You literally just described my life; except I made the jump to instructional designer after tech writing dungeon.
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Hey now, I kinda liked tech writing. Or did I? Was that just something I told myself so I didn’t get sad enough to eat frozen desserts with vodka poured over the top? you know, more than twice a week.
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Thanks, it looks much less like wallowing in self-pity and way more punk as fuck now
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And the next one suggested was this!
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What was it Atwood said, again?
Yet men don’t get upset when their feelings are the only things hurt. /s
(No, it’s not 101 basics when people are really dying).
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I hate this headline because it seems, to my mind, to legitimize this murder. This man was going to murder his wife - reasons be damned - and nothing she did (short of trying to murder him) could ever justify his actions.
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Now, for a different kind of healthcare travesty.
Who else has a story like this? raises hand
This is one of the more dangerous systemic biases in our culture, IMO. The amount of time, energy, and yes, even health care dollars wasted on endless arguments with doctors is bad enough. But the cost in lives is real.
This doesn’t even take into account that even the body of medical knowledge is biased against women: most data on non sex-specific diseases is based off men, even though women may have different symptoms or even therapeutic requirements.
And the more qualifying factors you add, the worse it can get. Are you fat? All your issues are due to being fat. I don’t even want to think about what non-cis people must go through.
Fuck… I need to go make a Dr’s appt, too.
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My favourite example is when both my ex and I got identical inner ear infections after walking home in a stiff wind. He went to a clinic, got his ear flushed out, and was prescribed antibiotics.
I went to a different clinic, and explained I had vertigo and pain in my right ear only. I also mentioned I’d had recurring ear infections since childhood, and this felt like an inner ear infection.
The doctor said he couldn’t see any discharge. Well, you often don’t with inner ear infections.
His conclusion, even after I mentioned my partner had the exact same thing, was that I was pregnant and in denial about it. He said I’d have to stop taking the Pill and get a pregnancy test done after waiting a month. I asked since when was vertigo in one ear only a symptom of pregnancy and we argued until he basically dismissed me.
Further to that: at this point sometimes when I’m telling this story, people ask if I wound up having a miscarriage.
I WASN’T PREGNANT.
But I was sick, and it took me weeks to recover while my ex was back to good health after completing the course of antibiotics. I was a casual contractor working hourly then, my ex was doing short-term contracts, and I couldn’t afford to take any more time off work.
So I warned my students if I sat down suddenly it was just another vertigo attack, and worked while sick.
To this day I have chronic ear and sinus issues on that side, although it’s better than it used to be. GPs always say they can’t see anything wrong, but my dentist notices. Last week I had a root canal on that side. The tooth had been killed by infections.
The ability to become pregnant, even though I never have been, has cost me thousands of dollars in dental work, sick days, and all the crap that comes with chronic illness.
ETA: my ex didn’t have any discharge either. The difference is they believed him when he reported his symptoms.
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Oh boy. This hits very close to home.
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What makes me really angry is there is no “just” about it.
“It’s just anxiety.” “It’s just anaemia.”
Hello, those are real freaking medical problems! They deserve attention and care and follow-ups when it turns out that’s not the right diagnosis.
“Women’s bodies do weird shit; whatever” is not a diagnosis!
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I’m looking for information on a theory I have that the tar on “gossip” (which is women’s talk) as being anti-spiritual is a way of preventing women from sharing information about men and others who can be harmful to them. Can anyone point me to someone who is talking about this, or did I just invent it?
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That is ringing a bell for an article about corporate communications I read a long time ago. I will hunt around for it.
The same thing, maybe not so explicitly gendered, does happen in the corporate world of course. Management discourages gossip, meaning any messaging that doesn’t happen via official channels. They say it’s because it’s so often wrong, but I often feel that’s a bit disingenuous. It’s people trying to read the signs because they aren’t in the loop enough.
Traditional gendered gossip works the same way.
Might have been this article:
IMHO, while women get tagged as gossips, men do it too. I’ve overheard way too many conversations between guys on public transit to believe otherwise.
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Most of the scholarship that I’ve read tends toward an explanation of the social function of gossip and it’s presence and specific function in specific social interactions (regardless of gender). This is primarily due, I think, to a batch of scholarship from the mid-20th century that recognized and explicated that gossip among women served a generally positive social function, a POV that has since been widely accepted. I think looking for scholarship in women’s studies or sociolinguistics from that period may address your interests/questions?
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To me, the claim of “gossip” is really a way to try to get women to self-police their own sharing of important information. Men can talk away all they want. No one says, “Oh, stop gossiping.” Gossip is valuable. But women feel that it’s dirty and, particularly, will not talk about people that hurt them or who they are suspicious of, because they don’t want to be seen as a gossip. I can’t be the first person who has thought about it as a way of censoring our speech.
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Men network, women gossip 
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This isn’t what you were asking for. It’s more of an example than an explication.
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Shut-What-When-Nothing/dp/0310339642
Totally gendered, religion based, mega-dose of shame, it’s “Beyond just a “how not to gossip” book”. I saw a woman reading it in an airport, and it made me sad.
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I think you’re on to something here, regarding how women’s speech is characterized.
But what about malicious gossip - when people use gossip to punish people who don’t conform in one way or another (certainly not the domain of women, though it’s often spun that way)? Gossip isn’t always just information sharing, it can also be a means of defining in group and out group dynamics, yeah?
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Yes - this is what a lot of the scholarship is about! Sorry if I was unclear!
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Too true, and then there are the people who just can’t stop. I broke off a friendship because, six months after she was laid off, someone couldn’t stop dishing dirt about management and trying to pump me for details. And no, she said she wasn’t suing.
I always see it as a matter of tone. “Huh, A & B are having meetings a lot, wonder when we’re going to find out what that’s about” is a lot different from “A & B have been awfully cosy lately, haven’t they?”
They’re both gossip, but the first one is more intent to speculate while the other is more intent to imply something malicious.
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