bomberqueen17:

buttons-beads-lace:

bomberqueen17:

Here it is, here’s my ACA Open Enrollment Plug:

If you’re in NYS, DO NOT SIGN UP WITH FIDELIS CARE. 

If you support real religious freedom (i.e. your religious choices are between you and your god, you have a right to privacy)

if you have endometreosis or any other complex reproductive-system-related condition

if you want to keep seeing your gyno, and want to be able to access all the services your gyno provides

DO NOT SIGN UP WITH FIDELIS.

They don’t have the guts to say this anywhere you’d notice it while you’re perusing the plan benefits– I actually did try quite hard to go through all the fine print but I missed it. And clearly, New York State expects you to miss it. Because when I signed up, after a couple of months, they sent me this letter, which clearly indicates that they didn’t expect me to already have realized this: 

“Fidelis, the health plan you joined, does not pay for family planning services.” (That last is bold and underlined.)

The back side of the letter tells me to go to Planned Parenthood. Here’s the whole text:

(Photo is of a list of places in several counties where you can get family planning services. Note that one of the counties in the list contains no family planning clinics and lists no options.)

I have a primary care physician who does my gyno care. This tells me, in effect, that I’m going to have to find another gyno to do that, because my insurance company won’t reimburse my PCP for a visit where she mentions birth control. 

Now, what my personal medical needs are, are immaterial to this discussion, but I am making this post because I know a lot of people are trying to choose plans right now. And it is NOT OBVIOUS that Fidelis is a Catholic company– they changed their name from Catholic Health Plan of NYS for that reason, I think.

So– BE AWARE, because they’re sure as hell not going to make it obvious.

I don’t know if this is legal in any other states, or if Fidelis exists in any other states, but LOOK FOR THIS KIND OF THING when you sign up!! Explicitly CHECK TO MAKE SURE. 

I am going to switch away from Fidelis not because I can’t stand to go to Planned Parenthood, but because I don’t want to support a company in any way that feels it can dictate my health choices because of its religious beliefs. 

I did a quick search and found a news article about this, and also the page buried in their website where they explain it. 

Thank you for the clarification! Excellently researched!

As the article states, it’s clearly not something that’s obvious when you’re signing up for healthcare. It shouldn’t be legal, and yet, they do it. And they don’t exactly announce that they’re doing it.

Fuck them.

pyrrhiccomedy:

animate-mush:

amatara:

I’m pretending all the time to be, kinder, stronger, funnier, more sociable than I am. I guess we’re all like that but it just feels so inadequate.

What’s the difference?

I know it sounds flippant but… certain things are fundamentally performative.  And other things are so close as makes no difference.

Kindness is performative.  Actions are kind, and people are kind by performing those actions.  You can’t “pretend” to be kinder than you are, you can only perform kindness or not perform kindness, and choosing to perform kindness is always worthwhile, no matter how much you may second-guess your motivations.

Strength is so many things.  It takes strength to pretend a strength you don’t feel.  And the way to achieve strength is to exercise it, so long as you do it in enough moderation to not strain or break anything.  Being able to affect strength when necessary while being able to put it down again when that in turn is necessary is healthy.  Everyone starts weight training with the littlest weights.  It’s not fake or pretending to do what you gotta do in any given situation.

Funniness lives in the interlocutor, not in the speaker.  It doesn’t matter how funny you think you are (or think you are pretending to be) – that’s not how it’s measured.  At what point are you “pretending” to be a musician if the music still gets made?  And often what it’s tempting to describe in first person as “pretending” is more accurately described in the third person as “practicing” – which is of course the way you cause things to Be.

Sociability is also performative.  Pretending to be sociable is just…being sociable, despite a disinclination towards it.  It’s making an effort towards something you value.  So long as the effort is not so great that it backfires into resentment, there’s no practical difference.  

Qualities or activities or whatever are no less worthy because you have to actively choose to perform them.  If anything, the worthiness lies in the act of choosing.  It’s not “pretending” – it’s agency.

tl;dr: ain’t nothing wrong with “fake it till you make it.”  A plastic spoon* holds just as much soup as a “real” one

* I keep wanting to talk about semantic domains!  Artifacts are defined by their utility, whereas living things are defined by their identity.  So plastic forks are still forks, but plastic flowers aren’t flowers.  So there’s two pep-talk messages to take away from this: (1) for certain things, the distinction between “fake” and “real” isn’t a relevant one so long as they still get the job done, and (2) the purpose of a living thing is to be the thing that it is.  The idea of a “useless person” is as semantically nonsensical as the idea of “pretend kindness” (or fake cutlery).

I love this post. It illustrates what I think is maybe the key difference between a developing self-identity and a formed self-identity, which is, like…confidence? If you are BEING kind, consistently, if you are prioritizing that over your own comfort or fatigue or even, occasionally, your emotional inclination (because OH MY GOD FUCK THIS GUY, I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE–uuughhh, but no, I’m not gonna lash out at him, that won’t accomplish anything, and besides, he’s probably had a bad day, he’s under a lot of stress, I don’t have to be an asshole about this…), guess what? That makes you kind. That is literally what kindness is. Same for patience, same for strength, same for all of this stuff. You got it. You’re doing it. You’re not faking anything. Stop second-guessing yourself and cutting yourself down. Give yourself enough credit to look at your actions and confidently assert to yourself that you are no longer just making things up as you go. 

gallusrostromegalus:

wigglyflippingout:

wigglyflippingout:

so last night my nightmare was that i was doing adult stuff writing checks, and in the part of the check where you say the amount of money in words, i wrote “fifty dollars fucking exactly”, and then spent the rest of the nightmare stressing about whether the bank takes checks with cussing in them or not

the next time i see @loononthepond in real life i am handing her a check for “two dollars fucking exactly” and we will report back with results

Fiance worked at a bank and says they definitely took checks with swearing as long as they could read the “Fifty Dollars” part.

He once had someone hand him a check for “seventy-six dollars and twelve cents, I hope you choke on it asshole” with an additional “travel expenses, to hell” in the “for” section.

partybarackisinthehousetonight:

never let your printer know that you waited until the last minute to print something and you’re in a hurry. they can sense fear