i am reviving this book—YAY! i'm super excited and i hope people who follow this are too! let's get our discourse going!

so. i just watched an interview where margaret talked about the testaments, her new sequel to the handmaid's tale. and she said something that just sort of struck me.

now i've followed this line of thinking in the past, but i got my period this morning, and it really hurt today—i was having a significant amount of trouble functioning normally in my chemistry lab because of it. that's how bad the pain was. this isn't an uncommon thing for me on my first day. generally, i have very abnormal period symptoms—intense pain, enormous blood clots, large volumes of blood, the works.

anyways, margaret said:

"young women of reproductive age are always in the minority in any society, and therefore they're never allowed to vote as a group on measures that concern them. they feel they're on the verge of of having decisions made about them, and about their entire future and fate and body and health and all the rest of it, that they have not been able to decide."

and i was like, margaret... you're so fucking right.

i suffered so much today, and i have suffered for so many days ever since i turned thirteen. and it's all so i can have a kid one day. and i do want to have a kid! i am so excited for when that day comes—i think childbirth is a miracle, and i think raising a kid and filling him or her with love is beautiful, too.

but childbirth is MY miracle. mine. it won't be my husband's. it's not my father's, or my mother's. it's not my doctor's. it doesn't belong to the old men that make up ~76% of the congress and senate, and it sure as hell doesn't belong to that #pussyassbitch trump.

so why do people act like it??

why can't i make decisions on what happens to my body? why is that decision in the hands of men? they don't understand what it's like to get their period once a month. they don't understand how crippling it can be to carry a child or birth that child or raise that child.

honestly, women should be the only ones allowed to vote on issues that concern them. it only makes sense.

because i'm a psychic, i know some of you will bring up the issue or parental claim over the child. "but it's my measly little sperm giving the kid life! i get to decide what happens to it, too!"

but, guys. if it's not your body carrying and delivering and (quite literally) MAKING that baby, your choice just doesn't matter that much. one sperm won't lead to a child—a woman, however, will. a woman and her womb and nine months of her life and the pain she experiences and the morning sickness and the likely inevitable rip in her perineum and pushing and the postpartum waddling.

i mean, to bring to mind legally blonde here, by your logic, every single one of those sperm that you masturbate out is a veritable fetus and must be protected at all costs.

and in an age where we're, say, fifteen years away from giving lesbians the ability to have a biological daughter, women should have complete ownership over their bodies.

and yet. my uterus doesn't belong to me. just let that sink in.