Living as a woman

Fanny shot after three 10ib natural births and two sneezes in rapid succession equal doom

Love this..reminds me of many moons ago some dickhead kicking off on the phone asking to speak to my manager. Sorry the manager is not available right now. "WHEN WILL HE BE AVAILABLE"
"SHE will be available after her lunch" and she will wipe the floor with you

In April being beaten to a top job for which I was the best candidate by a white middle-aged man when they had said they didn't want another white middle-aged man.
Interviewed by four middle-aged men, including the outgoing postholder, who told the senior woman interviewer, who was on holiday with her kids, she didn't have a veto over their decision.

Interview for my first ever job 35 years ago and being asked if I w a s going to have children. It was an illegal question even then.

And the job was shit. So if you get asked, refuse to answer and leave the interview, because they're going to be shit to work for.

Nothing changes.

I hope you eventually got your BFP!

During my TTC years I hated the feeling of hoping a negative test was 'just too early' I also had a couple of very early losses, so I stopped using home tests.
Proper test with the clinic after IVF I'm wandering round the shops, the clinic phoned - just confirming its positive 😀 - WHAT? REALLY? The girl on the other end of the phone was fully expecting I'd have done a home test. I don't think she'd actually broken the news to anyone before!

This happened to a woman who asked why they were calling her when her husband was the main contact as she was due in court imminently.

"Oh, I'm sure the judge will understand."

"I am the judge."

Encouraging my daughters to feel able to stand up for themselves and assert their boundaries with predatory, entitled men, but also wanting to warn them not to be too assertive and provoke those men to anger...

Standing in a queue, trying not to look too desperately in need of a toilet cubicle.
Then running into one and realising that not only is the seat wet but there's no tp!

I thought I was the only one called every time but the school even though I wrote down in capital letters to ring my DH first as he works close from the school and I don't.
They keep ignoring this. It's infuriating.

Leaking bodily fluids - milk, blood - and it just being perfectly normal.

The thing that strikes me about these posts is that these experiences are so detached from anything that could be described as identity.

These are such powerful posts, all of them, every single one. I have been so moved reading these universal experiences placed so carefully and thoughtfully before, alongside, across, on top of…. This isn’t a thread, or a list - it’s a wall, a rampart, a defence against flippant crassness from people who can never share our pain and glory 💪💪

Being groped outside a bus station by a group of young fellas. I was 13/14 but my body was very mature for my age.

I hadn't a clue what to do with that however, I had no sexual desires at all at that age.

I just remember that I had really liked the outfit I'd had on that day. Not that it was revealing or anything, far from it, but I'd liked how I looked. But after it happened all I felt was shame.

We need a better system of reactions on here - we only have thanks, agree and love.

There are so many posts I want to react to, but not with thanks, agree or love, and if I quote them all this thread would fill up with page after page of my quotes.

So to all of you, here are and anything else you feel in need of.

(BTW why is there a emoji?? But if anyone wants one of those, be my guest!)

Not doing things a man would take for granted like walking home alone after dark, not drinking alone in a pub, Drs refusing to sterilize you because you'll change your mind about wanting babies, not using a toilet if the door doesn't lock properly _ all things based on trying to protect yourself from harm.

Unexpectedly having my period on my wedding day and hoping that my San pro, 2 pairs of period pants, 2 pairs of tights and underskirt stop the risk of any accidents on my beautiful wedding dress

Having a condom break and crying because I was terrified I’d get pregnant and I didn’t want a baby at 16. Having a terrible first pregnancy which resulted in the need for a nephrostomy and a wee bag strapped to my leg for 4 months because I have a bicornuate uterus and my (now 23 year old) son was lying in such a position that he was crushing my ureter and causing my kidney to fill up.

I can’t imagine the horror of that, I’m so sorry.

Seeing the young males that I trained shoot past me on our career trajectory

Love this. Not the loss obvs, but such a powerful sentiment.

I felt as if a thousand hands were beside mine during those nights, sisterhood across centuries and millennia.

This is beautiful. I really want to embroider the last 5 words on a cushion

Washing my breeches out in the public loos, having come on and flooded, whilst waiting for a bus to take me to our local stables

Being told at age 36 after my cancer biopsy that they had found stage 4 endometriosis (it was everywhere) as well. All this a couple of months after our wedding. Losing my fertility. Adopting a girl who as a teen has already been sexually assaulted and groomed.

Thanks, don’t worry I told her very forcefully that as an educated woman she must feel like a complete dick to openly speak such idiotic sentence.

Being two weeks into a bleed following coil insertion, meaning I couldn’t be examined by my pelvic physio today (needed due to stress incontinence caused by two pregnancies and two vaginal births)