Ariel Levy’s piece in The New Yorker. I want to make it very clear that this is the saddest story in the world, and it will be a very long time before you may also be able to understand how it is also a work of great beauty, and you do not have to read it unless that sounds okay to you. Mom and Aunt Peggy, I know you read The Toast, please do not click through.
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Also in the new issue of The New Yorker, Simon Rich’s “Guy Walks Into a Bar.” It’s paywalled, but what a great opportunity to remind everyone that The New Yorker is still the crowning achievement of high-quality journalism in our nation, and you can subscribe at any time. I can honestly say that I envy Simon Rich’s extraordinary talent over his connections. Go buy Ant Farm and Free-Range Chickens and The Last Girlfriend on Earth.
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LIST ALERT: Entertainers who died during performances, and inventors who were killed by their inventions.
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Thanks for the whooping cough, Jenny McCarthy:
At this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself. Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing—also a common side effect. Nor do I still have the fatigue that felled me, often, at my desk and made me sleep for 16 hours a night on the weekends. Now I rarely choke on things like water, though laughing, which, it turns out, I do a lot of, is an easy trigger for a violent, paralyzing cough that doctors refer to not as a cough, but a paroxysm.
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Yoko Ono, international treasure:
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Ovulation deviled eggs.
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I like surprises, and now I get one in the mail from Book Riot every three months, which is bananas and fun.
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Oh, pardon me, there’s an even sadder story, by Kathryn Joyce, and now I have to set the whole world on fire.
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For the man who has…everything.
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I like this weird dude.
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Why AA has never gotten a lot of traction in Russia.
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The cost of being a roller derby girl.
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Orgasms. Hookups. Discuss.
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
My kid was telling us about the Thomas Midgley one at dinner last night. The fact that he’s also the guy who put lead in gas and CFCs in the ac really speaks volumes about the poor dupe.
“what a great opportunity to remind everyone that The New Yorker is still the crowning achievement of high-quality journalism in our nation, and you can subscribe at any time.”
Umm, yeah. What a great opportunity to remind everyone that The New Yorker is still a crowning bastion of misogynistic journalism in our nation (see VIDA count 2012 on link below), and you can UNsubscribe at any time and support journals that have – WOW – discovered women.
http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2012
They’ve got their issues, but Ariel Levy, Dana Goodyear, Rebecca Mead…they publish incredible women and I hope we all pitch them to death.
We have two cool pieces about sexism and The Count this afternoon by female writers, don’t miss them!
I will miss them; I am buried under a pile of old New Yorkers and the ghost of Flannery O’Connor.
That story about families who adopt and then abuse kids, mostly from Africa, made me so sick when I read it yesterday. There is SO much going on there. But mostly, toxic racism. It’s like they honestly expected the kids to be cute props or pets… Ugh
SO appalling. Just nauseated – those poor kids. It’s fucking mindblowing – though I suppose not surprising – how few structures there are in place to protect adopted children, especially internationally adopted children.
Every link was great reading today, but I just have one comment (still trying to process the feelings from some of the other links): was that really the uniform of Russian paratroopers?? They are my new style inspiration.
They are still the uniforms, and in fact different divisions of the army have their own special color of tank top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnyashka. They are readily available at army/navy stores, but sadly if you wear them in Russia, people will look at you strangely because you are not an enormous drunk man.
Amazing! The stripe width is just perfect. However, I think at least some of their effortless style is coming from the large tattoos, which is going to be slightly more difficult to achieve.
I’ve always had a pretty firm stance about vaccination: just do it, especially in at-risk populations like children and the elderly and immunocompromised. Our populations are a little over-crowded at best, which makes infection a real issue. However after doing my pediatrics rotation, taking care of a handful of precious little spuds who had whooping cough and were hospitalized for DAYS for it, I’ve become even more militant. It’s so dangerous for little ones, and it’s a horrible cost to the families. I have ZERO TOLERANCE for the anti-vaccination movement.
I accidentally put on my angry pants this morning. Stuff like this gets me really fired up.
OMG THE COMMENTS!!!! QUICK, WHO HAS THE FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE GIF?
I also briefly clicked on the comments before my self-protective instincts kicked in. ANTI-VAXXERS WHY?
happy to be of service
How many times do I have to learn to never, ever, EVER, never never never read comments on anything having to do with vaccinations?
I sometimes like to read the comments on other sites, just for the brief thrill of doing something stupid, before scurrying back to the level-headed, well-informed comments of the Toast. Just to see how the other half lives.
Yes! It’s even more important for the (very very very few) people who cannot be vaccinated due to legitimate allergic reactions. Herd immunity is the only way that those people can be protected. My parents didn’t get me vaccinated as a baby/child due to random fear mongering, and, anecdatally, I am the sickliest person I know.
The anti-vax people are so out there and garner such (legitimate) disgust that it actually makes things difficult for those of us who are in favor of vaccinations but don’t get the flu shot because we react badly to it. I have the hardest time getting people to understand that yes, the flu shot makes me very, very sick, because they assume I’m making it up, thanks to anti-vax fear-mongering.
For which I blame the anti-vax fear-mongerers. Vaccines save lives, and the odds that any one person is in the “reacts badly to” category are very small.
My parents also chose not to vaccinate me, and I’m pretty hearty! I did get whooping cough as a baby though.
I kind of feel like everyone who has ever even briefly contemplated not vaccinating should take a stroll in a NICU or PICU and see the potential consequences of their actions.
My neighbors growing up had a set of identical boy twins, and the doctors office opened a new vial of a vaccine (I think MMR but I am not sure) after dosing up one boy, and for whatever reason the twin who got the dose from the second vial had a horrible reaction to it and was permanently mentally and physically disabled afterwards. That same neighbor had another set of twins several years later, and vaccinated them both without even a delayed schedule. I figure if anyone had the right to be anti vaccines it would be her, and even she thought the risk of something terrible happening again was nothing compared to the dangers of vaccine preventable illness.
Yes. I want Jenny McCarthy to sit by the hospital bed of a baby with whooping cough and explain to that child’s parents why she is against vaccination.
My mom was a nurse and my dad was also a medical professional, and they’re still pretty anti-vaccine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you know why? (I’m genuinely curious. Haven’t heard of many people working in medicine who are anti-vaccine.)
I don’t know the details. I was born before autism bullshit was a thing, so it’s not that. I think they had concerns about them not being tested/understood enough. I don’t know if my younger half siblings were vaccinated (although I think my teenage brother had whooping cough himself recently, so), but I know the hospital my dad worked for was trying to force all the employees to get the swine flu when that was going on, and he was pissed because it was so new. I imagine it also a part of their general hippie lifestyle. No vaccines, breast feeding, cloth diapers, other aspects of attachment parenting (before it was in vogue to hate attachment parenting!).
I get where people are coming from, but it does bum me out a bit to see people who concerns about vaccines all get shit on as stupid/uninformed/don’t you hope their kids get sick, they’d deserve it. You can be a smart, well meaning, and caring parent and still just be… wrong about stuff.
(Don’t worry everyone, I’m all vaxxed up these days. Pumped right full of mercury.)
Because of a reading comprehension fail, for a few happy minutes I thought that *Jenny McCarthy* had whooping cough. Sadly, I was mistaken.
God, I thought the same thing. Like, “Great, Jenny is live blogging her whooping cough! She deserves it!”
Ha! I had the exact same reaction!
I joke that I have bail money set aside in case I ever encounter an anti-vaxxer in real life. It’s kind of not a joke.
Oh my god, I love that article. Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And I am completely, totally behind you on the importance of vaccination. In my old job, we had to walk through the HIV clinic to get to our clinic space. Can you imagine being the sumbitch who gave someone on immunosuppressants the flu? Or pertussis? Or measles?!
There’s a school in our neighborhood with a 35% non-vaccination rate. I live in fear of my kid getting near it.
My problem with it is– well, there are many, but one is that the anti-vaxxers always pull some creepy evolutionist argument about how all diseases would have died out naturally if we had never come up with cures for them. Even if you accept that logic, thousands of people would have died. There’s this weird devaluing of compartmentalized human life.
Ask them how cool they’d be with their children and grandchildren being among those who died while we were waiting for all the diseases to die out naturally. Since anti-vaxxers seem to be incapable of thinking of the health and lives of any but those they know and love.
I also completely don’t buy the evolutionary logic there. Viruses and bacteria are phenomenally good at adapting to new circumstances, whether new circumstances created by a planetary ice age or the ineffective use of antibiotics. (Antibiotics are still awesome! Use them right!) Anti-vaxxers: measles is a way better survivor than you are. No contest. Vaccinate your kids.
My lovely doctor (actually, his lovely staff) nudged me into getting a booster DPT (diptheria/pertussis/tetanus) shot a couple of years ago when I had a sliver requiring medical attention. I haven’t regretted it, but it’s pretty unreal that adults and their medical providers have to worry about pertussis shots again.
I just don’t understand how the anti-vax movement continues to thrive, after that Lancet study has been disproved over. and over. and over. again. Fear and ignorance about science, I guess. But then my husband’s tenured physics professor boss is apparently an anti-vaxxer (or at least a vaccination doubter) as well? *Tears hair out.*
It still pisses me off that we also don’t have a human Lyme disease vaccine for very similar reasons. Despite the massive, increasing rates of Lyme disease every year and how much that disease can fuck you up. Gah!
Oh wow, re: Lyme vaccine. I hadn’t even thought about that, despite being a vet tech for 8 years and administering thousands of Lyme vaccines to dogs, and now transitioning to human medicine and not hearing boo about Lyme vaccines. WTF? That’s pretty sad!
GlaxoSmithKline had a human Lyme vaccine on the market over 10 years ago with good efficacy, but it had a bunch of side effects and GSK was essentially forced to take it off the market. Right now there are no new Lyme vaccines in development, which is incredibly unfortunate.
No. Oh my fucking christ. I read the Ariel Levy piece and half way through (I am in the office) I started wanting to scream. Maybe I did scream silently. I cannot tell yet whether it’s a great work of beauty, though it is, it is, but I have never felt so physically affected by a piece of writing before in my life. Nothing is sadder than what happened to her.
My best friend has just gone through similar, but had to have a termination as the baby had a severe chromosome disorder and had no chance of living. As she was 5 months along she had to give birth, and being induced as it wasn’t happening spontaneously, it took 14 hours. I’m the least maternal person on the planet, but being there with her as she went through labour knowing it was hopeless was indescribable, and I can’t even imagine how it was for her, given how upsetting I found it as hand-holder.
*makes you a cup of sugary tea, sits quietly with you, because this is what British people do when there is nothing else to do*
Thankyou! That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for her, because when it comes down to it, what the hell else can you do? There aren’t words that can comfort someone going through that. I’m also having to deal with not murdering her ‘boyfriend’ (who deserves the air quotes) who is being an utter pig about the whole affair.
I have a friend who went through a very similar situation. It is so, so, heartbreaking. Hugs to you and your friend.
One of the women quoted in the NY Times hookup article has the same name as my old boss… had a mental record scratch moment while reading, then I realized that it couldn’t be her (age/location).
I’m too afraid to read the Ariel Levy article 🙁 But I feel like I should suck it up. It seems like it’s one of those so hard but so necessary reads.
I had to stop about halfway through the Ariel Levy piece. I have a 3 month old guy asleep in my lap right now and I think I just need a little more distance from the whole process in order to get through it. What I did manage to read was really beautifully written.
It’s hauntingly sad and beautiful. I read it, and .. yeah.
My sister-in-law very unexpectedly went into labor two nights ago and delivered her baby ten (10!) weeks early, and then yesterday morning I read that Levy piece and couldn’t stop crying and realized maybe it was the wrong time to be reading that. But oh, her writing is so so beautiful.
Ten weeks isn’t necessarily so bad! A friend of mine recently had a baby about that early, and he’s totally fine. Had to spend a few weeks in the NICU learning to do things that full-term babies generally already know how to do (like regulating his own body temperature and learning how to eat and keep breathing at the same time), but he’s home and doing fine now, and they don’t expect he’ll have any long term issues because of it. So I hope it works out the same for your sister-in-law!
Yeah, he’s actually doing beautifully, and we are hopeful he could go home before his original due date (which is the departure date they always tell you to expect). My SIL had no issues like this with her first baby, and they still aren’t sure what caused this, and it’s just so sobering to remember exactly how lucky it is to have a healthy, full-term infant.
glad both are healthy! I have a pregnant sister and a pregnant sister-in-law right now so I am avoiding the piece out of anxiety.
My mom claims to have met Yoko Ono once, in Central Park in the 80s. (Someday I’ll finish that pitch about my mom’s alleged celebrity encounters.)
I’m kind of not surprised that the hookup article said women have less orgasms in one night stands. I find that guys have a tendency to not consider the interests or their partner or bother paying attention to if she’s enjoying it in those situations. And even if you’re super attentive there’s also the fact that everyone likes different things and it’s hard to learn what someone likes all in one night, especially for women who aren’t sure what they want.
I’m very comfortable asking for what I want but I still don’t like one night stands, because while in theory they sound super fun but I’m pretty picky and it takes a couple tries for a guy to master my vagina, even with solid directions from me. I totally get why people like one night stands (with or without an orgasm) but if orgasm is your goal I think a lot of women would benefit from a friends with benefits type scenario, where you aren’t interested in dating but are hooking up frequently enough that you can figure out what the other person likes and give that to them.
for real! i was fully prepared to be SUPER BORED by this article, and then like halfway through i was pleasantly surprised to see this:
“By contrast, roughly three quarters of women in the survey said they had an orgasm the last time they had sex in a committed relationship.
“We attribute that to practice with a partner, which yields better success at orgasm, and we also think the guys care more in a relationship,” Dr. England said.”
AT LAST COMMON SENSE BEING APPLIED TO HOOKUP CULTURE.
whenever an article is like “women don’t have orgasms every time so they must require LOVE FEELINGS” i check out instantly.
Yes! If a guy is kind of tipsy and wants to get off and a girl isn’t sure if she wants to direct everything when she’s just trying to have a fun night…it’s going to result in less orgasms for the girl. But if you know the person it’s more likely that the girl will be like “hey I like this but not that” or “I’m not sure what I like but maybe lets try this” and the guy will be like “so tell me more about that thing you want me to do with my tongue”. And then it’s more fun for everyone.
Yeah, this was really unsurprising. I have no problem with one-night stands, but I do have a problem with mediocre sex, which is why I haven’t had a one-night stand for years.
The adoption story. I’m in tears and just so angry at the world. The family that killed her got the last say on her headstone? ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh.
I’m glad I read the Ariel Levy piece yesterday; otherwise I would be completely wrecked right now.
I read that Ariel Levy piece and now I am doing the crying equivalent of dry heaving, like, just wheezing at my desk trying not to actually start crying because then I might never stop.
I have long been a fan of Simon Rich (Ant Farm being one book I am still guaranteed to laugh-out-loud at, years later) but I was uncomfortable reading Last Girlfriend on Earth. I started to feel like Rich’s Nice Guy(TM) characters weren’t satirical anymore. Or maybe they never were. I don’t know! I couldn’t love it the way I’ve loved his other stuff, though. I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts on the matter.
I watched the 5th episode of Masters of Sex last night and went to bed sobbing. So, I think I’ll save that Ariel Levy piece for next week.
Er yeah, exactly.
Are you being sarcastic? I don’t think I can handle any more depictions of women losing their babies. Right now, Lizzy Caplan is holding my interest for that show but it feels like the pacing is so slow.
Oh my god, no, I am never being sarcastic and particularly not then. I had to turn of Masters of Sex, possibly for ever, because I was too upset.
Sorry! I always assume the worst. That episode was particularly hard to watch and it just got worse and worse. You made a good decision. What do you think of the show in general?
I’ve been following Hana’s story since her death, and I hope her parents burn in the hell they so fervently believe in. Books like To Train up A Child and Babywise are fucking shams, guides to abuse wrapped in scripture. When someone tells me they use it, it makes me think less of them. And the “adopt brown people for Jesus” thing makes me absolutely insane, because it seems like when a white evangelical family adopts a kid old enough to know their home culture, it’s cruel to completely cut them off from it (and we have a huge Ethiopian/Somali population in the Puget Sound area) and inflict a fucked-up form of morality on them that they can’t understand because they’re KIDS. Oh, right, and the barely-concealed racism and ugh, the whole situation makes me want to cry.
Not to mention that Ethiopians founded one of the world’s oldest Christian churches in the fourth century, when these adoptive parents’ ancestors were still dirty pagans in Europe, so they don’t need evangelizing by stupid white American Johnny-come-latelies.
It’s always fun, as an Episcopalian, to hear that we and the Catholics aren’t “real” Christians because we’re neither Baptist nor born-again. As if no one had any ideas about Jesus before William Johnson came along.
The Ariel Levy piece was so astounding and sad, sad, sad, and reminded me how uncomfortable people are with mourners, especially those who have lost a child, and how society tries to stifle grief and make it something acceptable. Including me – I felt so deeply for her when she described trying to show well-meaning friends the picture of her baby, but I also know I would have been incredibly creeped out, and that makes me feel sad about myself too! There’s just no way to handle it or process it, ack, gotta go cry some more.
I think people (in the U.S. anyway) are uncomfortable with negative feelings in general. We love a good story about how someone used to be in pain but feels better now, but we can’t handle the acute phase of pain. There is a lot of pressure, often subtle, to frame your story optimistically and that’s difficult when you’re in the thick of things. It’s pretty radical to share the ugly parts of emotional pain and I am glad when I see people who do so even though it can mean exposing oneself to criticism and more pain.
“Comedian Harry Parke, father of Albert Brooks, died while performing as “Parkyakarkus” (a pun on “park your carcass”), at the Friar’s Club roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. When he died, he collapsed onto Milton Berle.”
OMG.
The list of entertainers who died while performing led me to the newscaster who shot herself during a live newscast, which then led me to the list of unusual deaths, and now I will never, ever be able to look at a swimming pool, a horse or a cupboard the same way again.
I read the Ariel Levy piece, which is both a thing of great beauty and possibly the greatest pain imaginable. I feel like I can’t breathe, because I am working so hard to contain the sobs in the back of my throat.
I read Ariel Levy’s piece yesterday, but not until I got home because I was sure I would cry. I’m 19 weeks pregnant this week. I can’t even imagine. I made my husband read it too. ALL THE FEELINGS.
Then today I read the NYMag piece on abortions (26 stories) and almost cried while my students were writing an essay, so clearly I am making good decisions for a hormonal pregnant lady.
I’m 25 weeks (hi, yay that we’re both still chugging along!) and have Levy’s piece open in a tab that I keep going into and back out of again. I feel like I should stay far far away from it but also I really want to read it.
You should read it! But definitely when you are safely somewhere you can cry if you need to.
Not to mention that Ethiopians founded one of the world's oldest Christian churches in the fourth century, when these adoptive parents' ancestors were still dirty pagans in Europe, so they don't need evangelizing by stupid white American Johnny-come-latelies.
Do you know why? (I'm genuinely curious. Haven't heard of many people working in medicine who are anti-vaccine.)
I got to the newscaster one too and had to read all about it because was so fucked up!
Ask them how cool they'd be with their children and grandchildren being among those who died while we were waiting for all the diseases to die out naturally. Since anti-vaxxers seem to be incapable of thinking of the health and lives of any but those they know and love.
GlaxoSmithKline had a human Lyme vaccine on the market over 10 years ago with good efficacy, but it had a bunch of side effects and GSK was essentially forced to take it off the market. Right now there are no new Lyme vaccines in development, which is incredibly unfortunate.