed one over to her as discreetly as I could; she was very thankful and I thought that was the end of it.
About 40 minutes later, another woman came up to the desk and told me there was a girl in a stall in the women's washroom, and had been there for a long time. (The same backpack was on the floor.) I went and checked; there was only one occupied stall and sounded like crying. I knocked on the door and asked if she was okay, and the door actually opened. It was the same teen, she was just standing there with her jacket tied around her waist. Looking kind of freaked out.
She told me it was her first period; she’d bled through her pants and was miserable. I asked if she was okay, if she had her cell with her (she did, and she had a friend from their high school coming with clothes and Ibuprofen.) I asked if she wanted company until her friend got there, she said yes. I introduced myself, chatted a bit with her about mine, but didn’t want to overwhelm her or anything. Her friend showed up, she cheered up quite a bit, and they both left, and the teen turned to me and thanked me, and I said no problem, “we’ve all been there.” She gave me the biggest smile at that.
About an hour later there was a phone call to the front desk: it was the girl’s mother asking for me by name, and thanking me. It was a pleasant call, and lovely to hear thanks, but that’s not the point of the story. The point is:
This girl was embarrassed, and your first time, even if mentally somewhat prepared, is always a shock. I just kept thinking the entire time: what if we didn’t have separate washrooms? This girl, in this moment, needed privacy and some gentle reassurance, and women who understood. What if that wasn’t the case? If she didn’t have a private, actual safe space for that experience? Do we really live in a society where this 13/14 year-old girl would be called transphobic if she were to be vocally grateful for this space?
I'm not sure if I feel inspired by this or defeated. Lol. Either way, it felt important.
If I don’t marry by 25, they will be off my ass to do so indefinitely?
I can get permanent sterilization after age 30 ar no cost to myself?
I hear many Ovarites saying ‘don’t threaten me with a good time’
His "apology" reminds me of the "it's just a joke" dudes.
They are testing their fantasy to see how much they will be allowed to get away with, guaranteed he is looking for support to carry it out.
Yes! That was exactly my thought too about the "jokes."
Can you imagine if a female official "joked" about castrations?
Can you imagine if a female official "joked" about castrations?
They would be burning down her house. Posting fake violent porn of her all over the Internet, threatening her children, and stalking her until she ends her life. Business as usual for dudes.
I think there should be a basic intelligence test before you're allowed to enter politics, because this is abysmal.
Right?
That's stupider than Trump.
I mean, Trump simplifies complicated issues and acts with toddler logic, but even a toddler can see that sterilization leads to no babies at all, and that being banned from marrying after 25 will result in very few women getting married at all.
(Not sure intelligence tests would help - the gender insanity has alerted me to the fact that some people with nominally high IQs can be made to believe very stupid shit with an "It sounds counterintuitive, but smart people know it is true" approach. Every toddler knows that men aren't women, every child who attended primary school biology class knows that humans don't change sex. But tons of academics thinks humans are clownfish.)
This is one of the more roundabout ways I've seen someone express that they want institutionalized pedophilia. Or he's too stupid to live, but neither bodes well for the people he makes laws for.
Wait isn’t removing fertile women’s uteruses going to result in LESS births???
Bruh thats even worse than the korean comfort women shit. Whats his plan - have women at 18 get sold
Japan doesn't allow emigration because they want to stay homogenous. They don't like foreigners. Their population is declining markedly. They need to let immigrants in instead of expecting women to have babies for the country.
Fix population decline by sterilizing women less than midway through their fertile years? #malelogic
They like to pretend that teen mothers don't have extremely risky pregnancies with poorer outcomes than women in their 30s because these men want to fuck children.
If patriarchal society as a whole and men in general truly cared about the best outcomes for the children they father and the women who bear those children, so many laws and policies would change.
[Comment deleted]
[Comment deleted]
Male idiocy never ceases to amaze me.
It's like doing nice things for women causes them physical pain or something, so they desperately want to find a way to harm women and raise the birth rate at the same time.
(Ok, that's not fair. Hitler decided to give women (of desirable ethnic background, of course) who had more than four children a medal and some privileges to go with it. Just saying, Japan, if your ideas to increase the birthrate are eviller than those of Hitler, then you should take a good, hard look at yourself. Bribing women with social privileges for having many children is sexist in its own way, and those mothers surely lorded it over childfree women, but at least Hitler wasn't too pained by the idea that some women might be happy to go through with this.)
Sure, banning women over 25 from marrying and forced sterilization at 30 would result in more babies ... when most women have babies only after 30. WTF is wrong with his brain?
Canadian Historical curiosity: "The Great Stork Derby" (1926-1936). Charles Vance Millar, a Toronto lawyer and financier (and bachelor), cynic and mischief-maker, bequeathed part of his estate to the woman in Toronto who produced the most children in the decade after his death. Eleven families competed and four received $125,000 each for nine children apiece, since Millar's shares in the Windsor-Detroit tunnel project blew up, turning his $100,000 estate into a $750,000 estate by 1936. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-great-stork-derby/
Having children in the hopes of being given money for it seems very risky, even apart from the inherent risks of childbirth ... nine kids must cost a lot to bring up. (Hopefully, those 125 000 dollars were worth more then than they'd be now.)
The writeups gave the impression they'd have reached that family size without the derby. The CPI inflation calculator says nearly 125,000 in 1936 is equivalent to nearly $2.7 million in 2024.
[Comment deleted]
Same psychology as scammers use to pressure people into making a quick (and disadvantageous) decision.
But women already have a limited time to birth children...
[Comment deleted]
That might be the idea behind it, but it wouldn't work on me. Knowing that the biological clock was ticking didn't make me have kids with some useless male, so ...
And I suspect in Japan, the problem is also the lack of good husbands, so that method will achieve nothing.
(Tricking people into buying products "right now! the offer is only good for three hours!" works because they only invest money. Not even a lot of money, most of the time. Having kids is more like buying a house.)
[Comment deleted]