(Part 2) Top products from r/GenderCritical

Hiya! Saw your comment and had to mention a book to you. Actually, the poster above me mentioned the method taught: FAM. The book is "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" and it is amazing. It's not just about the fertility awareness method, it also will teach you so much about the hows and whys and what's going on with your body. Here is a link to the webpage the author of TCOYF runs. Just read some of the FAQs! It's an awesome resource.

Anyway. Women react to different types of birth control methods in different ways. What's awesome for one person can be terrible for another. If someone is forgetful or wouldn't consistently follow the FAM rules, it will not be an effective method. A copper IUD (Intra-uterine device) is another non-hormonal option and again, some people love it some hate it. There's Mirena, a hormonal IUD. There's Nuvaring, hormonal ring. There's Implanon, lots love it and lots hate it. Depo-Provera is an injection good for three months, I know women who swear by it and others who hate it so very very much. Then there are bc pills. These vary from if they will have a combination of hormones or just one, some try to imitate a cycle and you'll see four colors in a pack (the three that month, plus placebos). Then there's the how of taking it. Continuously? Skip placebo?

So even though this is getting long, going to throw in some personal experience. I started taking the pill at 19. Tried 5 different ones over the 9 last years, not counting each time it was auto-switched to generic. They were effective and did what they were supposed to. About 3 years ago I switched to Generess Fe, then took it continuously meaning no periods! That lasted about three months, then switch to generic, then got my period the day after starting the generic. Anyway, it went away, I stayed on it and for the next year took it with no placeboes (is there an e? or not? damn) so no periods. For funsies, the pharmacy switched to the other generic! Period. But, no period since then. It also dampened my emotions (to the point of just about nothing mattering), gave me racing thoughts unless my brain felt full of fog, stifled my sex drive and left me always feeling confused.

So... like 23 days ago, I finished the last pack and stopped it all because after looking at the side effects I realized I was never nauseous like I'd been for the last six months of 2018 and that before taking any bc I had only thrown up a few times when very sick as a kid. I hadn't gone more than two weeks without vomiting for 9 years. Now I haven't thrown up once since I stopped taking it. The reason for starting it was my neurologist would not even talk about my epilepsy meds @ the time unless I agreed to go on HBC and take folic acid (folate is what ya want, btw) because I was having sex w/ condoms. She somehow managed to spend a solid 45 minutes telling me every brutal birth defect while leaving out that the medication I was on (Trileptal) lowers the effectiveness of HBC while never looking to adjust or change my medications because the possibility of a baby was the most important thing. It worked out being on it while I was because for a bit there were lots of med changes and a pregnancy would not have been good.

All of this is to say - look into everything! Like, everything. Depo for instance, if you got a shot then stopped getting them, could mean waiting for 6-12 months for your period. I haven't gotten mine yet and I was taking the pill. Which just makes life a bit unpredictable. It does actually mess with your hormones and has side effects, not in an eternal way but your body has to figure out what was happening and adjust.

My completely unsolicited and late night advice is that first, get a copy of "Taking Charge of Your Fertility". You can learn a lot about your cycle and your body and knowledge is freedom and all. Look into the different types of birth control. If I were you I'd start with a pill or ring because it's much easier to stop and IME most women try at least a couple of types. With depo, they can try to add more hormones if you bleed for 6 weeks, or say wait for it to get better but they can't remove the hormones. Then visit your OBGYN and get a script if that's your choice. Then, even though they'll ask about your current meds and don't mention how something might affect birth control - read the really boring label, run anything - including OTC herbs and such - through a drug interaction search. For instance, St. John's Wort lowers the effectiveness of birth control. The second anti-epileptic I was on was made less effective by my birth control and the dose had to be adjusted throughout the month.

Look at all of it and keep learning more. Whatever you choose just make sure the positives outweigh the negatives for you. Don't think you HAVE to stick with a medication or method that you don't want to.

Sorry about this being so long and rambling. Best wishes and I'm glad you feel more comfortable exploring all options for your health.

oh, you can check out /birthcontrol for advice btw.

eta: So, because hormonal birth control can be used to control symptoms of PCOS or endo, just wanted to say this. It's not a cure. For a lot of people, it means they'll be able to live a life with much less pain while on HBC. HBC is just pretty much the solution that will be offered if you're in a lot of pain, have abnormal periods, etc. It's a band-aid and an excuse to not find a solution because obviously, as women, our health isn't important. That last sentence is more about pharama companies and the narrative of our bodies being a magical mystery science can't understand than doctors doing what they can to help. The end point is that when you go off of HBC at some point, if it's before menopause, those symptoms from before will return. If your periods were like clockwork and light on BC but before lasted two weeks in crippling pain, the most likely result is having to try to find a solution to a problem that should have been addressed before masking it.

If she is between five and eight/nine maybe, Monster Allergy from Disney Italy is a fun comic.

Also W.i.t.c.h from Disney Italy are great, about Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia, Hai Lin. Link to Amazon Take care to buy the original comics and not the spin off comic or the paperback novels. From five to twenty, I think, but the main characters are teens.

Moomin by Tove Jansson varies a bit in quality (books are best, the comics are made by her brother, but some are nice). Valhalla by Madsen is about the Scandinavian gods (not exactly feminist, but she learns something). I also read Ranma 1/2 by Takahashi for my daughter, but it contains a really creepy man stealing women's underwear and trying to touch girls. I was a bit relaxed with what I read for her, I just read a lot and we talked about it, so I just presumed she would understand after a while. Marguerite Abouet has made some new comics about a little girl that I haven't read (the books about Aya are for teenagers / adults – about sex and infidelity, although no explicit scenes I think).

Tove Jansson lived with a woman for most of her life. Too Ticki is based on her girlfriend. I think that in the cartoons/moving pictures (just to be certain I get the terms right) Too Ticki is made to be a man, which is silly. There is also an hemul who always wears dresses. Who is a man. Nobody ever question his manliness.

I hope there are more good and fun books for girls now. In Norway now there seems to be some idea that they shall make the books easy to understand, so children's books have become just stupid.

I'm not sure I understand your concern, but if you struggle with math, it may help to start with coding. It can make things a little more concrete. You might try code academy, a coding bootcamp, or MIT open courseware.

An Emory prof has a great intro stats course online: https://www.youtube.com/user/RenegadeThinking

Linear algebra is the foundation of the most widely used branch of stats. This book teaches it by coding example. It's full of interesting practical applications (there's a coursera course to go with it): https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra-Applications-Computer/dp/0615880991/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469533241&sr=8-1&keywords=coding+the+matrix

Once you start to feel comfortable, this book offers a great (albeit dense) introduction to mathematics. It used to be used in freshman gen ed math courses, but sadly, American unis decided that actually doing math/logic isn't a priority anymore: https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach-Ideas-Methods/dp/0195105192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469533516&sr=8-1&keywords=what+is+mathematics

Theres a concept that Nancy Friday mentioned in Women On Top. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XG31Y2S

>When a boy enters our lives and wants to touch us there, of course it is unthinkable. We couldn’t do such a thing. Why should he? Why does he want to? That a man dreams of parting our lips with his fingers, looking at it, putting his mouth there, is so upsetting to some women that no honey-tongued lover could convince us otherwise. The clitoris, urethra, vagina, and anus have come to be thought of as one filthy, indistinguishable mass “down there.” This kind of thinking is called the Cloaca Concept. Cloaca is Latin for sewer.
>
>I can’t remember the name of the doctor or analyst who first used the term Cloaca Concept, but I remember my own emotional jolt of recognition. I was gathering material for My Secret Garden, and I could imagine the women who were contributing, oh so hesitantly, to my research twenty years ago feeling just that way about their genitals—a “sewer,” something to be touched with the utmost hesitation.

Friday, Nancy. Women on Top (p. 56). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Al lot of men are still at that stage, I'm sure this has a lot to do with the trend for shaving.

Of course having a hairy bum crack is far more common in men. I'm told...

I don't know if there will be a next time for you, but if there is, these 2 books might be helpful for that next guy:
Come as You Are,
She Comes First.

Some men can learn to do better.

You might be interested in When God Was A Woman.

I'm reading Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke. She writes about how the only other species to experience menopause, that is, living a long life after losing reproductive abilities, are killer whales. These whales go on to lead their pods. You read that right. They become the group's leaders.

She writes how menopause is a series of thresholds. Each hot flash is a metamorphosis into something different, a new human being. Someone wiser not lead by youthful folly.

It makes me think of getting away from one father-figure leader (i.e. presidents, CEOs etc) and having a council of post-menopausal women running the show. Kind of sounds amazing, doesn't it?

Ending Aging would be probably good for bodily autonomy. Check out Aubrey de Grey's book too.

+1

Would recommend the book this book as a starter to the not giving a fuck lifestyle.

Exactly on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Free-Letty-Cottin-Pogrebin/dp/0070503702

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Crayons-Story-Michael-Hall/dp/0062252070

So true.






In her very good 2009 book The Myth Of Mars And Venus: Do Men And Women Really Speak Different Languages?,gender communications professor Deborah Cameron very rightfully points out that even though today many women and men are getting the same educations,doing a lot of the same jobs,and interests,they still want to believe that deep in their brains and minds they are still fundamentally different because social changes in gender roles,are scary. The big irony here though is that if they were so ''fundamentally different'',they wouldn't be getting the same educations,and doing a lot of the same jobs,etc. But that's what's threatening and why they want to believe the common gender myths and gender stereotypes.




https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199550999

Bikini Kill are awesome. There's an amazing book called Girls to the front about the history of riot grrrl. Nostalgic for those days.

Those kinds of societies are also described in this book

Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Women's Archive and has spent the last 40 years putting together women's history based on archeological objects and manuscripts. This is the first of the planned 15 volumes. She dug through old letters written by priests which described the pagan practices that they were trying to quash and convert to Christianity. It took hundreds of years for the old religion to die out. Most of it was the way women did things. For example, the 3 fates were given offerings when a woman gave birth. There are still some cultural practices and sayings that can be traced back to pre-christian religion.

Another author is Marija Gimbutas. I very much liked this book who paints a picture of the prehistoric European goddess culture based on neolithic symbols found carved into stones and other objects.

David Reimer -- and it was far more than just being raised as a girl. There was a significant amount of child abuse involved, iirc, and emotional trauma.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-may-13-me-reimer13-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer#CITEREFColapinto2001b
https://www.amazon.com/As-Nature-Made-Him-Raised/dp/0061120561

I've checked and all of these are available new and are not exorbitantly expensive. I haven't read all of them, some are just from my own personal wish list. These are radfem but not directly trans-focused. Sorry if that was more what you were looking for, if so I can check for more along those lines.

Life and Death by Dworkin

Intercourse by Dworkin

Letters from a war zone by Dworkin

The creation of patriarchy by Lerner

Origin of the family, private property and the state by Engels

Ain't I a woman: black women and feminism by hooks

Pornland by Dines

Anticlimax by Jeffreys

Are woman human? by MacKinnon

Although I am not a fan of the veil in general, (for a feminist look at the veil I suggest The Veil And The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation Of Women's Rights In Islam by Fatima Mernissi) but I find it insane that we are letting males who “identify” as female compete against girls, but we are disqualifying girls for wearing hijab. Girls are screwed no matter what they do.

Why are you posting this in a feminist sub? Your premise is false. It's historically and scientifically inaccurate. Multiple studies since the time period show that children are no more likely to lie about being raped than are adult women. The issue that remains in contention is how best to handle their testimony in court given developmental status, how to balance their safety and psychological well being against the rights of defendants to a fair trial.

The phrase "Believe the Children" has roots in the Second Wave which had some success challenging societal denial and victim blaming in accusations of rape, with similar campaigns encouraging the public to believe women.

Read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Witch-Hunt-Narrative-Politics-Psychology-Children/dp/0190465573 Professor Cheit reviewed the court records and conducted interviews with primary sources in all of the major child abuse cases in the 1980's and '90's. Contrary to what is now conventional wisdom (thanks to the pedophile lobby), he found there was irrefutable MEDICAL EVIDENCE such as genital wounds and STDs, as well as physical evidence, and corroborative testimony in the majority.

Conversely, the people who invented the idea of false memory were themselves accused of sexually abusing their own daughter, who is a respected professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. She accused them privately and in response they launched an offensive public campaign. They invented the term false memory sitting at their kitchen table. False Memory Syndrome is not a clinically recognized condition and is not included in the DSM, it is purely political. The Foundation they started soon ballooned with members of accused parents, and others who claimed to be falsely accused by adult women, including at least one board member who turned out to be an admitted supporter of pedophilia.

Major players among those who invented the "satanic panic" or social panic theory of the first wave of the CSA movement formed another foundation that persists to this day. This foundation gives $100,000 annually to defense funds of convicted pedophiles. They believe laws against child sexual abuse are too stringent, and as with the FMSF above, a look deeper into their connections and published works reveals tacit, and sometimes outright support for pedophilia.

Unfortunately, the views of these backlash groups have been proliferated by sympathetic media, and welcomed by a public too traumatized to accept the horrors of CSA, to the point where it is now a kind of conventional wisdom, including, shamefully, among some radical feminists. Child sexual abuse is so widespread, it is going to take generations to contend. Child trafficking is a multi-billion dollar business. Until the narratives of the backlash groups—what I call the pedophile lobby—are thoroughly debunked, the work is going to be incredibly difficult.

Find yourself a properly apt analogy for the trans phenomena, as this one not only doesn't fit, it's false and harmful to CSA victims everywhere.

>I guess this is my kinda of my issue. How do you explain transwomen who date and marry ciswomen? If what you were saying is true all transwomen would be dating cismen and exclusively cismen. Right?


They’re heterosexual males with a sexual fetish.


Anne Lawrence


Blanchard


No. I said that they tell homosexual children (a small subset of trans) that they are the wrong sex and then sterilise them using cross-sex hormones after puberty suppression.


Then, we have transwomen telling lesbians (homosexuals) that they are bigoted for not liking penis or wanting to have sex with people that maintain or have previously maintained those organs.


There is a big hint in the word homoSEXual that would lead you to understand that sexual orientation for heteroSEXuals and homoSEXuals is based around the SEX of the person.

Telling lesbians (or gay men) that they must like people of the opposite SEX based on their “GENDER identity” is creepy and disgusting.


People are not obligated to re-evaluate their attractions because of someone else’s “identity”.


Years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists used to try and force homosexuals into liking people of the opposite sex. This is no different.


--------------------

>I think gender is a set of ideas on how someone acts and looks that is typically based on sex. That is to say that usually female people act and look in a certain way as a woman.



What.the.fuck? Act and look as a woman based on sex? That right there, straight up fucking misogyny.


What does a woman “act” like? You realise that is the antithesis of feminism. That women “act” and “look” a certain
way.


How does sex, one’s reproductive capability, have anything to do with how someone acts?



>I don't know if gender roles are innate, I really don't think they are.


Good. Because they aren’t.



>I don't know if its more real or less real. I think sex is pretty complicated in general and can't be decided by one characteristic but by using multiple different criteria simply because theres no real one defining characteristic that says you're either male or female. for this kind of stuff I typically look to places like the Olympics

Production of gametes. Bam. Simple.

Failing that? Structures for the production of gametes.

Failing that? Genetics.

Failing that? Organs.

Reproduction is real. Human biology is real.

How do you propose we classify people then? How is gender real? How does the way a person "acts" affect anything about their physiology? Things like rape shelters, bathrooms, prisons are all based around people's physiological needs.

Women can get pregnant to males, menstruate and pee sitting down. We have different cancers and different levels of medication tolerance (and alcohol tolerance) because of our physiology.

Men can impregnate and pee standing up. They do not need access to abortions or gynaecological medicine. They may need access to medicine based on their prostates and testicles. They have difference levels of tolerance to medicine and alcohol based on their physiology.

Why would you look to the Olympics? Why not ask a biologist?


>I think this would fall under gender roles again. I don't think a woman is really any one thing. Gender isn't based in your body and how it looks but rather in how you act.

Wrong. A woman is an adult female human.

How is gender then more important than a biological reality again? How is the way someone “acts” overriding this?

Am I no longer a woman because I don’t “act” like one?

The fuck?

Who governs these rules for how someone should act?

Why can't people act however they want? Just because you have certain bits doesn't mean you act any particular way.

Your physiology is just a fact of nature and your ability to produce offspring through the exchange of genetic material.

>If you mean a woman again I don't know if that's a biological reality meaning that you can definitely say that you identify with and are more comfortable with that set of gender roles.

And what of the millions (billions?) of women who aren’t happy with the gender roles place upon us? What if we’re not happy with ANY gender roles for anyone?

What is a gender role and why is it even important?

>If you mean female, I think that's more of a thing that happens as you transition rather than something you just become.

Nope. Males cannot become females. We are not gastropods or fish.

How does a male born become female? That makes absolutely no sense.

>It gets a little worrisome because this kind of thinking can lead to transwomen being excluded from places that most other females are allowed to be. Bathrooms, locker rooms, etc and I'm not sure if that's ok to do, although I'm a proponent of non-segregated bathrooms and changing rooms, I think its a little silly that we separate by sex.

WHAT?

NO! Males cannot become female.

You DO NOT produce oocytes, have menses or gestate and birth young. (Yes, I am aware that not all females can either)

Males disproportionately attack females for violence and sexual assault.

Look at the FBI or WHO statistics if you don’t believe me.

And “transwomen” maintain MALE levels of criminality which makes them just as likely as any other male person to cause us harm.

Males and females are separated because SEX is the only thing that is different between us. We can get pregnant and get “gender” bullshit because of that. We are somehow "weaker" and "less capable". We're also vulnerable because of our ability to get pregnant.

Males and females have different physiology, different medical needs.

You propose what? We separate on “gender”?

How is gender real?

IT FUCKING ISN’T. It was created by society. Biology wasn’t.

Here’s some links to transwomen violence:

One


Two

Three

Four
(This is a person who gained access to a women’s rape shelter by claiming to be a woman and then SEXUALLY assaulted women)


And I have more.

> would that teenagers are typically below the age of consent, IE below 16 and thus can't legally make a decision to have sex no matter what age the other person is.

But teenagers and children are able to consent to hormones and puberty blockers?

And yes, the brain develops as it gets older. Atrophy and damage can halt and stop the development.

So, how is "brain-age" less real than "brain-sex"? How is it any different to "negro-brains" or "jugglers-brains"?

If I scanned my brain and it had the same volume in certain parts as a medical professional does that make me a medical doctor?

>I think the only difference is the fact that there is some actual research done on the brains of transwomen vs ciswomen which shows some of the same structures not present in cismen.

Yes. We’ve all seen those.

First off, NONE of those studies have been reproduced which makes for bad science.

NONE of those studies identify why they are able to determine what a “woman’s brain looks like”

Actually, here’s a really succinct link that breaks it down

And I’m more than happy to refer you to read Sheila Jefferies new book Gender Hurts, Cordelia Fine’s Delusion of Gender and Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen


>I tend to defer to medical organizations for things like this and typically take them at their word if they say that the cause of transgenderism is due to different brain structures.

Medical organisations used to advocate for lobotomies of the mentally ill, the castration of gay men, and the “hysteria” of women.

You also can see examples of bad pharmaceutical practice in Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science

I’m not saying I agree 100% with any of the above texts. It pays to be well informed and to complete your own research.

Do not “take them at their word” about things like “brain” sex when the methodology for their premise is so unbelievable flawed.


>Does that make sense?

It didn’t make any sense, even a little.

I mean seriously? Fucking gender roles in 2014? We’ve come a long way baby from Suzie-Homemaker and Captain America.