Does anybody know what is behind this ridiculous practice of waking infants during the night to feed them? My pediatrician gave me a brochure that insists on this, and my sister tells me horror stories about hordes of unhinged nurses bursting into her hospital room at 4 am in order to wake the baby using cruel and unusual methods.

I’d understand people in Ukraine acting out our collective food trauma in this way. But the US is overcome by obesity. What drives this desperation to feed when feeding is obviously pernicious and unhealthy?

Spain is experiencing a wave of protests by single women and lesbians who oppose the current legislation specifying that public funds can only be spent on fertility and conception procedures to assist couples consisting of a man and a woman.

For the longest time, Spain has struggled with a demographic crisis of massive proportions. Today, the economy is in shambles, and fewer people than ever want to procreate. To fill the demographic hole, Spain has adopted a set of very lax immigration requirements. As a result, the country has begun to suffer from the same host of issues that idiotic immigration policies have caused in other Western European countries.

It is mind-boggling that in view of all this the Spanish government would persist in its practice of imposing barbaric, Franco-era limitations on who is worthy of having a family. Instead of being happy that there are women in Spain who feel like creating little future taxpayers, the stupid government of the stupid Mariano Rajoy is in thrall to its barbaric prejudices.

Isn’t it time to accept that Franco is dead and no amount of political sorcery will resiscitate him?

On a serious note, if you have the same issues with self-esteem as the ones exemplified by the quotes I gave in the previous post, remember that no amount of pretending that they have anything to do with politics or with activism will help solve them. These are your issues and it is up to you to make sure they are resolved, even though you were not the one who created them.

The very first step on your way has to be finding the strength and the courage to name the person or people who made you believe all this crap (“you shouldn’t be too confident, confidence will repel people, you are only attractive if you are self-effacing,” etc.) A little hint: that person is not called “society.” Another hint: none of this has anything whatsoever to do with feminism.

Now is the time to decide once and for all whether you will continue hiding from the issue behind the “we are conditioned by society” discourse or will finally find relief and move on.

I very often feel very thankful that I’m excluded from these weird social codes that seem to loom very large for many people:

Men and women face different pressures when it comes to communicating and performing confidence. Women must be humble and self-effacing (“Oh, me? I’m nothing special.”)

I’m extremely happy I heard this for the first time at the age when it is too old to start doing the fake self-effacement thing.

Here is more:

Women who are “too” confident (which often means women with a reasonable, healthy level of confidence) are disliked much more than men who are “too” confident (which is more likely to mean men who are truly unpleasantly full of themselves).

I’m definitely one of the “too confident” group. And maybe people do hate me for that, who knows? The great thing is that I live in a bubble where I’m convinced that everybody finds me amazing all of the time. It isn’t like I’m capable of noticing or caring what people really think.

With beauty specifically, women end up in a weird double bind. Women must be beautiful, but they must not be confident. So they must play up their beauty while denying having done so and while claiming outwardly that they’re not actually beautiful.

All I can feel for people who participate in this insanity is profound compassion. I wish somebody had told them that the routine described in the quote is extremely obnoxious.

I’ll have my autism instead of this miserable way of being any time.