I was about twice the size of my (SE Asian) pediatrician’s daughter of the same age, and he just concluded that I was a very healthy Amazon child. I have yet to reach his projected height of 6′4″, alas. How much of the gap comes from starving myself in early adolescence, I have no idea.

Whoa, 6′4″. That’s really tall, but actually doesn’t surprise me given what you’ve said about your general build, and weight setpoints.

I was also very tall as a child (I think I hit five feet and 100 pounds in fifth grade; I’ve got this nifty trend going throughout my childhood and adolescence where my weight at any given time would be ten times my age. Makes it easy to remember how big I was at any given point), but extremely thin, bone-thin. My limbs always looked freakishly long, and by the time I was in middle school my ribs would all stick out really far if I sucked in my breath. Starting in early adolescence, and persisting through college, I hit the weight room really hard, and added maybe 40 or 50 pounds of muscle mass. My shoulders broadened a lot, and I haven’t looked *skinny* in a long time, but I still have fairly small, fine bones.

I remembered reading earlier on your blog that you were around 5′8″ and 180 lbs., which is right about where I am. But what you can’t see just from those measurements is that my 180 is a skinny person plus a crazy amount of weightlifting, while yours is a really big, strong person with a history of starving herself.

But no, most people would just look at the numbers and go “You both need to lose weight! Fat bitches.”

Not considering/knowing about the very real sensory issues and overload, doctors assumed that I had a huge mess of anxiety disorders (panic disorder, GAD, and even agoraphobia when I avoided overwhelming stimuli). Anti-anxiety meds will blunt your reactions to sensory issues, but do not address the problem. At all. Nor do the various forms of therapy aimed at changing your responses to anxiety-provoking situations; the sensory stuff kicks in before the anxiety-related thought patterns they’re looking at.

Learning that the sensory issues are real, and how they’re working in my case, let me figure out some ways of coping with them, directly. Even if CBT does not work directly to stop the sensory reactions, you can learn to change your reactions to the “symptoms”, once you know what’s going on, besides learning to work around overloading situations in the first place. That’s even without my previously-unrecognized hypoglycemia/diabetes: eat a piece of fruit before leaving the house, avoid >50% of “anxiety” symptoms while out and about. Now I know that I can manage this without uncomfortably sedating myself.

The meds did, however, greatly help the muscle spasms. Very possibly for the same reasons that I don’t have many opioid receptors now (wipe out dopamine receptors, you also wipe out related opioid receptors), I have never had a physical problem stopping taking rather hefty doses of benzos, besides just losing the muscle relaxant effect. This is the only type of psychiatric medication I would consider taking again. A lot of people do run into problems.

Ah, I will have to check out Wellbeing and Health–sounds like some interesting posts there.

Yeah, the dystonia is a major invisible disability–and rarely considered as a source of chronic pain. Barely treated, it’s done a lot to hurt my quality of life the past few years. I hope you can get your hands and back straightened out!

Finding out more, now I’m actually less prone to kick myself over turning into a caffeine and nicotine fiend–particularly the nicotine. No wonder my reactions to caffeine totally changed; it’s all about the dopamine! I used to hyperreact like I was on speed, now I need a coffee top-up several times a day to try and balance things out. Pretty soon, I want to try to give up the tobacco again–this time using enough nicotine products. The muscle spasms have gone absolutely crazy every time I have cut back, much less tried to quit–not surprisingly, I’ve seen other people with dystonia report the same thing. Not many people seem to recognize the dopamine link there, while blaming people for smoking.

Once I’m where medical cannabis is legal, I am sooo tempted to try that. Haven’t touched the stuff since the dystonia started, but that is a major thing it’s supposed to help. (Actually, legality isn’t the main thing stopping me now; I’m still vaguely embarrassed to admit it, but social isolation is the main barrier. I’d rather not have to go and hang around pubs hoping to see somebody dealing!)

Good to see more perspectives from women in CS/IT. Reports from people I know vary a lot, as does the amount of blatant sexism they’re running into on the ground; part of that is perception, I’d imagine. I’m still pretty irked at the pay gap–if anything, more blatant because employers have a hard time doing the old job title switcheroo, AFAICT.

Evan of Wellbeing and Health has posted several posts in the last week about being mindful. And being at home in our own skins. Lots of interesting comments about whose body we are talking about when we say ‘my’ body. Similar to issues you wrote about when you had some spoons.

Dystonia is indeed a big thing. It is also a hidden thing. I have worked my hands and my back into some untenable positions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssHealthcareNews/idUSN0646293320091106

(Found this from Furious Seasons).

And Other Fancy Stuff’s Being a girl in CS doesn’t suck.

http://otherfancystuff.blogspot.com/2009/10/being-girl-in-cs-doesnt-suck.html

(Pamela Fox works for Google and does these terrific presentations.)

The most appealing thing about the ’70s to me was the level of hope that’s mostly been squashed by backlash. Sure, things weren’t perfect, but they were looking up–and there was reason to believe that they’d continue to improve. The work people had put into improving gender and race relations seemed to be paying off, rather than seeming to vanish down a rathole to the extent that it seems to do under the backlash. Another major factor I’ve seen a lot of 2nd Wavers mention? Since then, we’ve been strongly encouraged to view obstacles (low pay, harassment, violence, etc.) as personal problems, rather than widespread political ones. Some more consciousness raising sure would help, these days.

If expectations of real change remained higher in Sweden, I can see why a lot of women would feel let down, as they can’t help noticing that with all the talk about true equality, it does not look likely under the existing system. I sure am tired of getting told that we’ve already got equality, in the face of all the evidence–so what else could you want or need?–and doubt it’s any more palatable where official policy change actually managed to go further.

Yeah, I’m mostly going by observations from 2nd Wavers and other activists who were around in the ’60s and ’70s, including my mom. It did seem to me that the emotional climate around a lot of issues changed as the ’80s marched on, being sensitive to that kind of thing. Part of the perceived difference may just be from my turning more disappointed with experience.

What counts as gender violence under a patriarchal power structure? Would most women even think of similar assaults as having been based on gender when asked about it? How “serious” does it need to be in order to qualify? Does injured dignity count, if it doesn’t cause visible bruises?

Good question.

There’s been a succession of interesting posts on this topic at Shapely Prose not too long ago; your post reminded me specifically of this one, in which Fillyjonk wonders whether we learn to excuse, and expect, a certain level of intrusiveness just because we’re women and harrassment of women is so ingrained in our culture.

Ah, letdown from the ’70s. I was born in the middle of the decade, and I still feel let down in a lot of ways.

I was born in the mid-’80s, with the backlash already in full swing.

The ’70s sound like they would’ve been a nice time to be alive.