Ugh, I'll Always Hate This Trend. As The Daughter Of A Nurse, I Was Taught Growing Up That Acrylic And

Ugh, I'll always hate this trend. As the daughter of a nurse, I was taught growing up that acrylic and fake nails are not okay because they are terrible for your actual nails, especially if done repeatedly, and because they harbor bacteria between the fake nail and your real nail. You can safely paint your nails for far less money anyway. If you do want to get them painted professionally, try to find a nail salon that is family owned or one where you can verify the workers are not trafficked. I grew up in the midwest US and I got pedicures at the same nail salon for over a decade because I knew it was owned by a local Vietnamese family.

I hate the trend of long acrylic nails so much. Ah yes, let's encourage young women to do something to their hands that will prevent them from doing most everyday activities. I get occasionally wanting to decorate your body. I get it. I paint my nails on occasion. But me painting my nails purple does not prevent me from handling small objects. Tricking young women into paying 35+€ every three weeks for the pleasure of not being able to use their hands is cruel.

Bonus: In Europe at least, many of the women doing your nails are trafficking victims, forced to work for essentially no pay with chemicals and dust that will permanently destroy their lungs and airways. All so you can be unable to use your hands.

“There are far more intended parents waiting to be matched with a surrogate than there are women available to carry these pregnancies, yet surrogates are taught to view themselves as disposable laborers. A doctor at a clinic in India adds that “for the surrogates it’s mostly the character of the womb that we are interested in. We make sure the surrogates know that they are not genetically related to the baby, they are just the wombs.” … The doctor superimposes a single body part (the womb) over the personhood of the surrogate as a whole being, effectively eliding her subjectivity. 

The surrogates that Pande interviewed referenced their own contributions to the pregnancy, contrasting the level of effort that they were putting into the pregnancies to that of the intended mother, who contributed “only an egg.” The surrogates were thus justified in making kinship claims to the future child … When one surrogate was told that she would have to “reduce” her pregnancy from triplets to twins, she insisted that she would keep the third baby if the intended parents did not want it because it was her blood, if not her genes … While blood does not circulate between the pregnant woman and fetus, the placenta is built from both maternal and fetal blood cells that can migrate between the two, lingering in various organs of the body and potentially impacting a variety of future conditions for the child, such as cancer risk and immune disorders.

This biological connection, however, is often downplayed because it is not genetic. In the Assisted Reproductive Technology industry, genetics are privileged over gestation, and thus the role of the surrogate is cast as that of an incubator who will not affect the appearance, intelligence, or personality of the child. This strict compartmentalization assures intended parents that their choice of surrogate will not impact the quality of their carefully selected genetic material, thus legitimizing cross-racial, cross-class, transnational surrogacy arrangements in ways that benefit the consumers of reproductive technologies. […]

Daisy Deomampo found that the intended parents she interviewed became very attached to the Indian “origin story” of their children, regardless of whether the child was conceived using Indian gametes. Parents returned from Indian with emblems of the country, “flattening out” the specificity of India and its historical and political contexts. [She] argues that parents “conflated the geographic space of India – and the attendant orientalist discourses that construct “Indian-ness” as exotically opposite to Western sensibilities – with the embodiment of the child’s identity through its gestation by an Indian surrogate mother in India” … Simultaneously Other[ing] Indian women’s bodies while incorporating romanticized and potentially colonializing notions of Indian identity or origins for surrogate-born children. 

The idea that reproductive tourists can tap in to the natural resource of Indian’s fertility is also raised … [Despite] India’s birth rate or “fertility surplus” [being] deemed a demographic problem, [it is implied] that the purported “excessive” population, bodies, and fertility of India are always an available commodity for the foreign tourist … An estimated 8-10% of Indian women suffer from infertility and most surrogate mothers have been permanently sterilized … [But] rather than addressing the health care needs of Indian citizens, foreign economic pressure and state intervention have aimed at limiting the fertility of the poor at the same time that the image of fertile Indian surrogates is used to draw in reproductive tourists.”

—Laura Harrison, Brown Bodies, White Babies: The Politics of Cross-Racial Surrogacy

HALT! Do you have sensory issues? Overwhelmed by sound in a messy environment? Desperately wanting to write that essay/fanfiction but your ADHD is getting on the way? In need of atmospheric sound for your tabletop game??

Please let me introduce you to MyNoise.net - a lifesaver on all aspects.

Mynoise provides an incredible index of noise machine generators with personalizing sliders to suit your every taste.

Missing the sound of a lively coffee shop during the pandemic? They have that. That specific, calming noise of a public park in a peaceful afternoon? they have that. Rain sounds? City sounds? Want to fuck around and listen to some uninterrupted Gregorian chants? They have that also!

According to the website:

"myNoise generators cover the whole audible frequency range, from 20Hz to 20kHz, over 10 color-coded sliders. Through a simple but accurate calibration process, all myNoise generators can be shaped to your personal hearing thresholds and compensate for your audio equipment and listening environment deficiencies, including the presence and nature of background noise. Calibration is unique to this website, and makes calibrated noise machines stand out from regular white noise machines. During the calibration process, we are able to measure your personal hearing levels, and adapt our noises accordingly. If you are suffering from age-related hearing, you'll be surprised to hear frequencies you thought were lost."

And that's not all. When I say 'incredible' I really mean it; I've found myself using the website on multiple occasions, for work, creative and stress-related issues, and the variety of machines provided cannot be overstated. You've got animal noises, nature soundscapes, street sounds, meditation aids, melody-based lullabies, magical soundscapes, medieval ambiance, situation specific sounds, white noise generators-- and a lot more!!! They even have noise to block out IRL sounds you don't want to hear.

Just take a brief look at what the index page provides:

There's something for EVERYONE. And it's all for free! It's been for free for years, and it is the creator's wish that it remains accessible to everyone who might need this kind of aid in life. I am using it to write this post right now. Though if you read some of the above index, you may have noticed that the support for the website has been very low lately.

Which brings me to the reason I'm making this post. Mynoise is curated and maintained by a single person:

Please check out the Mynoise Index for yourself, donate if you can, and tell your friends who might be interested ♡

Amen

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and a female by any other pronouns would still be oppressed in a patriarchy

Radfems focus less on owning TIMs online and focus more on real world grassroots organizing with other radfems for the specific purpose of forming class solidarity amongst women challenge