"It's that time of the month, isn't it?"

[TW for misogyny and gender essentialism]

Have you ever been angry? I know I have. I'm angry every single day of my life. But there's a huge difference in the way in which my anger, the anger of a woman, is valued as compared to the anger of a man. I think it's safe to say that just about every single woman on the planet who has ever been angry has had to deal with comments from men about it "just being that time of the month." As a matter of fact, whenever I find myself ranting about women's issues, or anything else really, in front of my brother and/or my father, they will often tell me to stop PMSing so much instead of engaging my anger and addressing why I might be upset. Or perhaps it's not "that time of the month," and you're just being an inflammatory bitch. Because, I mean, it's not that you have a legitimate reason to be upset: you just feel like stirring the pot because vagina.

What makes the whole PMS excuse so horrifically offensive is the fact that it uses women's bodies and involuntary biological processes as a diversionary tactic to distract men from the fact that maybe, just maybe, the angry woman in front of them has a legitimate reason to be angry. This excuse is, without a doubt, a silencing tactic. In other words, rather than addressing the issues that are causing women to be so angry, rather than accepting women's anger at face value and addressing it as a completely legitimate response to a completely legitimate issue, men are choosing to attribute that anger to an entirely irrelevant source in order to undermine and invalidate that anger. They think that by telling us that we're not actually angry, that it's just our poor laydeebrains and vaginas fucking everything up for us, we'll just stop being angry, or that we'll at least stop vocalizing that anger. What that would do is make it easier for men to continue to marginalize us and continue to invalidate our perfectly legitimate emotional responses to issues that concern us. The reason that men use this excuse so often is because it's easier to invalidate a woman's anger than it is to actually engage it, which would force them to examine their male privilege and the role that it plays in the oppression of women, something that most men are not willing to do.

For those of you who are going "Hey! Women pull this shit, too!" I want you to think back as hard as you can and try to remember the last time you heard a woman tell another woman, "Wow, you must be PMSing" when she was angry.

I'll wait.

Some men try to use this as a "joke" around women and think that they're being funny, that they're commiserating with us women, but they're really not. Is it any funnier coming from a woman? No, it isn't. It's not funny coming from anyone, but at least coming from a woman, I would know that she was being sarcastic and referencing the crap we women face every single day, things that men will never have to deal with. Men's anger is always taken at face value and never questioned, mainly because men are expected to be angry. One of the main traits of traditional masculinity is "rationality," so whenever a man gets angry, it is assumed that he has a perfectly legitimate reason to be angry because of that inherent rationality. Men can get angry at just about anything and they will never have to worry about being told, "Wow, your testosterone levels must be through the roof today!" Their anger will always be engaged in the appropriate manner to the situation, and they will never have to worry about someone thinking that they're just being a raving bitch. That is what male privilege is all about. In the meantime, women's anger is almost always attributed to them having their period or simply being angry cunts.

Let me just cue you in on something: no matter what stage of her menstrual cycle she is in, a woman's anger is ALWAYS LEGITIMATE. If she is menstruating, if she's just about to menstruate, if she's nowhere close to menstruating, her anger is always valid. That in and of itself is a perfectly acceptable reason for women to be pissed off about this "joke" whenever it is told. For ME to be pissed off.

But maybe I just have my period or something.

I Just...Don't Want to be a Mother. There, I Said It.

[TW for severe gender essentialism and sarcastic violent imagery]

Actually, that's not 100% true. I'm about 95% sure that I don't want to be a mother. The other 5% is telling me that I will change my mind someday, but I can never be sure that it's my actual instincts telling me this or if it's the patriarchal idea that's been drilled into my head since day one that all women MUST WANT to become mothers or else they fail as women. Almost any time I find myself in a conversation about parenthood and my lack of desire to become a parent, I am made to justify my decision. It's interesting to note that, in the same conversation, any woman who expresses a positive attitude towards, and a desire for, motherhood is not made to justify her decision.

Most misogynists and gender essentialists seem to think that nurturing a child is the ultimate thing a woman can do with her life. Forget a career, forget traveling the world, forget everything else you've ever wanted to do with your life; unless you have a child, you're nothing. And gods forbid you ever express your complete non-desire to have children. At best, you will be told that you will change your mind in the future. At worst, you will be told that you are a selfish freak of nature and that you're not a "real woman." I actually had a woman in an online Pagan forum tell me that I was sick in the head and that I deserved to die alone and unhappy because I didn't want to have children.

Is choosing not to have children selfish? Yes. And I'm not saying that choosing not to have children is selfish as a bad thing; I think it's fucking great to be able to look at your life and what you want to do with it and realize that having children is truly not something you want. For example, there are so many things that I want to do with my life where children would just not fit. I want to be a college professor and write research papers for a living, which is going to take up a HUGE chunk of my time. I also want to travel the world, go out with friends on a regular basis, take in shows, go to a week-long Pagan festival in the woods, pick up and go to the beach on an arbitrary sunny day just because, spend a weekend doing nothing but relaxing in a bubble bath and reading, etc. etc. If I were to have children, I would never be able to do any of these things. I just wouldn't have the time. And, simply put, I just don't have the patience for it. Crying children, rather than warming the cockles of my ovaries, make me want to shoot myself in the face just to end the suffering.

Although I suppose there is an altruistic aspect to choosing not to become a parent; there's that whole "not having a child you don't want and fucking up all of your lives because of it" thing.

What it boils down to is this: parenthood is a deeply personal choice, a choice that nobody but the person and/or people involved in the process of creating (or not creating) the child can make. It is not a decision that anyone has to justify to anyone else. Do I have an agenda against women who want to become mothers? Not at all. I give the utmost credit to and absolutely applaud the women who are ready and willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary in order to take on motherhood. Notice the key words there: "ready and willing." These women made a choice to become mothers, and that is what feminism is all about: CHOICE. If you want to be a stay-at-home mom, great. If you want to be a working mother, fantastic. If you don't want to be a mother at all, more power to you! You are not any less of a woman because you have chosen not to make use of your ovaries. So many people seem to think that wanting children is this inborn, biological force of nature that nobody can escape, but the fact of the matter is, ever since I was a child, whenever I envisioned my future, it never had children in it.