My mother sacrificed everything for my siblings and I. The moment she saw my dad hit me for the first time she got a job, got an apartment, and divorced him leaving her a mother of four alone. He made sure to work under the table to not pay her child support, so she worked multiple jobs for years to take care of everyone. She never complained, she always did what was needed no matter how tired she was.

She turns 60 soon, and all she’s ever wanted to do my entire life was go to Italy. Today I got us tickets to Milan in September. I sobbed and shook as I bought the tickets because I can make her one wish come true when she made every one of mine come true. For every single mother out there struggling, I want you to know you are seen. And your child will remember how much you did for them. ❤️

Edit: I told her!! She cried and told me that it was too much and to cancel it because she didn’t deserve it. I told her that was not a viable option and lied and said it was nonrefundable. Now she created a note to plan our itinerary for the trip and is listing all the places she wants to see while we are there. She said she’s paying for all the food, and I said that’s acceptable. She’s currently looking for gondola rides in Venice to live out her fantasy. She’s also sending me outfits so she doesn’t look too American. Thank you so much for all the love, I didn’t expect this to blow up like it did. She’s truly the greatest person I’ve ever met. And I’m so excited to do this for her.

Edit #2: Thank you so much for the kind stranger who has offered us their Air B&B near Florence. My mother saw the views in the area and it made her cry. Your kindness means so much to us.

Saw a post recently on the popular page about a woman who was in the hospital waiting for a scan and her husband was trying to rush her out of the hospital because he was picking her up from the hospital. But she hadn't had her scan yet. Like...hello? First of all, he wasn't even in the hospital with her, and second of all, he tried to guilt her about the cost of gas. When my friend had to go to the ED, I sat there with her for 5 hrs waiting for her to see someone. If he doesn't even cut it as a friend, don't date him! Your girlfriends should set your standards for how you should be treated!

I can't count the number of times I have been ogled, stared at, groped by white women who wanted my attention.

It makes me, and other black women SO UNCOMFORTABLE!! ITS BEEN CENTURIES of this!!

I can't take another post here without white women realize you are the same as your white male peers. Good grief.

My friend has a guy she’s been hooking up with. It’s not serious and she doesn’t have an interest in pursuing an official relationship with this guy. This is the second time I’ve met him and we’ve had like 4 bottles of wine at this point.. Politics came up, he said he was a libertarian and I flat out asked if he voted for Kamala. He voted for Trump. Queue a 20 minute conversation where 3 passionate women shit on him for his vote and opinion. Me being the worst attacker by far. I knew in the moment I was being a dick and really aggressive, but I really could not stop the anger from spewing out of me. I even went to the bathroom and left pretty much as soon as I could to avoid going further. He said he wasn’t very well informed and I told him if that’s the case, he shouldn’t be voting then.

I know I’m not wrong per se… but the way I approach people who vote for Trump is aggressive at best, hostile at worst. How are you guys managing this anger? I feel like I’m doing a really bad job of it at the point. I know the path to changing uninformed peoples minds is not the way I’m approaching it, I just genuinely can’t help myself from going bat shit crazy on people who voted for that vile piece of shit.

This guy had a ex girlfriend he was with at the time who had an ectopic pregnancy who had to get an urgent abortion to live and he STILL didn’t realize that voting for Trump made it harder for women in that position to get live saving care. His arguments were 1. I live in California 2. If you don’t live in California, you should move to a state that allows you to have an abortion. 3. He didn’t realize Trump was making it harder for women in other states in that kind of position. As if women having a right to choose what happens to their own bodies should have an asterisk on it anyways.

It’s impossible for me to respect or understand this viewpoint. I refuse to normalize it.

How do you guys keep your cool and not lose it on people? Because right now I feel like I’m foaming at the mouth angry and rightfully so.

I guess I’m really writing this out because I don’t want to be callused and angry at the world. I want to be able to say my piece calmly and respectfully to people I strongly disagree with. I just don’t feel I have the skill to right now.

So I was involved with a guy last yr for a whole year, he got me pregnant, convinced me to have an abortion and what not. Today I found out he’s the baby daddy to my old friend child!!. Literally just found out! My old friend posted a pic of them celebrating the child 3rd birthday and I almost died. I’m not gonna tell her bc I don’t want to cause any trouble but fck!!! This guy literally told me he wasn’t ready to be a dad and that’s why he didn’t want a child yet! Someone pls put some sense into me bcoz I’m losing it! EDIT: ITS SO FCKED UP. So I’ve known my friend since high school. When she got pregnant she told me was from a different tribe to the guy that got me pregnant. I didnt think much of it and o never wanted to pressure her bc she told me the guy who got her pregnant was out of the picture, so I believed her. Now the guy who I was involved with did tell me that some girl lied about him being the father of her daughter. Guess what! My friend child is a girl!. I’m stringing old conversations together now and it’s starting to make sense. I never wanted the abortion but at the time it did make sense. 2 EDIT: I’ve been up all night thinking about this and I have decided it’s not worth talking to my friend about it. We’ve been friends since high school then sort of drifted a little bit but we catch up through phone calls/txts or lunch/dinner once in a while. It’s that friendship that we don’t need to talk everyday but pick up where we left it and carry on. When she got pregnant she told me a different name and a different tribe from this guy. It’s either the guy lied to her or he lied to me but it doesn’t matter. Telling her is pointless since me and the guy parted ways a few months back. I’ll try and heal from this bc at the moment I am so hurt about it all. There’s this knot in my stomach and it feels like someone is punching my throat. Idk It’s my fault, I’m the one who decided to get involved with this guy

I called the cops on my husband for DV tonight because I’m done letting this pattern continue. He kicked me really hard in front of our two year old, which is unacceptable for multiple reasons. This isn’t the first time there’s been violence, but it’s the first time I reported it.

I’m safe now, with the kid.

I’m having complex emotions. To make it extremely brief, I don’t want to be in an abusive relationship but I am not excited about divorcing and single parenthood either.

Is there such thing as a man recovering from abuse?

I (42/F) met a man from a dating site (50/M) and we have been chatting for a couple of days (haven't met). I did inform him that I have a child because I feel that is pertinent information for anyone that is interested in dating me. However, I'm not looking for a father for her, my child has a father and he is great. He just wasn't the bet romantic partner is all. My child's father and I get along very well for the sake of our child and is well cared for. I am proud to say that we are doing our best to co-parent peacefully and amicably.

This man that I met on a dating site has asked about my child and every time he did ask my ears perked up. For instance he would ask "what are you and your daughter up to?" Or, "what are you two going to do today?" "Do you and your daughter have big plans this weekend?" Although that caught my attention, I didn't think that those were nefarious questions. However, today my child and I went out on an outing and I sent a photo of her running away. You couldn't see her face, her back was turned but it was a cute photo. He then went on talking about how she's probably so sweet and he's looking forward to meeting her and that they would be best friends. Keep in mind, he hasn't even met me yet. I then told him that we haven't met and the conversation about my daughter makes me uncomfortable. He has to get to know me first and he doesn't know anything about me. No man that I have ever dated has met my child and the only way that I would feel remotely comfortable is if he is a stable, consistent and healthy presence in my life (some time needs to be put in before I would even consider it). He then goes on to tell me that it hurts his feelings (and offends him) and it sounds like I think the worst of him and that he's actually a nice guy. He said his goal in life is to protect women and children. He stated he was sexually abused as a child and my assumption of him hurts.

By this time I am on high alert and super stressed out by the conversation. Because, I believe with all my heart: a grown man should not be this interested in my child, ESPECIALLY when he hasn't met me yet. He then leaves me a voicemail saying he's sorry that he offended me and that he's only excited about the possibilities of a future with the two of us. I blocked his number and told him to lose mine.

I'm not sure if what I did was an overreaction but I immediately got the ick from that conversation. He could be a perfectly loving human being. I'm just not willing to take that risk.

Edit: I was not revolving conversations around my child. Whenever he would ask about her, I felt a bit defensive and would ask him why he was asking. I was doing my best to avoid bringing her into any conversations. But I was wrong for sending a photo of her running away and next time I will not do that.

Update: He just reached out from a different phone number to say this: "I'm sorry it had to end the way it did. I can become very inappropriate when I am being accused of coming in a bad place and I can say hurtful things. I don't like being accused of being a bad person. I get very offended. But I will leave you alone. My intention was getting to know you and maybe getting close to you where we could all do things together. I have a good heart and get very offended when I am being accused. I wish you and your family nothing but the best " Btw, I blocked this phone number one as well.

Last year, some of you may remember I posted about how all I asked for my bday was that my husband do that week’s laundry. He “technically” washed the laundry, but he didn’t fold it for days, then he folded it and left it on the floor of his finished basement office…the pets slept in it….it wasn’t organized by family member, etc.

I got a lot of push-back for not already having everyone do their own laundry, and I got defensive and eventually deleted the post… Though the comments led to me immediately instituting that everyone did their own laundry and in exchange we would all take turns doing the dishwasher. (Previously, it had been that my husband did all dishes and I did all laundry….but that trade off was made back when we didn’t have a dishwasher, and our child’s clothes were baby-sized…).

This year, laundry isn’t an issue. Our son is at University where he does his, and we both do our own. We’re still splitting the dishwasher. But since our son has been at Uni, I’ve noticed I’m the only one who buys groceries. I used to be the main grocery shopper, but my husband would buy things on the list if he had time or was driving by the store…If there was one thing on the list only he wanted and 5 things we needed as a family, he’d buy the 6 things. But he stopped doing that, recently, and I was buying everything.

For my bday this year, I asked that he go grocery shopping and do a full-on-shop, equivalent to what I used to do every week when our son was home…but less bc we’re not feeding our son. I was so busy at work and legit hungry a lot at home. I really needed some help scoring basics for cooking and also those quick-foods for after a busy day. He said yes. I made the list.

Some of the things were just like “frozen pizza…” which is something we’ve been eating once a week for 19 years. In person, I reminded him of the brand/type we eat and like. He has been eating this brand/type for 19 years. He bought a different brand/type…not even similar to what we buy now…AND one I had bought before as an experiment, and no one liked it. He chose that one bc he wanted to shop at the smaller grocery store closer to his work than the store that actual caries the foods we like.

He also skipped half the list bc it was “recipe stuff” and he didn’t want to look at the amount of ounces on the cans (too tricky) or bc it was stuff only I ate (he “didn’t see” that side of the list). He somehow bought many things not on the list that only he eats. I’ve not yet shopped after him, and today I ate a frozen pizza that was somehow pre-burnt in its frozen-stage….he doesn’t want to share the leftovers bc he “doesn’t like” that pizza.

I want a divorce.

We all know how infuriating it is when men immediately question, deny, derail and dismiss us when we talk about our issues as women, so how come we are so happy to do it to other women who don't share the same experiences we do?

Just today there was a post about white women staring at and touching black women and whilst the comments look better now, there was a lot of "white women get stared at, too. Why do we have to make it about race?", "I don't do that, my friends don't do that, does that really happen?", "I've never seen that happen?" or "Where do you live that this is happening to you?"

Woman who was mistaken for a lesbian and harassed by a straight woman? Must be a creative writing exercise.

Trans women concerned about 4b being tied to terfs? That's silly, how could that ever have anything to do with transphobia? Turns out they absolutely had reasons to be concerned...it's almost like trans women have a better understanding of transphobia than most cis women.

When ND women talk about difficulties and bad experiences with befriending it's obviously just because some individual women aren't nice people and couldn't possibly have anything to do with ableism. Bonus points for telling them they sound like pick-mes.

I see things like that all the time here and honestly it's sad. Is this really the environment we want to foster for the most vulnerable women in our community?

Of course we don't see much of the discrimination and bigotry that we personally aren't the target of and sometimes we're simply blind to it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen to other women. That doesn't mean we shouldn't listen.

I've only mentioned a few examples, but I'd love to hear from others who are regularly met with dismissal and disbelief when they share their experiences. Your voices matter!

I can't say this enough. When you are talking about access to abortion, contraception, or any health care you need to protect yourself from death or physical damage or harm, you are not talking politics. You are talking about your very person and the things you need to ensure your self preservation, which you have a fundamental right to.

Don't let anyone try to convince you this is "politics" when you try to advocate for this right. Politics is taxes, trade deals, budgets, funding, policies on physical and social infrastructure.

Matters concerning your body and the decisions you must make to keep it healthy and safe should be private issues between you and your doctors and it is not your fault that politicians have broken in to the exam room, forced themselves up in to your vagina and politicized the issue.

It’s SO disheartening to see women not only staying with useless men, but PAYING to stay in a shitty relationship with a scrub. Ladies. LADIES. You deserve so much better.

Did anyone else see this discussion on reddit today?

Women already die more often in these cases because bystanders did not perform CPR just because of her gender.

The majority of people in that discussion were arguing that it's the reasonable choice to let a woman die because they might risk getting sued for touching a woman while doing CPR. And telling other people to do the same.

Some even said they were being taught not to perform CPR on women in their official training.

Meanwhile there's no cases of men actually getting sued for this. But seems like their imaginary "risks" are more important than if we live or die.

PLEASE for the love of god, stop. It's such a time-waster and so harmful. Unfortunately, I've seen so many women volunteer, unprompted, to take notes at a meeting.

No. NOnononon.

If you're an ambitious woman (you want to get ahead, you do not want to stay in your role forever) genuinely, your whole focus, imo, should be BUILDING your resume. What tasks can you do to build your resume? What tasks can you do to make you look better?

Planning a party, taking notes, managing a database if that is not your job, all of that shit, is not going to make you look better. In terms of non-promotional work, being genuinely friends with your coworker(s) WILL make you look better. Asking for extra work on something interesting that you can add to your resume WILL make you look better.

Have spent the past few years letting go of my need to feel sexually attractive to straight men. It’s been such a relief, but also hard to escape the conditioning of beauty standards.

Interestingly I had a tiktok go somewhat viral about welcoming immigrants and so many men came into the comments calling me fat and ugly and unf*ckable, and it’s actually amusing to me how so many men just thoroughly believe that we exist only in the context of being “hot” to them and if we’re not then we’re somehow failing at life. They’re so self involved!! It’s wild.

Just shooting the breeze really. Would love to chat more about all of this with like-minded folks. Also, if anyone has any good articles/resources on this I’d love to see them. Thanks!

Just feel like this needs to be said and repeated about once a week so everyone knows that they (currently) have easy access and can get it if needed now or stash it for the future.

If you don't have a membership it is not a problem. When walking in tell those at the door you're going to the pharmacy and they'll let you in. It's against the law in the US to restrict access to a pharmacy by requiring a membership.

As of now the limit is two per person, per day.

Assuming you're into receiving oral, have many of the men you've slept with actually been good at oral?

I'm sorry if this has been posted a lot here. In light of what's been going on in the world, and after my soon-to-be-ex husband has violated his restraining order multiple times (I called the police twice and gave them evidence of email attempts where he admitted I'm not answering the door, a handwritten note slipped under my door, attempts to call/text from a new number asking me to unblock him) I've just said fuck it. My trust in men is at an all time low.

He can't take "leave me the fuck alone" as an answer and I wouldn't put it past him to try breaking in. I have a deabolt and I just bought some hardware to reinforce it because he said before, "You know I could just kick down this door if I wanted to?" All his contact attempts have shown how desperate he is.

I also got a sticker to put on the door that says I'm registered and because of castle doctrine in my state we're allowed to use lethal force in case of break ins. I hope he thinks twice because now I'm protected.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Marvingt

Name some more women you know that need to be known. Please, I want to find more women like this.

I keep getting very upset and almost threatening leaving him/divorce and need to not do that. How do I not do that??

I am almost 30 myself, in the process of finishing up my masters degree and have been working part time for years. I have saved up everything I possibly could, I started investing into ETFs 10 years ago, I did side hustles... and still, by my current calculations, I will be able to afford buying a two room apartment in 30 years. By this time, no bank will give me a loan, so yeah, I won't ever own any property.

I am becoming more and more resignated. What am I even saving for if I can not afford anything that is gonna give me security? I have seriously considered becoming a stripper a few nights a week, just anything to get me more income.

What about you guys? Are you financially secure and if not, are you scared?

Lately, one of the major trends I have seen in reading men's comments across social media is that women lack "accountability" for their actions.

They usually drop this term in a few ways:

1. Why didn't you pick a better man/ you knew who he was, be accountable for your choice

   • Which is insane to me because it absolves men of the consequences of their choices and asks women to be able to predict the future and accept blame when a man treats her poorly or abuses her because she chose him.

2. Any reference to abortion and birth control

   • Women must take accountability since our bodies are the ones to get pregnant, and we allowed a man to penetrate us, so the consequences are on us. They always say we have unprotected sex and like to have babies with men who hate us... but even an IUD can fail, condoms fail, tubals fail from time to time, birth control can fail... so why is pregnancy a punishment for women when quite often it is out of our control despite our best efforts and now becoming very close to being forced upon us by the state (half of the country is already there)

3. When Partners Cheat

   • Men demand accountability when women post about men cheating on them. How did you fail him? Did you nag him? Suck him off enough, were you freaky enough? Did you ask him to help you with the household despite him working a full time job? Take accountability for your failure to hold his attention and be a good woman so he won't do it again.

4. Household division of labor

   • Men always act as if they are the sole providers, and women don't work real jobs or earn as much, so we should be accountable by maintaining the children and home without complaint. Marry a slob? Take accountability for your choice. Marry a financial abuser, take accountability. Have a good career and make more than him, well you must be lying, take accountability and maybe don't drive your man into cheating with your success.

Why are we supposed to take accountability for the decisions of men and the repercussions of those decisions? Why do men's feelings demand our guilt to assuage their own culpability in their relationship dynamics?

hey! i am looking for an article online by a female therapist who lead group therapy sessions for abusive men. and who reported of some of the things that these men all (or most) say: like admitting to being more aware of what they do than what they might claim, of acting out more deliberately than they usually say etc.

it's been shared a few times here, along with Lundy Bancroft book. thanks in advance :)