A Quick Post About Tomorrow... When the Resistance Starts in Earnest.

A point of order for the resistance tomorrow. As people have said with old media (ie TV), the goal should not be to simply leave the TV off. While viewership might be down, overall share of the views will be drastically up. You can see how someone like He Who Shall Not Be Named would manipulate that to say how popular he is. So change the channel, put on TLC, put on that one housing and decorating channel, put on QVC, put on something that won't be showing the inauguration. Bring those numbers down. Meanwhile online, I would say, don't hashtag him. Don't mention him. Leave him as a vague pronoun. Leave him as a vague cipher so facebook or twitter's algorithms won't pick it up and say how "everyone" is talking about him. Don't fucking give him attention. Please, don't. Don't normalize him. Don't defend the fucking prick as he is far beyond the pale. Tomorrow at 12:01 PM EST the resistance starts in earnest. Stay safe, stay INFORMED, and stay TOGETHER.

Hey you Nasty Women and Bad Hombres

I wanted to make my first post just a little introduction as well as an about me.  I'm Jenny, and I'm proud to be a Nasty Woman.  I'll be trying to write every week here to give hot takes on the news of the week, perspectives from the LGBT+ community, and historical perspectives.  I am a proud member of the LGBT+ community and have done grad school for European history, specifically the Holocaust/Nazi Germany.  I find these days that that specific area of expertise might be coming in handy more and more in the coming months under Trump.  I want to briefly state that his parallels with Hitler's style as well as how he rose to power are striking and need to be commented on.  I look forward to writing for you all, and hope to hear criticism and responses.  Be safe out there, folks.  It looks like it's getting hairier and hairier out there.
Jenny

Get an IUD

I am getting really sick of seeing the words “free birth control”. Especially when it comes to birth control paid for by an insurance company. Free? Newsflash, women pay for insurance. Uninsured? Well I bet you pay taxes... the same taxes which go into funding “free” clinics (except abortion). Or maybe you have no income, and thus make no tax contribution... well gee, that seems like a really bad time to have a baby. It seems to me a woman who can't even afford to make a contribution through taxes to health clinics really shouldn't be having a child which will immediately require government welfare programs to survive. A baby which will make this poor woman much less likely to do the sort of things she needs to do to get herself out of poverty. And this sounds a lot more expensive than birth control.

Birth control isn't free. Unwanted children are not “saved”. Whether or not a woman pays a monetary cost for birth control we pay for it. Believe me.

Hormonal male birth control was abandoned because too many men dropped out of the study. Despite the fact that male birth control lacked many of the most severe side effects of female birth control... like death. One would think pussing out on birth control would at least give men a renewed respect for women bearing the brunt of responsibility in preventing pregnancy. Nope.

If you are a woman reading this I likely do not need to tell you how frustrating it can be trying to find the right hormonal birth control. You suffer through all kinds of side effects ranging from painful to humiliating. After recently switching my birth control due to the mustache I'd gotten from my progesterone only pill I found none of my clothes fit. I felt constant nausea, had terrible headaches, random bruising, constant bleeding and cramps, breast tenderness that made walking hurt on some days. My melasma mustache (I call him Federico) did not go away. I couldn't just stop taking this pill without some kind of a backup plan, not without risking a parasitic infection.... I mean pregnancy.

Thankfully I have never had to have an abortion despite being poor through my late teens and early twenties. I was lucky I became a sexually active poor person in the state of California, where state clinics are extremely cheap if not free. As a result I always had access to the pill, or plan B for the few times I had a condom break when not on the pill. I had access to important cancer screenings. I could get UTIs treated without having to starve for weeks to pay for it. When I moved back to New York City and needed birth control I went to Planed Parenthood. At the time I was unemployed. The pills still cost me over $100.

Now Republicans are working to allow insurance companies to start charging for birth control again. I am not an optimistic person, so I had a feeling this was coming. For this reason I rushed to get an IUD in December after finally deciding my fear of the big bad IUD was surpassed by my fear of the Republican's war on women.

Before the election my doctor suggested I get Mirena. I had always been a little afraid of IUDs. There are so many horror stories (most of which are based on the old fashioned IUDs) and they seemed so permanent. You can just switch pills, but you can't switch an IUD without more money and more pain. Then Trump won and Republicans took the majority in the House and Senate. So I started asking friends if they had IUDs and what they thought of them. What I found was everyone loved them. At least from my friend pool everyone was extremely happy. Most people wished they had done it sooner. Only one friend had an initially negative experience with expulsions and hormones, but after adjusting was happy she’d done it. I also found that the IUD, the most mysterious and frightening form of birth control methods had been floating around in the uteruses of A LOT of my friends and coworkers.

One thing everyone agreed on, (except my gynecologist who has some kind of magical reproductive system) was that the insertion process is a beast. I mean a BEAST! Holy crap was I unprepared. If I had to go back and do it all again I would ask my Doctor for some tramadol, which has been found to be the most effective pain medication for the insertion, and prescription ibuprofen for later. I would not, as my gyno advised, do it on my lunch break, and I would have had someone come with me to drive me to and from the office.

My friends had prepared me for a rough week. But I had heard mixed things about the early weeks of the IUD. Some people had terrible cramps for months, others days, my gynecologist was perfectly fine, because she is made of magic. For me it lasted about a week and a half, at which point I demanded some prescription ibuprofen which finally managed the pain. I didn’t have much bleeding. I have been spotting off and on since I got it at the end of December. My period was a little heavier, but nothing crazy. And in many women periods will stop all together with Mirena.

For the first week I thought I must be crazy to have allowed a stranger to shove a huge piece of plastic up my cervix. I felt bruised and raw in places I hadn't appreciated the existence of before. Was I really that afraid of the government? Yes. Yes I was, and yesterday it was confirmed that my fear was based in reality when the Republicans began their repeal of the Affordable Care Act and rejected attempts by democrats to keep coverage of female reproductive health, and preexisting conditions. Remember, being a woman in this country is considered a preexisting condition. So is being pregnant.

IUDs are 99.9% effective at keeping the GOP out of your uterus! 

I am so glad I got an IUD because it means I can focus without fear on fighting for women’s rights in an increasingly sexist country. It means I no longer have to worry about being able to afford my birth control. In some regards I now have the same reproductive freedoms as a man. I don’t have to take responsibility for a child unless I want to.

But I do not have the same freedom as a man. My darling boyfriend didn't have to suffer through the pain of the IUDs insertion. He didn't have to miss work because he was in too much pain to leave his bed. He didn't have to let a stranger ram and inch of plastic up his cervix. I don't resent my boyfriend for this, and I know he felt genuine concern and care for me while I was suffering, but it seems the majority of men in this country do not give a damn about what women go through to insure any offspring they do produce are cared for, wanted and loved. That is the message the Republicans have been sending since December when they began daily attacks on women's health and began passing legislation designed to shame and humiliate women.

Unless you are unable to get an IUD for medical reasons, or are ready to have a baby, please get one and do it now while you still can. Without insurance IUDs can easily cost over a thousand dollars.

Overall for me it was a positive experience. It made me feel much more empowered, and gave me a reason to talk about my body openly with others; something which for some reason we look down on in American culture. I wound up having conversations with friends coworkers and acquaintances about the female reproductive system in a really normal positive way as we shared advice and stories.  
We talk about this on episode 3 of our Nasty Women Report podcast, but for those of you who haven’t heard it, here’s what happens when you get an IUD:

That entire fucking thing gets rammed up your cervix!

First your gynecologist may want you to wait to order an IUD from the pharmaceutical company. Tell them your insurance is changing and you need to rush it if they do this (they might be able to get your insurance company to approve using an IUD from their stock rather than having to order one).

Once the IUD is ready to be placed you will have what starts off as a normal exam. The painful part is the device which opens your cervix. This may hurt less in women who have already had a child. Next your doctor will poke around in your uterus to measure it and figure out where to place the IUD. This part hurts a lot. Apparently being poked in the uterus causes contractions. At this point you will probably be thinking “holy shit what the fuck is wrong with me! Why am I letting someone do this to me! When will this pain ever end!” it ends in what will seem like the longest minute of your life.

Immediately after the insertion I felt fine. Some women feel dizzy or nauseous. As I checked out of the office the cramping started and only got worse as I drove home. I felt really awful for the rest of the day. It was far beyond period cramps. The next day I was able to run errands and live more normally, I even had sex. On the third day I think I was having uterine contractions. I was in so much pain I was writhing around and crying in my boyfriend’s car. He gave me some tea and buried me under a pile of blankets for the rest of the day. It was off and on like that for the first two weeks. But since then I have been alright. I have had an occasionally strange feeling that I have a tampon in, which is unsettling, but slowly going away.

I will go back to the doctor six weeks after my insertion just to make sure everything is in the right place, and then all I have to do is check on my strings for the next five years. By then I assume either America will be a smoldering pile of ruins, or some sanity will be returned to our government and I will be able to use my insurance for whatever reproductive health needs I may have. Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, but for now at least I do not have to worry about any unwanted pregnancies.

So go, my vagina touting friends! Select your IUD and spend the Trump era worrying about everything but unwanted pregnancies!

You too will be this happy in white when you no longer spontaneously bleed from the vagina!

What Do You Mean Make America Great Again?

The divide which exists in America is nothing new. It has always been there. With the aid of 24 hour news networks, social media bubbles, and a government which seems to have forgotten how to compromise, that divide has been widening. Trump won the White House by playing to that divide and going after the fringe elements of both the left and right. In this election being a centrist on either side was frowned upon. For the first time in my life I found myself with more in common with “Never Trump” Centrist Republicans than I did with members of the far left. Despite the fact that only 37% of American’s view Trump favorably he managed to scrape together enough votes to defeat Clinton. Since that defeat many public figures on both sides have said we cannot simply classify Trump's supporters as racist, uneducated, misogynists. So what is it Trump and his supporters really stand for?

One of the many troubling things about Trump is his inability to layout and commit to a clear agenda. From one day to the next it is impossible to know exactly what Trump plans to do. In case you haven't been able to keep up, this article from NBC does a great job of laying out just how much he flip flopped during his campaign. If it is difficult to understand exactly what Trump plans to do, it is even more difficult to understand the minds of the people who voted for him.

As the days tick away towards the impending Trumpocalypse it becomes less and less clear what exactly his supports expect from a Trump presidency. In a recent article by NPR Trump supporters seem not to care much about whether or not Trump actually comes through with any of his campaign promises.

“At rallies on Trump's campaign-funded victory lap of Iowa and other battleground states that voted for him, supporters have been telling NPR they're excited to see what the president-elect will do, even if they're not exactly sure what that will be — and that's OK with them. “

One of the men interviewed by NPR, David Mortiz, did have a clear reason for voting for Trump; he wants to see a conservative fill the empty seat in the Supreme Court. He goes on to say,"A lot of people project their own ideas on to him," he said. "They feel like whatever their highest dream is, they project on to him and say that he will make this happen. I tend to think that that's going to create a lot of uneasiness in the people when he ends up being just a regular human."

The article goes on to interview other Trump supporters, whose responses support this idea. I am blessed to know very few Trump supporters, but those I do interact with on a daily basis support the idea that Trump's supporters believe he will do what they believe he will do. Confusing? It should be. Now that we are in a “post facts world”, what other proof do you need than your own convictions? This does little to help us get to the bottom of what it is the other side wants, and even less to help us understand them.

In August the Atlantic published a collection of letters from Trump supporters explaining their rational. They vary widely from one person to the next. Unlike a politician we cannot see how Trump has voted on issues in the past. He is whatever he says he is, and he says a lot of things. Things which change from one moment to the next, and are difficult to keep up with if you don't really want to. It seems to boil down to “What does 'Make America Great Again' mean to you?”.

The responses to the Atlantic could fuel an entire years worth of this podcast and blog, so I will sum things up briefly here. The main reasons people seem to have voted for Trump are:

-They are part of the disenfranchised middle class and believe Trump will make their lives better by bringing back jobs and ending programs they feel burden them.

-A vote for Trump is a vote against the two party system.

-They want to watch chaos unfold.

-He is a negotiator and will make America appear more powerful globally, while getting the politicians in Washington in line.

-He will stop protest culture (Black Lives Matter).

-He will end political correctness.

-He will stop immigrants from taking American jobs.

Ignoring all the issues here (we will explore all of them in detail in other posts) these do seem to sum up what most of Trump's supporters want. Interestingly a woman's right to choose and Islamophobia were not major issues in the letters to the Atlantic. This is likely due to the Atlantic's demographic, as there have been many incidents which support a fear of Muslims and a woman's right to choose contributed to Trump's support.

Despite devoting a day of my life to studying these people, I am still not really sure what conclusion to draw from all of this. Other than the one I'd already come too in 2015. I do not feel I have a better understanding of Trump's base in the way those who wish to unite us would like me to. As a member of the middle class I can agree with the sentiment that things are not great for us right now, but I disagree with Trump's supporters on the why of it and what needs to be done to fix it. Pretending those of us against Trump can move beyond the eruption of hate his campaign and election have caused, can we really ever hope to understand one another? Perhaps as a country we have been divided for so long that our ways of thinking and reasoning are now no longer compatible. It is impossible for people living in a “post facts” world to have a constructive dialog with those of us who still live in a world where facts matter.

I for one, will stick with the truth, because lies have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.   

Nasty Women Fight Back

This November women in America were delivered a devastating blow. If you don't understand why, turn back now. This isn't the blog for you.

America let it be known that it doesn't matter who you are. Where you come from. Whether or not you posses the right qualifications, or the truth is on your side. You can accomplish whatever you want as long as you know how to strike the right emotional cord... and have a penis.

For most sane women this November's election solidified a truth we had all been denying. We are second class citizens. We are not judged the same way as our male counterparts by mainstream America. We aren't paid as much. We are ranked on a scale of 1-10 and dismissed if we don't score high enough.

Rights our Grandmother's earned are being taken away from us. Now more than ever women cannot be silent. We cannot be intimidated. We need to come together and be as nasty as it takes to finally achieve equality.

Each week our Nasty Woman Podcast will touch on important issues facing women and minorities under the new regime. In this blog we will delve more deeply into issues we discuss on the podcast. The blog will also have original content from Nasty Women contributors who are unable to make it to the recording studio.

Get ready to get nasty. 

Image From Elle.Com