All knowledge is contained
May. 21st, 2014 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livPeople have been posting informative guides recently, so have some links:
jae: Forms of address in North American academia. Wittily written, lots of overlap with academia in anglophone countries and interesting contrasts with eg continental Europe. The comments go interesting places in terms of discussing name etiquette in general. This tends to be a particularly acute problem for women, partly because lots of languages and cultures still have bits left over from eras when women were just their husband's wife rather than having their own identity. See for example this discussion chez rmc28, which isn't quite so cross-cultural as jae's, but interesting. Titles for people who aren't either male or female, or don't want to mark their gender as part of their formal name, remain an unsolved problem, and it's touched on in some of the discussions, but I don't have a particularly good recent post about it to link to.
jack wrote a challah FAQ, something I've been meaning to do for ages because people do in fact F.A. me Qs about whether non-Jews are allowed to eat challah. jack is wittier than me, though, so go and read his post and the ensuing discussion.
Can't now remember who linked tomelannen's excellent list and discussion of menstrual symptoms. There's an ongoing Tumblr fight I'm vaguely aware of where apparently some men (possibly straw, possibly actual ignorant teenage boys) treat periods as just a minor inconvenience and laugh at girls / women who complain about them, and Tumblr counters this with screeds about how periods are actually terrible and devastating. There is undoubtedly a problem of periods being seen as "gross" such that many men make it a point of pride that they're completely ignorant of this aspect of human experience. Matter-of-fact posts like melannen's are a good way to counter this: yes, many people experience pain, mood issues and digestive symptoms that are affected by their menstrual cycle. And a period isn't always or even usually a nice convenient 3-4 days of bleeding exactly once a month. However, some of the stuff I've seen on Tumblr goes too far in the opposite direction, a sort of competition to make periods sound as horrifying and debilitating as possible. Honestly it's not normal to be in massive unbearable pain for several days every month, it's not normal for periods to render you completely unable to get through your day-to-day existence, and it's not normal to bleed so much that the blood can't be contained by any sanitary products. There's likely to be an underlying and possibly treatable medical issue if periods are that bad, and the meme that periods are "meant" to be unspeakably miserable and agonizingly painful is itself sexist and damaging.
Finally, on a serious note, how to be supportive to someone with a terminal diagnosis. Gross is a friend of a friend, so her stuff comes up on my FB feed from time to time, and she's a strong writer.
As for me, I'm in the part of the academic year where I feel as if I don't really have time for my own life. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, and most grateful for support from friends even if I don't really have time for all the conversations I want to be having. Term ends on Friday, and much as I love full-on teaching like this I have such a backlog of everything I've put off while I've been so busy, I'm kind of counting the hours.
This weekend I celebrated my sister's 30th birthday, which involved a very cool Tube-themed party (I pinned some red playing cards to a red dress to represent Redbridge), and a bit of hanging out in Brighton in glorious May sunshine. And back to Stoke for the community's Lag b'Omer picnic, which was likewise blessed with stunningly good weather. I'm also in (what I hope are) the closing stages of selling my old house in Stoke and buying somewhere withjack in Cambridge, so it's a bit stressy.
Hoping to be in Cambridge over the BH weekend, and might see some folk at the beer festival?
jae: Forms of address in North American academia. Wittily written, lots of overlap with academia in anglophone countries and interesting contrasts with eg continental Europe. The comments go interesting places in terms of discussing name etiquette in general. This tends to be a particularly acute problem for women, partly because lots of languages and cultures still have bits left over from eras when women were just their husband's wife rather than having their own identity. See for example this discussion chez rmc28, which isn't quite so cross-cultural as jae's, but interesting. Titles for people who aren't either male or female, or don't want to mark their gender as part of their formal name, remain an unsolved problem, and it's touched on in some of the discussions, but I don't have a particularly good recent post about it to link to.jack wrote a challah FAQ, something I've been meaning to do for ages because people do in fact F.A. me Qs about whether non-Jews are allowed to eat challah. jack is wittier than me, though, so go and read his post and the ensuing discussion.Can't now remember who linked to
melannen's excellent list and discussion of menstrual symptoms. There's an ongoing Tumblr fight I'm vaguely aware of where apparently some men (possibly straw, possibly actual ignorant teenage boys) treat periods as just a minor inconvenience and laugh at girls / women who complain about them, and Tumblr counters this with screeds about how periods are actually terrible and devastating. There is undoubtedly a problem of periods being seen as "gross" such that many men make it a point of pride that they're completely ignorant of this aspect of human experience. Matter-of-fact posts like melannen's are a good way to counter this: yes, many people experience pain, mood issues and digestive symptoms that are affected by their menstrual cycle. And a period isn't always or even usually a nice convenient 3-4 days of bleeding exactly once a month. However, some of the stuff I've seen on Tumblr goes too far in the opposite direction, a sort of competition to make periods sound as horrifying and debilitating as possible. Honestly it's not normal to be in massive unbearable pain for several days every month, it's not normal for periods to render you completely unable to get through your day-to-day existence, and it's not normal to bleed so much that the blood can't be contained by any sanitary products. There's likely to be an underlying and possibly treatable medical issue if periods are that bad, and the meme that periods are "meant" to be unspeakably miserable and agonizingly painful is itself sexist and damaging. Finally, on a serious note, how to be supportive to someone with a terminal diagnosis. Gross is a friend of a friend, so her stuff comes up on my FB feed from time to time, and she's a strong writer.
As for me, I'm in the part of the academic year where I feel as if I don't really have time for my own life. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, and most grateful for support from friends even if I don't really have time for all the conversations I want to be having. Term ends on Friday, and much as I love full-on teaching like this I have such a backlog of everything I've put off while I've been so busy, I'm kind of counting the hours.
This weekend I celebrated my sister's 30th birthday, which involved a very cool Tube-themed party (I pinned some red playing cards to a red dress to represent Redbridge), and a bit of hanging out in Brighton in glorious May sunshine. And back to Stoke for the community's Lag b'Omer picnic, which was likewise blessed with stunningly good weather. I'm also in (what I hope are) the closing stages of selling my old house in Stoke and buying somewhere with
jack in Cambridge, so it's a bit stressy. Hoping to be in Cambridge over the BH weekend, and might see some folk at the beer festival?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-21 10:58 am (UTC)Indeed! I did actually have terrible periods - two days of agony in bed, migraines, incredibly heavy bleeding that no devices could contain (not even plastic underwear over the top), and all of this happening at totally random intervals. Despite my mother being a nurse, and telling various medical professionals and teachers (due to embarrassing incidents) no-one thought to investigate the problem. Turned out I had PCOS and endometriosis, but this was entirely treatable, as I found out...aged 26 in hospital for cervical shock. Periods aren't just an annoying day or two, but they shouldn't be an extreme ordeal either.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-22 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-21 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-21 03:49 pm (UTC)Given my affinity with red dresses, I'd like to see that. Anyone actually being in the dress is purely optional, of course.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-05-22 04:53 pm (UTC)