femininity sucks

across all cultures, from ancient china, to to ancient Rome to ancient China to modern Argentina, every culture has had the same definition of femininity is; submission. "listen to your husband. be weak. be subservient." it's all the same. so, that's why I hate it. some feminists try to frame feminity as a good thing, (because they think femininity is a biological thing and unchangeable?)

women should be masc for their own good.

Just looking for some advice from women in their 20s. I recently turned into an adult and I feel like I'm missing out on so much of life due to the country I was born in. I feel such desperation, rage, and hopelessness whenever I think about it. I have talked to girls my age from around the world, and tte ones who live in English-speaking or first world countries have already experienced so much of life.They've traveled alone from city to city, they've met people and madde friends with the opposite gender, they've worn whatever the hell they liked. I guess me being queer also adds another layer to it-l quite literally feel like I'm suffocating all the time due to my conservative country and environment. I've never talked to people romantically,never dated,never had any of the "normal" experiences a young adult is supposed to have. I cannot stop the feeling that I'm missing out. I'm trying my hardest to go abroad for undergraduate so I can finally be shackle-free for once,but it's not very easy because I'm not from an ultra-wealthy family.People keep telling me "Oh, you can always go for a Master's or a PhD!" but I feel like I'll already have missed out a lot of my youth by then? I won't be able to form friend groups or support systems if I go there at the age of 25-26. I'm also afraid my parents will start pressuring me to marry by then.

Anyone else who dealt with stuff like this before? Any advice?

For a little bit of context, I (23F) have never had bad period cramps (a little bit here and there, might suck for a couple of hours but nothing huge), but this time, they're really bad, and I'm not sure what to do. Ibuprofen sort of helps but not really (400 mg), I'm not sure about the water bottle thing (I cant exactly put my regular metal one in the microwave and im afraid a plastic one will melt), and I dont have any heating pads. I have class tomorrow so I need to get it under control by then. Does anyone have any tips?

I think it might be a hormonal imbalance from my Nexplanon wearing off (I believe it needs to be replaced soon if I can find anywhere nearby that it wont be terribly expensive), if that helps any.

The most beautiful park in my city is about a mile from my house. I figured I’d take advantage of the gorgeous weather yesterday and take a wander over to enjoy the space.

I don’t live in the best neighborhood, but I definitely don’t live in the worst. Solid, standard downtown adjacent area near a main road.

This man flipped his car around three times - first to honk, then to wave, then to right turn onto the side street directly in my path (unfortunately my road). He kept telling me how “good” I looked - so I did what any woman would do, I flipped my shit and started yelling/cursing him out. Kind of like facing a charging animal, right? Be louder and, ideally, crazier.

He looked confused, disgusted, then drove off and I booked it home keeping an eye on my back for his car.

I’m just trying to not let it get to me or make me feel like I have to change something about my route/routine/life. I’m 36 years old. I always thought I’d age out of the male gaze by the time I hit my late 20’s. I’m just counting down the years until I don’t feel continually violated.

I’m 23F and just recently started going to clubs. I usually go with my best friend (22F), we hang out often, so it’s always just the two of us.

Every time we go out, she ends up talking to guys and following them around. She makes sure I tag along with her while she fully focuses on the guy. And this will go on and on with few other guys and when they leave they ask for our socials. At the end of the night, a guy or a group of guys that she was talking to will walk us home (we live on college campus).

Im not much of a talker and when I drink I get really sad (I feel the life's despair on the dance floor). When I feel dismissed or ignored by her, it hits harder. Im a prof dancer and I go to club solely just to let loose and have a good time but she ends up focusing on someone else. The last time we went clubbing, we stayed for 5 hours. I told her I was tired and wanted to head home, and she refused, still dancing and chatting with a guy. I brought it up later and said it's basic girl code to leave together if one wants to go home for safety. She said she’d never do it again. There have also been other weird things she does when she gets drunk but only around males, which I don’t want to go into detail about in this post.

There have also been moments where she kind of bullies me when these guys are around. Just yesterday she made a snarky comment like, “Only weird guys ever approach you, I always get the good-looking ones.” And Im like, these are drunk college guys? what is not weird about them?

I don’t know am I overreacting? Outside of clubbing, our friendship is okay(ish) but something about this pattern just doesn’t sit right with me. I think she comes off as very male centric, and I’ve just been profusely ignoring it because she’s the only close friend I have. Is this normal, or am I overthinking it?

I've been using a June cup for a few years, but lately have had leakage due to increased flow (stopped using oral birth control and still trying to figure out what my normal cycle is like). I tried using a Saalt disc and had a lot of difficulty removing it. I found the little indent that's meant to be the spot where you pull it with your finger to be totally slippery and impossible to grasp. I ended up hooking my finger up and over the top edge of the disc to remove it. It makes me very nervous to use it again, but I was hopeful that this was the better fit for me. Any advice on smooth and limited mess disc removal?

A good friend of mine is due with her first and I assumed her mom, who she is very close to, or her MIL, who also lives in the area, would be hosting her baby shower. However, I just found out that she is hosting one herself (a little earlier than I had assumed) and this makes me so sad. She’s a lovely person and had I known they weren’t doing this for her, I would have offered.

Is it too late to offer to host it or to help organize for her? Should I just give her a big check? I don’t want to impose but had I known, I would have offered.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Not every post needs to be advice or a success story.
Just a quiet post to say:
If you’re struggling with PCOS and trying to conceive… or watching everyone else get pregnant while you’re stuck in specialist appointments and cycle tracking… I see you.

You’re doing better than you think. You’re not invisible.

That’s about it, now when I get stuff I clutch it to my chest like gollum. I had to share everything even my birthday. My sister had to get gifts on my birthday or she’d cry nonstop. My dad would go into our shared room and take my books and plushies and give them to my brothers to draw on and destroy. I was also forced to parent them too as a fun bonus as the oldest daughter.

Title says it all. I went on Hinge and matched with a 31 y/o guy. He ended up being a total red flag in hindsight.

After about a week or so of chatting, he took me out to Dave and Busters. The date was fun and HE suggested we get food after. He let me order something first and didn’t get anything for himself. When I offered to share my flat bread, he just said he didn’t like onions. First 🚩 imo- he just put me in an awkward situation. No one wants to be eating alone, in front of their date who isn’t eating.

On that first date, I thought it was sweet that he walked me to my car, and I invited him in to keep chatting because the convo was good so far. Second 🚩- we started kissing and he kept trying to finger me and undress me when I repeatedly told him I didn’t want to have sex with a stranger in a parking lot. Still, I drove him home after that date (he didn’t have a car). He would try to have sex with me multiple times in the car, he never had his own place where he can take a lady back home. He never took no for an answer the first time, and I felt I had to keep fighting his advances. He would keep on pressuring me to do sexual acts later on.

Third 🚩- he would keep on negging me, bragging about the women he had sex with. He would make comments about my hair. I asked him favorite snack was, and he said I should try Skinny pop (i was overweight at the time). He opened my fridge and laughed at how empty it was (he didn’t have his own fridge or his own apartment)

Fourth 🚩- he would lie. About big things and small things. We made plans one day to get drinks and he was purposefully vague about it. I got to the bar, and he never showed. he said that he thought I knew that we weren’t meeting up that day. He used vague language to manipulate the situation. Later that week when I asked him about it, he admitted he just didn’t want to leave his sister alone in the house because he lived in the hood… whatever the reason was, he gaslit me, and I truly felt insane when I got to the bar and he wasn’t there.

Another thing he lied about was his height. This is so embarrassing for him, but he kept saying he was 5’9, but I worked in healthcare and measured people for a living. He was 5’6… and this was on his ID as well.

He also lied about getting tested for STDs. He said that he got free testing by the VA, but I kept asking to see his results, and he never shared it with me.

Fifth 🚩- he hated women. His wife cheated on him, and instead of healing, he developed a porn addiction. He resorted to red pilled podcasts by equally lame and hateful men, and their rhetoric about how traditional women don’t exist anymore really spoke to him. He saw all modern women as sexually promiscuous and… objects. The porn addiction didn’t help as well.

Six 🚩-Everytime I’d ask him what he was doing, he would either be jacking off or watching Netflix. He would preach about wanting a red pilled traditional woman, yet his dad gave him a part time job at his company. His mom was working 2 full time jobs, while him and his sister got to live for free at her house. We were in a low COL city… If his mother had him (another adult) in the house, why was she working 2 jobs? He was pathetic for spending his money on dating women that he hated, when he couldn’t even afford a car, or not even afford to keep HIS OWN MOTHER, from working overnights. The only job he had came from nepotism, while I was working full time, and had my own apartment and car. The audacity for him to complain about “modern women” and he couldn’t even financially support himself… I quite literally remain disgusted by this man.

Needless to say, this did not last very long. I ended this after about 1.5 months, when I realized how truly fucked up he is as a person. i have been embarrassed for a long time- how did i not see the signs sooner? I know i was only 22, with little dating experience, and couldn’t see the red flags for what they were as clearly as I do now. I just wish there was some way I can make sure that no other woman has the disservice of having him anywhere in their proximity. Dating apps should really blacklist against the losers and predators of this world.

Let this be a warning sign that these men exist, and they are closer to you than you think. They listen to their podcasts and literally plot on how to manipulate you. They’ll go on apps, and match with “easy targets” (young woman, insecure women, etc) They hate women, and still wish to manipulate and conquest them for sex. I’ve been looking into the redpill/purplepill community on here and have gotten a lot of insight into how these men operate. Please do the research for yourself so you can see the signs.

If a man lies to you to get laid. If he pretends to be somebody he’s not (with this I mean pretending to have a different personality), or if he pretends to have an interest in you beyond just having sex when it’s not true, shouldn’t this be considered sexual trauma? I’ve become very untrustworthy because of this. I can’t enjoy my sex life anymore partly because of this. It has made me so wary of them that I can’t fully relax and enjoy like I used to. I feel as if they’ve somehow stolen my sexuality from me because I’ve felt used and lied to many times. I think they’re so f*cking selfish and unreliable that I’m starting to deeply resent them. And it’s not just about me, I see this has happened to many women around me. Isn’t this another kind of sexual trauma?

I'm not sure if the majority feel this way or not, but recently ive started working out to lose body fat, but I'm increasingly terrified that its going to cause me to lose my boobs. I know this is a common fear for a lot of women, but in my case, its not because I'm scared of looking bad, or losing the size, it's that for DD+ like myself, bras are expensive. I've recently had to spend a lot of money on bras because none of mine fit, and i know this sounds like a dumb fear, but I'm terrified my boobs will be zapped and all that money on a comfortable fit will go to waste as I'll have to buy new ones. Does everyone's go away when they lose weight? I'm not sure how much anyone here knows about working out but I'm doing body recomp, which has the goal of staying a similar weight, just building more muscle in place of fat. I've always been slim and had big boobs since I started puberty, but I'm just worried all the money I spent will go down the drain

It seems like men understand that taking responsibility for their actions is the "mature" response these days, but it also seems like all they tend to do is just say "I take accountability." I swear I've even see men use it to shut down conversations by making the woman look unreasonable if she keeps arguing after they've said "I take accountability." For me, I had an ex forget both my birthday and our anniversary. For my birthday he didn't do anything to make up for it except buy my drinks the next time we were out (which he always insisted on doing). Never even got me a gift and acted like I was strange when I brought up the fact that he needed to make it up to me somehow. I didn't even call him out for forgetting our anniversary because I was incredibly busy and honestly didn't want to bring it up if he didn't. So I'm wondering what you all think men should be doing to take accountability? Is it different for small things vs. large things? Is a verbal acknowledgment enough? What else do you think you'd want from men?

My life looks great on the outside, with friends who adore me and people who always turn to me for support, but inside I feel empty. Being the emotional anchor has started to drain me and sometimes I cannot even breathe. I crave validation I never thought I would, I miss people and moments I should not, and even toxic times feel like the last time I knew myself. Putting it here because I just want to be heard. I wrote a longer piece about it here: https://medium.com/@as9391207/surrounded-yet-alone-d49eba587c74

I am searching for lightly padded panties for those occasions when a sudden laugh or cough can cause leakage. Also I am very petite and those that I have found such as Knix, are too large so the crotch sags. Help!

The entire university system is a joke.

From the „every accusation is a confession“ files:

A cold case investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has concluded that late sheriff Buford Pusser murdered his wife and staged it to frame others.

It was his tough-on-crime, I-was-also-a-victim lies that propelled Sheriff Pusser to national fame and caught the attention of Hollywood. The film Walking Tall (1973), a box-office hit, is a classic of its genre and inspired men to join the police. The 2004 remake starred Dwayne „The Rock“ Johnson.

Pusser claimed that unidentified assailants pulled alongside their car and opened fire, killing his wife. However, reexamination of the crime scene evidence shows that he killed her outside the car and then inflicted himself with a shot to the cheek. The exhumed body of Pusser‘s wife, Pauline, showed he had also battered her prior to her murder.

“This case is not about tearing down a legend. It is about giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time,” Davidson said in a news conference streamed online. “The truth matters. Justice matters. Even 58 years later. Pauline deserves both.”

Rest in peace, Pauline. Rest in shit, Buford.

AP: Late crime-busting sheriff Buford Pusser inspired Hollywood. Investigators say he killed his wife

I always hated them no matter what, seeing them as putting extremely pressure on the person that is getting this question being surrounded by crowd's of strangers. And if you reject the proposal or confession you are usually seen as evil or heartless but I noticed a very very big difference on the internet when comes to women's and men's. Usually you can find a lot of videos about guys being rejected being called "fallen soldiers" (Soldados caídos),being empatic for him where usually people comments are about supporting him, insulting the girl apparience or very rarely being against these confessions and being realistic or even the crowd from the video would boo her if she rejects him and leave.

But when a woman is rejected the comments usually takes a big turn, laughing at her, saying how "he put her in her place",how he revenged his fallen brothers, almost like being happy and enjoying seeing the woman "get what she deserves ".

I'm probably yapping but is something I always noticed on these videos and is wild how different are treated. Still this the public proposals or confession stinks a lot,like a lot.

I feel like something is wrong with me. I just don’t understand how it feels good to have something slamming in and out of you. I’ve seen some ✨videos✨ online and it just looks so painful. Obviously like everyone does it so I know that can’t be the case but I can’t even put a tampon in without feeling like I’m being ripped in half. I feel really immature but it just doesn’t make sense to me

In another post, a redditor suggested that she flushes pantyliners. Some of us were shocked.

Those of us who have ever lived with picky plumbing know you can't flush pantyliners, pads, or wet wipes (even the flushable ones). Frankly, you're not supposed to flush anything except toilet paper and human waste.

But! What about tampons?

Are they flushable? Does it depend?

Also, what about food? When I was a kid, we always flushed old food down the toilet (assuming it was the size of peas or smaller).

Howdy!

I(26f) recently left an 8 year relationship and entered the dating scene this summer, I’ve had numerous dates with some hits and some misses but overall have not seriously entered a relationship with these men.

I’ve been having discussions with coworkers and friends about these dates and their main complaint is that I pay for my half on the first date.

I’ve had some men who flat out refuse on me paying for my portion and it is nice, but I always felt awkward because I feel like I owe them. (It’s a weird thought process I have since I grew up in a household where if I do a favor you owe me—which I don’t condone)

Also I hate to be assuming that this guy will pay so I always have my wallet ready just in case.

Thoughts?

Since menopause, internal vaginal examinations using the traditional metal speculum have become quite painful. I somehow found the website for the Nella Comfort Speculum and was wondering if anyone had had their GYN use it for their internal examination? If so, how receptive was your doctor to using it and did it make the examination less painful. TIA!

There’s a strange kind of pain in knowing the wedding dress once made for me , a dress I rejected, a dress tied to a wedding that never happened didn’t just disappear. Instead, it was “recycled” and worn by my ex-fiancé’s brother’s wife for one of her events.

I don’t know if it’s pettiness, practicality, or just a way of erasing my existence, but it stings. A dress that once symbolized a future I imagined is now stitched into someone else’s story. It makes me wonder ,do families do this often, turning what’s left of one broken dream into another celebration, as if nothing ever happened?

Damn! The irony...LMAO.. a good way to save money isn't it?