Just for the Ladies

I thought I would talk to the ladies today. I come with a short but strong message today.

SELF EXAM YOUR BREASTS. PERIOD.

I say this because I recently had surgery on my right breast. I had a benign lump removed. I am 24 years old. I've had this lump since February 2008, at the age of 20. I know I've had it since then because I check on a regular basis. To be frank, it scared the shit out of me when I first discovered it. I didn't immediately go to the doc because I had my yearly check-up coming that May and felt it could wait.

I went, they felt it, and I was scheduled an ultrasound to further investigate. Come to find out, it was a solid benign cyst. I was told I had two options: have it cut out, or wait and continue to have it checked yearly by ultrasound. I opted for the wait and see.

I made the mistake of not going to the doc for my breasts on a regular basis like I should have. I still continued to self examine my breasts. I didn't feel it grow any so I wasn't concerned.

Flash forward to 2011. I went for my normal exam and was told that I HAD to have an ultrasound on the lump to make sure it hadn't changed any. According to the ultrasound, it had. They didn't want to make any decisions though until six months had past to do another ultrasound to make precise measurements. Six months had past and it had grown some more. It had grown well over the "okay" percent for a year, let alone six months. I was then sent to a surgeon to discuss further options, just like the first time.

I was given three options this time: Wait and see, biopsy, or cut out. I opted for the biopsy because of work scheduling issues. I was not able to take any time off to do a full out-patient surgery. I had the biopsy done and was first told it was a benign cyst. Nothing new. Scheduled to come back in six months for another check-up.

About two weeks had past when I got a call from the surgeon's office asking for me to come in. The pathologist's report had come back with different results. Come to find out, I had a cystosarcoma phyllodes tumor. It's a rapidly growing, normally benign, tumor. It was highly recommended that I had it cut out. I decided to go with the surgery.

I had the surgery and am glad that it has been removed. I'm not trying to scare you. Awareness is key. If you've never performed a breast self examination (BSE), see here for how to.

From what I understand, a lot of women do not BSE, and for different reasons. Forget, fear, or just don't feel right touching their breasts. I can understand that. I, at first, felt silly doing it, but it then became normal to do. Just do it. :)

My Short Time with Vegetarianism

This post will be rather short, but is something I feel like talking about.

As you can tell by the title, I tried out vegetarianism. I enjoyed it. But it was extremely hard. Even harder when you have everything and everyone going against you.

I decided to go vegetarian for health reasons. I was hoping it would be a lifestyle change that I could slide into. I first felt the need to discuss it with my husband since, you know, he lives with me. He was at first against it. He had been vegetarian before for a period of 7 or so months and ended it due to Burger King. After thinking about it more after my initial proposal, he went for.

We decided to gradually go into it because 1) didn't want to go into "meat shock" and 2) still had meats in our freezer. I went into it faster than he had. He was still reluctant. He went two weeks without meat before he buckled. He thought I was doing this as a game. I was not. I was completely serious about it. I continued on my way of only eating veggies while he went back to his old ways. It was hard. This continued for another two weeks.

I buckled at my mother's (third) wedding. I fought it. I really did. I had been at her home (where the wedding was taking place) for most of the day and had not ate that morning. I barely had had time to dress because we had moved into our new place the day before. By the time of the reception, I was starving. Problem? Nothing there was vegetarian friendly. I do mean NOTHING. I got talked into eating a BBQ pork sandwich for the sake of my blood sugar. I regretted it. For one, it was extremely spicy. Not good for an empty stomach. Second, my body had already gotten use to having no meat in the system. I got sick.

I had my momentary loss, but decided to continue with no meat. The urges to eat meat became worse. My final "vegetarian" meal came when I fixed spaghetti with vegetarian friendly italian soy balls. I took one bite and hated it. The meal ended up getting thrown out. I felt bummed. I really did want to continue with the lifestyle change, but everything was going against me. Especially my husband.

I would like to say that I have continued to eat mostly veggies and only eat meat when my husband and I are eating together. Maybe someday, under better circumstances, I can convert back to vegetarianism. For now, it's meat.

Figuring Out the Movements

First, I would like to apologize to my (very small) fan base for not blogging in a while. I have had to put quite a bit on hold due to health reasons. BUT, most of it is out of the way (for now), and I am currently on VACATION. (Yes, much happy thoughts ensue after thinking such a word!)

Now, I would like to address something that has recently taken flame (again) with Feminism, Skepticism, Atheism, and some other things.

PLEASE NOTE: This is just ME typing out my OWN thoughts on these issues. I am very new to this realm of knowledge and will do MY best to make my thoughts clear. I apologize a head of time if they are not clear. You can get upset with me, BUT if I make something unclear, please let me know and I will try my best to clear it up.

As of today, I have learned quite a bit about Elevatorgate, the MRA, feminism, skepticism and other things. We all have to start somewhere, so please don't expect me to know everything there is to know. As I have said before, I grew up in a small community and have basically been sheltered all my life. My parents allowed me to be open to whatever and am grateful for that, but there was not much to know where I came from. With this being said, I just recently made friends that are closer to my own thoughts and beliefs (or lack thereof.)

It all first came to my attention when a person I follow on Twitter, @dELYSEious aka Elyse Anders, had an incident at a conference that she recently spoke at where she was approached by a couple and was invited to have "pleasurable time" with them. She felt wronged by the incident and had the couple spoken to by the conference organizers. In the blog world, it got spoken about quite a bit. I read some of the blogs and gently pushed the matter out of my mind. If it had been me, I probably would have said, "Thanks but no thanks," and went on my merry way to forgetting about the couple. No need in getting others involved if the couple left things alone. And, (if I'm right), they did. They apologized, said it was a joke (which I don't believe AT ALL) and left it alone.

Well, I knew NOTHING about Rebecca Watson at this point, but did see that her name had been mentioned in some of the blogs about Elyse's incident and that she had a similar incident a year ago. I continue to stay in the dark.

I then start to see a trend on my Twitter feed about changing policies and making these conferences more aware and stringent on sexual harassment. As far as I could tell from what I had read, there really wasn't any harassment going on. Inappropriate words, yes, but when the person said no, that was the end of it. In my mind, when someone is being harassed, it's when the victim has said no and the harasser has continued to pursue the harassing. That's harassment. And, to further my thoughts on this, I also would like to say I think that the women who "beat around the bush" on saying no need to be told that that's not how to say it. A firm, but polite "no" can be said. Not, "I'm just not up for that kind of thing right now," (which can confuse the other person into thinking later could be a possibility) or, "I've got other things to tend to right now," (which makes it really sound like there can be a later on thing.) I use to have a friend who would do this because she didn't have the guts to tell them "no." It caused problems, so many problems!

Back to my post, they continued on their way of making changes. Cool beans for them, I guess. AND THEN this blog post came out. *Enter Thunderf00t, left stage first appearance to many in audience* This particular blog post has caused quite a stir in the Skeptic/Feminist/Atheist/Sexist/MRA/whatever communities. For one, the guy is new. He's only had 3 blog posts and this was his second after his intro about himself. When I read it I thought, "Yeah, I can agree with him in saying that SOME of this has gotten out of hand, but isn't he just fueling the fire?" Yep, I was right. And it made the fire WAY bigger. His approach with sarcasm definitely did not help him. He also has an air about him that screams, "Look at me! I'm on FTB and don't give a flying fuck if you don't agree! This is gonna get me some major hits on the site!" At least that's what screamed at me.

I still continued to leave it alone, for the most part, only mentioning it to my husband, who in turn said, "Why do you care so much about it?" (It's his approach to most of the things I read and think about.) I really don't care A LOT about it, but it's something to further my mind and to find SOMETHING to think about, you know, since I live in a small town where people can't get past that not everyone doesn't go to church. I don't believe in such establishments and wish to not be involved as much as possible. It sucks. I need to move.

Now, on to today. I have read this post by Thunderf00t and just a little while ago, this post by WilloNyx. I read her post because of her mentioning on Twitter that she had a commenter that was religious and such and that he used the phrase "feminism is misandry in disguise" in one of his comments. I was, at this point, still trying to get around to just reading the post let alone the comments and didn't know what misandry meant. I'm not a dictionary. I looked it up. I then said on Twitter "I just had to look up that word to know what that is. Seriously?! There may be some feminists out there like that, but majority IMHO are not that way." I then get the reply back from her "wow you must nit spend much time in the comments on feminism posts. That word is the MRA dog whistle."

I'll be honest here, I try to keep up with these things, but as I said earlier, I'm new and also do not intend to make this my life's work. Maybe in some realm of my minor in Psychology will I explore sexism and such, but not to the point where it will apply to my Computer Science degree. Unless I try to make the STEM fields better and more fulfilling for women to join (which is WELL needed!)

I felt hurt by what WilloNyx said. Actually, I felt small and stupid. At the time, I had no idea what the MRA was. I also feel like I have not had time to read a lot of these feminists posts. Following on Twitter is about as far I go on most things. It's just the way I "time manage" my life. If it peaks my curiosity, I'll read it. That's about it. In fact, what I'm writing right now is probably the longest I have ever had my mind set on feminists and such in my life. I may have grew up in a sheltered, religious cultured community, but I'll be damned if I let a man tell me what I can cannot do. My momma didn't raise me that way. SO, it really doesn't cross my mind when a woman gets suppressed by a man, I just say that if you need help telling and conveying what you need/want/feel, I'll help. I'm strong and stubborn and don't care if he gets pissed at me. So be it. The woman is a human too, NOT a subhuman. There, that's the end to my little existence in feminism.

Okay, I have now read WilloNyx's blog post. Several things caught my eye.

ELEVATORGATE

I did my google search and got directed to this blog post . I think this is probably the most unbiased POV out there on Elevatorgate. And it told me quite a bit on what happened the first 3-4 months after the incident. I will warn you, it is extremely long. Be prepared to sit for a while (unless you're a speed reader like my husband. It irks me…) I also read this to kind of get my feel on what the MRA are like. Yeah, I'm not warming up to the idea of the MRA and their ideas.

With ALL this put together, I would like to say that Some people have some good views/ideas on a lot of it. I also would like to say that a lot of this has gotten out of control. I may not be helping any by putting my input into this, but i just felt like saying my piece. I also think a lot of these people need to "calm the fuck down." Some people have calmly stepped into this (like I have) to give their input, but others have came out, guns blazing, ready to fight anyone and everyone who is opposed to their view.

I know that I will probably piss someone off with this post. That's fine with me. I know that not everyone will not agree with what I have to say. My only thing I would like to say to this wide community of people is that it's time to step back and think about what's really going on. Is it REALLY about sexual harassment? Do you view sexual harassment the same way I do? Or is this more about someone who just wanted to start shit to prove that men only think about sex and power and such? If it is, did they really prove that? Did anyone seriously get physically/emotionally/mentally harmed? Are the people telling the whole truth, or are they leaving out parts? Was there more that went on that they wish to not say?

Sexual harassment is real and is possible. I am not trying to downplay what happens to people who have seriously been victims to harassers. I think it's just time for everyone to step back and re-think everything that has happened.