You are what you are. I am what I am. If you like shooting/hunting, that doesn’t mean you aren’t a woman. I am absolutely terrible at math, my epic badness is legendary at the office… that doesn’t mean I’m not a man.

It’s interesting to look at the representations of things in different cultures and different time periods. You have the deities: Diana (hunt) and Artemis (hunt). Apart from being represented as the ultimate in human female physique (just like their male counterparts for male physique), that’s certainly not a “feminine” thing. In Japan, girls used to be trained to use the yumi, a large longbow… wanna take a guess at what it was used for?

I also work with a woman who can’t stand to be around firearms, I work with a male police officer who made his way up the ranks and feels the same way. I work with a woman who loves to grab her .308Winchester and kill “God’s creatures” and put them in her fridge, I work with several men who grab their and do the same. I admit that I don’t know of any women out here who use one of my friend’s preferred “deer” rounds, the old .375H&H Magnum, but there aren’t too many guys who want to shoot that either 🙂 Beautiful gun and a beautiful and versatile round, but *ouch*. Someday, I shall own a nice Finnish made .375H&H Magnum, but that day is not today.

Here’s a practical safety concern that I have for your beliefs. “There are times when i feel safer pretending to be a male.” One of the most important safety concerns is knowing your limitations and knowing when “going there” is a “Bad Thing”(tm). I am 6’3”, 230 pounds, and frequently carry a weapon ranging from .380ACP to .45ACP and can shoot a pistol to law enforcement qualification standards. You know what… when that little voice in the back of my head says don’t go there, I don’t go there. I am concerned that this feeling of safety may lead you into situations that you probably shouldn’t be in. It’s like those folks who get a concealed carry permit and think that they are invincible… they aren’t.

Anita, parents being late doesn’t always indicate being lost or forgotten or unseen. Work, traffic, mother nature, all sorts of things can add up to being late. This week, we had a storm here that was so bad, people who lived in the periphery but worked in town, stayed in town. Yes, in the 21st century, we had weather that was so bad people couldn’t travel.

Jawn: Anita’s right. You are romanticizing what was. The Med. isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Greece’s economy moved beyond swirling the bowl and is somewhere downstream of the toilet. Italy’s isn’t all that great either, same for Spain’s. There are some interesting genetic traits to deal with the climate down there. Go across to the other side of the Sea, and well, there’s not much grand over there.

Strange; northern Europe ranks pretty high in livability, including Norway, Sweden, etc.. Would love to go see it, if I could ever get enough tranquilizers to handle the flight. Haven’t had too many issues with the northern Europeans I encounter out in the Dakotas. Too bad none of the female Finns I’ve encountered are particularly interested… between my British Isles ancestry (queue up Welsh names) and the Finns’ apparent love for vowels in strange places, could have some interestingly named kids…

Inky: Hey now, there’s nothing wrong with the election. We’re just stuck with the gong show that has resulted from it. I’m more worried about the excessive amounts of human stupidity on display after the election than about the results. Seeing a big divide between the urban and rural communities. Really surprised that a ton of litigation hasn’t broken out yet. More troubling are the claims of “hacking” with nothing backing them up. Remember the threats the US made of doing cyber-attacks on Russia if it thought there was any hanky-panky going on? My concern is, we’ve got these allegations and nothing has been presented … how long before somebody thinks it’s a good idea to “poke the bear” and launch a cyber-strike?

Anyway, enough of that.

You do know what “clearing the decks” is for, at least originally, yes? 😛 I’d be a little nervous if the universe was “clearing the decks” in preparation for me… Especially if the universe’s equivalent of a 16″ naval cannon triple turret was swinging around to target me after the decks were cleared 😛

The Book of Psalms has some interesting reading in it as does Ecclesiastes (think I’ve got the right book). I am not sure that I’d take it as divinely inspired, but some of the material in there is pretty good for human understanding/knowledge back yonder.

Pain really doesn’t have a purpose outside of letting us know that something isn’t right. Could be physically, emotionally, etc. Sometimes it gives us a chance to fix/change/stop doing things.

Just be glad you don’t live in the US and get to experience the flat-out gong show that is taking place in our cities. (*Function checks 1911*). Sometimes glad to live in the rural areas 🙂 Though driving ~240 miles through a snow storm to get to the State Supreme Court for oral argument is a real pain.

Medications help, but they aren’t the end-all-be-all. The most effective I was ever prescribed was the Xanax, Klonopin, etc. family. Too bad they are now viewed as the equivalent of something like heroin these days; good luck getting a script for them in the US. Last time I wanted about 10 pills for flights, I got treated as if I asked for crack cocaine or something.

Before law school, I was diagnosed with major depression and GAD (also GERD, but something different). Before and during law school, I was prescribed virtually every flavor of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication available at the time. Prozac blew my stomach up; tri-cyclics turned me into a highly constipated individual who wound up losing hours long blocks of time. When I took Zoloft I hallucinated and had out-of-body experiences. The best overall effect for anxiety came from Klonopin for me. Klonopin and its relatives didn’t seem to have a ramp-up process that things like SSRI’s, etc.

Strange thing started to happen: when I knew I had something that simply worked, there was a certain power in that. I think I used a total of ~5 out of my last refill, mostly used with bouts of anxiety accompanied by migraine headaches (turn off the lights, shove a towel under the door, duct tape black trash bags over the windows, and turn off the phone type migraines). Once I grasped that I had something that would work when SHTF, then I could manage the lesser instances.

As far as coming out of the end of it, I guess you could call it a success. Graduated law school and now work as a prosecutor making six-figures with assets over $1M. The downside is that I went into massive work-a-holism, my social life went in the cr*pper, and I’m 39 with no SO or spouse. Still suffer from anxiety and depression, but much more of the depression side than the anxiety these days (late fall/early winter on the Canadian border and SAD).

We don’t really have much in the way of mental health services out here. It’s not that uncommon for even suicidal folks to not find mental health facilities, so I can’t talk about experiences with therapy. Lot of folks out here handle things differently. Shooting sports are very popular out here, but in Australia, probably not much of an option. A nice late spring day, a half-case of varmint ammunition, a sighted in rifle, and an endless supply of ground dwelling rodents = a mind (and field) clearing afternoon/morning.

Exercise is always good.

One thing: There’s always somebody richer than you are (unless your name is Bill Gates). There’s always somebody more knowledgeable about your field than you are. There’s always someone with a better looking, wealthier, SO or spouse than you. There’s always somebody with a better car, house, boat, than you. I don’t care what metric you choose, there is always going to be somebody better at it and somebody worse at it than you are. That type of comparison is not terribly likely to help you feel better.

Scandinavia is mostly civilized 🙂 IIRC, it has some of the top rankings for “best places to live.” Just expensive to live there…

Hehe Valkyries. See “What’s Opera Doc” for the Warner Brothers’ take on Valks 🙂

Villages where half the warriors were women probably means that it was a small village:) Back in the day when combat was up-close and personal with swords, axes, etc., I’d bet on the average male warrior over the average female warrior every day and twice on Sunday if for no other reasons than reach and endurance.

Here’s the thing: the feeling of “safety” isn’t about gender. On average, men are physically stronger than women as was noted. There are reasons for that beyond primary and secondary sex characteristics. If a man, XY, does not have the ability to make proper hormone receptors, the man develops with a sterile female body plan with average size and strength between that of a man and a woman.

The other thing is that trying to come across as a “man” probably won’t make you anymore “safe”. There are differences in how men and women walk, there are differences in proportionality, and generally differences in size. I sometimes work with a woman who is 6’3″ tall, but, even with body armour on, it’s still pretty obvious she is a woman. However, with a Glock 41 and ~5 x 13round mags of .45ACP + 1 in the “pipe,” she’s somebody you wouldn’t want to mess around with.

Not understanding the scientist thing. There are some jobs that I truly don’t think would typically work for women, but research isn’t one of them.