A woman I like a lot posts a bunch of stuff on social media. She writes a lot of cultural/gaming/technology criticism. Reading her stuff is like having to wade through a dick contest of guys arguing with her telling her that she hasn’t thought about stuff properly.

Maybe it’s completely awesome that I’m such a bitch. Do you know how often dudes try to tell me I’m thinking about something wrong? I can generally count the times in a year on one hand. And those dudes rarely make it a full paragraph into their digression before I start biting their fucking head off and they don’t come back to do it again.

Being a woman is a tricky thing. I’m “supposed to be nice” but most of the women I know deal with micro-aggressions they try to “be nice about” all fucking day long.

I’m not real nice. If you are going to argue with me about something it better be because I got a fact wrong because if you argue with my OPINION I am going to rip you a new asshole. Opinions are allowed to differ and everyone is entitled to any wrong opinion they want to have. Don’t.Fucking.Come.For.Me. I will make you sorry.

Why doesn’t that kind of attitude trigger the same, “I’m so bad I deserve to die” loop tape?

That puzzles me. There are pieces of my abrasive personality that trigger these intense shame spirals and I feel like there is no hope for a worthless piece of shit like me, I will never be worthy. Then there’s the fact that most dudes are annoying as shit about wanting to control the thought process of every woman nearby and Fuck That Shit.

I may feel like if any of the dudes wanted to talk about trauma and I interrupted their story that I am the worst person ever. But if they come to my sandbox to tell me I’m wrong about something (THAT IS A FUCKING OPINION) I will respond like a honey badger. And I don’t feel bad. There are some kinds of defense-of-self that don’t feel like a problem to me. Being willing to take the head off of people who argue with my opinion apparently is enough and that seems weird.

It’s a strange reason to feel justified in acting like a harpy. Only it is such a pervasive part of my culture.

This is about when I have a fierce conversation with a man and I have a different opinion and I refuse to concede that the Penis-Holder-Is-Always-Right I get called a bitch. Once I turned and said, “Would you tell a man who held a similarly strong position that he was an asshole?” Dude said no. They would just be a strong man.

This is where I wonder about gender and presentation and trans identity. I’m a woman. But I am not a woman who will be shoved in the woman box. I am a woman who is very happy to be stronger than the men standing nearby. That’s Jim-dandy fine with me, motherfucker.

I take my inspiration from what I read about Chinese Dragon Ladies. (I sure as shit hope that isn’t a rude racist way to refer to them as an outsider, I’ve read a fair bit of stuff that acts like it’s a common culturally accepted term.) Basically matriarchs who take no shit from anyone and boss the whole damn family around as well as anyone who walks too close to them.

That sounds great.

I am my own pillar of my community. I may look around to consider what other pillars are holding up, but if I don’t agree then I’m not fucking conforming.

As lonely and stupid as I get when I don’t see people much–I’d much rather be alone than conform to expectations that don’t work for me. This may be one of the most rigid parts of my personality.

I. Don’t. Need. You.

It’s a protective mechanism. When you cannot grow up needing your parents you pretty much have to form a barrier between yourself and the world because you can never need anyone. I have to be ok if everyone walks away. Noah, my kids, my friends… I can’t need anyone too much.

Some day Pam or Jenny or Sarah might divorce me. Sarah and I had that super traumatic separation as the result of my horrible behavior. I fucked up once. I could do it again. I’m not blaming anyone else for my fuck ups. I fuck up every so often and sometimes it is big. If there are consequences I get to pay them.

And I will need to keep walking. With or without the people who make me feel like maybe I’m not a worthless piece of shit. Because maybe I am and I deserve to feel that way and until the day I lay down and die… I need to keep moving. So I don’t hurt people too badly with who and what I am.

I found an incest cohort person who told me they are absolutely ecstatic to have a word for us that isn’t “victim” or “survivor”. I was thanked profusely and told they will use it forever in conversation because that is the best word for us they have ever heard.

Even if I am divorced by everyone I love. I still want to do research on my cohort. IDB still calls my name. I want to make a database about the incest cohort. Maybe it’ll turn into ICDB. I don’t know. I just reset the clock on that. Shit.

This research is going to be literally physically dangerous and I can’t do it when I have little kids. I’m going to make perpetrators very angry and they are going to want to silence me. What they don’t yet understand is the more you try to silence me THE LOUDER I SCREAM.

You should have heard me years ago at a bdsm dungeon. I was playing with an idiot who wanted me to growl/moan my way through him beating me. I got louder with every fucking hit. He was very angry I refused to process in the way he found sexually appealing.

Watch me weep for you. Oh wait, I won’t. Nevermind.

We didn’t play again. He went back to the “good submissives” who would do as he said. Well, whatever.

I do not exist to affirm the “rightness” of random men. Oh hell fucking no. Even though women are expected to default to that role left and right whether they want to or not. I may hate myself. I may think I’m a bad person.

I think I know my own mind better than you do, motherfucker, and don’t you fucking dare argue with my opinion or I will make your day very unpleasant.

I think this is partially because between my brain being an asshole and my body hating me… I have a lot of unpleasant days. Why should I feel bad about sharing that joy? You interacted with me motherfucker… you started it. But I get to finish it however the fuck I want.

I talk to my kids a lot about the fact that violence is very seldom the correct answer to a problem. But when it is you need to bring overwhelming force and not hesitate a millimeter or it’s going to go poorly for you. Avoid violence wherever possible–y’all are little bodies. You can’t withstand much violence so Don’t Fucking Start It. But I tell them there is no such thing as fighting fair in a real fight. Let’s talk about how to inflict serious damage and pray you never ever have to use this information.

Most of the women I talk to are not prepared to defend themselves with extreme violence. That breaks my heart. You deserve it, baby. And you don’t need to have a man defend you. You can bring a whirlwind of scary all on your own. I’m not a big woman, but I have a force of personality that scares the shit out of a lot of people. I get out of a lot of scary situations by looking implacable. People mostly don’t want to fight.

An instructor in a suited self defense class told me that the vast majority of muggers/random people who assault are not looking for a fight so people like me… just seem like bad targets. He stressed over and over that I was easily using twice as much force as is necessary to get someone to think I’m a bad target. Because in my head if someone targets me I need to eliminate that person. They need to never target anyone again. I don’t need to kill them… but I need to do enough damage that they will never think it is smart again.

I rehearse weak targets in my mind. Eyes, nose, throat, groin, knees. What will I take out first?

Where does this fierce desire to protect myself come from? Don’t I want to die? Don’t I want to suffer because I am bad and I deserve all the pain? Why don’t I put my head down and accept more pain as just?

Because even if I deserve it, I don’t deserve it from you and you are a fucking problem who might target another woman after me. I need to convince you how unwise that would be.

A friend commented “We marry our parents”. I said no I did not. I DID NOT marry my father. Has my husband committed rape? Yes, he has. But he is not a serial predator. He does not target children. There would be signs and I’m incredibly well educated about them. My kids know all the clinical language for their bodies and I don’t think they could be molested in secret. They don’t keep secrets. Christmas in this house is a hilarious round of “SHHHHHH. SHUT UP AND DON’T TELL YOUR SIBLING.”

My husband doesn’t terrorize his family. My husband is… not a small man but he’s not big either and my father was a giant. My husband is gentle and helpful and sweet. My father was a monster. The only interaction my father had with his kids was coaching sports teams, otherwise he wasn’t involved.

I didn’t change a diaper in the first month I had a child. I’m very certain it didn’t go like that for my mom.

I didn’t wake up crying, that’s good. This pregnancy is so rough.

I’m not reaching out to folks much for support because I am very much in that irritable and bitchy stage of depression and it’s easy to wear out a support network this way. I’m talking in depth about it to one or two people who are at a slight remove so I can’t bitch at them the way I might someone who feels closer. Mostly I’m talking to moms-of-many who are talking me through pregnancy depression stuff.

I get very different flavors of support from different friends and I need all of you.

Moms-of-many have something to offer me that moms of one or two or non-breeders don’t have. It’s not because y’all are lesser people. It’s just about a specific set of life experiences. Once you get to the point of not having enough hands to control all your children… the game changes.

I told Noah that if I have to have a C-section then a 4th child is not on the table even though he has talked about possibly wanting us to go there. I’m not doing two C-sections in this life. I’m just not. If I have a section I’m going to ask them to tie my tubes while they are in there. Then we won’t have to deal with another vasectomy. If I have an easier vaginal birth we can talk a year after Lightning is born. But if this is rough… I can’t do a fourth. I don’t have that to give in this life.

Pregnancy is so fucking hard. I’m 6 days away from 5 months. I’m still a pound below my pre-pregnancy weight. I’ve been bouncing up and down in this pound for a couple of weeks. I’m supposed to be gaining by now. The baby is not supposed to be actively stealing my fucking body. But hey, everyone goes through pregnancy in their own special, shitty way. My parasites eat me alive. Literally.

In a pregnancy gaining 20-35 pounds is a good thing. I’m 21 weeks in with 19 weeks to go. Haven’t gained a pound yet. But my belly is sure expanding. I told a non-breeding friend that a breeding friend commented that I’m bigger than I have any right to be. The non-breeder was very confused and asked what that meant so we looked at pictures of belly bumps on the internet. Yup, I pop and look like I’m in my third trimester just about instantly. Even though I don’t gain weight. I just bloat and fill out in the belly like whoa. I pointed out how the uterus is way down here and look at these tiny little dainty bumps… I don’t do that.

Bodies are weird.

I think my body adapts to pregnancy-shape really easily. Despite feeling awful, my body likes this shape. My abdominal muscles are excited to release. They think this is their moment to shine. This is not the standard American ideal, but what the hay.

I’m doing way better about eating vegetables in the past few weeks. We have attained Veggie-Soup-I-Like status and I’m consuming it copiously. I have way less diarrhea. I suspect this is related.

Sometimes it doesn’t work. I hang my head in frustration.

I’ve had several days in the past two weeks when I’ve added a third dose of pot to my day because I’m really not doing well. If I weren’t pregnant I’d be dosing four or five times a day. I’m trying hard to keep to two when I can manage but when I’m a weeping ball of useless… sometimes I just have the third fucking dose. It’s do that or hurt my existing kids by neglecting them AND hurt the in utero kid because being that upset is really bad for a pregnancy. There are reasons they put pregnant women on drugs that could hurt the baby because not being on anti-depressants is worse for the baby.

My drug has less chance of harming my kid than anything else on the market. I need help.

I could be content with three kids. I always wanted three kids. That was what I walked into this relationship hoping for. I would feel like my family was complete. But I get the argument for third kid needing a buddy. We’ve been doing better at going for walks in the evening. It’s really beautiful watching EC and FMC hold hands and talk and play as we walk around. They are such good friends. Yes, they fight sometimes too… but when they separate for longer than an hour they get anxious for one another.

We are a tightly knit group. I worry that Lightning is going to feel like a fifth wheel. If things go smoothly I will consider a buddy for their sake. I don’t think I need a fourth child.

I know some of my friends think I need to worry more about the ecological implications of having more children and impact on the planet etc. I’ve had over half a dozen non-breeders tell me that I can have extra kids and call them their contribution to the planet because they aren’t having kids. I’m a good mother if I’m not good at everything else about life. My kids are great people to add to the planet.

We’ll see.

I’m so scared of birth. But I love feeling Lightning jitterbug inside my belly. I’m going to have yet another super active kid.

That’s ok sweetie, we will understand.

I’m going to confess something I find funny. This entire post was written in the time it took me to poop. Have a nice day.

Oh, here is an article that talks about why I am SO ENTHUSIASTIC to support Noah having friends. Noah needs to feel that beautiful love from his friends, even if I am not involved. Especially if I’m not involved. He needs separation and love from not-me so that he can understand that he is not defined as worthy or not based on the amount of love I am showing on a given day. He deserves more than that.

We all need to be loved.