In Malaysia, chances are a lot of women don’t know that something can be done about it before cancer reaches that stage - and honestly, when it does, nothing can be done about it beyond palliative treatment.
I post on another board that’s about 90% women, and sometimes it seems half the posters have a child on the spectrum. The one thing that’s consistent is that whenever they go out in public, they think that everyone who sees them is going to criticize the way they interact with that child and the way that child acts, and that everyone is also going to spend the rest of the day talking about them. :rolleyes: Me? I have NEVER seen a crowd of people around a frustrated mother and a child in a meltdown, telling her that she just needs to beat him into submission. If these women face that every time they go out, I wonder where they live, so I don’t go there. I don’t want to be around Judgy McJudgypants like that, anywhere in the world.
I have definitely seen kids acting in ways that are not age-appropriate, but it’s usually really obvious that something is “wrong” with them, and if a child is very badly behaved, something I truthfully rarely see, the parents are usually acting worse than the kids.
My neighbor’s boyfriend, who’s in his 50s, has Asperger’s too. I figured that out the first time I met him (trust me, it’s that obvious) but she later told me that he’s officially been diagnosed. He was one of those people who read about “Aspie” kids and recognized himself in them, and got an evaluation. His obsession is the provenance of imported collectable vinyl rock records. :dubious: Anyway, he’s not a bad person, and he’s VERY good to her.
I find this comment offensive on so many levels I almost can’t articulate them all. Full disclosure: I am a breast cancer survivor. I had a hell of time in treatment and, to this day, appreciate the support I got from my family and friends. But I did not then and do not now think I’m some kind of special snowflake for having survived a disease that quite easily could have killed me. Shit happens in life. In my life, it was breast cancer and all the residual fall-out (no pun intended) from it. I know several women who are also surviviors. None of us thinks we’re special. We all know we are just lucky to still be here.
I find our society’s worship of the female breast to be utterly ridiculous. I was deeply hurt by my then-husband’s insistance that, if I had to have a mastectomy, I would have reconstruction surgery, regardless of how painful or difficult for me, so he could have a sex partner with the correct number/shape of breasts. But to suggest that we worship those who have survived breast cancer because we think female breasts are the End All Be All is assinine.
Breast cancer gets attention because that is the only way to raise money to find a cure. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, remember?
That’s interesting. One of the people on Real Housewives of New Jersey has an autistic toddler, and while in the previous seasons she was nice, if not a little childish. Now she’s just…insane. I thought it was stress from worrying about her kid but he’s got a lot of support and the family has a lot of money, and she’s got a lot of support. Sounds like what you describe above is what happened to her.
I think a lot of it is just fatigue. We are constantly being told that we need to think about everyone’s problems, and bend to them, and devote time and energy to everyone else’s problems, and we have plenty of our own. Whatever the new and hip illness is, we lose ground to them in small but practical ways. My kids get less instruction time due to an out of control autistic kid. We lose options in the grocery store because of all the new gluten free foods. Our health insurance goes up mightily because of cost of prescription drugs for borderline psychiatric issues. We lose decent swim lessons because all of them have been converted to those with special needs. We can’t watch a football game or parade without being reminded of people who have cancer. Conversations and opinions have to be edited because of the fear of stepping on someone toes.
I understand and sympathize that the options are opening for those with that kind of problem, but we all have problems too. They may not be autistic kids or breast cancer, but they’re real and limiting in their own way. There are only so many resources, and it sometimes seems that whoever has the current trendy thing is getting all of the attention, which takes away from everyone else’s problems.
One time here on the Dope there was a discussion about Komen and their pink ribbon thing. A Doper recounted a story of his wife, who I believe had lung cancer, watching a commercial about pink ribbons, and saying something like “I guess my cancer doesn’t get a shiny pink ribbon” or some such. How awful is that. I guess the point is that, after all this demand that I pay attention or give or make allowances or sacrifices - I’m over it. It’s too much, and I don’t care anymore. I know how callous that sounds, but it is what it is.
If only disabled people would just go away so you would have more space at the swimming pool. Having to wade through all of those gluten-free foods at the supermarket must be such an imposition. How dare people presume upon your attention or preciously limited resources for their psychiatric medication. It must be so difficult to feel the erosion of one’s unearned privileges and, too add insult to injury, to have to watch an autistic kid freak out at the grocery store! Your life would be so much easier if they didn’t share your pools and water fountains, I know. You have problems.
No wonder he’s your ex-husband! :mad: Truthfully, I have never heard of a man leaving his wife because she had breast cancer, although I’m sure it’s happened. I do know of people who got divorced, but they were going to do that anyway.
Yes, his insistance on this, which thankfully was unnecessary, was quite the insight into his personality. I will spare you the observations he made about how unpleasant it was for him to look at my bald head.
I, too, don’t know of a man leaving his wife because she had breast cancer, but I do know couples (yes, plural) whose sex life stopped utterly and completely because the husband was so put off by his wife’s disfigurement. Yep, our society worships the female breast and that worship does no one any good whatsoever.
Did you hear both sides of it? I’ve actually heard and read more stories about the sex life disappearing because the wife feared her husband wouldn’t love her any more if he saw her scarred chest, and wouldn’t put herself in situations where he might.
I’ve heard similar stories about women who were repulsed by their husbands after he had a testicle removed, so it’s not just pigheaded guys who act this way.
It appears that most women who have breast reconstructions do it because they feel unbalanced, and/or they want their other breast “fixed” in some way, most commonly reduced. There’s even a very interesting procedure where they do a tummy tuck at the same time, and guess how the extra skin is used? I saw this done on a TV show, and the “new” breast looked incredibly good.
DIEP Flap reconstruction. The doctor wasn’t able to get good enough blood vessels so they did a modified TRAM Flap which only took a little abdominal muscle.
My wife had the reconstruction on the table, and did not want implants. Double mastectomy, so the doctor was able to rebuild both for symmetry. Her choice, I just wanted her to have the tumors removed, anything else was trivial.
How dare these people want a normaler life too? Shouldn’t they just be regelated to back rooms behind closed doors? Damn them for getting in the way of normal people!
I think Facebook Fatigue hits the nail on the head.
I don’t see the individual parents of autistic kids or breast cancer survivors being worshiped so much. Like, you can’t show your breast cancer card and get a discount at the movies or anything. And autistic kids out in public or in schools? Well, they can be off-putting because they behave abnormally or difficult to deal with and people sort of react accordingly. Some with compassion, but not everyone. Which I think has to make life harder for parents of autistic kids.
But on Facebook (and similar venues), people fall all over themselves to let you know they think women who’ve had mastectomies are beautiful and amazing and autistic children are special angels (kids with Down Syndrome, too). People do things “for breast cancer awareness” all the time. They’re the subjects of glurgey stories and worshiped in theory by the sort of people who like to post that kind of thing (and also pit bulls- who are kind of in the same category, except for the part where they’re not people).
It doesn’t necessarily extend to helping the actual people, should they encounter one- the important part is that everyone knows how compassionate they are and these are the pet causes for slacktivist compassion.
The foods don’t bother me, but having to wade through all the perfectly healthy non-celiac-sufferers who’ve suddenly decided to give up gluten because it’s the latest food-woo bugaboo is sorta annoying.
I’m not sure what bonuses you get for being the parent of an autistic child, I’ve never gotten any. All I really want is for people to MIND THEIR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS! For whatever reason odd and unusual BUT not disruptive behavior in a child or hell even an adult bugs the hell out of people and gets their mouths wagging. And add to that people can have some very odd and unusual ideas about what autism is and it is all kinds of strange, I’ve taken to telling busybodies my son is deaf because that seems easier for them to understand.
“You should beat that kid’s ass for him”
“Why won’t he look at me?!”(when they decide they just must talk to him, the fact he won’t respond just gets them riled up)
“Why are you letting him do that?” (some harmless and non-disruptive thing that makes him calm and easier to wrangle, I often want to ask if they’d prefer running and screaming)
See…I don’t get this. Who, what and how exactly do you have to “wade through” anything? Did the 10 linear feet of shelf space in the supermarket devoted to gluten free foods displace your Cheerios? As the Mother of a Gluten Intolerant Child ( ) I’m very glad that such items are available…but if I weren’t, I can’t imagine how it would affect me to have them in the supermarket or on the menu of my favorite restaurant.
If anything, I’d be delighted to find that there are things to make crackers out of other than wheat, just because I like variety. Lentil chips? Yummmm! Flax, chia, sunflower, manioc, garbanzo…there’s just so many cool things in (some) gluten free foods; she gets a far greater range of foods and flavors, and maybe even nutrients than her classmates who enjoy wheat crackers and wheat bread and wheat pasta and wheat everything…and you don’t have to be a special snowflake to enjoy a greater variety in your diet.
My mom and my sister both went through breast cancer…Mom at 80, my sister at 57 or so. Both were caught early, quick lumpectomies, Mom had radiation and drove herself back and forth to treatments. Sister had chemo and had a worse time, but still managed to not miss many schooldays as a teacher, and wore her wigs and didn’t make much of it. She just got on with things. I visited with her during her first chemo treatments, and her family was much less supportive than I thought they should be, but that’s a whole 'nother thread…they are just as dismissive now that she is having knee replacements.
My sister has mentioned that it seems in all the BC hoopla that happens around the time of Komen fundraiser walks, so much is made of the stories of the women who have had much worse times of it…more aggressive cancers, not caught as soon, struggles with treatment, passed away way too young… that that sort of makes people think of them as these wonderful goddess/martyrs who have endured so much. But people like her and my mom, who really didn’t have horrendous experiences, are forgotten or minimized. Case in point: My sister’s school district had a Breast Cancer Recognition day last October for all the teachers affected by BC. No one from my sister’s school nominated her for any awards, they didn’t even have her on the list for the damn t-shirt they gave to every BCS and the restaurant gift cards and all the other things they did for the other women, she was totally ignored through all the presentations at the assembly. She didn’t feel right about making a stink and standing up and saying, “Hey, where is my T-shirt and pin and scarf” but sobbed to me on the phone. Afterwards, one of the administrators realized their oversight and apologized to her (but she still didn’t get a damn shirt because, you know, they had special ordered them in advance and couldn’t get just one more) but implied they had forgotten because she had sailed right through and hadn’t even missed much work (because she had timed her chemo treatments right). So in her mind, the canonization of the BCS survivor seems to be predicated on how tragic their story was. I told her maybe she should have shared more about her husband deciding he was gay and moving out just before she was diagnosed, so he was emotionally unavailable to stand by her, or her daughter saying her social anxiety made it hard for her to go to the clinic with her mom, but she vetoed that kind of sharing!
) I’m very glad that such items are available…but if I weren’t, I can’t imagine how it would affect me to have them in the supermarket or on the menu of my favorite restaurant.