For this post, I’m going to be sharing some comments about my health that I find deeply hurtful and explaining why those comments were personally hurtful. Now I am going to mention all of these comments were not meant to be offensive. People said these things to be helpful, supportive, or just didn’t know anything about me.

“You’re so lucky that you are young and healthy!”

Trigger warning! This post is about physical, emotional, and child abuse in a fictional TV show episode. In addition, I will be describing some very disturbing abuse scenes. Even though it is fictional it can be upsetting.

For this blog post, I am going to talk about Assassination Classroom.

I thought at first I was just weak. No one else struggled as badly with their periods. Clearly, everyone could handle these debilitating symptoms just fine. Therefore I was weak for struggling with something so natural. Then I realized there was something very wrong with my body. I would say something completely normal to me and people would react with confusion. At this point, I switched to feeling like a freak. It sounds egotistical, but at the time I had zero information about menstrual cycles. That’s sadly not an exaggeration. Oh, sure public health classes gave those deemed female basic biology information. But any useful information that could help people like me was never given. Like what are reproductive diseases? Or plenty of women struggle with periods its ok. Here are some ways to get help if you need it. Or heck, a simple don’t be ashamed to go to the doctors if you need help!

I recently led a discussion on banned and censored films in the United States. During the discussion the topic of nudity came up. It struck me that the United States has a taboo around nudity. And that is shown very clearly in films. What is typically shown is the illusion of nudity. The “naked” person is covered by a sheet or hidden behind camera angles.

Whenever actual nudity is shown it tends to shock the audience. Which is weird right? People are reacting in shock to seeing a human body.

It seems to me even when direct nudity is shown there tends to be a hierarchy of which body part is acceptable to be shown on screen. For example, butts are the rare exception for nudity. Shots containing butts are usually played for shock and laughter. Those shots are actually pretty common and may be shown in all age rated films. Then there are the chests scenes. Men go topless all the time. Topless women are usually only seen in R rated movies. And finally film scenes containing genitalia are essentially unicorns. You have to go looking for them, myths and legends surround them, and there is generally massive controversy whenever one is spotted.