Hi all,

As our community is still small and not overly active, I thought instead of trying to have a weekly or monthly chatter thread up as a sticky, we could try a perpetual one and see what happens.

So anything you feel doesn't warrant a post of its own, just put it here.

Cheers and take care!

Medical misogyny and gaslighting is an absolute bitch.

• you don't have to put your body through any of that
• you don't have to deal with some fuckass man saying horrible things like this about you after you MANUFACTURED AND PUSHED AN ENTIRE PERSON OUT OF YOUR BODY

An excellent reminder of why being CF is such a good choice. It's usually the people who think things through that make the active choice to take the path of staying childfree.

Otherwise, aside from a very tiny minority, it's overwhelmingly the mother who sacrifices the most.

Things are changing, slowly but surely, but even so. People need to stop believing that having kids is some sort of milestone, or the only way forward in life.

Source on Instagram

(also for the non-CF people who will inevitably come rushing in here with their pitchforks held high: this is a joke. For comic effect. In case that wasn't crystal clear.)

A little while ago I had the joy of taking my partner to a cat cafe that recently opened in our city. The rules very clearly state that children under age 10 are absolutely not allowed in the cat room without parental supervision. Which isn't ideal, but it's something.

Except "parental supervision" doesn't really mean jack shit if the parents don't care to supervise. A family with two kids came in about 5 minutes after we did and the kids (both very much under 10, because who cares about the rules) promptly started running riot in the cat room and grabbing at the cats willy-nilly while their parents just scrolled on their phones in a corner. All of the cats retreated into their hidey holes and we were incredibly disappointed -- we wanted to spend time with them, but thanks to these two wombats the experience was completely ruined. My partner and I and a staff member all tried to (very gently) tell the kids to be gentle and were immediately met with glares from the parents until they were finally asked to leave.

Why anyone would be so irresponsible and not bother to control their kids is beyond me.

PS: The point here is NOT that poor people shouldn't have kids, it's that no one should be having kids without having the basics of childcare covered, which necessitates widespread systemic, societal, and economic change so that no parent needs to worry about those basics, and kids can grow up in secure, healthy environments. I completely forgot to mention this when I originally posted it, and that's my bad.