Yes, I am getting help. It’s not diagnosable as agoraphobia, because I can leave my house. There are even a handful of places I can go all by myself. I am sure if I hadn’t gotton help, it would have become full blown agoraphobia. It’s complicated, but we’re working on it. Thanks for asking. That was nice.
This leads to my fear. I fear the total collapse of society. Sometimes I think about just how far out on a limb we are when it comes to being able to sustain the density of our current population. Just interrupt the food supply around here for a few days and you won’t need a bomb to achieve anarchy.
No, it couldn’t. It assumes a male hive mind which wants to band together and subjugate women (and–the implication is clear–uppity queers like myself).
Because when I told her why I thought it could never happen, she effectively said, “Nope, men are pigs and they want to lock us up in cages.” That’s intentional ignorance and I was offended by the implication that I would happily band together with the worst hypothetical misogynists in the world and help lock women up to do what we please with. It’s incredibly insulting and belittling of my political consciousness. I’m a feminist, but if I were Creaky’s coworker, every day when she walked by me she would be thinking, “Oh my god, what if that freak wants to lock me up in a cage?”.
Farmer Chick, thank you. You understand what I said.
And Hostile Dialect, I didn’t know you were queer! 
Come on Hostile, you are being a little obtuse here. For all of human history up until very recently, women were not given equal status. Are you trying to say that for all of human history, men were of a hive mind and have only recently become individuals? Are you saying that whence we came we couldn’t, but for a well-placed meteor of appropriate mass, return?
Going to the doctor, and having them find something wrong, such that I have to change everything about my lifestyle, and them criticizing me for it. I am getting a physical for a new job next week (after having managed to avoid it for my entire adult life until now- I go to the doctor only if I have a pretty good idea what’s wrong, and it’s extremely painful or threatens death or permanent disability), and I am TERRIFIED. Tears are running down my face just thinking about it. I’m more scared of doctors than at least one of my cats is of the vet.
Hypodermic needles. I have to look away if I get a shot, I cry and shake, and I’m near hysterical the rest of the day. I couldn’t even look when the vet gave my cats their shots.
Anything getting in my eyes. I will flinch, very hard, if something is coming near them. I can’t have someone else do eye makeup for me, nor could I put on eye makeup with my eyes open, for this reason. I had an easier time giving one of my cats eye drops than I do giving them to myself (since I have to close my eyes to do it, and tend to screw them shut tight).
I’m another one who can’t watch torture or anything gory in a movie or on TV. I remember Master and Commander only for the scene where the doctor
does surgery on himself
(don’t read that spoiler if gore in movies scares you)
I looked away from the screen during that scene, and asked Mr. Neville to tell me when it was safe to look. I still was feeling like I was going to throw up during it. Usually I will read one of those “movie reviews for parents” sites before going to any movie, to make sure there is no gore in it.
I understood it crystal clear, too. It’s just not rational. Having an irrational fear is fine–most people do, I’m sure–but when it’s pointed out how offensive that picture of masculinity is, and then you respond that, no, it’s quite possible that it will really happen and I really am part of a misogynistic hive mind, well, can’t you see what the problem is here? I’m not saying you have to get over it immediately; that’s just not reasonable. I mean, people told me not to be afraid of dogs for some 10 years before I finally got over it for good, and there are still lingering twinges of panic at times.
But think about what, exactly, you are saying. Consider how it would sound if you replaced “men” with “black people” and “women” with “white people”. I’ve thought of you as a basically good person and a likeable poster here, and it was a shock to hear how you think of me, irrespective of my actual individual feelings on gender relations, and that you seem to have no interest in hearing the truth about this. The fact that so many women apparently believe that men would do this, saddens me, and makes me wonder if people just assume those things about me all the time. It’s also very insulting. If, for some absurd reason, some group of men were to decide to subjugate women as a whole, I would undoubtedly have been part of the substantial (probably majority) resistance movement against that–but now I’m wondering if women would appreciate it. Maybe my attempts to educate myself and build my awareness of gender relations are all for naught, and I’m always going to be seen as some evil pig-beast no matter what I do.
No, and you’ve stretched pretty far to make that connection. Your basis is not even factually correct; I suspect that women have not been unequal for all of human history in all societies. The concept of gender inferiority is, I believe, a social construct, one which unfortunately caught on in Western society and took a long time to undo. The cause of gender equality is not helped by the belittlement of either gender as fundamentally base.
I guess you have a cite for the recent American society which locked women in cages as sex slaves?
My oven.
Seriously. I almost started a fire in my last apartment. I was making a babka (my first time using a new recipe) and I forgot to put a cookie sheet under the butter-coated springform pan. The butter leaked onto the heating element, which spewed out nasty cloud of smoke. It took me forever to clean it up and air out my apartment. Ever since that day I’ve gotten jittery whenever I have to bake something.
Oh, and mimes. They’re just creepy as hell.
You are the one who introduced cages and sex slaves into this discussion.
Well, yeah. Seriously, where the heck did that come from?
This is starting to get, like, a hijack bigtime here. Out of respect to the original poster, maybe somebody wants to start another thread on this subject? Not me; I’m too old and tired and lazy! 
OK, let’s look at the original quote:
She was clearly referring to the use of physical force to turn women into sex slaves–two of those three titles specifically involve total sexual subjugation. Whether or not literal cages are involved, the net effect is the same: women are physically prevented from escaping their fate as sex slaves. The whole thing is incredibly insulting for a large number of reasons I’ve already explained.
A recent discussion on this very topic. The example was in my mind because I vigorously defended men against this accusation in that thread and was, bizarrely, accused of being a pervert for it. Of course, that one turned out to be a troll (SBSO). As I said in my recent response to UncleRojelio, the “sex slave” part is pretty much equivalent to “concubine” and “breeder”, and the use of physical force to make it happen is considered at least metaphorically equivalent to literal physical confinement. It’s a simplistic reduction of your argument, to be sure, but I feel it also communicates how insulting that argument is to men like me who are active in women’s rights movements.
I did. You’re way over the top. Way.
You should really take that to the pit/GD. It’s getting really off topic.
Anyway. Dying in my sleep. I want to know what happens afterwards–I’d hate to just never find out. Even an, “Oh, it really is nothing” would be nice.
I’m convinced that Creaky meant no offense, so I’m not going to Pit her, and I like to stay out of GD. I’ll defend myself in the Pit, though. I just did on the very same issue, and I’ll do it again. (I’d appreciate it if someone lets me know by PM if I do get Pitted, though.)
Oh, and I’ll try to stop the hijack here, since it’s clearly bothering people.
Me too, including the part where I also check those review sites to make sure movies are safe. I wouldn’t have even been able to be in the same room as someone watching a scene like that. I wouldn’t be able to be within earshot.
For me, this fear also goes for books (I had to put down A Clockwork Orange every few pages and fan myself, I fainted reading Lord of the Flies, et cetera). I had to leave the theater during Speed Racer and go lie down on the bathroom floor because it showed a guy with a bloody lip. Oh, and I had a crying, quivering panic attack watching The Bear because of the scene where the larger bear is shot and limping even though I know it’s just fake blood and a well-trained animal pretending to be in pain. I couldn’t continue watching the movie.
I was always the kid to faint during the first aid movies in class and I once even fainted during an educational film about archaeological digs, because I kept thinking, “Ack! Those dinosaur bones once touched blood!” So yes, I’ve always been like this.
Of course, my boyfriend loves gory movies, so he’s never going to be able to share his favourite movies with me!
what scares you? And, more than that, what do you do with that? Do you attempt to outrun or avoid your fears? Do you attempt to take them on, conquer or destroy them? Do you attempt to embody them?
Spiders. I smash them with rocks when I can. Maybe I was a bug in my past life and I haven’t gotten over my grisly exit. Or maybe…maybe it’s an ancestral terror. A visceral aversion coded into my genes through thousands of generations of successful evasion of monstrous, vicious arachnoids. Insects don’t bother me–even when I feel them walking on me and I can’t see them–their touch alerts me but does not alarm. The touch of a spider is somehow different. Its cadence, assurance, stealth…its very intention to immobilize and torture is conveyed from its vile mind through its hooked clutches and right through my nervous system prompting a reflexive rush of adrenaline madness! I brush the beast from my person with my non-dominant hand and spin around to face my enemy, my two eyes gazing into the deep malice of its eight gateways to utter physical and spiritual destruction. My hand seeks for something solid–a book, a shoe…a large, flat rock. And with the assurance of the talisman of mother earth grasped firmly in my flesh, I dispatch the heinous, otherworldly menace. Crushing it, again and again, pulverizing it into a stain of unnatural goo. Crying like a child for my ancestors taken by arachnoid mandibles over the eons. Smashing the wicked mass of chitin and ochre for the sake of my own children until madness rescues me from awareness. And I sleep. Deep, dreamless slumber as the torn fragments of my mind reweave themselves as the orbweaver renews it’s sticky snare of destruction after ending another innocent life. I awake chilled, sombre, exhausted, sickened at my instinctive violent reaction and gaze with putrid satisfaction at the smear that was my attacker. And I weep at the hopelessness of my struggle…
I read history books.
Imagine the events…and the last, dying, terror-filled thoughts of the victims of history’s “great” men.
Yeah. My mom lived a long time in this state and then died a prolonged death from Alzheimer’s, and I told my doc I’d rather kick off in my 60s from a heart attack than to die the way she did. He got all alarmed and tried to change my way of thinking - maybe he thought I was going to take pills and snuff myself in my old age or something.