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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Elder Millennial here. I think I just have that “eww pedostache” reaction because, when I was young, such mustache styles were common among middle-aged men who hadn’t updated their styles since the '80s. Some of those men were creepy, so the mustache style became associated with creepy old men. And of course, teenaged giggling among ourselves about “eww pedostache!” really cemented the association.

    I’m pretty sure our parents had the same initial reaction when we brought aviator glasses back into fashion. We’ll get over it, the cycle continues.


  • I’ve had good and bad experiences with mostly-male and mostly-female groups. I think it has less to do with the actual gender of the group, and more to do with: (a) the manner and extent to which group members are invested in performing their gender, (b1) whether the group embraces deviation from that performance, or (b2) whether one’s own performance of gender is similar enough to the group’s.

    I’ve often described myself as “not very good at being a woman.” My weirdness and difficulty with hidden meanings has gotten me shunned by fellow women and usually bullied out of all-female groups, particularly when I was young. But as I discovered a few years ago after adopting a more active lifestyle, I get along fantastically with most women who play sports.

    All-male groups were usually not much better. I still had to keep LARPing a persona, it’s just that the “cool girl” persona came easier to me. The main advantage was that mostly-male groups didn’t tend to say one thing while meaning the opposite. (For example, “stay as long as you like” actually means “you should probably go home now” and that is absolutely nonsensical to me.) But all-male groups never accepted me either, so the best case scenario meant being tolerated instead of shunned.

    When it comes to work environments, it’s only been women who played the game of psychologically tormenting me until I have a breakdown and quit (although one of those was a woman boss in a mostly-male small office). So mostly-male groups have been somewhat better because I usually don’t have to waste as much brainspace on LARPing the correct persona. I still tended to be treated more as a tagalong or novelty, though, and gender isn’t a guarantee of future behavior (for example, one of my current coworkers is a man who politicks like a woman).


  • press X to doubt

    I can’t forage for missing sunglasses that are right in front of my stupid fucking face. My dumbass would be bringing back half a handful of poison berries like “This is all I could find and I have no memory of picking them but they probably didn’t come from the poison bush I guess.”

    I have similar opinions about the “iT’s nOt a diSoRdEr iTs mOdErN sOciEtY” thing that’s going around lately. Even if we lived in a utopia, I’d still be expected to listen when others speak, cook without burning myself or the food, speak without repeating myself, speak in a way that makes sense to others, keep appointments, read and comprehend instructions, transport myself from place to place without injury or forgetting necessary items…






  • I was also expected to be very quiet and perfectly behaved, and have also struggled with resentment toward rowdy children as a result. Even now, at 39 years old, I sometimes want to retaliate with an Aztec death whistle.

    Therapy can be really helpful in learning to deal with that resentment. If possible and reasonable, so can talking about it with your parent(s).

    Several years ago I said to my mother, “I’m feeling angry right now because I’m thinking about that loud kid we saw in the store today and remembering how I had to repress myself as a child.” Then we had a really productive conversation about the pressure to defy stereotypes about poor parents, being a parent with unrecognized and unsupported neurodivergence, and sensory issues.

    I hope you’re able to dissolve a significant amount of your resentment, too. In the meantime, there’s a kind of reusable earplug that reduces noise just a little bit so you can still have a conversation (can’t remember the brand name though).






  • It’s all by symptoms. In my case it was night sweats, sweaty palms so bad I had to give up my hobbies, sudden development of eczema, dead libido, inability to climax, brain fog, loss of speech fluency, morning sickness, and the occasional very mild hot flash when angry or stressed.

    There’s not really any test for peri, because hormone labs only take a snapshot of one moment. Not very useful because hormones fluctuate day to day. If doctors brush you off (super common ugh are we even people) there are telehealth sites that can help.


  • Yeah my meds have always barely touched my symptoms during the luteal phase. It’s even worse now that perimenopause has set in. Before I figured out I’d started peri, I was googling about early onset dementia because the ADHD symptoms had gotten so unmanageable. (Y’all, I forgot my own address where I’ve been living for seven years. Forgot my own birthdate at the pharmacy. Got lost on the way to the grocery store I’ve used for ten years. Couldn’t even watch simple TV because of spacing out too much.)

    Fun fact: estrogen is a neurotransmitter that helps dopamine do its thing.

    I take HRT now, but the 12 days of progesterone means a week of being an absolute box of hair. I stand up and forget why. Forget nouns and have to describe them (like that stabby shovel thing for putting food in your mouth). Cooking dinner and turn to open a cabinet and just stand there swaying back and forth with no idea what I’m supposed be doing, while the food gets all fucked up.