We just whip stitched two 8.5x11" pieces of fleece along three sides of a rectangle, and it was totally recognizable as a pussyhat when forced onto a head, with the brim rolled up an inch or two. It took about five minutes.
it was totally recognizable as a pussyhat when forced onto a head
Heteronormative.
1: That was one of the things I liked about it as a visual symbol. A whole lot of variety in the execution, but all recognizable as the same thing.
Was part of the reason for the smaller police presence because more people showed up than expected? I didn't see any clear numbers of expected vs. appeared, but I saw lots of people on Facebook that I never thought would have anything to do with a march at the march.
Possibly? But this looked underpoliced (not in terms of need, but in terms of past practices I've seen) for a much smaller march. I think it was demographically profiled as adorably harmless. The police attitude was also noticeably sunny and friendly, which I haven't generally seen in crowd-control situations.
And, it was a calm, happy crowd -- in terms of any actual need for a police presence, they were absolutely right. Which is nice if you're standing in it, but maybe not the most effective attitude to make change from.
I know a guy who stole a cop car, if you want tips on pissing them off. He never got caught, but that's probably easier in places where there's only one cop.
I also know a guy who stole the lights from the top of a cop car. He got caught and the guy he gave them to got caught. Both did jail time.
I don't think any of those guys knit.
A shame knitting needles are pointy -- it really seems like an ideal prison activity. I suppose yarn's expensive, too.
There's a knitting store in between my house and the bar, but it's never open when I'm going home so I've never been able to drunkenly purchase a bunch of yarn.
You could start drinking earlier? Route yourself by the store first, buy yarn sober and knit drunk?
I can't really see myself buying yard while sober. I'll look into drinking earlier.
4: For BLM events, they seem to bring in cops early (including borrowing from neighboring jurisdictions) on a highly defensive principle - disproportionate in the other direction.
I've been bugged by the "no arrests" discussion from the get, in large part because those pointing out that of course white women didn't get arrested act as if every march that isn't 90% white women* is full of arrests**.
But that's bullshit, as the OP notes non-judgmentally. I'd add, though, that there are arrests at marches for a third reason: sometimes people actually do get out of hand. I mean, there were arrests--of white people!--at the inauguration, and my understanding is that they were more or less justified (set aside the journalistic suppression that seems to be happening), and not just as a civil disobedience thing. So yeah, 3 million marchers nationwide without a single publicized arrest actually is saying something beyond "white women don't get arrested."
Furthermore, the Philly protests yesterday were, from what I saw, much angrier and more aggressive, with many fewer white women, yet there were no arrests there, either.
I think part of the reason this bugs me so much is that it's exactly the kind of cynical pseudo-knowingness that I scorn in general. "Of course white women wouldn't get arrested" is a close cousin of "if voting changed anything, it would be illegal." It's not exactly false--cops really do have very different assumptions about white women, and politicians really do try to prevent people from voting for change--but the way it's couched isn't intended to foment change/enlightenment so much as it's intended to show how wise and beyond it all the speaker is.
*which, depending on the city, the 1/21 marches weren't either, but they've been characterized that way
**there are black-led marches here all the time: sometimes protesting a political decision, sometimes as a statement of solidarity or Stop Shooting, We Love You. Those marches also feature few if any arrests. It's almost as if cops mainly get shitty with marches that are targeting cops, regardless of the identity of the marchers
Well right. BLM marches are stereotyped as violent, and the police are (probably not in every locality, but generally) specifically hostile to the goals.
That's sort of why I'm thinking having a wave of pussyhats start showing up would be interestingly supportive. "You thought that three million people nationwide was harmless and adorable? They've got the same goals the people you're afraid of do."
To the OP, everything you say is true, but I venture it's also independently impressive that none of the handful of immanentize-the-eschaton assholes who like to break windows, graffiti, etc. were in evidence either (judging by what we saw here at least). It would have been easy for them to come out, without much implication either way to the rest of the demos.
4, 5: I know that our marches far exceeded expectations, and there were late calls for reinforcements.
I agree with 5 that the cops surely predicated staffing levels based on a non-threatening march, but they do their homework. I mean, did anyone here think that the marches would be any different from what they were? By contrast, an average protest march has a decent shot at bringing a significant coterie of ANSWER assholes (let alone black bloc), and a more targeted march (anti-war or BLM*) will probably attract potentially aggressive elements that are vocal beforehand. That is, if you assume the cops are monitoring social media, there would have been nothing in the buildup to cause them to show up in force.
*or hell, a sports championship parade will feature some number of drunks that need to be policed, not really a concern for 1/21.
15.2: I have in fact seen that called for by black activists - white people (women) to use their privilege as shields, basically.
LB, I love this idea and from my cis-white-woman-elitist-liberal standpoint I think it would work. When I'm teaching about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the strikes that preceded it, I point out that the presence of wealthy white women among the strikers (aka the "mink brigade") reduced the amount of violence by police against immigrant women.
See here for example: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/mediamosaic/thepriceoffashion/pdf/portanova-joseph.pdf
I was also in NYC for the march and concur with your observations in, basically, every way.
The marches were great! 5-figure turnout in my hick town.
I will carefully note, addressing no one in particular, that some not entirely unpersuasive trans critiques of the p-hat are out there: critiques whose force would increase (imo) to the extend said headgear, rather than a specific, one-off play on words, came to be offered as general "symbol of the resistance"
Anyone who wants to knit a late hat for the purpose, here's one. I might do one this weekend.
19/20 -- funny, I actually used the 'human shields' language in talking about this last week. Yes, the underpolicing and lack of arrests reflects privilege, but if you've got privilege, there's nothing to do with it but use it to good ends.
I saw someone who had what appeared to be a small sweater on her head with the arms twisted to narrowness, kept sticking out somehow (wire inside?), so they looked like fallopian tubes off a uterus.
Or maybe it was knit specially and my non-knitter eyes did not register this.
not entirely unpersuasive trans critiques of the p-hat are out there
Got a link? I'm not seeing it myself without the argument being made to me -- persons with pussies at risk of being grabbed by Trump and his ilk are a group that exists, although it may not be a group that includes some trans women (includes a bunch of trans men, though). I don't see the offense in a symbol that identifies the wearer as either a member of that group or someone in solidarity with it (i.e., there were plenty of cis men in hats as well.)
But if I'm missing the force of the critique, I'd be glad to hear it.
My instinct would be to say that it would be an act of being a good ally, but I'm open to hearing the reasoning between other opinions.
My background is I've been involved off and on (recently mostly off) in radical leftist and anti-racist politics for the past 16 years, and I think it's important to be large tent on the left. It's important to be careful and attentive to how we can improve and avoid being inadvertently offensive, but at the same time I've seen too many things ruined by Cultural Revolution-style thought policing and "leftier/more woke than thou" type pissing competitions.
25
http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2017/1/25/womens-march-left-trans-women-behind
I have complex feelings about this that I'm not sure I want to share publicly right now.
I'm not the person to do them justice, but: issue-specific symbols can symbolically exclude--the p-hat is great as snarky rhetoric, exclusionary if it becomes universalized a symbol of women's resistance. There's an open status on FB by "J/ules Jo/anne Gle/eson" that does better than I could ever do....
That's interesting. The writer clearly has a sense for what's the right amount of representation of trans women at a march like this that's not closely tied to their percentage of the population, but I'm not sure either what she thinks it is, or how she gets to it.
Here's another article that's on a more broad issue:
26.2 There's not a word of criticism leveled at the pussyhat in that link. It's about representation of trans women on stage at the Women's March in DC.
28
Yeah, in general I have problems with the left's overreliance on the politics of representation. There's a way in which representation absolutely matters, but reducing demands to more representation misses what makes structural injustice structural, and is weirdly reductive in a kind of regressive way, individualistic, and buys into the logics of (dare I say) neoliberalism. You could have a board of directors made entirely of queer disabled black transwomen, and they could STILL be enacting the policies of white supremacist patriarchy, because that's how the system works.
One critique that I did find persuasive was that the uniform pinkness of the pussyhats felt racially exclusive. I don't know how true that was, but I hope there were hats in all shades of pink and brown.
I'm not really into the pink hats both aesthetically (I don't even WEAR hats, and if I did....) and semiotically, but I don't feel excluded by the people wearing them and so I'm not really making an argument. I'm just definitely not going to participate.
I went to a small march in Philadelphia last night because the republican retreat is here. It was pretty clear that the cops were not going to arrest anybody. They could have just set up a situation where they could arrest a bunch of people by telling us to disperse or whatever. I don't think anybody had a permit or anything.
They are ugly considered as hats.
33 Do I have to say it? Do I dare? I probably shouldn't. (In my defense I've been drinking. )
37: That racial differences in the coloring of mucous membranes are far less pronounced than in the color of skin?
In fairness though, I've written and deleted about 5 posts.
I figured I'd get in first with the minimally offensive phrasing.
Our observation of the police presence at the Washington march pretty much echoes the OP. Remarked on it several times. More police presence up and around the White House and just north of there where we went afterwards to meet up with family. (And I think in vicinity of some of the demonstrations form the night before.)
28: I think "not just two more than at Trump's inauguration" is fair to expect. In fairness to the march, there were probably more in percentages than in raw numbers - 3 out of 60 speakers at the march vs. 1 Jenner out of probably a few hundred attendees in the rich peoples' section of the inauguration. But still, 3 isn't a big number.
Also, the part about someone from the Transgender Law Center speaking but having their mike cut sounds bad. I have no idea why that happened (I read the tweet, they didn't elaborate, I didn't read replies to it because I'm trying to stay focused on work more or at least look like it) and maybe there's an innocent explanation, but it's careless at best.
As for the proportion of trans people among speakers vs. among the general population, I'd expect it to be higher among speakers (I couldn't put a percentage on it, but higher) because the march is about trans issues. Not mainly, but partially. It was right there in the march's statement of goals, and even if it hadn't been, sexism and bigotry were and trans people belong in a discussion of either.
Overall, I thought the article in 26 was... appropriate. The writer is careful to praise the march organizers for what they got right and say it was a good thing overall but could and should have been better in this area. They make a valid argument for that, depending on a lot of details like what was going on with that cut mike. Even if the details wouldn't fully support them, either way I can't blame them for wanting on an emotional level to see more representation of people like themselves. I'm not as bothered by it as they are but that's most because it doesn't affect me, but on the flip side I don't want to minimize their concerns.
I don't think trans men, unless they still outwardly present as femme, are at risk for Trump vulva grabbing since trump has not shown any interest in dude crotch. Conversely, trans women might be at risk for crotch grabbing regardless of the state of their genetalia.
I also saw a lot of focus on uteruses, which I thought was less potentially divisive.
Most of the hats I saw were a hot pink that I didn't read as corresponding to anyone's actual labia color. I thought of it more just as using female-coded pink to make a positive statement. Notably, DC's mayor Bowser, a black woman, wore a pink (or purple?) one. Not sure if I saw any brown ones, but I'll pay more attention in the future.
I thought the hats were kinda cute. Generational difference?
By contrast, an average protest march has a decent shot at bringing a significant coterie of ANSWER assholes (let alone black bloc)
No no no. The police weren't friendly and low key at the women's marches because of the lack of brick throwing and car burning, it was purely their love of white women.
In First weekend thread I made some observations* on the wearing of the hats while touristing the next day. (Done mostly because we were outside and it was coldish and we had no other hats**.) But that day was a semi-extension of the march.
I am about to leave for work and it is snowing and that is the hat in the car so I will probably where it from the parking lot to the building***. I could look for another, but not gonna bother. Not sure where folks are on purely utilitarian**** wear.
*Fact that older guy in hat got a lot more responses than my similarly behatted wife and daughter.
**Part of a pattern where our overall trip planning in general did not take into account that a lot of it would not be at the March. For the most part we only brought things we imagined possibly having at the march and even then left 50% of that back at the hotel.
***I now have a plan to retire from this job at the end of July so I am mostly out of fucks on a variety of fronts.
****Of course there is no completely utilitarian of wearing a symbolic article of clothing.
A symbolic rat orgasm is an orgasm nonetheless.
Appropriately 0.3% of people are trans gender. If you assume they are all transwomen, then 2 x .003 x 60 speakers gets you 0.36 speakers so there basically was an order of magnitude more trans speakers than would be given by representation alone.
Most of the hats I saw were a hot pink
Mine is not, but rather two-toned light and dark pink. So somewhat subtle. But it is a nice warm hat, as good as my others. And I disagree in general with LB's 36.
I think "not just two more than at Trump's inauguration" is fair to expect. In fairness to the march, there were probably more in percentages than in raw numbers - 3 out of 60 speakers at the march vs. 1 Jenner out of probably a few hundred attendees in the rich peoples' section of the inauguration. But still, 3 isn't a big number.
I feel nitpicky saying this, and I don't mean to diminish the concerns of trans women or say that the author of 26 was wrong to write what she did. But if your complaint is one of underrepresentation, I do think you need to have a clear conception of what an appropriate amount of representation would be. (How clear depends on the circumstance. Looking at a situation where there was no trans representation, a reaction that there should be at least some, without more specifics, would be fine with me. But looking at a list of speakers of whom 5% were trans, I want some basis for calling that the wrong number.)
Adding to my "not many fucks to give" is a something my daughter and I have discussed; how much sharper our hatred and contempt is for Trump voters now that he is in office. Almost certainly politically and socially unhelpful but God do i hate the fuckers.
54: yes. No fucks given now. If it weren't for my mom's poor health I would consider completely cutting ties with my trump-voting father. Struggling to decide if he's stupid or evil. Given filial respect, leaning towards the latter.
Appropriately 0.3% of people are trans gender.
I'm curious about the quality of the stats here. That is, acceptance of trans people has become wildly more mainstream in the past 5-10 years, and the number of actual trans people I'm aware of has also gone up quite a bit in that period. I've seen very very low numbers like the ones you quote a lot, and they seem out of step with the people I'm aware of -- I wonder if they're out of date, and if more current stats would show higher numbers.
On cops and so on, I was at a small-ish march focused on immigration rights yesterday night, and the cops were pretty low key. Not super cheery and supportive, but it was a freezing night and not a warm sunny day so there is that.
Also got a lot of cheers from people walking/driving by (even the ones we delayed), which on the one hand yay but on the other feels like you're playing the game in easy mode.
I think the far more persuasive trans critique is the association of women with pussies/vulvas/uteruses. But still, I have problems with that critique as well. I get that we need to be careful not to deny women who don't have female genitalia a place in women's spaces/movements (and there's an ugly history of exclusion), but it feels weirdly erasing of the vast majority of women's experiences to deny or get upset at the association at all. Like, if you're going to have a problem that a woman wore a uterus hat to a women's march, that's also a problem of erasure.
54: A quote from Hunter S. Thompson's obituary for Richard Nixon seems apposite here:
Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.
54, 55 I'm in a similar position with family. Gone are the once weekly Skype/FaceTime sessions home. I couldn't avoid Christmas but kept it short. Dreading going back this summer.
My mom broke up with her boyfriend after he voted for Trump. It was the last straw in a long line of things, but it definitely changed things. The most infuriating aspect is he keeps talking about how shitty American social security benefits are and how he's going to move back to Finland.
Yeah, in general I have problems with the left's overreliance on the politics of representation.
Maybe things have zoomed past, but I've been itching to discuss this all week:
As you may have noted in 18.1, there were two marches here, because the original, main one was being organized by pretty aggressively clueless white suburban women who completely freaked out at being questioned/called out, to the point where the march for a time lost its status as an official sister march. In the end, they got their shit together, but not before an "Our Feminism Must Be Intersectional" march was organized by black femmes. My gut would be to support that one anyway, and it was located at the housing complex that's at the center of our park battle, so attendance was a given.
But the day before, an announcement went out that it was NOT an anti-Trump march. WTF? Then they got mad at marchers chanting "No Trump, no KKK..." And yesterday I read, "As black/POC femmes, our existence is anti-Trump." Uh no. No it fucking isn't. Your existence is not even guaranteed to continue under Trump unless you fucking do something. And telling white feminists that they suck doesn't count.
One of the friends I met at the D.C. march is relatively high ranking in the military, so she was there only so long as she could maintain plausible deniability of it being only pro-women and not anti-her-commander-in-chief. Which she thought she could, since anti-trumpness wasn't in the march's official statement. I think she made it two minutes into America Ferrara's speech before she bailed.
But I'm amazed that they got pissed at the east liberty march about anti-trump slogans. Then again, their FB page wasn't well organized. The first post was explicit about how they were non-racial; the second one had an activity for black femmes only. Huh?
That's really odd, objecting to anti-Trump slogans. There was some worry about that with the NYC march -- one of the organizers said something about welcoming Trump voters or something stupid, but on the ground it was universally anti-Trump. (Also, I'm completely ignorant, but I don't know exactly what 'femmes' means in context.)
Cultural Revolution-style thought policing and "leftier/more woke than thou" type pissing competitions.
When there is a literal Nazi in the White House. Like, priorities?
Well, everything in balance. People reasonably bitched about the DC march being insufficiently intersectional, the organizers listened, and they improved it. It didn't end up perfect, but a lot better than if no one had bitched. So a certain amount of leftier-than-thou bitching is good and necessary, you just need to keep it from getting out of control.
66
Yeah seriously. I'm like, NOW IS NOT THE TIME, PEOPLE. I see the worst side of it on an elite college campus though. 18 year olds are irritating, wealthy 18 year olds are doubly irritating, and smug self-righteous recently woke* wealthy 18 year olds are quadruply annoying.**
*But, like, not if it affects my GPA because OMG I have to get into Harvard med school.
**Actually, in fairness smug self righteous recently woke 26 yo PhD students are way more annoying. The 18 year olds at least have an excuse of being 18.
And before anyone jumps down my throat, in general I think being woke and activisty are good things. It's just, the level of unexamined privilege and shooting-self-in-foot entitled millennial tantrums from this group in this particular circumstance are breathtaking.
65: Reference.
Honestly, I didn't have a handle on the "femme" thing, but it seems simply to be an inclusive substitute for "women". I'm not 100% sure why it's categorically OK that it erases butch women or excludes men with uteruses, but whatever.
I only read that for the restaurant reviews.
Or, from a parenthetical at the like, anyone who identifies as feminine. Which could include some men.
It's a perfectly reasonable usage, I just don't think I've ever seen the word used precisely that way before the P'burgh march.
I've accepted that every issue discussion in this country will devolve into farce and only the cleansing fire of a mighty asteroid will set us free.
I don't see why only French women can be activists, however topless and enlightened they may be.
You do you. The rest of us will keep working as we see fit.
BTW, AB & I are clearly visible in the NYT photo of our march.
Then again, their FB page wasn't well organized. The first post was explicit about how they were non-racial; the second one had an activity for black femmes only. Huh?
I'm sure there was internal disagreement (or maybe not-agreement); it wasn't apparent at the event at all, but looking at the overall info out there, it's really clear that there's one organizer who's emphatic on this point, and that the others are willing to be supportive. But I haven't seen anyone else making those arguments.
Anyway, to be kind of blunt, they're getting away with a lot of dubious stuff because most people are in "no enemies to the left of Trump" mode, but they are not on track to lead anything sustainable because there's a lot of personal touchiness that you just can't act on if you want to lead more than 3 friends and 20 sycophants.
71:Those things have been mailed in for years.
I just used the top google search result (data from 2011). the second google search result from 2016 gives 0.6%.
Yeah, I haven't ever seen any higher numbers. But wouldn't you agree that it seems a little low looking around?
The top google search result for 0.3% is 0.6%?
Getting away from the local march, the thing that has annoyed me most about the anti-pussy hat stuff is that it's not as if a bunch of cisgendered het women came up with it out of nowhere, as a way of expressing the most important and fundamental basis of their objection to Trump. It's a reference to a specific thing that was (and is) directly threatening, with all sorts of rhetorical power that makes it ripe for appropriation. Many immigrants don't speak Spanish, yet repurposing the phrase "bad hombre" is not an effort to erase their existence.
Ideally, I want to improve the government not improve the people. The people get to be shitty like they always are.
"The top google search result for 0.3% is 0.6%?"
percentage transgender
I self-identify as deliberately missing the point.
79: It's possible that you're in a coastal bubble situation, LB. I mean, maybe the percentage of people who, in a world without judgment, would prefer to live as the gender they weren't born into is above 0.6%, but I wouldn't peg the number of trans-identified people as meaningfully higher.
Now, if you include genderqueer, it probably goes up a chunk, but I'm not sure those should be conflated for these purposes. Like, cisgendered might be just 98% of the population*, but that doesn't mean the other 2% is all trans.
*again, possibly higher in a better society, but putting a number on that is pure speculation
It probably doubled. I just always grab the top google search result. (I only saw that 0.6% number after re- googling.)
To be clear, the 98% in 85 isn't meant as a claim, just an illustration. But I think that's the range: I don't think that 10% of the world (as it exists) considers itself non-cis.
Yeah, I don't have a sense of what I think the real numbers are.
.3-.6 percent doesn't sound crazy offhand. Like in a high school of 3000 you'd have 10 or 15? Seems about right.
When you put it that way, that does sound reasonable. I might have just been underestimating how many people .3% of the population would look like in practice.
Since it should be okay to go off topic at this stage: I thought this study (link below) was an interesting combination of "didn't we kind of know that? but here's the evidence" + "also explains a recent development" .
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/sunday/why-succeeding-against-the-odds-can-make-you-sick.html?_r=0
Brain Hat for the scientists' march?
(It's a plain pink hat with icord sewn all over it for convolutions.)
In some ways the virulently pro-ignorance and stupidity aspect of the Republican party is the worst. It's subtle, but undereducating or miseducating the majority of Americans is already having long-term terrible ramifications and will continue to do so. The Chinese are shocked over how we've shot ourselves in the face, education-wise.
91: I stopped getting colds after my son was about five or so. I had thought that I was getting sick prior to that because kids are germ magnets, but that's also about the same time I just gave up on advancing.
I've spent the majority of the Trump administration home sick and feverous with what's probably the flu. It must be all my relentless striving.
Ugh. The actual flu is horrible. Left me unable to move for three days and just horrible for a week or so more. Worse than mono.
Never had mono. High fever for a couple days, lots of aches, poor temperature regulation, largely incoherent, all the other standard symptoms. Also some awful vomiting, but that might have been due to How Lee's more than the flu. So maybe it's stomach flu? I had my shot, but apparently the vaccine wasn't very effective this year?
Anyway, that's where any incoherentness is coming from. Probably.
That's not a signal that the marchers were doing anything right, that's a signal that the police aren't hostile to crowds they perceive as nice white ladies.
On the way to the DC march, I warned my 12-year-old daughter to keep her eyes open for packs of wild women with switchblades, because they are known to be instigators in these situations.
My wife was not amused. This is because she's a humorless feminist.
93: Oh, and Chinese people aren't provincial in the same way as red state folks tend to be? Please.
Delayed live-blogging of wearing the pussy hat to work. Wore it from the car to the door of the buidling. I don't think anyone saw me.
92: If anyone expects scientists to march in that, they're going to actually have to get the sulci/gyri right.
99:
1. Maybe not, but the Chinese elite are probably shocked that our elite had such a bad handle on the proles.
2. I think there's an argument to be made that people in genuinely shitty conditions are more pragmatic. Whereas Trump won thanks to people who aren't doing all that badly, but feel they're entitled to have everything handed to them - retirees and near-retirees watching Fox News, middle-class white people who are totally average but think they should be lording it over minorities, etc. There's a certain degree of delusion involved.
99
I have yet to meet a Chinese person even in the most backwards of backwaters who doesn't believe in evolution, global warming, the importance of vaccination, science, and the value of education. This goes doubly true for elites.
There are definitely provincial people and people who believe crazy things, but you don't find those people in high government positions. Corrupt yes, stupid no. But more importantly, as 99 points out, China is gobsmacked that we've chosen to handicap ourselves in this way. We've basically told the world we no longer want to be a superpower and invited the Chinese in to take our place, something Chinese leaders are more than happy to do, from foreign investment to alternative energy. They also are confused as to why we seem intent on making ourselves into a developing country by dumbing down our workforce, ruining our higher education system, dismantling our safety net, and destroying our environment.
When it comes to general attitudes, the Chinese government has set out a plan that they want China to be a technologically-advanced manufacturing powerhouse making high-quality goods, e.g. a large-scale Japan or Germany.* This has a lot of enthusiasm across all levels of society, and there's universal recognition that being an advanced society requires a highly educated workforce. The Chinese government has made secondary education free and is expanding tertiary education at breakneck speed through billions of dollars of investment. Tuition is reasonable and need-based scholarships are widespread. Although proletarianizing its workforce is creating headaches in the short term for the govt. (an educated and urbanized populace is also significantly more savvy and demanding), longterm it's the only way for China to become an actual developed world superpower. Their environment is FUBAR in a lot of ways, but their government is taking global warming seriously, and they're not messing around in the goal to become the leading producer of renewable energy.
*Chinese people joke that maybe they should have lost WW2 as well.
TL:DR
China is a developing country wanting to be a developed country. They're beyond confused that we're a developed country wanting to be a developing country.
So I'm hanging out in an ER room with my husband, who's had a nervous breakdown, and I managed to grab my pink yarn but not the crochet hook.
So I'm hanging out in an ER room with my husband, who's had a nervous breakdown, and I managed to grab my pink yarn but not the crochet hook.
106/7
I'm sorry to hear that!
Might they sell crochet hooks in the hospital gift shop?
I doubt it, but at least I grabbed my phone charger. Debating whether to call his parents yet, but will probably wait a few more hours at least.
102-5: I take your points, but in terms of the components of education required for good governance, I think we still have China beat. Large swathes of our population are of course fucking useless, but, when it comes to critical thinking about our government and history and awareness of the world beyond our borders, the Clinton-voting segment of America would take China to the cleaners. Also, Chinese post secondary education is for shit.
Sympathy, J Robot. Hope you're both ok.
I think this may be the result of chronic sleep deprivation, combined with poorly managed stress and anxiety, but he hasn't had a psych consult yet, and I haven't heard about any lab results either.
I just hope that a) this is something treatable and not terribly serious, b) that he didn't lose his job, and c) that this serves as sufficient motivation to finally see a counselor.
I hope you guys are ok, JR. QuizUp is a good ER game.
Is there a real cause for the sleep thing, or was he letting things get the better of him? That is, is he in the midst of some massive time-demand, or is sleep just not a priority? Is this long term, or relatively recent?
Feel free to tell me to stop being nebby. Mostly I'm just hoping that you're right, and that it's something easily handled mostly through behavioral stuff.
Ah, for feck's sake, as if you guys haven't had enough to cope with. All I can do is remember to keep sending the game lives.
It helps me to talk about it, especially because I don't really feel like there's anyone local I can call right now.
He's always been a poor sleeper, and he has untreated* sleep apnea as well. In retrospect, things really went downhill after the election, which left him emotionally devastated in a way I've never seen in him before. I think he had also been repressing a lot of feelings about my cancer, and our friends' deaths, and our other friends' cancer recurrences. His mood picked up a bit around Christmas, but then he bought a new car and got locked in a dispute with the dealership. He's become increasingly fixated on that, which has led to staying up multiple nights in a row to research issues on car forums.
He was sent home from work today. I'm both shocked they let him drive, and amazed that he didn't cause an accident. He came home sobbing, talking about assassins, basically delusional. I got him to a hospital, and he's finally asleep.
I'm worried about him, but I also genuinely don't know how I can handle even one more additional thing going wrong. I ran out of teaspoons, like, fifteen crises ago.
*He tried a cpap, hated it, and then got stuck in billing hell with the medical supplier and insurance, which killed his likelihood of ever trying another model.
Re: the CPAP thing, I had the same thing with a sleazy CPAP company. They ended up filling in small claims and were sated when I sent back the machine with a letter from my brother's firm. I ended up buying a used one for $300 and programming it myself. I think it makes a big difference, but I tolerate it.
Thanks, all. They're taking his temperature rectally right now, so I got the fuck out of the room for a few minutes.
I hated cpap, but have had a much better experience with an oral appliance. That said they're a bit of an insurance nightmare because it's a medical device which goes through dentists, so it's not covered by dental and it's out-of-network for medical. Cost me around 2K which is probably a deal-breaker for something that might not help (though maybe other insurance is better), it was fine for me due to my weirdly good Danielscare HSA. Sorry if none of this is helpful.
And there aren't even any Pokémon around here...
Oh, gosh, J, Robot. I'm sorry you have to deal with so much, and I hope he uses this as a call to seek proper treatment.
Seconding trivia games for ER waiting room time-killing.
Right now they're trying to rule out meningitis or some kind of infection. Staff here all seem pretty decent, though, and I found my crochet hook after all,
Right now they're trying to rule out meningitis or some kind of infection. Staff here all seem pretty decent, though, and I found my crochet hook after all,
Scary! Wishing you and him less stress and a quick recovery.
I'm so sorry, JR. If you are out of teaspoons, let us know if we can supply a few. Feeling tapped out is the worst. Not that this in any way compares, but I truly sympathize; there was a time a little while ago when my husband almost had a grad school breakdown at the precise moment I was on my third pregnancy that turned into a subsequent third miscarriage and it was all we could do not to fall into a hole of having zero ability to care for ourselves, or worse, each other in the pile of crap that is the world post-election. We got out of it because it was a comparatively shallow hole and we got rid of at least some of the stressors that were dragging us down. But FFS this year is looking to be as bad as last year, and last year was the year in which I actually said in my head "OK, I've had two miscarriages, but at least I didn't lose my baby a week before the due date like my other friend so the least I can do is get my shit together and go to work" as a way to kick myself out of bed. I am really ready for all this bad shit to stop happening to great people though.
I'm sorry to hear of your losses, Belle Lettre. I can only imagine how difficult that was.
You people are making me so clingy to AB that our tween daughter is complaining. God bless us, every one.
A crochet hook surely qualifies as a blessing. Or at least, you know, a break from the relentless hell.
Thanks guys. I miss this community, feel bad about not being around more, but I really do value it.
Ugh. Best wishes to JR and BL.
Bell Lettre, I'm so sorry to hear that. J, you too. You have a lot of fans at our house pulling for good things for you!
If it helps to be honest, I'm pretty well tapped out too. Within the week we will finally get in with rheumatologists who will almost certainly diagnose Mara with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. This is her second weekend with me instead of with Lee because I'm the one who can do her physical therapy with her and have a heated mattress cover and can at least pretend I can deal with having a child who's in pain all the time. Selah is alone with Lee and with a viral cough and begging to come back here and I've said no because letting her choose where to live at 4 seems like a bad precedent. If we can get the coparenting therapist to convince Lee that the girls need stability they can't get with her. And as I was writing this she called, so now I'll have all three for the weekend starting in a few minutes. There's other stuff too, but no point enumerating it here.
That sounds rough, Thorn, I'm sorry. Sending good thoughts to you and the girls.
Mr Robot's labs and scans all came back fine, so now we're waiting for a psychiatric nurse to evaluate him. I'm feeling a little guilty for not paying close enough attention to the signs he was breaking down, but having grown up with parents who were frequently in mental health crisis, and then having my own struggles, I don't really have a good sense of normal.
I hope, at least, that this leads to him taking better care of himself (and me working on healthier habits myself).
Augh!
Mr. Robot sounds like he is in a horrible hole. I've heard good things about oral appliances for apnea. Compliance is easier/better even if they aren't the gold standard of the CAP.
Lee isn't proving an ability to care for a child. Sick kids are part of the routine. Sorry to hear about Mara. VW might have advice.
I'm wearing a t-shirt that says "Say yes to new adventures." I am throwing it in the trash the minute I get home.
Oh, J. Robot, I wish I could make things better for you. I have to assume CPAP machines are a thing people don't really share, but UNG had one for awhile which is still lying around my house. I would be happy to ship it if there was even a slight possibility it could help.
Adventures make you late for breakfast.
134 I suspect it can be pretty hard to differentiate not doing well from headed for a crisis sometimes anyway, especially if you've had a ton of your own shit to deal with. No guilt.
What 139 said, JR. Everyone I know seems to be having extreme mood swings on at least a daily basis because that's a normal response to this environment. It's very easy for things to seem basically normal until suddenly they're very clearly not. That you trusted him to monitor his own situation speaks well of you and your faith in him. I hope he can get stabilized to the point of taking that over and get the help and support he needs to get back on track. (Sorry for the cliches.)
139 and 140: Also true.
Mr Robot's sleeping right now, and I'm basically just waiting to see if he'll be admitted.
And it probably goes without saying, but no guilt and blame for him, either. It's easy to think you can hold it all together until suddenly you can't. You will both get through this. But it sucks in the meantime.
135.last Yes, he's been wonderful! We have a great group of people here, and knowing about what he went through last year has made this much easier on me. It just gets harder day by day for me to handle her suffering, but mostly because it's compounded on all the other things going on already. She's in good spirits for the most part and I'm incredibly proud of how she's been holding up and how well she uses the time in the afternoons especially when things aren't so bad. I'm grateful that Lee isn't insisting on time with her and that's the way I think things need to go, but that's hard too.
I'm glad he's sleeping, JR. Hope you will be soon too. I haven't dealt with that particular problem, but I do think it's probably better to have an admission if you can, because there are resources you can access after an inpatient stay that you can't through an outpatient or day-program setting. But I know it's always about how many beds there are and what hoops need to be jumped through and so on, not your call.
Frankly, I think making pink the color of the anti-Trump-ite forces, would be wonderful. As would (frankly) women being the leadership of those forces. Secondly because some nontrivial part of all this is a backlash by men angry at losing their privilege, and firstly b/c about f**kin' time. One thing I wondered about: I read articles about "pro-life" (I say "forced-birth", you say "pro-life", let's call the whole thing off!) women being rebuffed by the Women's March organizers, and getting angry about it.
I guess, I don't understand how it could be different. I mean, from where I sit, you can't be for oppressing women in the most important way that matters to them, and still expect to be welcomed with open arms by the anti-Trump-ites. But maybe I'm lost?
But pussyhats at every anti-Trump march? Allelulia.
Another point here for "CPAPs might potentially be great, but in reality they suck" vs "oral appliances actually seem OK".
134: Skip the guilt. IMX it only fuels endless and useless cycles of "if only". Best wishes going forward.
I'm glad Mr Robot is sleeping, JR. You need a break.
Still at the hospital. The doctor wants me to be here for the psych consult, which should happen any hour now.
Patient appeared confused and disoriented.
Well yeah. Woken up at 0200 after a horrible day.
Hang in there. Hope you get a chance to rest soon.
Everyone's having a rough night, good luck folks.
Nurse assistant just asked me if I was Mr. Robot's daughter.. Not quite as awkward as when people have assumed I was my dad's wife or girlfriend, but I'm still glad Mr. Robot was sleeping at the time.
Hoping the cats haven't clawed the house to shreds.
Very sorry to hear about what you're going through J, Robot. Hang in there!
Thank you. I don't know what the hell kind of psych consult can actually be conducted at 2 am, but I (can only hope) am about to find out.
3 am psych consult was about as helpful as one would expect it to be. Looks like I'll be taking him home and trying to get him in to see my psychiatrist on Monday.
Oh man, everyone. I'm so sorry to hear what you are each dealing with. J, Robot -- hope you can get a little window of peace for yourself amidst the hospital stress.
Belle, regardless of any loss anyone else may suffer, your experience of grief is your own and is real and should be honored. I know you hardly need anyone, let alone a stranger on the internet, to say so, but I just wanted to affirm it.
Thorn, I'm awfully sorry to hear about all that you and your girls are juggling. Not easy under the best of circumstances and definitely not when Lee is continuing to be so unhelpful. I hope the diagnosis removes some uncertainty and helps you get puzzle pieces in place.
If all goes well with a few things at my end, I expect to have a mildly epic tale to distract the blog with in a few days. Fingers crossed it all turns out.
Sympathies to JR, Belle, and Thorn. Fingers crossed for all of you and Witt.
Sympathies, JR. Really sorry to hear what you're going through. As someone who uses (and dislikes) a cpap machine, I recommend them reluctantly because they do work as nothing else does. But the mask matters enormously. Spend time getting the right one of those (they vary between Darth Vader/"I'm going over the top at Vimy Ridge" to a couple of buttons to put in each nostril) and the vile machines become more tolerable.
And the thought of a 2am psych exam -- really spelunking the dark night of the soul. Hang in there.
Belle, Thorn, Mara, more thoughts from here.
It's 4:30 am. I am unclear how making me stay up all night is going to help Mr. Robot. Still waiting for discharge papers.
Ugh, JR!!! The hospital closest to us does psych consults by rolling in a computer and having you skype with a nurse across town, though that doesn't happen until you've been sitting for a few hours. Luckily after several tries at that I realized we could go to the wonderful children's hospital across the river because here Medicaid will cover out-of-state emergency psychiatric care but not ongoing treatment, and now their intake/assessment is even better. We've had to make one trip in the last few months, but the medication they suggested has been wonderfully effective and I hope will keep us from having to go back too soon.
Physical health coverage there is great, so the first doctor who saw Mara at urgent care was an oncologist who takes shifts there to keep up with cancer-free kids' health concerns, who immediately did a blood test to be sure it wasn't cancer and then set us up with rheumatology. An ER visit a few days later when her problems spread to a new joint included consulting with rheumatologists to get her an immediate physical therapy referral and a better NSAID that still doesn't cut the pain but can't hurt and means we'll be able to check the box for first-line therapies when we arrive at our initial screening, which I hope means we can move on to medicines that will work. Her physical therapist is wonderful and in just three weeks we're already seeing that her exercises are getting easier and that her strength and flexibility are improving. (It's her knees and ankle affected, so we did the march with her and Selah in a wagon and I'm trying hard to make regular life as comfortable and accessible as I can.)
I'd been planning not to say anything about this until we knew for sure and had a plan, but I was recently reminded of SP's comments when his little daughter was sick and that I learned from them. I hope none of you need to worry about what to do for a child whose joints get painful, but here's my bit. Meanwhile I haven't gotten around to my own PT and still use an ankle brace I think today is 21 weeks since I sprained it by I've sort of stopped counting. And I still have a cough, though my sinus infection and bronchitis eventually cleared up. This has not been the world's easiest winter, but last one wasn't either and we got through and life got better.
I'm so sorry Belle Lettre. I hope this year isn't as bad as it looks now.
JR, I hope you guys got to go home and that you both get some rest. That must have been terrifying. I'm glad you got him to the hospital. I hope it's not serious, just temporary and that your psychiatrist can help. Take care of yourself. I'm so sorry things aren't getting easier; you deserve a break.
Thorn, I'm sorry about Mara. I'm sorry about Lee, too, but it sounds like your ties to her are weakening, which will be good for you and probably (long-term) good for the girls. Are YOU okay? Please be sure to do what you can for yourself. Self-sacrifice is great and you're great, but do you really want to model permanent injury due to lack of self-care to your daughters?
I know distance precludes it, but I wish I could have y'all over for a cup of tea/cocoa/hot chocolate and feed you cookies. Or whatever. Wine and chocolate? I'll settle for wishing someone had a magic wand to wave.
I'm trying to be mindful of my own health and the ankle is improving, but I really can't take any more time off work than I'm already doing. I'm hoping after Mara's appointment we'll have enough clarity that I can get back on my orthopedist' schedule and go from there. It was the months of not being able to breathe that were the worst and now that that's lifting I've already gotten some cleaning and laundry done this morning, not just breakfast. It all helps. And I have a very pushy and correct therapist making sure I focus on kustkf when I should. I'm trying.
Sorry, I hope mine didn't come off as sharp. Tone of voice is hard in writing. I know you're doing everything you can when you don't have time or energy or nearly enough help. The boyfriend and I have each sprained ankles, and I was lucky enough to have good PT and time to do it (I hurt myself at work, so it was on work time), and he didn't. It made a huge difference to how quickly each of us healed. My PT was hilarious. She was a former trainer for the Baltimore Ravens who was so excited to see an ankle sprain rather that repetetive stress injuries. "You have a high ankle sprain! That's like football players get! So, your foot rolled under as you fell? Does this hurt?! Oh, it does?! That's great!"
And yay on getting stuff done this weekend. I've made the executive decision to go to work tomorrow rather than today to get some chores done so I can feel like I'm a contributing member of the household.
I wasn't offended, ydnew! I know I'm cutting corners and trying to judge what's most urgent. I assume that in retrospect some of my choices will be wrong, but I also know that's all I've got right now. I suspect that if they'd realized earlier how bad my sprain was I might have gone with surgery or something, but maybe they only do that if the tendon is actually broken the whole way through. I've been good about cutting back our baseline to the point I can handle (so mess and lots of premade food) and figuring it will get better from there bit by bit, but it's just each thing compounding whatever problems came before and aren't yet resolved.
(I made myself a pussy hat at the last minute using VERY large yarn because I'm not that fast a knitter. It is not an especially fine garment. Pussy((cat)) hat, varmint garment, heh.)
A thing I can't keep track of is the I guess gender essentialism of trans women who at great cost and great effort do in fact realize their gender identity by getting the parts in question vs the (newer, I think?) trans doctrine that it's wrong and damaging to associate gender and anatomy. I'm not sure I've said this well, and I recognize that I'm saying it in a forum I think has no trans women because I have the perception that having questions at all can be taken as being a bad ally these days.
I don't suppose my castration anxiety helps either.
137: The machine would be fine to share. You just need to buy new tubing, and you need to know the prescription. Where I am this goes straight from the doctor to the medical supply company. It's a real racket.
A CPAP guy just did me a huge favor today (getting me a part we lost for free and on Saturday).
It's not my CPAP. I only snore because I drink.
144: Frankly, I think making pink the color of the anti-Trump-ite forces, would be wonderful.
Relatedly I have wondered whether relatively non-partisan things like pink ribbons for breast cancer will be increasingly viewed through a partisan lens. If so organizations like the NFL will have their fingers in the wind.
Much love to Thorn, Mara, and everyone else. We got home a little after 5 am, and he got several more hours of sleep. He's no longer delusional, and we're dealing with the anxiety with xanax, cats, and Pixar movies. I'm going to try to get an emergency appointment for him with my psychiatrist on Monday, but I think we are going to be alright. Crossing my fingers that his boss accepts his apology and doesn't fire him.
176: good if he'll take him on an emergency basis, but he might see it as a conflict of interest.
Fingers crossed for you and yours, J.
It has to be pink. All the other revolution colors will be envious.
J, no flippancy intended but being able to deploy "my wife had breast cancer and then 20 million bizarre related conditions and I haven't been able to sleep and lost my shit," even if not the whole truth? Should go pretty far toward medical leave rather than firing. I hope it works out. I hope even more, if more futilely, that you'll be able to stress about it as little as possible until reality becomes clear.
That was weird. Just spent the day lawyering at JFK. Went to protest, and then they called for attorneys. I mostly stood around -- no heroic feats of anything.
Kudos to BigLaw which was out in force. I saw lawyers from Cleary, Weill, and Sherman and Sterling, and god knows where all else the rest of the million lawyers worked.
BigLaw does not seem to be hedging its bets on this. I was there early, but once the firms showed up it was a seething, anthill-like mass of lawyers.
The lawyers were like ants or grains of dirt arranged by ants?
Ants. Dirt doesn't seethe the same way.
Are we talking regular ants or white ants? Because those motherfuckers build nests that can give a bulldozer pause.
Glad to hear that LB. And heartened by 184.
Nice work, LB!
(At this point, I suspect good lawyering is the only thing that might possibly save us.)
JR, hope you and Mr Robot are enjoying the Pixar movies while you decompress.
Some little signs of hope: Protest at MSP of course, and our heroic First Somali-American Legislator Rep. Ilhan Omar, posted a community talk back invitation about organizing against the EO for tomorrow at her office upstairs in the bohemian area she represents. Too many people were signing up, so she's moved the location to the nearby community center, but I don't think it could handle even a third of the FB RSVPs comfortably. They'll probably have to get one of the big lecture halls on campus.
That was me. Also, saw Hidden Figures finally and thought it very, very good indeed. Maybe not perfect, but way more explicitly feminist and anti-racist than I ever expect from Hollywood.
Oh, one other nice thing: Stopped at the convenience store and a young African-American fellow was just finishing up his transaction with the clerk, who is an Arab-American, and said something along the lines of "Stay strong with all this shit going on, brother" which I thought was a fine gesture of solidarity.
So, 207 more weeks to go, right?
I have a cow orker here who is directly affected. They are Iraqi. Her mother and a sibling have green cards and reside in the PNW. Her father also has a green card but is currently here. He bought a plane ticket to go back to the US in a little over a month but is not sure what to do. I would love to hook them up with some sound legal advice (and have a lawyer on call there if he can fly back).
Please hit me up.
Yay LB and the other lawyers!
I went down to the White House yesterday, figuring there might be some spontaneous action, but there were only a few tourists and a bunch of cops. There is something on for today, so I might go down again.
181: That is my plan for him. I'm going to see if I can get a doctor to write it up in a note for his firm.
194: Similar sentiment in double-sign form (courtesy a former denizen of here on Twitter).
Mr. Robot's office has put him on paid leave, which I'm choosing to see as a good thing. Trying to get him appointment with a psychiatrist this week. Now I have to go give a talk on campus to a group of international academics hosted by the S/tate D/ept, and that's going to be...interesting.
Feeling pretty stressed out.
Relieved to hear that J, Robot. Now go knock 'em dead.
Good news, JR! The leave at least gets you through now, and you can figure out next steps for him once he's more stable.
Me, I woke up in the night with a fever and feel sicker than I have in a long time, so it's off to the doctor to be tested for flu or whatever else they think might be going on.
Oh no, Thorn! I hope you feel better soon.
Not flu, just more bronchitis or more of the same bronchitis or whatever. Throwing lots of medication at it, and I'm sure I'll be fine.