Doctors tell a women to greatly risk their health for sex while men get to shut it all down for a headache. How this Mama Finally Said "Enough!"

A men's birth control study has been stopped due to 20% of men getting headaches. This really pisses me off. It isn't because I really need new birth control. My husband and I are no longer having intercourse.  No, I don't hate him, or sex. This isn't a mind game or a test. This is a health decision, and we are still happy, because I stopped listening to doctors. 

Let me start at the beginning. In my 20s when I began the pill I had horrible cramps all the time. They were constant. They were so painful that children couldn't sit on my lap when I was an intern. This couldn't be normal. The doctor told me to "get used to it" and wait months. Perhaps, I had a low pain tolerance? They put me on a lower dose. The cramps continued but they assured me all would be well. Really, I must be so sensitive. 

The pain continued. So did headaches and some mood issues. But, I wanted to be strong. I dreamed a monster was tearing at my stomach. I woke up and the pain was horribly real. After this stopped taking the pill immediately. Due to this I had really bad mood swings and two periods that month. I called people during crying jags. I cut corners at work. I know I had some really unrealistic expectations in my 20s that had nothing to do with whatever the pill did to me. But, after that month I felt failed as an adult and like many 20 somethings moved back home. I took much solace in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and my dog. I will say my mistakes were fully on me. However, all of this hormone dipping and diving did not help. 

Years later, I was in labor with my daughter. The hospital gives pregnant women these orders:

"Make sure the contractions are reasonably intense. Ten centimeters is fully ready to have the baby. If you are lower than three centimeters you will be sent back home until you are more dilated."                                                                                 

In other words: Don't be pussy about your pussy.  I went when the pain was bad for me. I was so afraid they'd sent me home. How embarrassing being weak when you're about to be a mother. But I wasn't. I was at seven centimeters and staff was surprised how well I handled it. 

It turns out I am a pain tolerance badass mama. So, I can't imagine how bad the pain was while I was taking the pill. I wonder what a man would say about it? How many studies would my pain have halted if I were a dude? I wonder what the women in the study for the pill said about the pain and how they were ignored as "hysterical.
At this point in my life I thought the world would leave me and my body alone. (I'm not talking about the constant pressure to have another baby and be thinner. Let's not get crazy. I just mean I thought people would leave my everyday bedroom stuff alone.) I am a "married woman with a child." I'm doing everything this culture wants me to do, right? So bye, Felicia to everyone being up in my business...

But, there was also this other problem - constant urinary tract infections (UTIs). These infections can cause a lot of pain. They would affect me so badly at times with my disability I couldn't walk. They really messed up my professional life too as I was often sick. They would happen every time I had intercourse with my husband. Every time.

Luckily, I could take an antibiotic after intercourse and that stopped them. Yay! Then the antibiotics stopped working. Boo! The UTIs often had atypical symptoms. No burning urination, lucky me. Instead I was utterly exhausted and in pain.

The last time I couldn't recognize a UTI I thought I must have cancer or lupus, or I was just being "crazy." I could barely make it to a child's birthday party down the street after sleeping the whole day. I was missing quality time with my baby girl. This lasted for three weeks until the UTI was realized. This time, I made the decision that I had enough.

I was no longer going to have intercourse. 

-The antibiotics didn't work.

-I was truly getting an infection every time we had sex.
-I am a mother of a young child.
- I am a woman with a disability that would lose the ability to be independent and take care of my child when I had these infections.
-It doesn't take a genius to see what the best and safest thing to do was. 
But no! I can't tell you how many doctors (4 and 3 of them female) told me that stopping intercourse was a bad idea. That this would "destroy my marriage." This is a real quote. In 2016. In Berkeley, CA. The docs acted like whiny high school boyfriends who just really want me to shut up and do it.

Here's all their advice:·      

-Can't I take cranberry pills? (Doing it. Not working)
-Can't I just jump up and pee after sex?? This works for other people (Tried it. It does not for me. Maybe I'm just not a fast jumper with the limp and all)
-Can't I just drink two glass of water before and after sex...? (Okay, that’s a bit..)
 -...And then shower right away

Okay, guys, you want me to drink a ton of water, jump out of bed and pee right after. Then you want me to drink more water and shower? Should I drink while showering? This isn't very romantic. Where are you during all this? On to your next Tinder date? I'm get the feeling you don't really care about me here, doc(s). You just really want me to do it, do it, do it... I have higher self esteem than that. Also, someone who really loves me and doesn't want me to go through all of that. So, what the fuck am I doing here with you? Get out! Get out of my bed. All of you! But.. I suppose I should be grateful for these doctors. The cancelation of male birth control is nowhere near the least disturbing story I have heard these past few weeks.  There is also the story of catholic hospitals who refuse to give birth control, tubal ligations, and abortions for any reason. They will not give abortions when BOTH the baby and mother will die if they don't do it, or when they know the baby will live for a few minutes and be in horrible pain.If catholic hospitals still see woman as only breeding stock. So, I suppose I should be grateful for my doctors who want me on hormones and are pushing me to suck it up and have sex with my husband lest I want my marriage destroyed. 

As women we are being pulled apart by both sides of our culture. There are so many ways to get sick because of sex. Including not being allowed to be sick of sex. Doctors have a responsibility to be better than this!

Maybe doctors aren't very creative people because "no intercourse" does not mean no sex. You think these Godless pill pushers would know that? You think they would know it's also really insulting to my husband to say no in-and-out will tear us apart. 

Do doctors think he is just some animal and that if I don't immediately offer up a hole he is going to take off? He is not Tori Spelling's husband, and Tori Spelling's story should tell you it doesn't matter if you offer up a hole when your husband is already an A-hole.

You want to know what is really stressful on a marriage:

• Death,Pain,Illness that leaves one of you unable to care for yourself and your child,possible permanent kidney damage... 

• These are all things that can happen to women with an undiagnosed UTI. I suppose I am lucky I have a husband that understands that these things are more stressful than no breeder sex. Especially, since no medical professionals seems to think he will. They all seem to think intercourse in the end all and be all of sex, which shocks me.

I wonder if it were gender reversed if people would think my hubby was lucky I understood that it wasn't safe for him to have intercourse. Or if I would just be excepted to halt all of my desires, like the male birth control study, because he has some pain.

I can't help but think of all the lives lost or ruined due to secondary complications of the pill and/or doctors pushing women into dangerous situations because we are still either meant to breed or keep other people happy. So, male birth control is being stopped due to men 20% of subjects having headaches? You can just say I have a headache forever. I'm not in the mood. Not for this discriminatory bullshit and not for intercourse, both are making me sick. 

The Paradox of Disability in Publishing & Everywhere

The Paradox of Disability in Publishing & Everywhere

I’ve been trying to write this for six months. I hope it doesn’t come off as too entitled…My inner critic will keep me in check. She went to catholic school. 

        I’ll start with saying I threw a woman with a disability out of her seat at the movies. I’d do it again. My friend thanked me. Some people might have cheered. I don’t remember. I was very indignant, so was she, but I had the armed guard on my side. 
How could you do that? She was like that poor kid with the allergic reaction on the plane !
She wasn’t. In fact I think she was the opposite….

     She, and her boyfriend who was willing to move, were in disabled seating. They appeared to be able bodied. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind moving.  There were other seats available merely a few rows back. They were just up some stairs.        

     The woman said that she had a right to be in the seat because she had a gluten allergy. My friend was in a disability scooter. I have a severe limp.

  Let me fast-forward to a good experience. I went to comic-con this past year. I was so happy to see that there were three panels that talked about disability in geek culture. I was extra happy to see the organization We Need MoreDiverse Books (WNMDB) had their own panel. 

       I was hoping that there would be one person on the panel with a disability. There wasn’t, but everyone was great. I wouldn’t take any person off that panel for anyone else.  

        At the panel Lee & Low books was offering a special publishing contest to minority writers. I wanted to enter the contest, but it was only for writers of color. Lee & Low supports and recognizes disability as a minority. 

            The publisher explained that they are a small company and if they opened up the criteria any wider it would be too much for them to take on. She was absolutely right. I understood, and I still do understand.

     So, this is yet another passive-egressive blog about how you're not included ? Another self-involved millennial Gen-Xer! You want to push people out.

            This is another example of how complex disability is and why it gets left out. Speaking of pushing people out I go to Whole Foods--

Whole Foods? You're going to complain about Whole Foods?
No, but I go to Whole Foods sometimes because something happened at another store.  An able bodied woman jumped out of her car and started screaming that I was “a stupid bitch cunt face” because I stole her handicapped spot. She had a handicapped placard.  She literally tried to push me out. Once she realized she was screaming at a woman with a limp she literally ran away.

 I wanted to go to a disability city meeting to possibly talk about the abuse of placards. The entire city meeting was going to be taken up by people who have scent allergies. They were going to try to ban people who work for the city of Berkeley from wearing scented products. I didn’t go.

       So now you're back to picking on people with non-visible disabilities?

  No, I back to talking about the complexity of this issue. I know scent allergies are real, so are other allergies. I just don’t believe in dictating what other people do with their bodies. 

             I get easily startled. It’s part of my disability. I wouldn’t go to a city meeting and demand that all city employees speak in whispers. I do believe that demanding too much of others takes away from the disability movement greatly. It causes disability to not be truly included in diversity causes.           

Do you really need to be in with other minorities Whole Foods lady?
            Not all the time. Lee and Low chose to leave out disability from this one publishing deal and I don’t blame them. WNMDB also often leaves out disability in their surveys, tweets, and studies. I understand this too, but I wish they wouldn't.  

            WNMDB often refers me and others to another wonderful and hard-working organization: Disability Kid Lit.  Disability Kid Lit is wonderful, but they don’t have the pull that We Need More Diverse Books does.

            They don’t get the articles written in Salon. Most major articles written about needing more diversity in publishing don’t include one line about people with disabilities. I understand. Disability is so messy. Any person can claim to have a disability. Especially writers. We’re all depressed or have some PTSD or at least middle school was hard.

            But there is “hard” and then there is “under-privileged” hard. The U.S. census and the Disability World Health Organization  reports people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and sexually abused than any other minority group. Gluten allergy woman was loud about her rights as a person with a disability. You might see her or other people with disabilities being loud at the movies. 
However, our voices are less likely to be heard than any other minority group in major media.  Diversity in YA reported YA books we have the absolute lowest number of published authors. We have the least number of characters. This means people with disabilities are less published than even authors of color, and, there are less characters with disabilities than of color. 

            I have been silent for too long! Demanding inclusion. Just like the parking lot woman.

 I am not demanding inclusion. I’m hoping for more.
            People with disabilities share all the burdens that Paula Young Lee wrote about in her recent Salon article on ethnic minority representation of characters in literature. In YA a kid with a disability either ends up with a miracle cure or dead. Ava Jae did a great job of writing about that here. 

            Does gluten-allergy-woman have a right to say she has a disability?  Of course. 

            Is she entitled to services? Yes. She can have all the services she wants, AS LONG AS THEY PERTIAN TO HER ILLNESS AND DON’T TAKE AWAY LIMITED SERVICES FROM OTHERS WHO NEED IT.

I know people with severe dyslexia. They are part of the disability minority, but they would never take my physically disabled seat away. I would never take their dyslexic scholarship away, even though I have slight dyslexia.

            Does gluten-allergy-woman have a right to say that she is an oppressed minority? What if she writes a book? Isn’t she a part of the diverse voices that aren’t heard?

             She has a right to say and write whatever she wants. But, I believe this is the reason why disability is often left out. Disability is hard to define. 

            What service and opportunities people with different disabilities receive is even harder to define. I think it’s much easier to just say “yes, we include disability in diversity too,” and then never do much about it.  

         Say Lee & Low did open their publishing deal to people with disabilities. I wonder how many people with gluten allergies would have applied claiming to be an author with a disability, when their book was a re-telling of Hamlet in space with horny teens, one of which had a gluten allergy.

            Portlandia did a skit on the “temporarily disabled” and they nailed it. Their two most entitled characters got sprained ankles. After this they wanted to have all the “benefits” of disability. They also wanted to take over the disability movement.

             The skit showed people with permanent and significant disabilities kicking them out of the movement. I think the group was played by the real Disability Group in Portland. The woman in charge of the group defined what disability was with-in the group.  She explained why the temporarily disabled yuppie-hipsters (yipsters?) couldn’t be a part of the group. Then, of course, the yipsters started their own temporarily disabled group and claimed to be more oppressed.

People with all types of disabilities deserve services too. Who are you to judge?
They deserve appropriate services. Someone has to judge.   99.99% of all organizations are run by able-bodied people (cities, movie theaters, literary agencies…) I’m sure able-bodied people find defining disability difficult. People are going to be left out, and angry about it. Able-bodied people may feel that they have no right to define what disability is.
 Maybe even some people with disabilities aren’t as brave as the woman in the Portlandia skit. They don’t want to kick anyone out.With people like the white gluten-allergy-woman being so loud about her rights you can see why people with disabilities are often left out or not given as much time in diversity movement. 

 Maybe you are  a person of color that has only had experiences with people with disabilities who were like this woman, someone who wanted to have something they didn't have a right to. If that has been your only experience with people with disabilities I would encourage you to seek out others. If you find me, or this post entitled, know that there are people with disabilities you won't feel that way about.       

          So what would make you happy?

             I  hope people can be brave in their organizations. I agree with Lee here in the case of diverse novels. You know when someone is pandering or trying to “cash in” on diversity. Publishing companies should know when someone is pandering.

             In the case of publishing, if you aren’t sure if an author or a book is truly on the up and up with disability you can always ask the people at Disability Kid Lit. For example they might say: Tara Caimi who wrote Mush: from sled dogs to celiac, the scenic detour of my life  is a book written by a woman with celiac disease and about it. It fits disability criteria. 

            A book like The Magicians by Lev Grossman, which has themes of depression and mental illness but is mostly about struggling with academia and magic wouldn’t be considered part of disability diversity. 

Are you saying...

No one has claimed The Magicians is a disability book. Lev Grossman suffered from depression but he has never claimed to be a minority. I just didn't want to give a link to an actual book that claimed to be about disability but people said wasn't. 

            But Aren’t you just as bad as the parking lot or gluten allergy women? WNMDB is about people of color. Aren’t you trying to push your way in to something you have no right to?
     The We Need More Diverse Books movement has said it includes people with disabilities as well as LBGTQIA people. I know there are going to be times people with disabilities don’t belong, but please try to include it. 

 So what are you trying to say in your whining and tales of woe?
  I think the most important thing I want to say is this:

            Every organization that wants people of diverse voices to be heard MUST define what disability means clearly in that organization. I’m talking about books and publishing because that is what I’m doing now, but this also included work places and schools…places where it won’t be easy.

            If this doesn’t happen disability is going to get left out. It’s going to be officially included but really not included. You have every right to only have an organization that is only concerned with racial and ethnic (or LBGTQIA) issues. However if you really want to talk about diversity as a whole you must include disability (and LBGTQIA .) You then must define disability. Otherwise we’re going to be left out, and I think we could be stronger together.  

            All I’m asking for is more disability representation.  In the case of diversity in literature: when you write a Salon article and are including all people of color include at least ONE book with disability. When you post statistics include statistics on disability.  When you are hiring diverse staff also think of disability… Maybe invite one person with a disability on a panel. Don’t take away a seat from any of those people. Just include another seat. It could be a person of color with a disability.  Please don’t just refer people to DisabilityKid Lit. Use Disability Kid Lit in your own work! Also, go to Disability KidLit as they are looking for people of color who have disabilities.

            Have the courage to define what disability is in your agency.  I think we are often left out because people fear they are opening up seats that might be taken by people that don’t belong there. Some people might get left out. I might even be left out if a group decided to only define disability in a certain way. But, in the long run what you are really doing is letting people with disabilities in.

             Should you get back to actually writing your book?