My majestic hound.
I have sympathy for anyone who loses a child they have grown to love, but I am so so tired of reading about families who knew from the BEGINNING that an adoption was contested or flat-out illegal and just figured they could wait it out and seek forgiveness instead of permission. People who literally kidnap children from parked cars are ALSO likely to grieve if the child is recovered years later, and those children may have grown to love their kidnappers, but that doesn’t mean they are allowed to keep them. I sound very uncharacteristically firm on this point, but the ICWA wasn’t created for shits and giggles, and anyone trained as a foster parent who has a kid placed with them who falls under the ICWA has no business being shocked when the letter of the law is upheld. It is neither the state nor the Choctaw Nation which is responsible for traumatizing this poor kid, it has been in litigation since 2011! DO BETTER.
This is a wonderful bad review of Batman V Superman:
2. The plot. Yo, this movie makes no sense. Dream sequences and non sequiturs and red herrings and where-the-hell-are-we-now mini-excursions and false starts out the ass. There’s a suicide bombing and multiple government hearings and a Fight Club and an innocent civilian who gets Lieutenant Dan’d and one of those posh, uncomfortable Batman-movie parties where Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne sass each other until Clark notices live news footage of a little girl stuck in a burning building in Mexico and then flies to Mexico to rescue her, whereupon the people of Mexico (it’s the Day of the Dead, also, which allows for very tight and spooky imagery) embrace him as they would a god.
There’s also a whole thing where Batman visits the set of Mad Max: Fury Roadand fights amid a buncha Moth People. Lois Lane says stuff like, “I’m not a lady, I’m a journalist” and has stuff said to her like, “[In the men’s bathroom] You know, with balls like this, you belong in here.” There’s an Entourage movie-worthy avalanche of celebrity cameos, from Nancy Grace to Charlie Rose to Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I remembered just now that at one point Superman gets nuked in space. There is Wonder Woman, who is dressed in a “Sexy Wonder Woman” Halloween costume and has very little else to do (at one point we get footage of her using an ATM) and mostly is there to provide certain Reddit subforums with a few notably lascivious Blu-Ray screenshots, in addition to setting up future interminable sequels involving additional superheroes, including Aquaman, who is also, briefly, in this movie.
Talking to Laura Mvula about her work and life and her anxiety:
As her music career got busier, Dionne and Themba stopped being able to cope. “Everything was moving so fast.” Mvula finally told her manager. He was “heartbroken”, she says, that she’d waited so long. An assistant, Mariama Abudulai, was employed, so that at least Mvula could lean on someone who was paid to be there, with a smaller measure of guilt. Her manager knew Mvula was more or less “debilitated” by anxiety, “but it didn’t go beyond management. And we all know the machine is huge – you have the record label, you have publishing, publicity, agents. You have the video team, stylists, all the people who are making your career move forward. None of those guys knew.” They still don’t.
We linked to a piece about Amy Reed and Hooman Noorchashm and their journey to uncover the dangers of morcellation a few months back, but here is an extended look at their work (I freaking love them):
The overriding duty of a physician is so well known that it’s a cliché: First, do no harm. But Amy and Hooman say her oncologist knew about the greater risk when she was operated on. That there were other women like her—including one who lay dying at Brigham and Women’s while Amy had her initial operation, performed with the same device that had caused that other woman’s cancer to spread. And that because the device made the operation easier and faster and cheaper, and all of medicine today is geared toward easier and faster and cheaper, no one was looking for problems that device might cause.
Amy’s a doctor herself, married to a doctor—one who worked in the same hospital where she was operated on. If she and Hooman weren’t told the truth about what might happen to her, what are the chances you or I would be? How blind is our faith in physicians, and how daunting our inability to know what questions to ask? That’s the bone that’s stuck in Hooman’s craw, and it’s what turned his email campaign against morcellation into an all-out war against the wobbly, opaque healthcare system that endangers us all.
Michelle Dean on Rob Ford:
How did this happen? my Toronto friends would often ask during the Ford era. They meant, How is it possible that we elected someone like this to public office? At the time, they did something I think Americans will understand in the age of Donald Trump: They simply drew a line between “us” and “them.” The people in the suburbs, the people with big new houses, the people with giant sport-utility vehicles, the people who go downtown only to eat and shop — the consensus was that they were responsible for Ford. “He’s so American,” people were fond of saying, as if to step even further away.
GUTS on Jian Ghomeshi and how you act after being raped:
We walked out of his building, him chattering at me like I wasn’t in a trance, like I wasn’t waiting for the moment I would be out of the violent sphere of space he occupied. When the cab arrived, he said something about having fun and we should do it again.
I think I mumbled yes.
I think I kissed him goodbye.
I can’t remember.
I watched Everything Is Copy, the Nora Ephron documentary, yesterday, and had too many feelings to go to the grocery store so my family ate their shoes for dinner.
Like many moments in history — most notably the Knowles-Carter elevator scene — the immediate reaction is Where’s the audio? But there is no audio, which is where the fun comes in. What on earth happened?
Well, you kind of know. Barack did something, got a little too fresh, and Michelle was all, Nah, and Barack was like, Come on, girl, you know I was kidding. (But was I? You know you like me, girl.)
No:
What do you think about including shared economy activities on your resume/LinkedIn profile and bringing it up in interviews? My husband and I are hosts on Airbnb, which involves a lot of coordination, hospitality, scheduling, and business management/accounting (we receive a 1099 from Airbnb).
We are talking about this election. We’re always talking about this election. I hate this election with every fiber of my being and this is a sentiment shared by most of my friends of color. The host asks a panelist, a conservative-moderate white woman, what she thinks of the rhetoric surrounding Trump’s campaign.
“It’s so fascinating,” she says.
“Fascinating” is a word used for reading about scientific discovery or watching a documentary. “Fascinating” is a word for observers, not participants. Things are declared “fascinating” when you can crouch down and watch the goings-on without getting your hands dirty. “Fascinating” has no skin in the game.
I was going OFF about breastfeeding on Twitter yesterday, and it influenced me to dig up this beautiful note I got from my pediatrician when I finally gave up, and if you are someone who couldn’t breastfeed or didn’t freaking WANT to, please pretend it’s written to you (this was my second kid, my first got way less milk):
love these vintage photos of Staten Island
Islamophobia and representation in YA:
This is what you need to know.
We are not your money makers. We are not your guinea pigs or lab experiments to prod at. We are not your wild child rebels or subdued servants or doe-eyed harem beauties to place about your draft like cardboard cut-outs.
Our children deserve more from the books they read than the same stereotypes used to bully and subdue their souls being painted over and offered up as something new and enjoyable.
This is a really interesting look at how the traditional rallying center of black political and social activism (the black church) is no longer at the heart of the movement, and why:
At least in this city, the “intergenerational beef,” as another organizer called it, between young activists and their elders might be trumped up. “The people who were organizing in the ’60s—we call them our OGs,” Gilliam-Price said. These were the men and women who stood at the front of protests against discrimination in schools, organized rallies after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., and sat at the tables of voter-registration drives. “Organizing through the churches made sense,” said Musgrove, the UMBC professor. Groups like the NAACP tapped into the money and large communities of congregations, and “they were able to run a lot of the campaigns for desegregation for public facilities in downtown Baltimore—from right after World War II all the way until the sit-ins at Morgan.”
The OGs of political activism were church people, but Gilliam-Price and many of her peers are not. Religion is “just not me,” she said. She had harsh words for a class of pastors, including Jamal Bryant, whom she referred to as “poverty pimps”—“nominal church leaders who are definitely just out there for their names and for their brands,” she said. “I went to a protest in Freddie Gray’s neighborhood in Gilmor Homes, and there was a pastor marching with his Instagram handle on his shirt. Church leaders have been exploiting this movement for everything that it has.”
Slate has a very reasonable comment policy. We do not need one, ourselves, as we enjoy deploying our draconian iron fist to crush polite dissent and mild disagreement whenever possible. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
I’d say the iron fisted comment approach is doubleplusgood.
Wait, so is this Slate comment policy new? If it works, thank God, I might actually venture in. I wanted them to kill their comments entirely, but if they start banning all the racist vitriol for good, maybe they’ll be ok? I don’t know. It was a dumpster fire over there, especially for everything written by Jamelle Bouie or a Double X contributor.
I should add, I no longer love Slate like I once did, but as long as Jamelle or Mallory are employed there in some capacity, I will continue to visit slate.com every single day. Otherwise, I make no promises.
I just can’t imagine seeking out Jamelle as someone to critique. Even his Twitter is consistently incisive and informative.
Thus giving us the world’s only tolerable comments section!
I’m in an online community that has a very strict commenting policy (wrt hate speech, slurs, and spoilers etc.) and it is honestly the most relaxing thing to know that I don’t have to actively avoid a certain part of the page.
Agreed! I feel like this is the one safe space on the internets. I sometimes don’t even feel that safe on my own facebook…
I’m pretty sure scrupulous regulation combined with a good commentariat is the only way to avoid the Tragedy of the Comments.
I also watched “Everything is Copy” yesterday and I also missed dinner as a result, which is *not what Nora Ephron would have wanted*.
I watched it, and cried, and when I saw the part where the New York Times called When Harry Met Sally “charming but hollow,” I cut that terrible rag out of my life for good.
I mean, honestly.
Eh, I feel like the NYT is weird with movie critics – like, people get moved into that slot from other positions because it’s a staff job; it isn’t something they hire for. AOScott has at least resigned himself to his fate – iirc he wanted to be on the book review – but most of them don’t have the interest or the commitment that you’d expect in this somewhat influential role.
My SO is making me see BvS on Saturday and I just…I just don’t want to go. You know? I don’t want to GO.
After reading that (glorious) review snippet, I DO know. I don’t want to go, either.
With ear plugs and your kindle app in dark mode, you’ve just gotten yourself a couple of hours to read a book and eat popcorn.
Yeah, I’ve had general super hero movie fatigue lately, and this one sounds like a rough sell even on top of that.
Exxxxxxaaaaaaccctttllyyy. I think a lot of superhero movies are entertaining. But there have been SO MANY of them, plus TV shows, and they are all blending and so full of gratuitous violence and angst and white man problems and it sucks.
My SO made me go to a midnight showing of The Phantom Menace when it was re-released in 3D. So it could be worse.
My last midnight release was The Simpsons Movie. After that, I told him I was too old for this shit.
I’m reallllllly glad that my SO is reasonable about these things. Though I did have to sit through Green Lantern on one of our first dates. NEVER AGAIN.
I’m shocked there were more dates after that.
Well he apologized afterwards. And our second date was seeing Bridesmaids, so I got to feel superior and radiant. #misandry
This makes it sound like our first date was Green Lantern. Our first date was a baseball game. Green Lantern was down the line a ways. NOT THAT THAT MAKES IT OKAY. Just. It wasn’t super early…
It was the third date, so don’t act like it was all an innocent mistake. Everyone makes choices in their life. And now you have to live with the consequences!
Wrong! Thor was the third date (also not great, but *so* much better than Green Lantern). Green Lantern didn’t come out ’til mid-June, so it was after we got back from the beach.
Whatever dude, your facts won’t stop me from resenting you forever.
I SAID I WAS SORRY.
I knew I didn’t see it in theaters when I heard how long it is, and now I know I probably don’t want to watch it at all!!
TWO HOURS
AND 25 MINUTES
I can barely binge on TV for that long, and at least the TV I like has dialogue.
There are very few things in this world that would make me sit on my ass for 2 hours and 25 minutes straight without at least getting up to walk around a bit (planes, trains, automobiles) and I am CERTAINLY not going to sit on my ass for that long to watch Ben Affleck’s chin. Good grief.
See, I was planning on skipping it, but all the pans are making me curious. I might go tonight…
(it helps that I have my magic film critic pass that means I wouldn’t actually have to pay for it)
I kind of want to see it more now than I did a week ago. It looks terrible, but it also could have been a terrible movie that everyone loved and I would have to suppress grimaces for two years.
But I kind of want to see the trainwreck that this appears to so gloriously be.
Why is Wonder Woman using an ATM? Is she buying lunch at a bodega?
I have not wanted to go ever since they confirmed Snyder was returning as director (I am not a person who really has big opinions about movies and I actively hated the end of Man of Steel), and when the early trailers confirmed my suspicion that they were doubling down on everything I hated about the last movie I told my boyfriend I was opting out. I do this a lot because he loves movies and I won’t see gory /horror and am ambivalent about lots of the rest but it was the first superhero movie I’ve ever put on the list. (I have since opted out of Deadpool but for the gore reason, not because I thought it looked bad.)
Now he can go and enjoy the movie if he’s inclined (I think he’s not really looking forward to it but he is a completist and loves the movie going experience) and doesn’t have to listen to me rant about how much I did not like it, and I get to sew myself a new jacket and sing Neko Case to the cat for three hours.
Small off-topic annotation: Deadpool is decidedly not as gorey as other movies. It overdoes violence in a hilarious way that turns it into a comedy element. Game of Thrones is definitely worse when it comes to violence.
Totally on-topic annotation: I’m sewing myself a summer dress instead of seeing BvS this week with work colleagues. I’m not singing to the cat though.
Agreed that Deadpool’s over-the-top violence is more fun and goofy than gory, but I’d still hesitate to recommend it to people who aren’t into That Sort of Thing as a general rule. If nothing else, I’d classify some of the flashbacks as mild medical horror and possibly unpleasant for the unprepared.
(This is not a condemnation, ftr. I LIKE mild medical horror. Probably not everyone does.)
Ugh, I forgot about the medical scenes (I think those were worse than the other violence. I mean, I couldn’t even watch the transformation in Captain America properly. Needles and bodies, no no no). I was actually extremely surprised about how mellow the movie was compared to the marketing, and then realized the rating was because of the sex scenes, not the violence. I don’t see that discussed very much, so I thought I’d point it out.
Thanks for the tip! The gore thing for me is more about keeping nasty images out of my pernicious visual memory than any real objection to it- I may try Deadpool when it hits TV and my boyfriend can warn me when to look away (this is how we watch GoT).
Toastie Nerterology (above) also rightfully reminded me that there are quite a few nasty medical/torture-like scenes in the movie people might be wary of. If you can watch GoT, you can watch Deadpool. 🙂
I found the violence very cartoonish. I went twice, with two different gangs of girlfriends!
I was ok with most of Man of Steel – up until the tornado scene where everyone goes and runs under an overpass which, btw, is very unsafe, discouraged by NOAA, oh, and HAS ACTUALLY KILLED PEOPLE BEFORE. I was so irrationally angry from that scene that I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the movie. I mean, I probably would have disliked the movie anyway but something about bad science just automatically turns on the “Do Not Want!” switch in my brain.
Also that tornado was really shitty looking, lets be honest. Wizard of Oz had a better one, and it used a SOCK as a special effect.
/end somewhat unrelated rant
I kind of want and it used a SOCK to be my new default reply for subpar things.
“That gourmet sandwich was crap. I got a better one at the gas station, and it used a SOCK as a condiment.”
I’m going with my boyfriend to the 7:30 show tonight. In IMAX. Fortunately, I love eating popcorn for dinner, so my rage will be soothed.
It’s so poorly lit, it might be dark enough to fall asleep.
Omg that actually sounds like heaven. I’ve looped back around to excited about this.
That rumbling bass sotto-voce dialog without any meaning can be soothing. It’s like listening to the sea.
I slept through the climax of Man of Steel in theaters, and plan to do the same for any other DC movie I am forced to attend. It seems completely possible.
Boyfriend and I saw Zoolander this exact way: gorged on popcorn, immediately fell asleep on top of each other. It was pretty romantic.
I can do this at home for a lot less money *and* better popcorn.
I am VERY grateful my SO has a best guy friend to accompany him to see this and all superhero movies in imax. Even if it means they’ll be gone all weekend on their bromance trip, it is worth it to me to not have to see this movie.
My SO’s best guy friend lives halfway across the county, and they planned our visit this weekend SPECIFICALLY so that they could see BvS together. I was hoping to not have to go, but his friend researched theaters with closed captioning specifically for me (I’m hearing impaired), and bought us tickets, and they’re just very excited. So…yeah. I think the theater serves alcohol?
It does sound like an excellent movie to get drunk to.
My partner and some friends got free tickets to the premiere at Radio City, and they all said it was fine. One of them is a huge comic book fan, and he summed it up as, “I’m always excited to see DC and MCU movies. I’m always glad to have seen DC and MCU movies. I never want to rewatch a DC movie.”
That said, I skipped it even though it was a fancy premiere because I didn’t care enough, so I sympathize.
I just agreed to go see it with a group of friends because I like them and want to spend time with them. I might also sincerely regret it.
I guess if it gets bad enough and I feel like I’m absolutely wasting time, I can always go hang out in the lobby and write some fanfiction on my phone while I wait for it be over.
I’m going on Saturday and really looking forward to it despite knowing the film will be terrible (as I have known since the trailers came out and finding out Rick Snyder is involved). I’m looking forward to it because my mom (who is the one who introduced me to comic books) is in town and we are going to see it for her birthday. A lot of the reason why my mom and I get along so well is a shared love of Batman and Superman and so even though most likely we will rant about it afterwards, I’m so excited to go to the movies with her. When I was a super shy kid in high school in Texas, we went to the movies once or twice a week with each other, seeing anything and everything because we have bad taste, and I’ve missed seeing movies with her. Also we’re going to the Alamo Draft House so the food will be good and the experience at least will be great. And Wonder Woman will be in it.
<cough> <cough> I bet there is another movie playing at almost exactly the same time at your local movieplex! <cough>
(life is short!)
Exactly what I was thinking. Bolt for something in Theater #2. Or #3. Or #…
I’m club “sneak beer in,” regardless of theatre and sometimes movie. Unless the theatre sells beer. I’m not a _sociopath_.
True confession: it took me an entire minute to reinterpret BsV away from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But I felt better once I realized where your reluctance lay.
I keep doing that too! “Whooo we’re talking about Buffy the…oh. Oh.”
I don’t really know why, and I’m not sure what it says about me (probably nothing bad!) that I have pretty much been gleefully awaiting reviews of BvS since its announcement. But man, oh man, is it even more fun than I thought. Sonia Saraiya called it “film review Christmas” on Twitter and that’s perfect.
I have no intention of ever seeing it. I’m just grabbing the popcorn and muttering “oh my God, tear this dude apart” as I load up the reviews. It’s been great, truly.
Oh me too! The knives are out and it’s very enjoyable. (Maybe in my case it’s because I’m d o n e with superheroes, but I doubt this one film will mean we go back to horses-and-swords films, so it’s an empty victory really)
Yeah, I don’t know what it is about bad reviews, but seeing that in the link roundup was the brightest spot of my morning so far.
I had negative interest in seeing BvS, but this review is making me reconsider.
I think I’m going to buy a ticket to something else and go see it. I want to see if it’s this bad of a trainwreck, but I don’t want to give them my money. Maybe throw the cash at Zootopia or something. (Or go do a one-ticket-double-feature.)
Sometimes it’s very soothing to read a brutal evisceration! This is why I read restaurant reviews panning $$$$ places I could never afford to go to. They’re so charmingly scathing about it. Sometimes, when I’m sad, I cheer myself up with that one review of Guy Fieri’s restaurant.
That is EXACTLY what I do. I was sending my (DC fanboy) husband some of the most cutting turns of phrase from the BvS reviews because they just fill me with glee. And then I told him not to feel bad because I also enjoy restaurant reviews for the same reason. I’m not judging the movie I haven’t seen or the food I haven’t eaten. I’m appreciating an especially skillful takedown.
Pete Wells continues to bring it, btw, with this review of Javelina. Maybe not QUITE so schadenfreudige as the Guy Fieri one (because you know who Guy Fieri is and he is fun to hate) but still will probably cheer you up.
That was a beautiful start to my morning, thank you!
I imagine every single reviewer cracking their knuckles, putting a straw in the coffee pot and cackling with delight as they sit down to type out one more scathing review that flays the move, Zack Snyder and any involved actor to pieces.
Hate watching the film could never give me as much joy as reading the reviews.
I could read scathing reviews of bad movies until the end of time.
Haha, A+ Hamilton reference. I too think that the reviews are often more enjoyable and educational (about society and current pop culture) than the product.
I’ve been slowly reading this NeoGAF thread chronicling the Rotten Tomatoes rating as it plummets, climbs a bit, falls again… just savoring the schadenfreude. So delicious.
From the ICWA article: Page accused the Choctaw Nation of “dictating where this child goes.”
Yes, lady. That’s how sovereignty works.
(I have More Thoughts on this, but also Lots Of Work To Do, so will leave it at that.)
My knowledge on ICWA issues is limited to “I read a book”….but it’s a very good book! Specifically, Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven. Without being too spoiler-y, it’s the story of a white woman and her sort-of-accidentally adopted Cherokee daughter. Kingsolver is such a good author, and the book is an emotional gut-punch but it also digs into why the ICWA is so important and how much damage has been done to NA communities through splitting up and adopting out their children.
YES, I love that book, this foster family needs to read that book (though I mean, the white lady main character in Pigs in Heaven is still largely involved with the Native American child at the end, so maybe it would give them too much hope still. But the rest of it should be very enlightening!).
So, so much damage. My partner knows their grandmother was Native American and you can tell from looking at them and their relatives. Nobody has any idea of what tribe she came from because she was taken and given to her white father to raise, with no contact with her mother’s people. They get all the racism of being obviously native, without even being able to claim that part of their family history openly.
This book sounds amazing, immediately adding to my list. I also loved The Bean Trees by her, it sounds like in a similar vein.
Pigs in Heaven is the sequel to The Bean Trees!
IIRC, Kingsolver actually wrote the book in part because someone wrote to her about the ICWA, which I think just further shows her awesomeness–she could have doubled down and gotten defensive, but she so totally engaged with it.
I very much enjoyed the supportiveness of the breastfeeding Twitter conversation yesterday even as a person without a baby, and thank you, Nicole, for giving me “…it’s literally Fury Road,” as a) a comment of understanding for friends who have no desire or ability to pump and b) praise for friends who are pumping.
I love breastfeeding. I nursed my first for about two and a half years and plan on nursing my current baby for about the same, or even longer if it’s working for both of us.
I LOATHE pumping to the point that I feel mildly ill when I get out my pump. Luckily I only have to pump once a day; if I had to pump for a baby in full-time daycare, I would almost certainly stop. It’s the absolute worst.
Yeah, I think if the powers that be really wanted to support breastfeeding, the answer is not guilt, but simply 6 to 12 months paid maternity leave. Because pumping sucks. I’ve had an easy go of breastfeeding but would surely have quit if I didn’t have a work from home arrangement where I could nurse instead of pump.
YES. I wish I could like your comment more than once.
Dear god it’s such an absolute slogggggggggggggg. And I had about the best set up possible in that I had a lockable office and nobody giving me the side eye for pumping twice to 3 times a day. I would actually consider another kid except I don’t think I could do that shit again and not snap.
The other day I actually counted the number of times I have left to pump before my baby turns one. It was … more than I wanted it to be.
I had to pump six times a day to get enough milk for my son (in addition to breastfeeding him when I was not at work). I felt like boobs on legs. He vomited up any kind of formula, and we tried multiple kinds. I hope to God my next one does not need as much milk or else tolerates some kind of formula because I do not want to live through that again.
All my sympathy for pumping moms.
I breastfed both of mine for 2.5 years each, and it worked because
1) Kid1 had latched on within 30 minutes of birth like he was born to do it, and never gave me any problems, which meant when Kid2 and his million problems came along I had a ton of experience so I didn’t give up in the first two painful, agonizing, “my baby’s gonna starve!” weeks
2) My employers were my parents so I told them I was bringing their grandsons to work and nursing on the job until they got too active for me to care for them and work both
3) My daycare was two blocks away, they were on solid food by the time they started, and I could pop over for a mid-day nursing until they switched to twice a day
Pumping is awful. Other than those first horrible couple of weeks with Kid2 (who wouldn’t take the bottle either), pumping was the worst part of the five years I breastfed.
It was SUCH a good string of tweets.
I finally understood the breastfeeding advocates who had their children in the 70s and 80s (my Mom is VERY MUCH one of these women) when my Grandma told me a story about feeding her baby with formula in a bottle while crying from pain from leaking, bound breasts because formula was the only option discussed because it’s better because science is better than women? But I think it’s pretty obvious that the pendulum has now swung too far the other way.
I am not a fan of the way breastfeeding is promoted, but I disagree with “the pendulum has swung too far”. Part of the problem is that breastfeeding is now very class, race and your-specific-social-group specific, so it’s very possible to feel like EVERYONE breastfeeds and NOBODY supports people using formula, whilst two miles away there’s someone who would like to breastfeed but doesn’t know anyone else who has. Breastfeeding promotion is a very blunt and unnuanced instrument, so both those women are getting the same perky “breast is best! not enough women breastfeed!” messages.
The other problem, I think, is that nobody really wants to fund the real changes that would make a difference. So sure, we’ll do all the cheap-ish stuff like public health campaigns, restricting the type of information that can be given out about formula, banning the types of promotions that formula companies can provide – but we won’t provide access to the kind of one-to-one support and information that can really make a difference. Or, in the US, decent maternity leave. Breastfeeding promotion comes across as clumsy and inadequate and guilt-tripping because that’s cheap, not because the pendulum has swung too far, I think.
Chekhov, my soul. <3
I am very very tired and trying to avoid BvS spoilers but it’s a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes and we’re seeing it tonight at 7:30. Which means I’m not getting home until 11. No-spoiler policy may or may not make it through lunchtime.
ETA that I was/am actually looking forward to this movie, if for no other reason than Wonder Woman gets to be back on the big screen in it, and I’m going to be really fucking sad and angry if the movie sucks and it gets blamed on Wonder Woman/Gal Godot. Like, I will be a whirling dervish of white-hot rage.
Back on the big screen? I thought I remember reading that her only previous movie appearance was in the Lego Movie.
Aside: I would watch this if it was Lego Batman vs. Superman.
I’m on about two hours of sleep. You’re right.
There’s a trailer for the Lego Batman movie around the webs today.
Lego Batman is my favorite Batman.
I think, from the reviews I’ve heard about (I am so uninterested in this movie that I can’t even be bothered to read them) that most people have had a positive response to Wonder Woman in the movie? And they’ve already started filming the first of her movies so they can’t take it back now.
Eh, weirder things have happened. Hell, The Little Prince was a week from release and got pulled.
But Netflix grabbed it!
My partner saw the movie last weekend and can’t shut up about Gal Godot as Wonder Woman. Apparently she’s great?
For what it’s worth, from what I’ve heard Gal Godot as Wonder Woman is one of the few bright points in the film.
I hope so! But I’m still not paying to sit through 3 hours of bloviating bullhonk male power fantasy to find out. I’ll just go see the actual Wonder Woman movie twice instead. 🙂
Yeah, her scenes will be up on YouTube or something soon enough. Save yourself the time and trouble!
I’m seeing it on Saturday, entirely for Wonder Woman. Due everything else looking boring-to-terrible, I’m going to a swanky theater that serves alcohol at your seat, so I’ll have a good time even if everything else is terrible.
+10,000 for “bloviating bullhonk male power fantasty.”
In India we voted in (with overwhelming majority) a government whose politics I hate. I’ve come to realise that even if I did not vote for them ‘they’ did and ‘they’ is my family and friends. ‘They’ is everywhere.
It really strikes me how universal Trumpism is, just with bits of local flair. Modi, Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Abe, Berlusconi, and Le Pen all read the same playbook, with varying degrees of success.
I learned during the Jesse Ventura and the Bush years that “They” are never as remote as you would prefer.
In honor of Purim (happy Purim!), here’s a fun Storify on Judaism/religion, and psychedelics: https://storify.com/selfagency/daniel-sieradski-s…
Yesterday pre-megillah reading, the rabbi had us test our graggers by saying “Donald J. Trump! *big laugh and gragger roar* I’m not making a political statement…okay, I’m totally making a political statement.” I need to go to shul more.
I like your rabbi!
Hah! I like your Rabbi too. (And I need to go to shul more but alas there are none close to me anymore.)
i’m developing a passing interest in the history of psychedelics and religion and the cultural changes that came about as humans went from a psychedelic based culture to an alcohol culture. I have a lot of friends and family who are getting very into DMT and mushrooms as part of their spiritual practice and learning (for some of them, the other just want to party, which is fair enough too.).
At first it sounds like pure stoner bullshit, but the more you read the more it starts to make sense and makes a lot religion make a whole lot more sense.
If you ever get the chance, take someone who’s really into this stuff to an ancient church, like in Rome or something. You will hear some amazing things.
I posted this on the discussion of abuse in academia yesterday but wanted to repost it here, since it’s really interesting: https://hbr.org/2016/03/women-and-minorities-are-…
It’s a survey on who is “allowed” to promote diversity, and from my experience as a woman in STEM, it sounds about right. It’s just one survey, so grain of salt, but the conclusion is a “duh” one.
And ICYMI, Eater has been absolutely killing it in its coverage of race and food.
One on Gullah cuisine in Charleston, and another on racism in restaurant reviews, in this case, specifically pertaining to Chinese food.
Ugh, but the way this is playing out in the “how dare you question me” response of some white chefs is exactly the heaping pile of racist crap you’d expect (if you’re a cynic like me). You might be interested in the Afroculinaria blog by Michael Twitty (one of the people quoted in the Gullah piece), if you don’t know it already.
I can’t tell you how many academic jobs I’ve applied to, particularly ones with a STEM Ed component, where they say that they want someone worried about diversity, but I always, always question if they really mean that. Like, will putting that in my cover letter actually be beneficial or not?
I also so question the people who “promote diversity” like particularly through easy K-12 outreach (We go to high poverty and talk about science! We’re so into diversity!) without actually questioning the very system they (and I, as I’m not 100% innocent here) are engaged in. Pumping more people into a broken system isn’t the best way to fix anything! You can see these effects in the sexual harassment fiascos, I think. Women make up over 50% of most undergraduate populations even in many STEM fields, but that doesn’t last long.
Sorry for length. Opinions I have.
“Pumping more people into a broken system isn’t the best way to fix anything”
Tattoo this on my forehead
What really bothers me is the breathless excitement about teaching low-income minority girls to code that too often boils down to having them learn a couple of lines of JavaScript or program a few commands into a toy robot using an idiot-proof UI. Teaching anyone to code is hard and lots of people are willingly throwing their hands up and saying it can’t be done at all, but I don’t like that these programs are being made to look more successful and operating in good faith than they actually are.
Toasties! OT, but I finally saw Magic Mike XXL last night, and I am not over it. I may never get over it. I’ve been beaming all morning.
I only watched it recently myself, I was just never in the mood for it. And then I went back and read all the glorious Magic Mike reviews and shouting here. Happiness.
I was re-reading Roxane’s review and giggling madly in bed. Even The Mister liked it, and he was veeeeerrry leery of sitting through two hours of beefcake. It was so much FUN!
UNF. You’ve combined my favorite Winchester with a discussion of Beef In General- you’re officially my favorite internet person today!!
the GLITTER ART
I DIED. And Richie sewing with his little wrist pincushion? Fantastic.
Uggggg I have been wanting to rent this but am ashamed of possible judgement from the SO. I have been trying to figure out how to stream it but it seems to be no where. 🙁
I made mine watch it in the face of extreme reluctance, he was giggling by halfway through and grudgingly admitted it was really good by the end.
That’s *exactly* how mine was. The moment it went to credits, he said “That was actually a pretty fuckin’ good movie!”
Mr. Bittersweet was hesitant, but really enjoyed it and later said it had some of the best and most natural dialogue he’d ever heard in a movie. Yay!
I think you should live your best life, a life without fear. Tell your SO to go out with their friends! The movie’s just over 2 hours long, so maybe build in an extra hour to giggle quietly to yourself and bask in its perfect light.
Do you need to watch the first one to understand the second one? Everyone keeps saying the second one is much better so I think I want to skip to that if I can.
I skipped the first, watched the second one, have no regerts. The first doesn’t even have Michael Strahan, so is it worth my time? Nope.
You can totally skip the first one. It’s a drag. XXL fills you in on the background you need (Mike used to dance with those guys).
The first one is terrible and these movies do not have a lot of plot so there’s nothing you need to know to go into the second.
Absolutely skip the first one. Like, watch it someday if you’re bored, but XXL was waaaaaay better. (Although you will miss some inside jokes, as well as the original Pony performance, which. Unf.)
I have not seen the first one and I feel I enjoyed XXL as much as a mortal could enjoy a piece of art.
I haven’t seen the first one and don’t want to.
I watched them together, but it was a special double feature deal at the theater, so why not. I wouldn’t want to watch the first one on it’s own (or again) but I do feel it added a little something to the second.
That being said, if I’d watched the first when it came out, there is no way you would have convinced me to watch the second.
I’m glad I only saw this one (and proceeded to buy the dvd today, because DAYUM Joe Marshmallow and “Closer”), but did front-of-queue the first one to see Tater’s original “Pony” dance and Joe in his firefighter outfit. (Am planning to fast-forward A Lot).
I saw XXL in theaters without having seen the first one. Had zero problem following (except I leaned over to my friend Nicole to ask “why do they call him Big Dick Richie?” Take a guess why. I may have been tipsy). I enjoyed it so much, I watched the first one a few weeks later and I regret that move. The first one is awful. Ponderous and Trying To Have A Point. Blergh. XXL is much more aware of its purpose – fun and beefcake – and doesn’t try to be more than that.
I think it’s currently on HBO Go if you have access to that, or you might be able to pay for a stream on Vudu? But aside from that I concur you should be defiant in the face of any possible SO judgment and just rent it!
The Burgomaster loved it! Also, if your SO honestly shames you for liking something (anything), I have a zillion side-eye gifs for them right here.
The note from Nicole’s pediatrician is terrific. I’m sure that guilt over failing to breastfeed was a contributing factor to my frightening bout with PPD. Even the formula can guilt tripped me about it! It is amazing how small the actual, scientifically proven benefits are for otherwise healthy babies with access to a clean water supply, versus the amount of time and energy that gets spent on pressuring the moms of those babies to breastfeed.
I am in no way anti-breastfeeding, but there is no need for moms who are having trouble to martyr themselves over it.
Sorry, it’s been eight years and it’s still kind of a raw nerve sometimes.
I’m so sorry you went through that. These things can have such lasting impacts on our relationships with our bodies and our kids!
“There is no need for moms who are having trouble to martyr themselves over it.”
This this this. I think there needs to be better messaging around the benefits. Like, yes, breastfeeding is great from a public health perspective because small benefits can add up over thousands and thousands of babies. But from the one-on-one perspective of you and your baby in a room, your one baby will be fine and a mom who isn’t anxious and depressed and guilt-ridden is a billion times more important. That’s a little less snappy than “breast is best,” though.
YYESSSS precisely. You as an individual don’t need to be a fucking data point in the World Statistics Of Perfect Parenthood. You just have to be someone who is taking care of your baby.
I agree. Pumping when I had low supply to try and get the nearly-nonexistent supply to be barely adequate was a fucking death march, and deeply demoralizing. I would not wish it on anyone. So many message board posts, too, about women who overcame it through sheer grit and went on to breastfeed “successfully.”
Also yes all blessings and props to Nicole’s pediatrician. Such an important message to receive from a person whose actual paid job it is to make sure your kid is healthy!
I had to supplement with formula (God, it was only like 6 oz of formula per day, it was NOTHING in the grand scheme of things but I felt like THE WORST MOM because of it), and later I told my own midwife about how I came to terms with that and forgave myself for it, and she said “Well I’m glad you’re feeling better but I don’t think you did anything wrong that even required forgiveness.” I will never forget her face and her voice at that moment.
I struggled HARD with it in the first few months. When I sought help for my PPD/A, my OB talked at length about the overlap of breastfeeding difficulties with PPD.
The stress and the fear and the crying jags as I tried to convince my little guy to latch on…gah. I already felt like I’d failed at the insta-bond everyone talked about, so what possible business did I have making a choice to use formula? So much PPD, so much pressure. That’s not what we should be making new moms feel.
That instabond thing not happening to everyone is another thing that no one talks about. It happens to some people, but this is literally a stranger who has explosively arrived in your life, amid physical pain and sleep deprivation, and for a lot of people, it takes time to get to know them. I mean, we don’t expect instabonding in any of our other relationships, do we?
And despite the lack of breastfeeding and PPD, my kid is the smartest, most compassionate, most loving person I know and I love her with the fierce fire of a thousand suns, so if there are any new moms out there reading this, be gentle with yourselves, IT GETS BETTER.
I was lucky that my mum said pretty much “this is a complete stranger ” to me so I didn’t feel so shocked when the instabond didn’t overwhelm me with this tidal wave of love. There is this suggestion that you might be a bit uptight not to give yourself over to the tiny dictator.
But I certainly pushed myself waaaaay to hard to “successfully” breastfeed – it took ten weeks and a lot of heartache, including dreading my baby being hungry. I even knew it was wrong but I just felt I would be letting her down so much if I gave up, despite being a wreck.
I definitely did not insta-bond with my first baby and it was difficult to deal with the expectation that I should. Luckily I had supportive family (especially my mom who is vocally in the “babies are hard, they are better when they get older” camp), but I felt weird and like I was missing something that other people had. I bonded a lot faster with my subsequent two, so maybe I just needed the practice? Anyway, I really sympathize with the lack of insta-bond and how upsetting it is. I wish we were better at educating people about the range of normal experiences.
These kinds of convos further solidify my decision to have one baby, lie the entire pregnancy (“nope, just been eating a lot and slacking at the gym”), then deny that there’s a baby (“that baby? No idea. I think it’s always been here”), until the guilt season surrounding pregnancy/breastfeeding/childrearing is over. That’s only like 18 years, right?
If you can get a decent healthcare provider and stay off the Internet in the first few weeks when you’re raw and hormonal and responsible for this tiny vulnerable thing’s LIFE, it helps a lot. Because you do soon get on your feet and develop a “fuck you, this is my kid and my life” attitude, but the beginning can be tough when you’re bombarded with judgmental garbage. (Lying is a very good policy.)
lying is BRILLIANT policy, and you can take it to ludicrous extremes so long as you can keep a straight face…
I am with you. It’s been over two years since I was wildly unsuccessful at breastfeeding after spending tons of time and energy and money and pain to make it work, and I still flinch and hunch into myself when it’s mentioned. It’s an awful thing to have to process and get past.
That “breast is best!” on the formula cans makes me really, really angry. I have always had an ambivalent relationship with breast-feeding, and luckily the people actually present in my life are really supportive of that. I thought I had worked out all my mom-guilt over breast-feeding with kiddo 1, but then I was struggling with kiddo 2 and went to the store to buy formula just so I had another feeding option besides “cry and try again so the baby doesn’t starve.” I stood in the formula aisle, overwhelmed by all the choices and just trying to figure out a type, any type so I could go home, and then read “breast is best!” printed on EVERY DAMN CONTAINER, burst into tears in the store and went home. I was able to go back the next day and get some, but still. I feel you on even the formula can guilt tripping!
Every time I got one of those containers, I would write “F**k to you!” (A quote from Borat), only with letters instead of asterisks, over that part. It made me feel somewhat better. But seriously–that message just shouldn’t be there!
Powercouple Jenna Dewan Tatum and Charming Tater are getting a tv show! Yes, it’s going to be another dance competition but I’ll still probably watch it as I love them both. http://www.refinery29.com/2016/03/106737/channing…
Here For It
Bring It On.
Putting it Center Stage on my TV lineup.
*slinks away*
You need to step up your dance movie puns, honey.
sorrynotsorry
Hey everyone if you would like to be mad about something, North Carolina’s Pro-Discrimination bill is so bad that all the Democrat state reps walked out rather than vote on it.
http://www.joemygod.com/2016/03/23/breaking-every…
The bill supersedes all local city ordinances that create trans protections (and hey, look at that — also prevents them from raising the local minimum wage, I’m glad to see that the Kochs got what they wanted out of the bill too), because Republicans are only small-government conservatives when they’re afraid the government will tell THEM what to do; when government gives them the opportunity to tell someone ELSE what to do, they are all in fucking favor.
I’m going to own not being as knowledgeable about this as I should, but has there been discussion of challenging the law under Romer v. Evans?
not that I know of because since i heard about it I have just been blind with fury for like two hours
Totally understandable. And my apologies if I seemed to be intellectualizing this issue.
oh whoah no need to apologize, I’m just saying that I haven’t had the wherewithal to look for what are legitimately important and worthwhile legal analyses
(I DO recall reading that the provisions about school students using the wrong bathroom definitely run afoul of Federal civil rights statutes, which in turn means they jeopardizing millions in Title IX funding)
But when have Republicans cared about school funding anyway, amirite?
Yeah this is probably a secondary benefit to them, underfunded public schools means they can make a good argument for why they should scrap the whole system and replace it with charter schools.
lol ONLINE CHARTER SCHOOLS are real things that are really trying to get funding in NC
we have them in Pennsylvania! they are fighting vehemently against tougher disclosure laws that would require them to show how they spend their money
At one, the principal and vice principal wouldn’t hire more assistant teachers or teachers, among other cut corners. They used subs as assistant teachers, some of whom weren’t getting the long-term rate, for months. One sub had been working as an assistant teacher for the entire school year. The rumor among the teachers was that the vice principal’s wife and son were on the payroll. The son was in high school.
One person who may have been me may have glimpsed a printout of the payroll and may have seen that the principal earned a $100,000 salary.
(Having said that, some of them, like the two Mastery Charter Schools I’ve seen, are excellent. A bunch of charter schools are ridiculously bad, though.)
my wife works at a regular charter school, and one of their previous CEOs and founders was replaced after he went to jail for literally using the school to embezzle money
I am not surprised in the slightest. I tried writing some charter school stories down for the “Jobs I Have Had” post, but there were too many.
I am so gut-punched/upset about this. I am currently interviewing for jobs in NC, so I can move there and be with my girlfriend. I’ve been telling interviewers that’s one of the reasons I’m looking to relocate (among others) thinking that if they did not want me I did not want to work for them. Now I’m wondering if I should be keeping quiet.
I think it’s more important than ever to make that clear. Now that NC has made it clear that its laws will not protect you, you need an employer you can trust implicitly.
You’re very right. I have a phone screening at ten today, and I’ll be honest with them when they ask.
We also have *extremely* blue areas here in NC, depending on where you’re looking at. There are good employers down here–my own company has good, comprehensive non-discrimination policies.
Yes! This hideous piece of legislation is a direct response to local governments enacting strong anti-discrimination policies. Lots of cities want very much to be inclusive of lgbt residents, not least because they want to attract businesses and workers (i.e., you) to the area.
Our garbage state legislature though.
Yeah, it’s really important that even if your state won’t protect you, that your future employer will have good anti-discrimination policies on the books and will protect you. My current employer has really strict anti-discrimination policies and I live in NC and honestly, the fact that they have that policy on the books and it applies everywhere along with the work they’ve been doing to promote diversity and anti-discrimination both in my profession and worldwide is a big comfort for me right now.
We have a post about at ten, it is horrible.
Thank you.
“Govern at the level closest to the people, unless the people disagree with you, in which case just govern at whatever level will let you impose your will on them.”
They literally do not have any principle they will not throw in the garbage when and if it suits them.
“State’s Rights! Local Control! Stop tyrannizing us with your elite outsider ideas!
…
Oh wait, the locals want to *expand* civil rights and worker protections? Fuck that, let’s turn this ship around.”
I guess it’s a good rebuttal to anyone who thinks that the right is just acting on high-minded principle and upholding the Constitution or the free market or whatever?
I woke up to this and just wanted to cry. And then I moved to feeling very numb about it.
I am so deeply ashamed of my home state. And my mother just announced that she is running for NC state senate (to get a sense of who she is, just know that my friends who I’ve told about her campaign have started calling her Momald Trump. so.) and I am grateful that she is not currently in that seat, because she would just be one more bigoted voice in an already very-crowded legislature.
I don’t know if mommy culture was a thing in the 80s or how strongly they were pushing breast-feeding then, but I know my mom gave up on me fairly quickly. I wasn’t gaining weight and it was just a disaster. They put me on a soy-based formula and I started gaining weight and I stopped being colicky. Then when I was 3 they figured out that I’m lactose intolerant, so I’ve always sort of suspected that that was the culprit. Given that, I don’t know how hard I’ll try to breastfeed my own kid if it gets hard, and I feel pretty secure in that. I just hope it will all go as smoothly as it does in my mind, no matter what happens.
This is possible, though actually *most* people are lactose intolerant, but babies typically have a lactose tolerance that eventually goes away when they stop breastfeeding. Still though, it is possible, it’s possible that it’s something else. In the long run, plenty of people grew up fine without breastfeeding.
I think most people are older than 3 when the lactose intolerance sets in though. Most of my other family members were in the teens or twenties before they started having problems with dairy
Both of my kids were casein intolerant for the first year so I gave up ALL THE DAIRY to nurse and it sucked so hard. There is a reasonable replacement for everything except cheese. I missed it so much.
From what i understand, casein is only in cow milk. You should have been fine with cheese made from sheep or goat milk
I was not willing to try because I enjoyed the non screaming for hours baby too much at that point. 😉 I may have been slightly irrational and sleep deprived.
Fair. A lifetime of lactose intolerance and a science-minded family has me pretty willing to experiment on myself. Dairy’s just too good to give up completely.
Having three kids with this issue, I can chime in. Goat seemed ok. Sheep, sometimes, but you have to really read the label, because sometimes companies call it romano but it’s made with cow milk. Buffalo mozzarella triggers the screaming, I never could have pizza until the kid weaned. I don’t know why, but apparently buffalo milk was close enough to cow milk that it had the same reaction. FYI, my kids were allergic to milk, not intolerant to milk–meaning, it didn’t make their digestive system freak out, it just really messed up their noses/mucus membranes, gave them hives, and made them scream for about 4 days. When the payment for a piece of pizza is 4 days without being able to sleep, or even put the baby down, you lose a lot of baby weight fast.
I had almond cheese once and it was… not that bad? Like it wasn’t quite cheese but it was pretty tasty.
I know that when my mother had by older brother in Ireland in the 80s, they actively discouraged breastfeeding. She had a burgeoning hippie streak and was determined to try, and the nurses begrudgingly allowed her to give it a go (but did not offer much advice or help apart from putting the baby on her chest and shoving her nipple in his mouth.) and after a week or two slapped him with a failure to thrive diagnosis and told her to bottle feed him or he would die.
It has changed a bit, but the public healthcare system are still very quick to say ‘failure to thrive’ and consistently use fear tactics to ensure new parents listen to them and do what they’re told (‘If you don’t do it our way your baby will die’ essentially); this may not be everyone’s experience, but I’ve known a few women to have babies in Dublin over the last 4 years and they have all had similar experiences.
I do not blame women who don’t breastfeed or choose to stop; it sounds fucking hard. But I do blame the system in Ireland and the UK for not supporting women to breastfeed beyond shouting at them ‘Breast is Best’ and telling them they’re terrible mothers if they stop. We know how beneficial breastfeeding is, I’m sure women don’t stop because they want their baby to do worse, they stop for hundreds of different personal reasons, but things like wider access to lactation consultants, or implementing a standard tongue-tie check would probably help a lot of women. And after that, all they can give is un-biased information about all types of feeding so that women can choose for themselves what is best for them and their families.
And there is really un-even attitudes from doctors/nurses during pregnancy and after birth; a friend of mine had a baby quite young, and she told me that during pregnancy classes and such the ‘breast is best’ thing was hammered in and they didn’t even discuss formula/bottles or anything, so she of course assumed she would breastfeed exclusively and didn’t prepare for any other situation. She then had a pretty tough birth and her baby was taken away and put in an incubator for nearly a week, at which point the hospital basically refused to support her to breastfeed (even pumping so he could be bottle fed) and started him on bottles without asking her and by the time she got her baby back he wouldn’t take a breast and she had to very quickly figure out the whole bottle-feeding thing without any prior warning or education. She was telling me all this recently (baby is now 3) and she felt very betrayed because no one told her before the birth that as soon as something went wrong she wouldn’t be able to or allowed to breastfeed.
Sorry about the essay, apparently I have a lot of opinions about breastfeeding.
Ahh, see my Irish/UK family and friends seem to have better success (in the short term at least, they don’t seem to have any desire for the long-term breast feeding thing there). Which I credit to 6-12 months maternity leave primarily, but also free health visitor/midwife visits in the first weeks at home.
I also think they have a healthier/more reasonable attitude when it doesn’t work out in terms of moving on with less guilt/shame. Here in the US with the back to work so quickly thing and the zero support after birth it is really challenging for a lot of people. I know the rates overall are lower, but i think fewer people are beating themselves up over it over there too.
I know that most women try it, but a lot stop within the first month, or begin to supplement with formula very quickly. I think yes, there is overall more support because of public healthcare; but the attitudes of the medical practitioners is not very supportive of exclusive breastfeeding, a lot of the women I know who’ve had babies recently were told by their visiting nurses to start giving formula because they didn’t have enough milk or the baby wasn’t putting on weight. So overall women are encouraged to try, but it if it doesn’t work perfectly straight away they’re told to give up. And the Irish are still a pretty conservative race who are uncomfortable with women’s bodies so there’s weird social pressure too (i.e. my grandmother in the 60s gave birth in the UK and they tried to get her to breast feed and she was so humiliated by the thought that she outright refused. That attitude can still linger and be imposed by older women too)
I think culturally we’re a bit less ‘all or nothing’ than the US though. From what I’ve read about childbirth/breastfeeding in the US, y’all tend to take things to extremes very quickly, and mommy-wars are a very real thing. Here there’s a bit of competition with middle class mummies, but the majority of people just get on with their life and try and do the best thing for their families and healthcare is very practical and realistic.
My mother was actively discouraged from breastfeeding me (born in 1982). I’ve made it my personal mission to both actively support women who want to breastfeed in my workplace and (b) give my friends permission to quit when they need to.
The most interesting thing to me was the research that the differences in outcomes due to breastfeeding versus formula virtually disappear when comparing kids in same family – and are probably due to class. It’s almost like poverty is bad for you!
Yeah….
When I had my first doctor’s appointment to confirm my pregnancy, his first piece of advice for a healthy baby was “don’t be poor”, and it was a little uncomfortable. I mean it was reassuring when he told me my kid would probably be fine no matter what, as long as I didn’t do anything blatantly stupid. But I think he could have phrased it better.
In 1987 I had midwives, which wasn’t very common, and they pushed me to goto the La Leche League to learn about breast feeding. LaLeche guilted me into doing nothing but breastfeeding, it was as if formula were evil evil … . My daughter fed every 2 hours, and by 5 months I was at the end of my tether with being up 24-hours a day. A neighbor recommended me giving rice milk to my daughter, and I resisted because of LaLeche; but she finally slept through the night. I mean, it doesn’t make common sense to be up 24 hours a day for 5 months and yet … there I was thinking formula was evil. To this day, I tell women to breastfeed if they want but don’t lose your mind over it and that there’s nothing wrong with formula and then I tell them my story … .
I’m totally supportive of women who choose not to breastfeed. However, FYI, it almost certainly will be harder than you wish it was. If you do want to do it, talk to some other experienced moms or a lactation consultant about how much hard you are willing to tolerate.
This is a great comment. If you don’t want to breastfeed, great! But if you do, and you’re considering quitting because it’s harder than you expected, it can help to hear from other women who have been through it to find out, like you said, how much hard you are willing to tolerate or how much hard is within the range of normal.
This was a big 80s thing. I got a week of breastfeeding, and then my mom went back to work. When I asked her about it, she said, “Well, you just liked formula so much!”
I’m getting a certain sort of sour satisfaction out of the BvS:DoJ bad reviews, of which there are a plenitude, because I thought that Man of Steel was not just a bad movie but bad in what should have been some very easily fixable ways, and Beevee, which is what I believe I’ll call this movie from now on (because even the abbreviation is unwieldy), looks to be more of the same. Maybe they’ll set Zach Snyder free to ruin someone else’s franchise.
In the meantime, dig if you will this lovely open letter to the Supergirl stars (may Snyder never get his hands on their characters!) with regards to how they have brought joy to an adopted girl.
I saw that yesterday and it got a little dusty. I said it when it premiered and I’ll say it again: the creators of Supergirl know what makes Superman Superman so, so much better than Zack Snyder.
I fully support Beevee because whenever I see BvS I mistake it for BtVS and then get mad that people are talking shit about Buffy.
And then I get sad cause they AREN’T talking about Buffy.
My position on Zack Snyder is that there’s a basic tragedy operating in his character, which is that he is a thoughtful director who believes in considering the ideas and themes of his movies, but he is also an idiot.
I went to a breastfeeding class where the nurse said “you can’t give formula to babies, they give formula to babies in the Third World and it LITERALLY KILLS THEM,” and I was so close to just screaming “that’s not true!” and I really wish I had.
Breastfeeding ended up working for me with this baby, who knows if it will work again with future babies, it really all is going to be fine, and right now my 8-month-old is happily eating her spoon and yesterday she kissed a boy, so the real issue for me is why I haven’t indoctrinated her into more #misandry yet.
I liked this for your outrageous breastfeeding experience class, and then I wished I could like it again for your desire to teach your baby to be wary of men.
I will go yell at her for you if you want! And I haven’t bought a nestle products probably ever, because my parents were so appalled by that scandal, but I am not under the misapprehension that it’s formula that kills.
I went to a breastfeeding class where the nurse said “you can’t give formula to babies, they give formula to babies in the Third World and it LITERALLY KILLS THEM,” and I was so close to just screaming “that’s not true!” and I really wish I had.
That’s so appalling! I sincerely hope everyone in the class realised that was utter bollocks. (I mean, yes, in less economically developed countries breastfeeding can be safer than bottle feeding, because of issues around access to clean water. If you have access to clean water, formula is not going to kill your baby.)
(What I mean to say is, I can totally see this happening!)
The literature that my hospital gave out on formula feeding said that it causes increased risk of death for the baby. They also treated me as though I had gestational diabetes even though I categorically didn’t (the endocrinologist was doing some kind of study and she is apparently too G-dlike ti have to obtain informed patient consent) scared me into thinking for a few months that I would be forced to potentially kill my baby because they give formula bottles to gestational diabetes patients’ babies immediately after birth. They also claimed during the birth class that ONE bottle of formula will completely, irrevocably destroy the breastfeeding relationship. And nobody told me that hypothyroidism can cause low milk supply, and that going off thyroid meds for a few months immediately postpartum (which the endo coerced me into doing) can make the thyroid situation and therefore the milk supply worse, as can mainlining fenugreek like I did at the advice of lactation consultants. My chance at an exclusive breastfeeding relationship (a.k.a. the way not to increase risk of death for my baby, according to them) was likely doomed from the start, and that’s not even factoring in my off-the-charts big son’s sensory issues or undiagnosed tongue tie. And all of the angst over formula feeding just. Didn’t. Have. To. Happen. My son’s almost three and I still have PPD that probably would be much lighter, or even nonexistent, but for lactivism (and don’t even get me started on the “advice” I received from LLLI).
Poverty pimps. That phrase gives me a lot to think about. I think of my call as continuing to work for justice in an urban setting, and I am troubled by many of the developments going on…between the poverty pimps and the gentrifiers, I wonder if the poor are actually going to catch a break or just get shoved out into the suburbs and the whole thing starts over.
We’re expecting the Ghomeshi verdict today, and Canadian twitter is having a batten down the hatches morning. #webelievesurvivors
I know, right? It’s so frustrating and heartbreaking how much the system worked in Ghomeshi’s favour.
Is there hope of a conviction?
Reading reports of what the judge is saying, not in the slightest. (He’s saying horrible offensive crap.)
I’m following Sarah Boesveld on Twitter right now. She’s done some great reporting from court. https://twitter.com/sarahboesveld
Thanks for the rec. God, this is wretched.
The CBC liveblog is here, and I’m reading it and just getting angry all over again at the prosecution.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/jian-ghomes…
Yes. Queasy and angry.
O my gods, the livetweets of the judge’s decision are basically a textbook in how patriarchy fucks women over. I cannot even with this particular sentence: “The twists and turns of the complainants’ evidence in this trial illustrates the need to be vigilant” in order to not fall into the assumption “that sexual assault complainants are always truthful”.
If it was not so awful it would be hilarious.
See I liked better how he said “sure it’s against the law to hold post-assault behaviour against the complainants but in this case I am going to”.
For definitions of like.
o my many varied gods, it is worse than we thought: http://www.ontariocourts.ca/en/24Mar16.pdf
“Ms. DeCoutere said her plan was to disclose all of these things once the trial began. She said that she had always intended to reveal this information but thought that the trial would be her first chance to do so. With respect, that explanation seems unreasonable to me. Ms. DeCoutere had literally dozens of
pre-trial opportunities to provide the full picture to the authorities. I suspect the truth is she simply thought that she might get away with not mentioning it.”
Yep, you should probably base your decisions on what you think she thought rather than what she said, seems legit. Are women even really capable of thinking anyway?
It was pretty much a masterclass on why women don’t report sexual assault and rape. All the one-fingered salutes to that icky judge.
Some other links…
https://t.co/9S57nLwzy0 (Same judge that presided over the JG trial fell for the same defensive tactics in another case of a man charged with multiple sexual assaults in 2008. Obvious TWs for sexual assault and rape.)
http://www.chatelaine.com/news/what-i-wish-id-kno… (Interview with first complainant in JG trial)
http://www.chatelaine.com/news/exclusive-lucy-dec… (Interview with Lucy Decoutere)
I literally just told a new mom yesterday that “If it hurts, your latch is wrong” is a lie. Sometimes it just hurts! New babies have tiny mouths!
The first time around I spent a lot of time deeply upset and insecure because–despite the fact that my baby was gaining like an elephant seal–it hurt so badly that I was sure her latch was wrong. (No thanks to fucking Dr. Jack Newman, who IS A MAN WITHOUT BREASTS.) This time it still hurt, but for less time and I didn’t worry about it.
Anyway, if you want to hear it, I am here to tell you that it does eventually stop hurting and FOR ME was/ has been totally worth it.
My younger daughter latched on perfectly and yet it hurt like the hounds of hell. There were times I thought I would pass out from the pain! Anyone who says it doesn’t hurt is a liar with their pants on fire. (New moms/moms-to-be take heart, the painful part doesn’t last too long, firstmute is right.)
I kind of suspect that breastfeeding advocates gloss over the fact that it can fucking hurt in order not to discourage people, but imo that backfires stupendously when new moms start nursing and find out that it’s not all soft music and adoring smiles like it is in the Breast is Best advertisements.
This is so true of so many things. Gloss over realities in order to encourage people to participate, which makes them feel like broken failures when they experience those realities. Blah.
It’s not like women aren’t already aware that lots of women-stuff hurts! And we get through that as best we can- so why pick this one to lie about? (well, I think they still lie about cramps in health class but less than they used to maybe?)
No kidding. Seared into my memory is the day my 1-week-old baby was breastfeeding and smiling up at me angelically and I felt so good about it even though it hurt like hell, and he opened his cute little mouth just a little and out dribbled a hot pink mixture of milk and blood. My blood. Freaking cannibal vampire baby.
And you know why sometimes it hurts so bad you cry? Because they gave you f’ing antibiotics at the birth, no option to refuse them, and it set up a yeast infection that nobody told you about and you didn’t notice at the time because everything hurt down there anyway, and now you have a thrush infection that’s getting passed back and forth between you and your baby and no matter what, medicine can’t fix it until you just.stop.eating.carbs for 2 months at least and the thrush infection gets into your milk ducts and causes Reynaud’s syndrome, which hurts bad enough in your fingers but GOD ALMIGHTY when it’s in your nipples it makes you want to die. Or, you know, that might be a reason, I’ve heard that it’s happened to people before….I may still want to kill everyone involved in my post-baby health care even though the kid is 19 now!!!!!
Noooo I am so outraged for you! I had Renaud’s syndrome with my first from nipple trauma and, yep, I cried through a lot of those middle-of-the-night nursing sessions.
With the second we both had antibiotic related thrush that would. not. go. away, until I finally dosed us both with gentian violet. Messy, but it worked!
Arghhhh thrush. That is all
YES. My baby’s tiny mouth, despite a great latch, just could not handle my flat nipple/massive areola combo and IT FELT LIKE SHE HAD FANGS. (Maybe she did. I dunno.) Combine that with D-MER (AKA sad nipple syndrome) and breastfeeding/pumping was the most horrible, distressing, mind-destroying thing I have ever been through.
I broke down in the middle of the night about three weeks in when I had a letdown that made me simultaneously scream with pain and look around the room for something to kill myself with that exact second and my eyes lighted upon the machete my husband keeps by the bed. (Don’t ask.) I had the good sense to break her latch, tell my husband to take her and feed her the formula samples the hospital sent home with us, lock the bedroom door and get six hours of blessed, uninterrupted sleep. When I woke up with boobs as hard as diamonds spontaneously squirting breast milk across the room and dreaded another nursing session, I had the good sense to say that maybe, just maybe, it’s better for my baby to drink some formula rather than have her mother kill herself due to a totally temporary but unavoidable problem with neurotransmitter regulation.
I still nursed her nearly exclusively until I went back to work four weeks later, and then nursed her at night and pumped during the day for day care feedings. After my HR person approached me (very sensitively and gently) to see if there was anything the company could do to help me since the sound of my sobbing was completely audible during my four daily pumping sessions, I realized how stupid it was and weaned her to formula.
I’d like to say I never looked back, but I regularly look at my bank balance and think what it would be if I didn’t spend 10 months spending $40 a week on formula, and now my daughter is dealing with allergy issues that I wonder if I could have prevented by breastfeeding longer.
But I did not break her and when I (even now! Almost two years later!!) get shade for having let a single drop of BABY KILLING FORMULA pass her lips I manage to restrain myself from dissolving into a puddle of incoherent screaming I congratulate myself for the self-restraint I learned when breastfeeding made me literally suicidal twelve to twenty four times a day.
And … this is why formula is one of the greatest medical advances of our time. It saves babies AND moms. Good for you for knowing when to quit.
As a mom with PPD that lasted 2 YEARS before anyone diagnosed me, I’m sorry anybody has to go through that.
And even with my second kid, who I was terrified to have because of the first and PPD, and was watched very carefully, I had issues nursing. He had no allergies. He slept, blissfully. He played with his fingers and toes instead of being colicky and screaming for the first 8 months of his life. Guess what? He GREW TEETH AT TWO MONTHS. Two.Fucking.Months. Yep, nursing an 8 week old with 4 teeth that would bite down as he drifted off to sleep. Fun times.
Whew. Thank you for sharing this.
I’ve been listening to Paul Beatty’s The Sellout in advance of today’s Tournament of Books decision (and, I presume, it’s ultimate victory.) I first listened to it before this election cycle got into full swing, and getting back to it now, in our post-Trump* world, is as “fascinating” as being kicked in the stomach repeatedly., to quote Oluo’s article way out of context. Back last summer, it was a wincing and hilarious satiric novel about living while Black in America, told via the outsized Me as he faced the Supreme Court. This go-round, I’m having trouble calling anything exaggerated for comic effect.
Another panelist, a white male news analyst, was next to respond.
“Eventually America does the right thing,” he said.
400 years of waiting.
Seriously.
*That Jamelle Bouie piece on “How Trump Happened” I think was in the LR a couple of weeks ago made me consider Trump’s loud-mouthing about Obama’s birth certificate a couple of years ago wasn’t just some random loud-mouth idiot spouting off about, but a calculated testing of the waters for his candidacy.
The Sellout is a joy and a rightfully tough go. One of the few books I’ve ever read that was described as “biting satire” where I actually thought the description was apt.
I want a review of Batman v. Superman in the style of Two Monks Invent Superheroes.
seconded.
That BvS review is fab, disappointed to hear Wonder Woman doesn’t get much of a look in after everyone’s been harping on about her appearance.
OT but my job extended my contract for another three months at the last minute (like, it was all confirmed two weeks ago and my contract ends next Thursday), and now one of the jobs I applied for when I thought my contract was going to end wants to interview me. Where I currently work is a more prestigious organisation, probably with more prospects in the long term, and I probably will get a permanent/longer term position once this contract extension is up. The other job is permanent, and for a charity which seems like they’re doing good work. I’m inclined to at least go for the interview – if I like it and they like me, I can take it, if not, I’ve lost nothing except a day’s holiday (and I get shit tons of holiday time in my current job so that’s not a huge issue). If I end up being offered it and not wanting it, I can at least use it as leverage for getting a permanent position at current job. What do you all think?
Definitely take the interview. It doesn’t hurt and you’ll always wonder.
Yes, go for the interview!
Do the interview, absolutely. Interviews are opportunities to seek more information on both sides, not a commitment to take the job if offered.
Zack Snyder on How ‘Batman v Superman’ is Like ‘Watchmen’. This made me angry. DC handed their most valuable properties off to a dude who just doesn’t fucking get them at all. I want a Superman movie I can enjoy, for fuck’s sake, it’s SUPERMAN. It’s the Big Blue Boyscout!
Tell a story about the ultimate immigrant who could do anything – literally anything – he wanted to do, but who chooses to do the right thing, who works in a dying industry because he believes in that industry’s mission as well as his own, who’s trying to do the right thing in a world where way too many people are just trying to make a buck, no matter who that screws over. Add in a love story where a guy who can bend steel with his bare hands and shoot lasers out of his eyes is awed by someone who is a thousand times better than him at their shared profession, and who is fearless without having any of his invulnerability. Put him up against a bad guy who has achieved everything a normal human could ever achieve, but who can’t fill the aching need to be the best because Superman is out there and he can’t beat his own jealousy. Make a secondary character someone who is willing to do ostensibly bad things for good ends – leave Batman out, but somebody like Wonder Woman would be good for this, because she will put a spear through someone if she thinks it’s necessary. Make Superman wrestle with that view of the world.
Or just film All-Star Superman. Or just put Grant Morrison in charge of the movie and tell him to do whatever feels right. Anyone but Snyder.
Based on this I’m all in favor of giving you the reins for the next installment. Anyone want to second the motion?
Thank you! To be honest, like I sorta intimated there at the end, a lot of this is copped from Grant Morrison’s various runs on the character, with a little bit stolen from my other favorite pieces of Superman writing over the last few years. I have come around on Superman in a big way in the last decade; when I was a teenager, I thought he was boring, and then I grew up a bit (and some stuff came out that was smarter and better than what I read as a kid) and now I love the character, but dislike a lot of the interpretations of him.
I used to dismiss him reflexively (“ugh, he’s such a boy scout. The only interesting thing about him is Lois”), but then I read Glen Weldon’s Unauthorized Biography of Superman and repented 🙂
BTW: I just ordered The Caped Crusade. Can’t wait until it gets here.
I had that feeling about Superman as a child but as I got older I liked him more–I think it’s because the longer you live in the world, the more you appreciate what a tremendous effort it takes to get up every day and resolve to be nice, play nice, and not use your skills or abilities in a way that hurts others.
I’m not super into comics, but I like superhero movies and I’m a business grad; and I cannot get over how stupid DC/Warner are.
Marvel works for a lot of reasons, but partly because they recognise that different characters need different kinds of movies BECAUSE THEY ARE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS.
DC basically just keep saying ‘we want to do what Marvel are doing because they are making lots of money, lets do inter-connected movies. What movie should we do? Well Batman worked really well last time, why don’t we do a Batman movie with Superman! Yes that will bring in ALL the money.’ and they just keep making nonsensical BORING AF movies.
The Dark Night trilogy worked because they had a director with a very specific vision that worked for the Batman character and mythology. There are 100 million Superman fanatics out there, let one of them make a god damn movie that at least gets the tone right. GRITTY ISN’T A PANACEA YOU FUCKS.
I don’t understand this fascination with “gritty superhero movies” that DC has. It’s like they looked at the success of The Dark Knight trilogy and thought “that’s what audiences want!” when it worked for very specific reasons.
(I just want them to watch the Justice League cartoon that I watched when I was a kid because that had emotional weight and didn’t lose sight of the fact that superhero stories are ultimately hopeful.)
DC is in the position to start making money hand over fist if they could just start telling GOOD STORIES. They’re putting out a Wonder Woman movie while Marvel is busy pushing back any movies headlined by female superheroes and DC has made a bigger effort in creating diversity. It’s RIGHT THERE for them to topple Marvel but it looks like they don’t understand how to take that last key step.
From what I can tell, DC are being risk-averse and basically saying ‘do what worked last time’ instead of taking a step back and looking at why things worked and what they should do again and what they should do differently (Which is what a smart business would do. Smart business people understand that you need to be ahead of the market and should not just copy and paste previous successes. Movie studios business practices piss be the fuck off, how can you be so rigid and stupid?)
Marvel worked because they were ahead of the game and did it first. It doesn’t matter if DC do it better (which they’re not anyway), they’ll never catch up to Marvel so they need to look elsewhere and find the next new thing.
Apple rules the world, not because their better, but because they were the first ones to change the narrative and everyone else is playing catch-up. And they stay number one because they keep changing the narrative just as everyone else catches up.
Also my understanding is that they got real gun-shy over at DC about funny or lighthearted movies after Green Lantern flopped. Because that’s what was wrong with that movie, obviously.
Thank you for reminding me why I was such a Superman obsessed teen – as I’ve got older and there’s been more bad Supermans about, I’ve started to question why I loved Supes so much when I was younger.
You had better taste than I did as a teen. I was a big fan of Frank Miller’s Batman, because “why wouldn’t you just kill the Joker, right?” (Because then he wouldn’t be Batman, idiot teen me, because Batman doesn’t kill people.)
YES YES YES YES you have beautifully described what I love about Superman and Wonder Woman.
Wow, you just made me care about Superman, and I didn’t think that was possible.
Hey you DC nitwits, protocoach for director, please!
Oh god, I would kickstart the shit out of an All-Star Superman. That would be so good…
Yep, this right here. I’m not a Supes fan, but fuuuuuuuuuck, I love me some All-Star.
Clark Kent has always been my favorite part of Superman. This is such a perfect write up of what’s great about Superman.
I went through a “Fuck Superman” phase but I realized what I was mad at was the focus on the violence Superman can dish out (and take) rather than his compassion. Hell, there’s a poster from just after WWII with Superman telling people that being mean to immigrants is un-American!
Now I want to find that poster so I can put it on every telephone pole in town.
Here it is!
It’s this one :http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/superman-poster-american-values_us_5650a695e4b0879a5b0b42a7
It’s a bit creepy because it asks kids to report things they think are “un-American” so it’s not perfect.
Also here to plug A Superman for All Seasons, which I think is an excellent handling of the character.
When I was in nursing school I got into a straight-up SHOUTING MATCH in class with one of my instructors who Strongly Intimated that not breastfeeding is equivalent to child abuse.
What a fucked-up system we have, where there is so much guilt and pressure built up about breastfeeding, but no systemic social support for parents who are actually doing the breastfeeding. FUCK THAT.
I give my pregnant patients now a little speech about how breastmilk is better than formula in XYZ respects, but just because formula is second-best doesn’t mean it’s awful or dangerous or somehow “wrong.” It’s just second-best, and it’s a CLOSE second-best at that, and it’s fine. You gotta make your own choices about what you do with your own body.
(I breastfed my son for like 53 weeks and it was one of the most emotionally intense — in good ways and in bad — things I have ever done, and has had a much more lasting impact on my relationship with my body than the actual pregnancy and birth.)
Before people I know/are related to started having babies, I innocently assumed that the whole ‘breastfeed or DIEEEE!!’ thing was exaggerated, that it was only something that happened among super-competitive 1% mothers who feature in magazine articles, and that in *real life* doctors, nurses and advice-givers are sensible; they understand that formula is not remotely dangerous and a formula-only or combined approach is perfectly fine.
HOW WRONG I WAS. I am genuinely disturbed at the number of healthcare professionals who propagate the PROVABLE LIE that formula is dangerous, and the fact that this BF shaming and guilting are a real thing making new mothers’ lives hell. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it: “But…if the baby is still hungry because they aren’t getting enough from breastmilk…why on earth WOULDN’T the recommendation be to supplement with formula? Are professionals ACTUALLY advocating that it’s better to let the baby go hungry while you struggle to make something happen that isn’t going to happen???? Like, isn’t that Child-Rearing 101 – feed the kid???? WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS FUN-HOUSE-MIRROR REALITY??”
The funny thing is, where I am at least, getting evangelical about breastfeeding is a relatively recent phenomenon. Women who chose it in the past were, while not necessarily outright shamed, slightly looked down on, as BF was still somewhat associated with poverty and backwardness, and formula was seen as the Great Powdery Scientific Hope for the future. So the message has gone completely 180, with the only common factor being medics and interfering types talking down to new mothers and bossing them around instead of properly supporting them.
Experiences can differ so wildly. I actually got a lot of pressure to use formula from doctors when my first baby wasn’t gaining as much weight as they wanted. (I did, but I was–stupidly–devastated, and worked very hard to make sure that it was only temporary.) This was in Los Angeles.
When my baby was older, we lived in South Carolina where rates of breastfeeding after the first few months are very low. I had more than one exchange like this:
“What formula is she on?”
“Oh, she’s still breastfeeding.”
five minutes later
“Now what formula did you say she was on?”
Even later we lived in a very crunchy northeastern town, where my pregnant friend sat me down and said, very gravely, something like “I have to tell you something. I’m not going to breastfeed because I’m on a medication that I can’t stop taking. I wanted you to know that.”
I can understand why your friend did that. Back when I thought I might want kids, I had multiple breast feeding fanatics demand I tell them why exactly I was so sure I couldn’t breastfeed, including wanting to know my specific meds, why I was on them, and was I reeeeeally so sure the benefit to me was greater than the benefit of miraculous boob nectar for my completely theoretical child? Ughhhhhhh.
People shouldn’t have to justify their self-care like this.
Absolutely! It illustrates how much ambient pressure there was, that she felt she had to tell me as if it were some big thing. (I’m a big fan of breastfeeding in my personal life and feel very strongly about supporting women who want to, but I always say “IF you breastfeed” when it comes up with pregnant women and always let them bring it up first.)
It’s sorta depressing how much you can improve a pregnant person’s day just by supporting their choices and not demanding to know what those choices are. You have an excellent strategy for being supportive imho.
I (silently) defriended an online friend of ten years (we went to each other’s weddings!) because she posted a completely useless and unsolicited “make sure your latch is OK” comment ON MY FACEBOOK POST SAYING THAT IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY.
This! I also gave birth in LA, and the hospital had no lactation consultants on staff, and when I asked the nurse a question about whether the latch looked right she said “Well, you could always give him formula!” Which made me dig my fucking heels in and breastfeed for a year NO MATTER WHAT. There’s a lot of pressure to breastfeed from certain quarters, but there’s still a non-negligible amount of pressure not to from others.
Wow. Just…my nephew was adopted at birth! What the hell else is he supposed to eat? Good for you!
I know some people who will insist that adoptive mothers can (and should try to!) actually induce lactation so that they can breastfeed their children. Which seems really intense/kind of crazy? (Though obviously if there are women who want to do that, good for them! I just think other people insisting that adoptive mothers need to try something like this is bananas.)
My sister-in-law has twins! Yes, it’s POSSIBLE to exclusively breastfeed twins, but I think we’d have a lot fewer twins surviving their first year if formula was not also an option!
Yeah, my mum partially breastfed us (triplets), but there was definitely also formula involved because trying to exclusively breastfeed three babies is a recipe for disaster. We are all still alive.
Oh, I met a triplet-mum on Monday down in Plymouth! I was staying with my brother and the twins, and I got chatting to a woman in the co-op about how many babies is too many babies. Her triplets are 28 now so I did have s moment of wondering if she was your mum!
Ha, we are 26 and my mum has not been, to the best of my knowledge, in Plymouth this week, but I imagine triplet-rearing has a lot of similarities between families. (Did you come to a conclusion about how many babies is too many?)
Yes – when you have three babies, two adults, and your brother has gone off to work with the double-buggy in the car boot, that is Too Many Babies,
We had a completely hilarious twenty minutes where we tried to go to the park with E in her buggy, and the twins (also 17 months and just walking) on reins. Neither of the twins knows how to walk on reins yet, so they kept running into the road, reaching the limit of the reins and falling over. They went in opposite directions. They would not be picked up. They screamed the entire time. E sat in her buggy looking bemused. It was completely hopeless and we gave up after 25 yards and resigned ourselves to staying in all day!
Every time you post on pregnancy and childbirth stuff I like you more and more. The field needs more people like you!
Thank you! This is a really wonderful thing to hear and I am going to carry it with me all day as, like, a talisman. *all the colors of hearts emoji*
where there is so much guilt and pressure built up about breastfeeding, but no systemic social support for parents who are actually doing the breastfeeding
yes yes yes – this was exactly my experience in the UK (see above for comment to selma!) – so-called “moral support” aka guilt is ever so much cheaper than actual experts and services.
I had the gratifying experience of meeting one of my health visitors and a trainee breast-feeding peer support volunteer when my daughter was about 7 months and the awfulness of the first two months was starting to recede. I told the peer-support person what had happened, and the health visitor said afterwards, “I think Mary’s story really shows the importance of providing emotional support…” And I said, “LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE – I completely understand that you may see many women who are not supported to breastfeed by their partners or their families or their social group, and maybe they need emotional support. I have lots of friends who breastfed and my mum breastfed and it is normal in my social situation. I didn’t need emotional support, I needed someone to listen to what was actually happening, hard information and referrals to services which could help. Emotional support came across as useless guilt tripping. So emotional support may be important to some women, but it was useless to me.” I felt SO GOOD having the opportunity to say that.
This is an OUTSTANDING story and I applaud you for it! Hopefully you made a difference in that peer-support person’s development of her(?)self as a volunteer. I know I have always really valued the times that my patients have called me out on something I’ve done, usually with good intentions, that is not-helpful or just plain harmful.
I did a year of child nursing in the UK, and some of the health visitors (who are trained nurses) were truly scary on breastfeeding. At that point, they got paid a bonus if one of their clients was still breastfeeding six weeks after the birth (regardless of whether this was due to any HV interventions), and as you’d expect, this meant it got personal for them really fast.
The majority were still decent and kind to all mothers, regardless of their feeding style; but the mentor I was assigned to was very harsh about and to clients not breastfeeding.
My official feedback form noted that I didn’t ‘understand’ the importance of breastfeeding because I questioned why a mother on lithium who chose to bottle-feed was being told ‘all health problems in children are from mothers who don’t breastfeed.’
When I left for my next placement in a hospital, she told me that childhood cancers are linked to bottle feeding. Absolutely frightening.
I did feel sorry for some of the HV though, they seemed to be in the position where sometimes, you could see mum was absolutely killing herself trying to overcome every barrier and breastfeed, and the baby still wasn’t gaining weight, and you’d just want to say ‘It’s okay to stop!’ but it went against Official Recommendations.
Especially as there’s additional pressure to phrase all discussions of it as positive as possible (so ‘demand led feeding’ is now outdated terminology) but instead of framing the mother as central; it just comes across as you’re not allowed to say your baby legitimately struggles with feeding (or anything else), you just need to admit that you’re not doing something right/enough.
Laura Mvula. I love her so so deeply.
I am *obsessed* with Overcome.
Ctrl + F “The Americans”
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Probably better for Open Thread, but… does anyone want to talk about The Americans? We could sing the praises of Mail Robot, First of Its Name, Blameless and Innocent Amidst the Blood-Soaked High Body Count of This Show.
I love Mail Robot. They just try so hard to do their job.
I haven’t seen yesterday’s episode but I am here to share your enthusiasm for The Americans. Martha hit it out of the park last week, and Stan continued to be worthy of a swift and painful death.
OKAY BUT GO WATCH IT AND TELL ME WHAT YOUR THOUGHTS ARE ON UNDERCOOKING MACARONI AND CHEESE
Mail Robot! Attacked by someone it should’ve been able to trust!
Gaad still needs to pay for his crimes against Mail Robot.
I have never liked Gaad, so while his attack of Mail Robot was understandable under the circumstances, I cannot forgive him. At all.
I want a spinoff, in which Mail Robot goes off on its own, like Breq in Ancillary Justice, and avenges Martha.
VERY IMPORTANT MAD MAX LINK http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/…
I have feelings that need to be discussed
She is the best, and her jacket was the single best thing about the Oscars, and all those other motherfuckers can eat it, you lost and she didn’t and she rides eternal, shiny and chrome.
I somehow managed to miss the entire oscars business, so I am only now being exposed to the awesomeness of Jenny Beavan. I’m so in love.
I really love that she decided to put on a costume to represent the movie! It wasn’t about making a statement, she just wanted to show her love for it and everyone got the wrong end of the stick!
Are your feelings ones of love for her decision to do one chrome nail? Because mine are. Also, “I have no interest in clothes other than what they tell me about a person,” which is, of course, exactly the kind of attitude we should be expecting from a costume designer.
The nail! I love the quote ‘George says keep things simple’ or what ever.
LIKE OMG GOD HAVE YOU SEEN FURY ROAD AKA SKULLSPLOSION.
She showed admirable restraint for only putting three disembodied doll heads on Rictus’ crotch when there was clearly room for at LEAST five.
That bit about storytelling right there was so friggin’ perfect. I read that and my mind nearly exploded in complete happiness.
I want Jenny Bevan to be my neighbor and we can talk about her garden and what projects we’re working on in a calm way and drink tea while she teaches me her wonderful ways.
She lives near me in London and I’m seriously trying to figure out how I can befriend her and have her be my matriarchal mentor for life. So far I have ‘hang out in Peckham a lot’.
My sister just moved away from Peckham, to my great dismay; running into Jenny Beavan is that much less likely now.
“The thing that lots of people are missing,” she says, “is that I was wearing a costume. A homage to Mad Max.”
THIS. I couldn’t believe that people didn’t get that. She considered it a costume! I could see that (and I’m guessing a lot of women could too), as soon as I saw her! But that’s because I consider all clothes to be a costume.
I want to be that lady when I grow up. Including the dispossessed cat and random collection of artist friends upstairs.
She dressed carefully, in a jacket “like the Mad Max motor bike cop”, a scarf reminiscent of “an oily rag”, “weighted jewellery”, boots and “biker-inspired” jeans, and she painted one of her nails a shiny chrome “in honour of the metal of the film. And just one, because George [Miller, the director] always said: ‘Keep it simple.’”
GEORGE MILLER, WHERE WAS THIS WHEN YOU DREAMED UP THE DOOF WAGON?
The Doof Wagon was perfect, though.
I will not hear a word said against it; it was a thing of beauty. But not “simple”.
Thank you for linking to that Islamophobia and YA article. Does anyone have recommendations for YA books (or any fantasy fiction) actually written by Muslim or South Asian authors? I’ve already read Alif the Unseen (which is incredible).
Saladin Ahmed is a personal fave of mine. http://www.saladinahmed.com/
Intisar Khanani is a great fantasy YA author! I also recommend Zen Cho, Susan Ee, Aisha Saeed (who is mentioned in the article), Sabaa Tahir, Ken Liu, and Kendare Blake.
Second on Intisar Khanani! She is awesome. I also like Zen Cho, I will have to check out these others.
I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops is a short story collection by Hanan al-Shaykh, and many of the stories have magical realism/fantasy elements.
I used to read so much Middle Eastern literature in college and then I totally fell off. I should check out these recommended authors too!
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
The iron fist over comments juxtaposed with the BvS review makes me think you’d better keep one eye out for Batman in a robot suit coming to take down The Toast.
The BvS reviews have been great, but I’m a little concerned (well, not concerned, I don’t really care) about the possibility of them overstating their distaste in an attempt to one up other no- and 1-star reviews.
I think they do, usually, as a form of hyperbole. It either has to be GREAT! (also hyperbole), pretty good but flawed (legit review), decent but seriously flawed (also legit), or THE WORST >:[ (super hyperbole land involving references to hemorrhaging blood through your eyeballs) because a review of a rather-poor-but-not-irredeemable film doesn’t make for the most enticing read.
Links! I thought this discussion on magical disabilities in SF/F was fascinating.
And this lil comic, oof.
OOF is right. The comic is incredibly beautiful.
Also thank you for introducing me to disabilityinkidlit. I want to read all of it.
Definitely went down a rabbit hole of book reviews yesterday!
That discussion was great! There was a lot of great nuances there that I hadn’t thought of before.
Guys, guys guys guys–I decided to check whether the Name of the Year voting is open, and it is, and they’re putting up the occupations of the contenders, and some of them are GLORIOUS examples of nominative determinism.
Charol Shakeshaft is a sexual abuse researcher.
Onno Hoes is a mayor who was ousted for a sex scandal.
Rigoberto Uran Uran is a Colombian cyclist (it’d be even better if he was in track and field)
Bonus odds and ends:
“Cleveland Indians farmhand Sicnarf Loopstok is one of the few players in sporting history whose first name is his father’s first name (Francis) spelled backwards.”
“#7 Dick Tips, funeral home owner, vs. #10 Amethyst Valentino, karaoke host.” <—-that is a perfect karaoke host name
“Sithole nine-seed Emzy Veazy III is a man of many identities: a black Republican; a forward thinker in Fashion and Entertainment; a defender of U.S. Flag Code; a self proclaimed Esquire; a descendent of famous slave rebellion leader Denmark Vesey; host of a TV show called ‘Caviar and Class’; and a man whose business cards read ‘Rugged Individualist.’ “
“Cleveland Indians farmhand Sicnarf Loopstok is one of the few players in sporting history whose first name is his father’s first name (Francis) spelled backwards.”
I think I remember reading Nomar Garciaparra is another.
At least Nomar seems like it could be a real name, Sicnarf is just…something else.
No first name should end in “narf.”
Snarf from Thundercats: *sadly* Snarf, snarf.
Oh, definitely. “I don’t want him to be a ‘Junior’. That’s weird. Sicnarf it is!”
a man whose business cards read ‘Rugged Individualist.’
With a name like that, why not go large?
Indeed. Large as Caviar and Class.
I remember the Onno Hoes sex scandal! He was the mayor of Maastricht, which is a lovely but fairly conservative city, and his husband was a well-known Dutch TV presenter. After several reports of him cheating with guys in their 20s (some with pictures), one went to the press with receipts. He survived a vote of no confidence from the council, but “decided” to resign anyway. So it does kind of take a lot to bring down a Dutch politician with a sex scandal, but it happens.
Dick Tips’ given name is ROBERT. It’s not even Richard! ROBERT.
He could have been Rob or Bobby Tips, but no! He went with Dick!
Like, every adult in his life failed him by letting that happen.
Onno Hoes’ occupation is the reason he’s my favorite
Loved the Michelle Dean article. Although, the line that “he revealed that we, too, had a resentful middle class,” rather irked me. The voters who will go for anyone who promises lower taxes have been a dominant force for as long as I’ve been able to pay attention to Canadian politics (Mike Harris, anyone? Wild Rose party?). Rob Ford’s voters were just a more bombastic version of the right-wing Canadian populism.
Oh, that Ford comment just brought back all of high school for me. Being half-American, half-Canadian (Canerican, I called it), living in Toronto, I was constantly hearing American-bashing. Granted, much of it valid! But it also felt like (and I never had the guts to say this out loud) “do you GET that you’re bashing half of me!?” It actually felt like a relief to be in the states where no one gave Canada a second’s thought.
I guess I might feel very differently now, as a grown-up. But at the time, I remember being sick of the younger-sibling dynamics.
I’m an American that spent 5 (all of 6th grade – 10th grade) years living in Toronto before moving back to the States. I lived through the John Kerry/George Bush election and listened to a lot of American-bashing. My response is the same now as it was then, “You realize that Canada is also not perfect right?” My Canadian friends were pretty offended when I would say it but… weren’t they just also pointing out the flaws of the country I loved?
Younger sibling dynamics is a great way to put it!
I’m a recent Canadian citizen from the US and have lived in Toronto for the past six years, and I noticed even among very dear friends of mine that America-bashing is kind of a bonding ritual, even though many of them are gaga about New York City and American culture and media. It also seems to me that many Canadians find it plucky and adorable to hate the United States. I get it, the US isn’t perfect, but much of the bashing is not even factually accurate. And then the same people get butthurt when hearing negative things about Canada, including mild criticism, or even my bad experiences in the healthcare system (my physical and mental health, and possibly my fertility, have been destroyed as a result). Or other things like human rights and the justice system or environmental protections are fondly supposed by many people here to be better here than in the US, when it is not the case at all.
That article about Amy Reed and Hooman Noorchashm has me torn three ways between gratitude, rage, and terror.
I know. I’m having to read with breaks because I’m getting so angry and viscerally ill. The gratitude I have for them for bringing this to light is immense.
I have friends who are in medical training (residents, fellows, etc.) at both Boston hospitals referenced and I’m definitely bringing this up with them when I see them next. I’m curious if this is something that’s been a topic of conversation for employees at these institutions and, if so, what the tone of that discussion has been.
I went through the first page and I had to stop.
My recon (the failed one) was at BWH, my daughter was born at Beth Israel (and spent a month in the NICU there). I tend to feel safe at hospitals because I have family who have worked there, and who help me choose doctors, but if TWO ACTUAL DOCTORS can wind up in that kind of treatment problem shithole, the rest of us are fucked.
Yes, yes, yes. This has been on my radar in a big way because I have a giant fibroid and the only way any specialist here in Canada will consent to treat it is with morcellation. (Not because it can’t be treated in any other way but because it’s their favorite.) This is including the one hospital in the Toronto area where they proudly declared in the news that they have the Israeli-invented focused ultrasound machine now to treat fibroids far less invasively. (I waited many months to see a gynecologist there, who insisted that they have no such machine, despite its being in the news.) Fortunately, I’d read about this brave couple before going to this appointment, and I shudder to think about what might happen if I were a more compliant or less informed patient. Ag the last gyno I saw, I mentioned the FDA warning that morcellation is contraindicated for fibroid removal and the gyno waved his hand and sneered and said, “yeah, but most women are OK.” I was like, OH YES, that will be SO REASSURING in retrospect if I’m not among them!
*Toast hugs* That is BULLSHIT. I’m so sorry.
Thank you! (Also, I *LOVE* the quote on your profile!)
Emily Byrd Starr for life!
(I wish there were a way to get you to the US for the surgery.)
She’s my favorite LMM heroine! Besides Valancy. Actually–fingers crossed–we’re going to move to the U.S. in the next couple of months or whenever my husband gets a job, whichever comes first. I’m so excited!
Yay for both of them and for you moving to here! (I also like Jane more and more as I get older.) If you end up in Greater Boston let us all know!
Okay, that’s it, I’ve had it. I’m tired of people linking to a tweet that contains a picture when the picture is the main subject! SOME if not MANY of us are at work and can’t see twitter through our work filters, okay?!!!?!?!! New York Magazine!!!!
Sorry, I know this is an unreasonable tantrum but being deprived of a cute pic of the First Family that everyone is talking about feels like a horrible crime this morning.
It drives me up the wall too!! And this one was a gif, and a really good one at that!
(You could try looking it up on your phone, if you like – that’s what I had to do.)
I live on Staten Island. These photos have been making the rounds for a while – they seem to encapsulate The Good Old Days, before the borough got “overcrowded”. That’s a sentiment I can’t really empathize with because I moved here from Brooklyn a couple of years after Brooklyn turned into a “brand”, so to me it feels spacious and provincial here.
Re: foster kid.
Seems like it is the state, who initially placed the child with a white family, who did actually traumatize this kid. (And the family, who dragged this out through three lawsuits and five years.)
I can think of legit reasons why they might place a child with a white foster family if they’re the only ones available, such as if the relatives asking for custody are under a different state’s jurisdiction (Utah, I believe) and they aren’t willing to just send the kid across state lines without checking up on the situation first.
But I can’t think of a single reason a foster family should think they have the right to refuse to return a child to her rightful guardians when the foster period is done, and dragging this shit out from the age of two (when she didn’t remember anything) to the age of six (when she can only remember living with them and is old enough to be terrified at the thought of being taken away, but not old enough to understand the adult reasoning behind it) is inhumane.
If anyone would like a low-stakes hate read this morning, this criticism of Hamilton manages to miss the point flawlessly.
In Hamilton, Burr is a mere prop, a villainous foil, his personality an overblown caricature. He is portrayed as a man who lacks principles, unwilling to believe in, or fight for, anything that matters.
WHAT? (Ok, ok, she’s a Burr stan, stans gonna stan.) BUT WHAT?
Burr is more complex than ANY OTHER CHARACTER in the musical.
HELLOOOOOOO HE IS THE DEUTEROGANIST
I was going along reading that, thinking “ok, this is reasonable” and “I guess you can see it that way”… and then I got to
“No one watching Hamilton will want to be Burr, one of the most interesting figures of early American history. Leslie Odom, Jr., who plays Burr, has a lovely voice, but his portrayal echoes a familiar slur: the opportunist. Or to use Hamilton’s favorite insult of Burr (and others): a “cunning” man, who carries himself with aristocratic airs. In Hamilton, Burr is a mere prop, a villainous foil, his personality an overblown caricature. He is portrayed as a man who lacks principles, unwilling to believe in, or fight for, anything that matters.”
uuuh… What musical did you watch, dude? Burr’s not only the narrator, but the contrast between Hamilton and Burr (who share many things) is used to show the limits of both their attitudes.
Oops, my sexism is showing: while I use “dude” pretty indiscriminately, I did assume this piece was written by a man, but the author is in fact a woman. Mea culpa.
Your sexism was lost on me; in my vocabulary dude can be used on any gender, as well as inanimate objects and as a general exclamation.
Also, Burr gets the best songs!
I can only conclude the author blacked out while “Wait for It” and “The Room Where It Happens” were sung. Because no one who heard those songs could think he was being portrayed as an “overblown caricature.”
” I can say emphatically that rules of historical rigor do not apply to Hamilton.”
Wait, really? I’ve been so misinformed.
The entire thing seems to misunderstand the play, reducing Jefferson and Burr to one-dimensional villains whom, apparently, no one likes, confusing Angelica and Eliza, and saying people are only interested in it because the actors are hot.
I enjoyed the part about how the founding fathers really were old. “History: No, it really is about old and boring people! Are you interested yet??”
I just want to point this person to the “bought frequently with” listings on Amazon under the cast album. Guess what’s there? The Ron Chernow Hamilton biography. Who’d have thought a wildly popular piece of historical fiction might spur interest in the real history?
She clearly has no idea how old these people were during the war either. Lafayette was like 19 when he left France to fight in our war.
You mean that Jefferson and Hamilton never rapped?
Oh no, that part was accurate.
“no one watching Hamilton will want to be Burr”
Listen ma’am, what show are you watching/listening to and what fans have you consulted because this is just false.
There’s an interview somewhere where Miranda remarks that most biographies of Burr are written from an extremely defensive position, and I keep seeing that reinforced with the occasional salty response to Hamilton. Like this is at least the third one I’ve seen.
I mean, sentence number one here: “The musical follows an old playbook that divides the founders into heroes and villains.”
How do you see the show (or, yknow, listen to the soundtrack multiple times) and end up at: there is a clear hero/villain divide?
I mean…I do want to know where LMM took liberties with the facts! But the Genius annotations take care of that without the condescending “I assume you watched this show and thought it WAS true facts” tone.
(And thanks for the low stakes hate read. Those are fun, especially after a lot of actual rage at the North Carolina thing.)
The musical puts feminist words in the mouth of Elizabeth Hamilton, presuming she wanted to tell Jefferson to rewrite the Declaration to include women.
Wow, you were not even paying attention, were you.
Yep, the author JUST disqualified her entire article from serious consideration, well done.
First Sentence: “The musical follows an old playbook that divides the founders into heroes and villains.”
Life doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints
I mean, did you even listen to the musical?
And check out this one which I thought was a joke but I guess is serious? Maybe? I still can’t tell?
I think it’s *meant* seriously, but snide comments about >”people whose tastes range from “music from video games” to “music about video games”< are an instant disqualification if you’re trying to critique a musical piece, sorry.
Hamilton exists more as a corporate HR department’s wet dream than as a biographical work.
????????
Do you think they meant PR department? Because I did not understand that at all, either.
I think they meant “it is diverse just so it can check boxes”? But …
Oh my GOD.
so did she like get up to go to the bathroom during all of “wait for it,” or what
i can’t think of any other excuse for this nonsense
Wow, she really has missed the point. Burr is not just a two-dimensional villain! The line “Now I’m the villain in your history” highlights the way the prevailing narrative shapes our idea of a person as a character, and points out the problems with this. “Reducing Burr to a villain turns the musical into a lopsided morality tale, glossing over the complexity of early America in favor of characters we can cheer for” is not what is happening in Hamilton.
Falsely casting Burr as an aristocrat is a rhetorical ploy: It incorrectly shifts the blame for class prejudice onto him.
… didn’t he try to name himself Emperor of Mexico, though?
Finally, Hamilton wrongly claims […] that Burr knowingly shot Hamilton after he saw him fire a bullet in the air.
This is definitely not how I’ve been interpreting The World Was Wide Enough.
The musical puts feminist words in the mouth of Elizabeth Hamilton, presuming she wanted to tell Jefferson to rewrite the Declaration to include women. This is absurd.
A) it was Angelica. B) How is it absurd?
What part of “the story of America then, told by America now” does that author not understand?
All of it.
It makes me sad that precious Hamilton tickets were wasted on such a grumpy curmudgeon
Did you guys see this?! Paul Ryan gave some speech to some interns about how he was a Dirtbag about Ayn Rand!!
“There was a time when I would talk about a difference between “makers” and “takers” in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. “Takers” wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don’t want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point. So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong. And of course, there are still going to be times when I say things I wish I hadn’t. There are still going to be times when I follow the wrong impulse.”
http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/full-text-sp…
I’ll believe it when I see deeds to match the words.
From a political stand point, I agree with you whole-heartedly. So much of his stake in the game is premised on making the rich richer. But I also think a lot of conservative American Catholics–especially Paul Ryan & his generation who are too young to remember Vatican II, only knew Catholicism as defined by JPII, and have been shouting about abortion being the only important religious issue–got shamed pretty badly by Pope Francis on their poverty rhetoric. I noticed small shifts in Paul Ryan’s language after Francis became popular, and definitely after his visit to the U.S. This feels more like an extension of that to me.
What in the everloving fuck?
I do think that somewhere inside Paul Ryan is a respectable civil servant. During the SOTU he was visibly (at least to my eyes) trying to restrain himself from applauding many of the wonderful and beautiful things Obama said. It was like Ryan was all, yes, yes, Mr. President, I actually 100% agree with you but because politics are a shitball I cannot.
FLY FREE, CIVIL SERVANT, FLY FREEEEEEEE.
Sounds like the zombie-eyed granny starver (as Charles Pierce liked to call him) has either been so appalled by the people who are the frontrunners for his party’s presidential nomination that he had a come-to-Jesus moment (that would be the Jesus of “whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers”, not the one of the haters), or that recruit-Ryan movement has some muscle behind it and he’s starting to tack to the center in anticipation of a convention surprise. Either way, chalk me down in the “wait and see” column.
If he’s having a come-to-Jesus moment over his party’s presidential frontrunners, I’m pretty sure he needs a better map. Every time he makes a statement about how Donald doesn’t represent what his party stands for, he’s followed it up by saying he’ll still support whoever the nominee is, even if it’s Donald. I’ll believe in his call for listening to our better angels when he finds it in himself to actually stand up to the literal personification of everything he spent his speech decrying.
Always upvote for “zombie-eyed granny starver”
whenever I see stuff like this it just makes me think of that part where the T-1000 learns to use your mother’s voice to call out to you.
Unrelated, but I’m just going to use this space as an open thread, because I need to vent SOMEWHERE.
My one professor, who is both technically a reader on my dissertation committee (I doubt he has yet read any of my draft) and also currently holds the departmental role of person-who-is-supposed-to-advise-grad-students-and-submit-all-paperwork-to-university, does not know how to do his DGS job in the slightest. My every correspondence with him somehow manages to needlessly stress me out and waste my time because he does not understand consistency or how the system works. WHY???
There has to be SOMEONE in his department who knows this is how he works? Another grad student who is ABD who can take you under their wing? What about the department secretary…they know all the secret ways to get messages through to people without ruffling their feathers because they are admin, not students, and outside the system. I can’t think of anything else, but that sounds awful, and I’m sorry!
I had a sitch kind of like this in one of my grad programs. I ended up talking with two assistant deans in the Graduate School itself, and they were very helpful in creating a plan and reining in the wayward professor. If this guy’s incompetence is such that it can prevent you from finishing on time (or meeting other necessary milestones), then they need to know about it. (And it’s amazing how individual grad programs shape up as soon as they realize the central grad school admin is giving them the hairy eyeball.)
I found it very liberating to not expect one of my committee members to read my dissertation. The presentation went fine, he asked me an off-topic question, I passed. Lots of faculty members don’t really read them. Don’t worry too much about that bit.
(Note: I come from a place with a 3+ committee member requirement. If you only have 2, maybe having the experience where everyone actually reads it is the norm. Still though, I’m sure some people are known for not doing it.)
Nora Ephron man.
I know I’d like her stuff but I feel like it would resonate a little too much for me? IDK if I could handle that level of affirmation that life is sucky.
Not sure what you’re expecting -I’d guess she loved life.
I think its her aging and divorce stuff that would be the most triggery right now.
Ah. Well, Heartburn pulls a crushing victory out of an appalling story, it is a full-stomping win for her, plus we know she had a later immeasurably better marriage with a better man, so I think it’s the most life-affirming divorce story you’ll ever read.
On aging she’s pretty damn funny, and her life was pretty amazing and productive through to the end; but you can always start with the 70s stuff and not read the last couple of books.
I just read Heartburn, at the suggestion of the bibliotherapists who wrote the book The Novel Cure. It didn’t cure me of my aging- and breakup-related sadness, but it helped me feel less alone, and it was a pleasure to spot lines that she stole from that novel for later screenplays.
I’m gonna go see Batman vs Superman simply because Henry Cavil is the prettiest man on the planet and I want to look at him.
I completely understand that a lot of people are VERY emotionally invested in the story. I was the same way with Harry Potter, so I know what it is like to see something you love and cherish eviscerated on screen. *side eye at Chamber of Secrets*
I’m not invested in the BvS back story, so I’m gonna enjoy the hell out of a superhero story that doesn’t have a BILLION new characters that don’t make sense unless you ARE invested in the comics. *side eye at the latest Avengers movie*
This, yes, thank you.
I watched the whole of Man of Steel in a hotel room 2 years ago JUST to keep looking at Henry Cavill. His beauty, especially at the end of the movie in those glasses at the Daily Planet, was overwhelming.
The whole breastfeeding v formula thing is just another way of reducing women’s value to their biological function. I breasted my kid for 6 months and stopped. It doesn’t matter what I did. My baby’s going to destroy the fucking patriarchy.
I feel like this tweet summarizes my BvS feelings nicely:
BTAS rewatch this weekend, perhaps!
On an unrelated note, my most annoying, chauvinist coworker used the term “baby moon” this morning in all seriousness and then proceeded to explain the concept to another coworker in a fair amount of detail. It made me wither a bit inside and I still haven’t quite recovered.
So true. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are the true Batman and Joker. Also, John Stewart is the best human GL, and Wally is the best Flash.
I am usually not even down with Huge Ensemble Superhero Teams, but I’ll be damned if JLU doesn’t break all of those rules. Huntress/Question is a joy forever.
(Still could have done without canon: Bruce Wayne dates Dick Grayson’s ex who is also his protege, but that is a relatively small quibble)
Wally and Hawkgirl were my favorite original Justice Leaguers.
Yeah Batman Beyond doesn’t exist for me because of Barbara Gordon/Babs and what happens to the-love-of-my-life-when-I-was-12 Tim Drake. The rest of it is great.
It was a reasonable (and so dark for a kids show!) interpretation of A Death in the Family, but that does not mean I would like to see it a second time!
Have you seen Green Lantern: The Animated Series? It was developed by Bruce Timm, the same guy who did the DCAU, and the amazing Giancarlo Volpe (ATLA and SWCW) and Jim Krieg!
John Stewart is still my favorite Green Lantern (of Earth…) but this show makes Hal Jordan a very likable guy. The one drawback to the show for some people is the CGI style, but I thought it worked very well and was super-pretty!
Bonus: the show is amazingly written and will DESTROY YOUR FEELS. Watch the show!
I am a couple days late to the thread but:
*bursts into tears anew over Razer*
Librarian Toasties (and non-librarian Toasties) might enjoy this piece about Sadie P. Delaney, librarian at the Veterans’ Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama, an early pioneer of African-American library collections, and founder of bibliotherapy. She sounds like she must have been an amazing human being.
Cool! And of course I had to go see if she was related to Samuel Delaney, and wouldn’t you know she was his aunt, and that makes all the sense in the world.
NO WAY. That is awesome!
The morcellation story… I’m a PCP specializing in women’s health, so naturally I read it and was shocked and outraged. Conveniently, a local oncology group have a talk a few weeks later, and a gyn onc addressed this subject.
First, the “studies” the FDA used to justify discouraging the use of morcellation were astonishingly bad. Like, one of them involved a male (!!??) study subject and many poorly defined what was being studied. If you threw out the ones that were not directly about morcellation in women without suspected malignancy, the research showed morcellation saves lives. That’s because the alternative surgery involves large incisions (with morcellation, you can do it transvaginal or with much smaller incisions).
This doc totally changed my mind. The specific stories of bad outcomes are really sad, but bad outcomes are a risk of any surgery. Morcellation allows for a safer and less invasive surgery, and it is ultimately safer for women without any reason to suspect malignancy.
In conclusion, surgery is barbaric, and future doctors will look back on us and wonder how we ever did any of this to our patients.
Indeed. I have a hard time considering my three colonoscopies to have really been surgery-surgery because I compare them to having upper and lower jaw surgery with a few nasal procedures for good measure. And even in my jaw surgery, the differences in technique were huge – my mom was amazed at what I could do when and how tiny my wounds were, compared to what she had after much less intense lower jaw surgery 20 years before.
Absolutely. Look at C-section scars, hysterectomies – it’s amazing.
My youngest was diagnosed with a lung mass in-utero (CPAM), and we were able to monitor it from 20 weeks on, and when he was 9 months they did thoracoscopic surgery and he was in and out of the hospital in 30 hours. He has an inch-long scar on his back and that’s it. That’s AMAZING.
The fact that we can do surgeries on tiny people and heal them is proof of magic in my book. Except it’s science which is even better than magic, because it’s real.
Ugh, yes, I firmly people believe will look back on current medicine with the same horror I feel when reading about 19th-century practices like jabbing an unsterilized probe through bullet wounds to find the bullet, or prescribing diets like raw meat on stale bread.
But in the original article they talked about how doctors are trained to treat any mass as cancerous until proven otherwise; so what are the criteria used in ‘not suspecting malignancy’?
In this case something was clearly missed, as they didn’t see she had a cancerous mass in the first place. And they didn’t consult the patient about the morcellation, and by missing the cancer and morcellating the mass the doctors involved have effectively killed this woman, so what protocols are medical professionals going to put in place to prevent this happening again? Or are they just going to continue to hide behind statistics?
I understand that medical knowledge deals in broad statistics, but surely there should be some focus on the individuals behind those statistics? So accepting that this procedure is, in general, safer, shouldn’t they still put something in place to prevent cases like this?
Proving something in medicine is often invasive and carries significant risks. The best we can do is evaluate the signs and symptoms, consider FHx/genetic risk, discuss the procedures/alternatives/risks of the options, and move forward in a way that balances patient preference with the lowest risk option for the individual.
If every mass was considered cancer until “proven” otherwise, there would be lots of unnecessary biopsies. Moreover, biopsy carries the risk of spreading cancer via seeding. Do we favor surgical removal of all masses over biopsy because of that risk? Do we change to riskier methods when there is a rare adverse outcome? We can only do the best we have with the tools we have, and hope that better technology gets developed.
The gyn onc walked through every study the FDA included in their warning. I can only remember the most egregiously poor quality studies included, but there were also studies that were looking at different scenarios and outcome measures than what they were commenting upon. It was not appropriate to include them.
Yeah, this is pretty much how it goes in medicine. Bad outcomes happen, and surgeons do their absolute best to minimize them. I could suffer a perforation of my bowel at my next colonoscopy, but that’s still safer than leaving polyps to develop into colon cancer.
I sustained serious nerve damage which requires daily meds and has been so painful that I have wanted to die just so the pain stopped, after I had jaw surgery. Out of 2000 procedures like mine, I was one of two patients to ever sustain damage like that at my surgeon’s practice. Sometimes… Sometimes the doctor does everything possible and you still fail your saving throw. It isn’t fair and it’s horrible, but it’s also extremely impossible to prevent 100% of bad outcomes from occurring.
I’m sorry that happened to you. You’re right – [the vast majority of] doctors do their best, and terrible things still happen unexpectedly. It’s the nature of the field.
I’m still wrapping my head around it as a relatively new doc. I have a tender heart that just wants everyone to feel better, but it doesn’t always work out for a variety of reasons. The best we can do is be thoughtful and go with the available information.
Oh, thank you. It’s actually okay – it could have been triggered by a blow to the face instead, most likely, and the jaw surgery enabled me to *eat food like a normal freaking person* so I’m okay with it now. I mean, crusty bread and raw carrots dipped in hummus are awesome, and we have a monogamy exception for the inventors of carbamazepine if any are still alive and want to bone. (Life. Changing. Drug.)
I actually saw my surgeon so he could have follow up pics, ten years after surgery, so I might be in his textbook ir an article now! Or not. Posnick’s a busy dude so he must have a lot of patients to choose from.
Thank you for bringing this up. Study quality, systematic review and meta-analysis are hugely important issues. And the risk of any procedure or medication is never zero.
However, conclusive meta-analyses based on ideal studies are not available for many common issues. That doesn’t absolve medical personnel of attempting to both minimize and explain risks.
Is it true that bags are used in most similar procedures on other organs, but not with fibroids? Even assuming the risk of cancer spread is low, wouldn’t using a bag decrease it even further? Also, I’d think that it would be easy to briefly discuss the possibility of uncontrolled/unnoticed spread of unforeseen cancer in a pre-surgical discussion. Similarly, the increased risk if other problems (e.g. infection) could be mentioned for the open surgery.
I have no knowledge of this area, so I stand ready to be corrected as necessary…
Toasts! Vanessa Nadal just retweeted my work tweet and @’d her husband Lin-Manuel Miranda in it!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT DO I DO DO I EXPLODE HELP
AHHH, the science art? It looks so great! Nicely done. 🙂
YES. They do it every year and it’s always awesome.
OK, the Indian Child Welfare Act was specifically created to PREVENT situations like this. Essentially, because of the U.S. government, religious groups, and individuals thinking that a child is better taken away from their culture because of “Love.” That the culture that they were born into doesn’t matter because right now the kid is happy. That losing your family is ok because they are from a different “Lesser” culture.
The forcible removal of Native American children is part of our national history and one that we should avoid doing again at all costs. The fact that this family of white people has more right to this child than her birth family who happen to be non-white and Native American is precisely what happened in the 19th and early 20th century and continues to happen in South Dakota (no really, SD is basically like “Fuck Federal Laws when they apply to Native Americans”).
That isn’t coherent at all, but this pisses me off to no end. I’m not Native American, but I know from history and some very patient Native Americans (who smacked my ignorant white butt down when I was being An Ass), the history of the United States and White people’s inability to allow them the right to raise their own children (and in many cases, even to live).
They’re mad that they DON’T have more right to her than her birth family.
These foster parents were told FROM THE BEGINNING that the girl was NOT ADOPTABLE. They decided to ACT LIKE SHE WAS, and kept appealing various custody decisions so that she was with them until she was 6, and then freaked out, cried, and screamed when she went to live with her extended family (who she’s known for years, and where her sister lives, and where her dad can visit).
A letter of recommendation writer of mine just copied me on an e-mail to a job that I am applying to in which he attached the letter. Should I open the letter??! Or just delete the e-mail and pretend it never happened? I really dislike reading evaluations of myself even if they are good ones :-/
well there’s not gonna be critical information there you will be tested on in your interview
Maybe resist the temptation now and keep it for when you have a self-esteem dip?
I have a letter of recommendation from my college PI that I totally return to during self esteem dips.
I would read it just to make sure it’s good and you want to use him as a reference in the future. (What if it’s bad, or not super great, and you can use someone else instead?) If you don’t want to read it yourself, maybe try sending it to a friend and just ask them to tell you if it’s something you should keep using.
Link roundup is on fire today! Looking forward to reading every single one of these. Thanks for curating the internet for us, Nicole.
Man oh man, breastfeeding. Why is it so hard to feed a child?? I am breastfeeding my 10 week old and I was so worried that it wouldn’t work…and I got very, very lucky and it works great. So great, in fact, that she refuses each and every bottle with tremendous force and I have to go back to work in 2 weeks and how will she eat???
Anyways, as I said, it is so so hard to feed a baby, no reason for anyone to get Opinions about it. A fed baby and a surviving parent is the ideal situation, who even cares how that comes about.
Try some different bottles and nipples. Avent is very breast-shaped.
Also, she will not starve. She’ll fuss for a while, and then she’ll eat.
Lots of people have told us that she will not starve, and I am clinging to that like a life preserver!
At my count we have tried…9 or 10 different bottles/nipples? I think she won’t be happy until I leave my boobs at daycare with her 🙂
1) Shout-out to the collective Toastie awesomesauce that happened on my comment yesterday, thank you x1000, I am feeling much more at peace with the whole situation.
2) I was already disturbingly in love with Nicole for Reasons, but the whole nursing thing on Twitter yesterday made me sing. ADHD meds can’t be taken during pregnancy or while nursing, but they’re the only thing that keep me from Hulk Smash. (Well, they make it easy to stay cool, at least.) I cannot imagine exposing my hypothetical kid to a sleep-deprived, extra-hormonal, poorly-controlled rage monster of a mother in the name of Perfect Motherhood. The postpartum hormonal crash is bad enough, but research shows that ADHD ladies get hit extra-hard with it. I just feel like I would be setting myself up for failure. Future Baby Jonesy deserves a chill mom who doesn’t scream at them for ruining their fourth onesie in an hour or whatever. I’m still not sure I want to go through with pregnancy, period, now that I know what a difference meds make in my life. But A++ to Nicole for validating non-nursers everywhere and making me feel less selfish.
I breastfed, and I’m happy about it, but I have some friends who are overbearing about it. When my son was 19 months old, I started taking pain medication (we didn’t know it at the time, but my pain was due to metastatic breast cancer), so I had to stop breastfeeding. One of my friends kept saying, “Oh, well, you did your best.” Are you freaking kidding me? Don’t take pity on me for *only* breastfeeding over a year and a half! Don’t act as though this was a failure!
When another friend got breast cancer while she was pregnant (she got checked because of my diagnosis, so they caught it early), that zealous friend kept sending me articles to pass along to her about breastfeeding through cancer (which takes a LOT of effort and sacrifice). So, she’s already going through a horrible disease and a scary pregnancy, and you want to add MORE pressure to the situation?! I discussed it once with the sick friend, and she said that she was bottle feeding with no regrets. I told the zealous friend to back off, but she still sends me links about how baby wearing can make up for a lack of breastfeeding and so on (because sick friend TOTALLY has the energy for that).
Again, I am pro-breastfeeding. I also think it’s up to each individual mother, because every situation is different.
She would probably not be my friend any more. That’s a frightening lack of respect for someone else’s bodily autonomy.
Holy cannoli. I’m glad you could be the gatekeeper between Zealous Friend and your poor friend with cancer. (Also, I hope you are healthy and well now.)
Also, I’m laughing cause my first kid weaned herself at 12 months and was like personally affronted that I was still attempting to breastfeed her. Maybe I should have contacted some sanctimonious extended-breastfeeding moms to concern-troll her.
My first kid was born face-up (fuck you back labor), with his face all bruised up from the birth. Nursing hurt him, and he would just scream and scream when we tried. The guilt trip I got from so many people around me for using formula was ridiculous. I wish I had the strength to tell everyone to fuck off before visiting three different and unhelpful lactation consultants. Uuuuugh.
OMG. My second did that same thing. Lovely, he was 9 lbs 10 oz, he was stuck, and his collarbone breaking was what finally got him out and me out of a c-section. (the team was scrubbed up in magenta outfits right at the foot of my bed). He had a fever, so I was forced to stay with him in the NICU for 5 days. Infant, with broken collarbone, there is NO WAY to pick him up and hold him without him screaming in pain. A nurse came in at 3 am and told me “You give that baby to me, you’re just anxious and you’re making the baby upset and that’s why he’s crying”. !!!!!
That she survived to LEAVE the hospital room was a miracle of my self control. I looked at that woman and said,
“This is my second baby. He is nursing well. He is SCREAMING because he has a broken collarbone that hurts whenever he moves, and every time the startle reflex happens he hurts that same broken bone. You did NOT reply to my call AN HOUR AGO to give him more tylenol for the pain, and the tylenol wears off between doses, anyway. GET OUT.”
When you upvote a comment and then can’t take it back after you read the whole thing and change your mind.
#myday
Not related to this link roundup, but if anyone wants a nice mental palate cleanser, here’s a story I found I last week (I think). Apologies if anyone’s already posted it! A missing dog (he fell off a boat and much searching proved unsuccessful) was presumed dead but he WASN’T. Now he’s a happy dog and he’s going home!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/35833259/ca…
Yay, happy dog!
Look at that dog’s eyes. Clearly she is a magical sea doggie, akin to a kelpie or a sea nymph.
Completely off topic, but I need to share.
I just came from the printer, where I was to collect some very important work related documents I had just sent to the printer. There was another print job already going, but when I checked the tray, it was full of nothing but full page full color LOLCat memes. SOMEONE in my office is printing dozens of LOLCats using the office printer.
I want to camp out and find out who so I can make a new friend.
Oh man, I def went through a LOLcats-making phase on ICanHasCheezburger before they changed everything and this makes me nostalgic for my Lowell Cats.
and…
Thank you for your indulgence.
LOLcaToasties! You have taken my mind off Bad Things today! <3
I made my best friend at a previous job when she described something as serious business and I said “you spell that with seven letters and no vowels, don’t you?” She shot me a look of DEEP SUSPICION.
I wasn’t sure that the assistant I hired was going to be a good fit until a couple weeks in she turned around and asked me, with no context, how to spell “exsanguinate.” (note: we’re accountants)
Every time I see BvS I read it as BtVS and get unreasonably excited. Curse you, poor reading comprehension.
The story about the child being returned to her biological family is so awful – I can’t believe the foster family has been dragging out the process like this and making it so much more difficult. It must be very hard to give up a child, but that’s generally the deal with fostering, and they are making it so much worse for her.
Sansa is so very majestic!
I was bitching last night about a book I read probably 5 years ago that pissed me off so much it is the one and only time I asked for a Kindle book refund and then also stripped the DRM and uploaded it to various friends so that anyone who was curious about it could read it without giving the author money, because it was so horrible.
And the YA and Islamophobia thing is timely, because that’s 50% of the beef I had with the thing. I wanted a candy-book about princesses and tween problems – I am a grown-ass woman and sometimes it’s a nice break to read those kinds of books, you know? and I do love princess stories. And in this particular book, a teenage girl who thinks her life is so boring gets a fairy godmother who makes her a Princess For Hire (that’s the title) – ie, when actual princesses need a break from lives, she steps in and takes over for a few days (with magic, she looks just like them, of course). And one of the girls whose life she steps into is the daughter of some Arabic princeling (I want to say Saudi, but that doesn’t make sense for her life, and she met the queen of Jordan, so definitely not Jordanian), and it is so subtly yet so strongly Islamophobic and I hated it.
Anyway, what I’m saying is, if you want princess stories and stories about privileged tweens realizing that everyone has problems even princesses, this is…not a book you should try. It’s also extremely gender essentialist and has a terrible message about romance, and the Islamophobia is distinctly linked to racist beliefs about whiteness/purity/beauty.
Long-time lurker, first-time commenter here.
Relevant to this link roundup: A particular favorite thing of mine is watching-Ben-Affleck-movies-on-mute. Because I am, god help me, super attracted to him but he cannot act his way out of a paper bag and he seems to choose terrible projects so consistently that I can’t help thinking it must be either a conscious choice or a manifestation of secret self-hatred. Pearl Harbor is an awful movie, but on mute it’s really quite beautiful. The Town is weird and hackneyed, but on mute it’s a sort of fascinating pastiche. My point, to the extent that I have one, is that I kind of cannot wait for Batman v Superman to come out on netflix or amazon prime. I’m thinking BvS + mute button = all kinds of fun.
Not relevant to this link roundup: I’m on sabbatical, supposedly turning my dissertation into a book manuscript, and all I want to do is listen to Hamilton and read Toast comments. This is entirely reasonable, right?
Have you watched Bounce? I kind of like that one. I’m not normally attracted to Batfleck myself, but there’s a moment where he’s drinking in the shower that’s pretty hot.
I had a similar thing a few years ago with Bruce Willis movies. I can’t stand Bruce Willis, and I don’t even think he’s good looking, but for some reason I find him really attractive. But the man has made maybe three decent movies over the course of his entire career. For awhile I had a thing where if I had to write an essay i would rent a bad Bruce Willis movie and watch a few minutes of it every hour or so as a break from work.
Ah, Bounce. Yes, I celebrate Ben’s entire catalogue–on mute.
The watching a few minutes of a movie every hour idea is kind of genius.
It works great with bad movies, because that way you don’t risk getting so sucked into the movie that you just watch it instead of doing your work.
The thing that also confuses me about the ICWA case is that I thought that this was pretty standard for ALL foster children. Like, if you can put them with relatives that is what you do. It seems to me that the law and the Choctaws are being demonized and it just doesn’t make sense. It does seem to me that the state never should have placed this kid in foster care in the first place.
It was kind of odd for me to realize that I guess my children will be covered under this law? I’ve never considered myself Native American because I don’t consider 1/32 to be enough to call myself Cherokee, but this girl is 1.5%.
I think that the ICWA was put in place to prevent situations like yours from happening. Sure 1/32 isn’t a lot, but it also isn’t particularly far removed and you deserved to grow up with a connection to your culture. Putting blood quantum restrictions on who is considered a real native is practically a guarantee that the cultural genocide will be successful when you consider how colonized peoples end up being primarily mixed-race. Also in this case it is not about blood quantum because it is about citizenship. You are either a citizen of the Choctaw nation or you are not, you cannot be 1.5% a citizen.
Yes, I think that is exactly how I feel but I wasn’t sure how to put it into words. My family has not had a connection to the Cherokee Nation for generations, so I wouldn’t ever check the “Native American” box in surveys or to get into a school or anything. It doesn’t seem fair to me.
However, for the first time I’m really wondering about my great-great grandmother- I always thought she got married and just “assimilated” but that’s probably not how it happened at all.
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma actually has a lot of information on their website about citizenship and genealogy: http://www.cherokee.org/Services/TribalCitizenshi…
The Cherokee Nation does not use blood quantum as a prerequisite for citizenship, fwiw. If you had an ancestor on the Dawes rolls, you are (or can be) a citizen.
Same me. My great great grandmother was ‘picked up’–that’s the family history word–by my great great grandfather when he was traveling from South Carolina to Texas. I don’t even know her real name.
So, no cultural link and no claim on census forms, but maybe I should mark myself mixed Native American on census forms to make the Native American population bigger? Should we make that claim, us white people with one long-ago native ancestor? It feels exploitive, somehow. As if I would be claiming some benefit beyond the white privilege I already have. So, I don’t.
Yeah, I’ve got a great-great grandmother on one side and a great-great-great grandmother on the other, one of whom was Sioux and the other was Cherokee (her grandson, my great grandfather, had a story he was told when he was young about how she walked the Trail of Tears, but we don’t have solid information) but I don’t feel any right to claim to be in any way Native American. But I also feel like simply listing myself as white is sort of erasing them and their part in my family history, maybe? I am generally very confused and somewhat conflicted about this.
Often foster care is an emergency placement while tracking down family or helping family to get ready to accept custody. In this case I see the family are out of state, which slows everything down; I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of Choctaw registered foster parents available in California, so you just need to get a kid into a home. (I’d say it’s uncommon to move a child straight in with relatives without some fostering, tbh, the state has to approve the placement even if it’s with a sister or grandmother.) She has been with them four years now, but a lot of that seems to be because the foster parents took the case to court instead of letting her go.
edit-this was supposed to be a reply to immunogirl
This, I accompanied a HV team for ten weeks, and I was really surprised how much of it was social work rather than …well, health related.
There were a lot of accompanying class issues, too – lots of the HV had the accompanying middle-class baggage you find a lot of in the UK among social workers/nurses, etc. My mentor used to record whether the parents owned their own home or were renting, etc.
It seemed like everyone lost under that system – parents who were well-off could be struggling, but the checklists (messy house, lack of support from spouse/family, etc.) are designed for people with less money – a rich mum can afford cleaning help, dad can afford to work from home for a few weeks, etc. so safeguarding/mental health issues can go unnoticed.
Likewise, parents fitting the demographic for social care lost out because they got overly scrutinized and judged for things that middle-class parents could skate by on (feeding choices, parental age, history of mental health issues, messy house.) One had a social worker noting it was a 'concern' that the parents used a nursery when they were both off work one day (!)
Emily Byrd Starr for life!
(I wish there were a way to get you to the US for the surgery.)
What really bothers me is the breathless excitement about teaching low-income minority girls to code that too often boils down to having them learn a couple of lines of JavaScript or program a few commands into a toy robot using an idiot-proof UI. Teaching anyone to code is hard and lots of people are willingly throwing their hands up and saying it can't be done at all, but I don't like that these programs are being made to look more successful and operating in good faith than they actually are.
Yay for both of them and for you moving to here! (I also like Jane more and more as I get older.) If you end up in Greater Boston let us all know!