BlogHer - What's Bugging Women? - Comments

Just Not Bees

A Elliot — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:42:15 -0600

Bugs don't "bug" me at all. Honestly, I don't have a problem with them. I do have a problem of bees though because I have bad reactions to them. Until I started blowing up from them, though I never minded them either. Don't get me wrong, I don't seek them out, but I also don't freak out if I find one in my house.
Alex Elliot, Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting

Things that sting

Suzanne Reisman — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:20:15 -0600

I am completely terrified of bees. I've never been stung, but any time a bee gets near me, I can feel the panic rising in my like a big wave that will drown me.

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

They probably thought

biggirlblue — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:25:30 -0600

They probably thought someone had a gun. Sometimes I scream and sometimes I just go spastic.

Moe
BigGirlBlue
Large & Lovely

"Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known." ~Nellie McClung, 1916

"The only good bug is a dead bug"

biggirlblue — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:23:39 -0600

Bugs and spiders, have a purpose in nature... just not in my house. When they are in the house (or my vehicle) I freak. Freak. More so spiders or those creepy centipede things. I've been known to have panic attacks if I feel cornered. I know it's irrational (afterward). I have been known to wake my husband up at 2 am if I find a spider lurking. I couldn't sleep otherwise. I could be in a dark room and sense a spider in the far corner. This sometimes freaks out my husband.

I got excited about your bunny comment until I realized you were fibbing. I honestly think I would go into heart failure if I saw a cockroach. Seriously.

There are certain bugs in nature that I've come to accept. Ladybugs for instance, dragonflies, bees (although the fright radar comes on if they get too close. I once demolished a hot dog in the car because one flew in while we were parked and eating), butterflies.

I'm feeling anxious just thinking about it. Oh, and I am a gardener. :) We all try to stay clear of one another. Sometimes it works and sometimes I need to run into the house for a break.

Moe
BigGirlBlue
Large & Lovely

"Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known." ~Nellie McClung, 1916

Bugs...just not on me

suebob — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:23:07 -0600

I am pretty brave when it comes to critters. Maybe it comes from having to take entomology and the whole bug collection thing (you have to find like 100 species and KILL them in a cyanide jar, then pin and label them, all very gruesome). I just kill and move on.

But if one runs across me, I still shriek like a little girl. I did this at work at the cube farm the other day. A spider ran across my hand and I YELLED into the quiet, hearing 100 keyboards quit clacking simultaneously.

Buggy stuff

Mata H — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:53:27 -0600

I really don't mind insects -- they annoy me, but do not frighten me. I'll squish 'em or spray 'em in a heartbeat. I have a dear friend doing some contractor work for me, someone I have known over 30 years, and his wife took me aside to explain that if any spiders appeared I would have to kill them for him. I never knew he had this fear. I plan to be very respectful, however, and have asked his wife to just tell him to tell me "spider alert" and I will be there.

I am afraid of mice, bats and rats. Terrified. Bloody, bone-chilling, howling with fear, frightened. They make my skin crawl and they scare me. So I "get" irrational fears. My parents even tried creating a mythological mouse buddy named "EEKY" to no avail. EEKY was fine, real mice sucked.

What I do not get are people who taunt others with fears -- like putting a fake rat on my computer one day -- it just scared me almost to tears, but why did people find that funny? I asked them -- "why is my fear so funny? It felt very bad to me." They had no answer and apologized -- but what is up with that?? I have a male friend who is terrified of birds. He also has been taunted. He is 6'4" and burley, but terrified of birds -- what is amusing about his fear? Another male friend is scared of snakes, even if he knows they are plastic or not real. Yet people have continued through the years to taunt him.

These taunters are not your standard bully types either -- just regular folks...I do not get it.

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs relentlessly at Time's Fool

Like Charlotte!

Suzanne Reisman — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:51:27 -0600

I never really liked spiders either, although I cried my eyes out when I read Charlotte's Web when I was nine. I think you are on to something here. Personifying insects can help children overcome fears of them, and hopefully lead them to a healthy respect for bugs rather than developing crippling fears. Great idea, Alyssa!

On a separate note, I decided to write about women and bugs yesterday. This morning, I roach appeared in my dining room. I decided that on Thursday I will be writing about how women sometimes love it when money comes out of their shower heads instead of water.

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

name them

alyssaroyse — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:43:19 -0600

I've always loved bugs, dont' know why. My daughter, however, seems to have arrived with a crippling fear of spiders, something that puzzles both my husband and I. Until this fall, anyway, when a particularly large one built a particularly large web outside our front door. Our daughter freaked out, and I said, "Oh, don't worry honey, that's just Scooter, i invited him to stay with us for a while." She looked at me like I was crazy (but then, she's 9, so i get that look all the time) and then she said, "Hi Scooter" and walked in the door. Scooter was with us for a couple months, and seems to have moved on now. But he seems to have cured our daughter of her spider issue - in fact, she has now named all the spiders in our yard and designated them as Scooters aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers etc.... Not a relevant story, but cute.
___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE
make some good news!
www.JustCauseIt.com

not me

super des — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:38:11 -0600

I'm not afraid of bugs (cockroaches don't count here) but I don't like killing them. Most of the time I leave them, or let my cat get them, but I do have to kill mosquitoes and some spiders. I don't think I still actually kill the spiders. They are grabbed with a tissue and released outside or washed down the sink. My boyfriend, however, smashes them on the spot and leaves the ex-bug to ruin the paint job. This grosses me out more than the original bug.

What's Bugging Women?

Suzanne Reisman — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:23:36 -0600

At the wedding of my brother-in-law two weekends ago, I was slightly taken aback by how many times well-wishing toasters joked about his new wife’s fear and loathing of bugs. Ever since she had taken up residence with my husband’s brother, Gwenn has not been forced to call her dad or friends for help whenever a bug popped up in her apartment. (For the record, this is not uncommon in even the tidiest and cleanest of New Yorker’s apartments.) The newest member of my extended family could rely on her hubby to take care of these creepy little problems for her.

As the resident insecticide in my household, I chortled upon hearing this. Whenever my husband sees a six- or eight-legged uninvited guest in our home, he screams and runs away. This is particularly annoying to me as sometimes it manages to disappear before I can appear on the scene with my murdering equipment. I’m not asking my squeamish husband to kill the things, but can’t he at least monitor their activities until I get there? In fact, my husband hates bugs so much that I finally convinced him, after three years of constructive arguments, that we should get a pet rabbit because bunnies kill bugs. (Note: this is not a true statement, but it was very effective and some experts believe that roaches and other varmints are repelled by the smell of animal litter, which I do think helped us a bit in the long run.)

I adore my husband for many reasons, and one of them is that he is not afraid to admit his stereotypically “girly” fear of bugs. However, as I’ve been reflecting on my brother-in-law’s wedding, I began wandering how many women vs. men have entomophobia. Men as stereotypically portrayed as big, strong, and protective (fearing not even those multi-legged prehistoric critters that sometimes appear and make me nervous), keeping the pretty little lady safe from harm that is unlikely to occur from killing a roach, even if it is completely disgusting.

Erin at I Don’t Buy It, in her beautiful post about her dying grandmother, noted that:

She credits herself for my non-fear of bugs and things-that-crawl from my time in her garden and the things that i would encounter in the raspberry patch and rows of beans. I do remember running screaming from the berries after tossing the harvest into the air after a daddy long legs found his way into the bucket. But i went back in.she explained he had every right to be there, and the good wirk he did.

This made me realize that women who are in direct contact with the earth – gardening, farming, tending plants, etc. – are of course less likely to fear bugs. Insects are a fact of every day life and play an important role in keeping plants and soil healthy. It seems that women who garden also can distinguish between “helpful” and “destructive” types of bugs.

On the other hand, Amy at Lively Days wrote about her fear of bugs because of a tragicomic recent run in with a mosquito:

I have a fear of bugs… I know it’s a phobia because my fear is completely irrational. I know that most bugs won’t hurt me, but they freak me out so bad that they cause me to become overly anxious.

Maybe my phobia started as a child. I remember my parents telling a story about how I wouldn’t go outside for an entire summer because I was afraid a bug would land on me (I must have been really young because I don’t recall this). My parents also used to get cockroaches in their house because they live in a damp area. Several roaches have crawled on me over the years (one even managed to get inside my coat once), so these experiences traumatized me.

Aside from an occasional bee sting (thankfully I’m not allergic to them), I’ve never been harmed by a bug. My fear might seem more legitimate if a bug had actually hurt me somehow… People probably think I’m strange when they see how I react to bugs. But for whatever reason, that is one thing I just cannot deal with.

I think Amy is being too hard on herself. Her fear of bugs sound completely legit to me based on finding a roach in her coat (I shudder to think of this). And even if her dislike of bugs doesn’t have a grounding from some childhood experience, we are all entitled to have a thing or two that we “just cannot deal with.”

However, if someone finds themselves crippled with fear, as the anonymous blogger at if I wrote you found herself one day this past August, maybe it is time to seek help. Staying locked in a room because one fears sighting a bug cannot be healthy for anyone. She notes, “I really, really need to deal with this phobia. I guess I'm just lucky that none of them were lurking around when my parents were gone, otherwise I would have spent the entire week in my room.”

In all my blog reading about people with fears of bugs and people who fear things other than bugs, I only found one man who admitted to fearing creepy crawlies. Greg at 1 Happy St. highly recommends that those who want to avoid insect bites and the creatures who cause them use OFF! In fact he loves it so much that he feels it would make a great holiday gift or birthday present. (Needless to say, I don’t think OFF! is going to appear on the Top 10 Feminist Gifts list that I will post on BlogHer on Dec. 13, but as long as I am digressing, please feel free to email me at cussandotherrants AT gmail DOT com and let me know if you have any more exciting recommendations or if you do think OFF! would be a great gift.)

In conclusion, my decidedly unscientific survey of whether more women than men are afraid of bugs (and why) seems to indicate that more women are certainly willing to write about their phobia than men. It also surprised me by how many women really hate bugs and live in semi-irrational fear of them, not that this is necessarily a problem or result of some gender divide. (My husband insists that he does not fear bugs, he just doesn’t like them. “They don’t like me either,” he claims, “which works out just fine that way.”) Interesting stuff.

Where do you stand (and with how many legs) on the topic of insects and spiders?

Suzanne blogs about her fears of bikini waxing and life’s other misadventures at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants. Her husband did, in fact, help her kill a roach this morning.