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Smells Like Fish

Is anyone else horrified by Vagisil commercials? The most recent one has a woman in it who is all dressed up but sees her own reflection as looking crummy, in a hoodie. And why does she feel that way? Because she worries that other people will smell her bad smell.

Ugh. I mean, come on already.

Buying a tube of whatever because your vagina is itchy and/or smelly is demented. First off, if things are itchy and/or smelly temporarily, that’s just how it goes – you don’t need Vagisil; you need a bath and maybe to wear cotton panties for a week. On the other hand, if your vagina consistently and chronically itches or smells bad, you need to see a doctor, not buy a tube of Vagisil. Yeast infections can be fatal, and you can give anything else that would cause itching (like crabs) to sex partners, and you know, that’s just not nice.

But the whole “women are icky and smell bad” = specifically because their vaginas smell bad = is misogynist bullshit. Women’s reproductive systems actually work to maintain a PH balance on their own, and while having a lot of unprotected sex with multiple partners throws off that PH balance, that’s not really an advisable thing to do anyway, considering all the possible STDs, including HIV, and of course potential pregnancy.

Read Natalie Angier’s Woman: An Intimate Geography. It’s a great, scientific, readable book about women’s bodies and how they work, a must-read.

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Winter

Hey, it’s actually cold outside! Finally! Though it is funny, traveling between Andover (which is near the border of New Hampshire) and New York, as it feels like I’m going through the change of seasons twice: leaves were changing up there when they were still green in Brooklyn, then they were falling off up there while changing color down here, and now, I expect, it will be genuinely cold up there while it’s still getting cold down here. I assume I’ll see snow on campus before I see it in Brooklyn, too. Interesting. It’s like traveling back & forth in time, kinda.

& I assume I’ll feel like I’m traveling back (or forward?) to the Ice Age when I move to Wisconsin. I did already buy a pair of waterproof boots, light green Timberlands, off Ebay.

(Someone remind me to post about the lectures I did at Merrimack, and about Betty’s visit to my class, please. I keep forgetting.)

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To Sleep, Perchance to Sleep Some More

So this break it’s like I finally stopped doing stuff long enough for my body to let me know I’m exhausted. I came home & slept & slept & slept. I woke up, worked for a client, slept. Did some bookkeeping for another client, & slept. For a while I thought I was depressed, but really I think I was just tired.

& It’s been great. But tomorrow I’m off to Andover again, & then I don’t really get to stop until I’m in Wisconsin (if then).

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Cold Case

I was talking to my mother the night before TDOR, about all the stuff trans people often need to do, the legal stuff, the ID changes, sometimes the medical issues, and she mentioned that she was really touched by a recent Cold Case show she’d seen. I haven’t seen it yet, though I’m a fan of the show and watch it pretty often. The story was about an FTM in the 1960s who at the time was assumed to have committed suicide but who, in fact, was dead before he hit the water. Thus, the re-opening of his “cold case.”

My mom didn’t call him an FTM; she doesn’t have that language yet. What she said was, “She was a girl who was really a boy.” And I had a moment where I wasn’t sure if she meant an FTM or MTF, but once again, my mom impressed me; he was an FTM, &, to her mind, “really a boy.”

Which is of course the opposite usage of most people who throw their “reallys” around when talking about trans people, which strikes me as too cool.

But what she wanted to know was whether things were better now, and she was asking me this the night before TDOR. And I told her for some people it is, but the violence against trans people is still too up-close & personal. She thought people should be taught to keep their hands to themselves, at the very least. But I did also tell her about FORGE’s document, about us allies and partners and family being recognized as also often being the victims of violence, and she said, “of course.” She said she’d light her candle on the 20th, too.

Yeah. My mom rocks.

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Happy Thanksgiving

A very happy Thanksgiving to the Americans out there! Tolerate your family even if you can’t enjoy them! & Don’t eat too much! & Don’t drive drunk, please.