Backwards Feminism, Misguided Parenting, and How to Train Your Dragon 2, a rant in 2 parts

I swear it will all make sense by the end…

A few weeks ago I read this article…

http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/618-were-losing-all-our-strong-female-characters-to-tr/

It got a lot of comments and enough traction to appear on Jezebel.com which is often a crap shoot for actual feminist writing but mostly a bunch of postgrads who want to show off the shnazzy feminatzi buzzwords they learned at their Seven Sisters college.

It talked about how movies are getting better at making strong female characters but then they do jack shit with them. After bitching for a while the article does go on to frame a nice outline for writers/directors etc. to use in the future to have their strong female characters actually “DO” something other than be a trope. Unfortunately no writers or directors are going to read that part because it comes after a great deal of whining on the part of the author. Some of the article focused on How To Train Your Dragon 2 which I was really looking forward to watching with my kids. My daughter is obsessed and has been gobbling up the books non stop for months and sleeps with a stuffed Toothless toy.

doesn't he look all soft and cuddly

 Once I read the article I was really bummed. It talks about how they introduce Hiccup’s (the young male protagonist) mother Valka - A strong complex and pretty badass female character. 

The article then complains about how she doesn’t do anything once the male characters are done using her to further their own plot lines. This made me sad and uninterested in seeing the film.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

Well, we just saw it.

It was fantastic.

Fantastic in a way that sequels rarely manage.

Whats more is that Valka was fucking awesome. She is strong, smart, independent, and has been living as a lone human among a hoard of friendly dragons including a behemoth Alpha dragon, for 20 years. Learning about them and protecting them.

Valka in her intimidating kickass homemade armor riding her gigantic fucking dragon.  Honestly when we meet her in this getup she is scarier than the movie's real villain.

Valka having a tender moment and connecting with her son Hiccup

Do strong female characters often exist to further the plot lines of the male protagonist? - Yes. Do some women with overly strong senses of self righteousness and a deep misunderstanding of “feminism” get their panties in a bunch over nothing? - Yes

Newsflash - This wasn’t Valka’s story! She did, like every one else in the story male, female and dragon alike, serve to further the main character’s story. 

Part of Hiccup’s story has always been his belief that he couldn’t live up to the expectations of his large gregarious beloved clan chief father. He felt he didn’t fit in with his clan. Without those beliefs he wouldn’t have set out onto the path that led him to become the person he never thought he’d be. In How To Train Your Dragon 2 Hiccup meets his mother who is basically the dragon whisperer. It fills in all the back story of where she's been - living with dragons, why she left - because she disdained her tribe’s ongoing war with dragons and fought to protect them which allowed infant Hiccup to nearly accidentally be injured and so she stayed away to protect him as well. It makes Hiccup whole to find out that he is not a freak, that his desire for peace and his rapport with dragons are not a fluke. They are traits he inherited from his mother and I say again - she is awesome. She doesn’t wallow in guilt over the life she could have had. She is (re)wooed by her husband and plans to return to Berk (their island home) with him and be a family again. The femi-nazis complain that she gave up what is essentially her “career” and all the things that made her awesome to go be a lowly wife and mother and they call it misogyny. How do they not see that by viewing her choice to be a wife and mother (AS WELL AS A FUCKING DRAGON TAMER ) as being beneath what she was THEY ARE THE ONES BEING MISOGYNISTS! The WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF FEMINISM IS CHOICE!

Then Then - oh then, when I went to look up the original article I sited above I came across a few others written about how HTTYD2’s box office earnings were very disappointing and how they believe it is because parents are upset by the movie. Why are parents upset by the movie? Its making their poor tender little flowers cry.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Hiccup's father, Stoic, dies protecting Hiccup at the hand (er…electric fireball) of Hiccup’s dragon, Toothless, who is under some kind of dragon mind control. 

Just like so many ridiculous things we are raising our kids with that are basically pussifying them like trophies for everyone, not keep score, etc. Having hero’s journey stories without the hero actually having to sacrifice anything are completely pointless. But thats how we like it in America isn’t it? Reward without sacrifice. Hell, reward without any work or thought at all.

Anyway, it wasn’t Toothless’s fault. It even takes Hiccup a little while to remember that. His mother quickly and gently reminds him of that even as she is mourning the loss of her husband…who she just got back after 20 years. 

The loss of his father is what FINALLY propels Hiccup into adulthood and accepting the weight of chieftain. 

Now maybe the company responsible for marketing this movie made the mistake. The characters are 5 years older than they were in the original, they’re around 20. It is not a little kid’s story the way the first one was. It is a coming of age story. 

How many stories and movies have we all experienced where a parent, companion, or guide dies thus creating the path the protagonist takes. There is so much psychology and Joseph Campbell stuff here but I’m not writing about it go look it up. Point being - we’re all fine! Better than fine. Who would we be if we never reached the age of becoming disenchanted with our parents/guides/teachers? That point at which we realized they too are human and flawed but still wonderful. Kids don’t have that language. Their developmental equivalent is Bambi’s mom dying! That is what they understand. If you survived Artax and Mufasa your kid can deal with this. 

Why do people think that preventing their children from ever being upset is a good thing? Is being a good parent? How do you expect to grow as a person unless you come up against challenges and upsetting things and then learn to overcome or move past them? It makes no sense for a character and it makes no sense for your child. No one would listen to a story like that. Your children are stronger and more resilient than you think.

Thats Atreyu crying because your kid's life is so dull.

Grapefruits or Methadone

I often try to think of other things I can cut out of my diet to make me more healthy. I could easily just add exercise and I wouldn't have to cut anything but of course I HATE exercising. Every nutritionist type person always has a different idea of what I need to do and all of them sound impossible.

In the last 10 years I have cut out:

Fast food. It now makes me ill to eat it.

95% of the soda I used to drink and now even the %5 that is left is natural soda made with sugar cane and free of dyes and shit.

I've reduced the amount of red meat.

I've greatly reduced the amount of mayo and dressings.

I've traded much of the frozen processed  microwaved veggies I grew up on for fresh. Steamed.

I've started eating: onions, kale, mushrooms, peppers, hummus, squash, olives, and garlic.

I've traded white rice for brown

white potatoes for sweet

white pasta for rice or whole wheat

white bread for whole grain.

and have added Quinoa, millet, couscous, orzo and beans and I don't eat them often anyway and they're certainly not the main part of any meal.

My sandwiches and burgers only get half a bun if any 

I cook with better oils and less oil

I don't use margarine

I don't use artificial sweeteners.

I eat 2 organic eggs nearly every day.

I hardly drink juice

I hardly eat chips or crackers

I cut out almost all milk

I eat yogurt often.

I make entire meals out of salads

dessert out of a grapefruit.

I eat maybe half my bagel at our weekly bagel breakfasts and often eat less than my young children in a day.

Every dinner has veggies

Every meal has protein and so do most snacks.

I hardly ever eat candy.

In all this time and with all these changes I've just gotten fatter and more tired. Moodier and less fertile.

WTF

I am beginning to think the key to fertility is a steady diet of McDonalds, soda, and Meth. Those bitches have no problem getting knocked up.

Grasping at Straws

My sister gave birth two nights ago. 4 minutes into Halloween. I was so happy and then so sad.

Two times have I been pregnant in the last 3 years and both times I lost the baby and my sister had a baby. I am of course not begrudging my sister her healthy children. I am sincerely happy for her and I delight in my niece and surely will in my new nephew. But I am so so sad for myself. What makes is it worse is having people all over say things that make me feel guilty for my sadness. 

I know it is selfish.

I know I already have two children

Thank you Captain Insensitive. 

Yesterday I just could not stop crying. Every moment I had to myself I would start weeping.

This sent me into a frenzy of "I have to DO something! I have to plan something! I have to talk to my doctor and schedule something!" This passive - taking a new pill for six months and seeing what happens - thing is hard. It is very difficult for me to be patient when I have already been waiting for so damn long.

There was some small part of me, the part still grasping at straws trying to understand why I miscarried, trying to find a reason. This part concocted this idea that because I myself am a doula and I am the big sister that I had to be baby free to help my sister through her birth. So at the last minute when things got crazy and events aligned to make it so I could not be at her side, that last straw turned to dust in my hand. 

So I'm coming out of the closet

The mean bitchy mom closet.

SO I posted this 

to my FB today.

TO be honest I saw the "mediocre" moms thing after I clicked on it. I didn't pay much attention to it. I laughed. I passed on the funny to my FB universe.

I've watched a few others in the same vein. The "shit crunchy moms say". The "shit people say to breastfeeding moms". I never took offense to any of it. But I post this one and holy-hellfire-from-hypersensitive-moms. They jumped all over it taking offense and ruining what should have been a "funny" shared amongst likeminded friends.

What I want to say...

What I can't say....

But REEEEEEEEEAAALLY WANT TO SAY is

YES i do believe that my choices are better - If I didn't believe they were the best thing then I would have done something DIFFERENT. SO IF YOU ARE TAKING OFFENSE TO SOMETHING I HAVE DONE IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT OK WITH THE DECISIONS YOU HAVE MADE.

If you were confident in the choices you have made it wouldn't matter what anyone said or what stupid video they posted to FB!

end of conversation

So yeah.....none of that shit worked

Have not posted in a while. 

This is partly because I had nothing nice to say.

Partly because I am holding on to my emotions with a tight reign and if I started writing well....Hiroshima. 

So none of that fertility specialist stuff worked. 

8 months. 

6 rounds of Clomid. 

Ovidrel

IUI

$1000.00

no baby

Back where I started. Cycle Day 31. No sign of ovulation.

I started this new supplement called Inositol. It is just starting to be used as an alternative to Metformin in treating PCOS. It helps manage insulin/sugar/testosterone just without all that pesky constant debilitating nausea. You have to take a lot of it for it to be effective and the pill load was so high I had to cut out some of the herbs I was taking. So its the thyroid medication, the adrenal support, the inositol, the B complex (the inositol works better in conjunction with folic acid) and the DIM. Its been about 30 days since I started. The only change seems to be that my LH isn't surging once a week like it used to. Which is an improvement. The problem is it hasn't surged AT ALL. Doc says its still better than having too much.

Had a glucose and insulin tolerance test today. Empty stomach, both kids with me, 2+ hours of weakness and nausea from the disgusting shlock they make you drink. It was swell. Results Monday.

I am mostly angry.

I cry occasionally but mostly I just get angry. Everything, every little thing that goes wrong in a day just piles on and my natural inclination is to say "well of course. of course this horrible/upsetting/petty/ridiculous thing happened to me. Why wouldn't it? This is just what my lot in life is."

That kind of thinking happens on my bad days. I've had a lot of bad days in a row. Beginning to worry its my new norm.

IUI

IUI (intrauterine insemination) was done about an hour ago. No turkey baster which was a little disappointing on the comedic end but it wasn't too physically uncomfortable. Emotionally is another thing.

It was so cold, sterile, awkward. 

I keep hoping its the sperm from Thursday nights sex that does it but really I shouldn't care. The important thing is that a perfect little person comes from it.

Right? 

What do I have in common with this turkey?

Just got word that I"m not "surging". This mean that though I have a 23mm follicle, my body hasn't decided its time to have a Lutinizing hormone "surge" which would tell the follicle to get the hell out of the ovary. So tonight I take the plunge. Almost literally. I (or more likely my husband) will inject something called Ovidrel into my stomach via syringe. It will do what my body is too uncoordinated to do on its own. It will tell the follicle to finish ripening and emerge.

Then hubby gets to jizz in a cup....

Then in two days hubby gets to jizz in a cup in the doctors office and I get a nice turkey baster up the hoo-hah and gods willing we'll make a baby.

I"m the turkey in this scenario

This is so unromantic and unsexy it is hard to believe so many people do it. Then again, people poo in each other's mouths for pleasure so I guess this isn't so bad. But it's seriously unfair like so much else. 

I get to lay on a cold table naked from the waste down with my feet in stirrups and have a stranger shove a cold metal speculum inside me. Then the doc will use a catheter to  inject the "specimen". I get the speculum...

HE gets to have an orgasm!

How is this fair?