Ta-Nehisi Coates, getting it right, always:
This is not about the jury; this is about our Constitution. This is not about Michael Dunn, individually. This is not about George Zimmerman, individually. This is about me and you and everyone American we know. This is about whether we will live in candor or live in flattery.
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Anne Helen Petersen wrote the loveliest thing for Pacific Standard about rural two-lane highways, and it’s way more interesting than I just made it sound, so go read it:
When I was growing up in rural Northern Idaho, my family did a lot of driving. Not in town—“rush hour” was when the mill changed shifts and you had to wait at a red light—but to everything else that wasn’t school or church or a drive-in movie theater. We drove to the reservoir to swim, we drove to go the Sawtooth foothills to go Morelling, we drove to the Sawtooths to ski. We drove two hours to get new school clothes at the closest legitimate mall, and we drove those same two hours to catch a plane that didn’t add an extra $200 to each ticket. We drove to summer camp in Northeast Washington (three hours) and family backpacking trips in Glacier Park (seven hours), to Huckleberry Heaven (two hours) and Lake Pend Oreille (five hours) and Lolo Hot Springs (3.5 hours).
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This Bitch Magazine piece on how feminism needs to stop failing transgender women is really great, and the TERFs who show up in the comments prove why it was necessary to write.
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A Patron of The Toast has asked me to announce that he is willing to sponsor a number of posts on ”forgotten popular fiction written by women in the 18th and 19th centuries.” If you can write on such a topic, or wish to tell your friends, please to so!
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I automatically link to anything that mentions Cord Jefferson. He was always too beautiful for the internet.
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Oh, my God, Sir David Attenborough narrating curling.
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Misandrist Degrassi!
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Who killed Myeisha and Damiah?
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
really want to read that bitch/trans piece, but I’m getting a 403-forbidden. Anyone else? Is it a TERF conspiracy??
Thank you for making me start my day off with Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is a national treasure and a beautiful writer.
Working fine for me, but you can probably just go to their mainpage and find it, it’s definitely worth the read.
I am still thwarted, but will try again once I get home tonight.
It’s working for me! (I’m using Chrome)
I got it to work with IE, finally (firefox still a bust.) But I sort of wish I had waited until I was at home in pajamas because, man, those comments.
Also there is something about the language and tone of the TERFs that is really weird… like really grandiose, but off somehow, like they’re at a renn faire or something? I’m having trouble putting my finger on it.
I’m getting the same error message 🙁 seems to work if I switch browsers, though (to Safari).
TNC has been writing lovely things as usual re: the Dunn trial. I also loved Jessica Williams’ piece on the Daily Show; to wit: “‘The ‘Stand Your Ground’ defense is like bleach: it works miracles for whites, but it will ruin your colors.”
gah, that Lear quote. TNC is perfect.
TNC’s MIND, guys. And his willingness to gut himself with intellectual and emotional honesty when he feels it’s necessary. He’s just so, so, so wonderful.
ugh, did you guys read this one:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/…
SO HEARTBREAKING.
Everyone should also listen to the conversation he, Gene Demby, and Jamelle Bouie had on NPR. Just, wow. The only thing as good as TNC writing is TNC speaking.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/19/27…
ALSO, the situation in Kiev! (I woke up and the world had gone way further to shit.)
Depressing, isn’t it. I work for a company that does risk analysis (which I shan’t name here as i don’t want them to find out I spend all my working day on here) and I edit news about Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, so I know more about it than anyone really needs to.
It was all so hopeful back in 2004 with the orange revolution, and since then I’ve just been watching it all turn to shit and it’s so sad.
People are not talking much about it, but there is also rioting in Bosnia. I have only seen it covered in the Economist. 🙁
I spent this morning editing a Bosnia piece. Also dismal but Bosnia has been so troubled for so long, it’s going to take a hell of a turnaround to change anything. Ukraine was so close to doing so well and then it all just fell apart.
Eh, part of me wants to agree with you, but a bigger part of me is a longtime student of the fmr Yugoslavia who has seen firsthand how this “ancient ethnic hatreds” “utterly unfixable” narrative is actually undermining Bosnians’ efforts to turn the country around. Here’s the thing – Bosnia hasn’t always been like this. Bosnia/Sarajevo in the 1970s and 1980s was a legit, rad, cosmopolitan place – they had the Olympics! It can be that way again!
The rest of the world has written the country off for so long – that’s why these protests aren’t in the papers, everyone just assumes “oh those Bosnians are killing each other again.” But in fact these are anti-corruption protests, against the huge state bureaucracy (which the international community actually created, with the Dayton Accords, and still funds and supports), failed privatization of state firms, environmental degradation and unemployment.
It’s actually an anti-nationalistic movement – Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks are all protesting together against the politicians at the head of each of these three groups, who have been playing them off each other whilst enriching themselves since the mid-90s.
This is all explained much better by the incredibly talented Lily Lynch in Balkanist: http://balkanist.net/protests-across-bosnia-a-col… http://balkanist.net/protests-in-bosnia-and-herze…
Scroll down a bit on the liveblog to links to a few other excellent news writeups. Al Jazeera has been covering it as well.
Alternately, here’s an open letter signed by 130 academics and scholars that sums it up pretty well:
“For more than two decades, the international political community has viewed, interpreted, and acted upon the political landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina almost exclusively through an ethnic lens – despite careful academic scholarship, which consistently warned against such over-simplifications and dangerous pandering to local ethno-nationalist elites.
The war, and the peace that has ensued, both overseen (“aided and abetted,” to use the ICTY language) by international observers, have only emboldened the local ethno-nationalist partitocracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which – shielded by fears of new wars and new violence – proceeded to enrich itself in the country with the official youth unemployment rate of 57 percent.” ….
Signed, Can’t Let An Opportunity to Talk About the Balkans Go
Since google reader ended I haven’t been keeping up with the Economist at all — looks like I need to get back to it, since I hadn’t heard about Bosnia at all. Is that really the only news source talking about it? Yikes.
Seems to be. We’re subscription-only so won’t come up in normal news searches. The Sarajevo Citizens’ Plenum says it’s going to blockade Sarajevo unless its demands are met. (Said demands being primarily resignations of various politicians, official inquiries into the police handling of the riots earlier this month, formation of cantonal governments and privatisation law revision.)
Thanks. That is…yet another thing that’s so huge and complex and upsetting that I can’t really wrap my head around it all at once. I’ll poke around and learn more — I appreciate that you’re telling us about it!
Totally off-topic, but: are you aware that there are things from other companies that are more-or-less like Google Reader? I moved to Feedly, and I’ve been pretty happy with it.
I mean, maybe you just decided you didn’t want to follow stuff after Reader ended, and that’s cool, but if you do still want to follow stuff there are still options.
Feedly is okay. I use it now. It’s no Google Reader.
Well, yeah. But it mostly does the job, and I’m too lazy to really look into the other options. I suspect none of them is quite Reader, either.
Are people interested in reader alternatives? I’ve tried like 3 dozen.
I do want to follow stuff! I just need to admit that so far I’ve been too lazy to investigate other options, so I really appreciate the tip!
Thank you for talking about Kiev. I blog about it on LiveJournal (for the like, five people who still read there), post about it on Facebook on Tumblr, etc. and I feel like I’m screaming into a void.
Can someone link me to a good explanation of what’s going on? I don’t have a great background in Soviet or Eastern European history and it’s hard for me to tease out what’s going on. I mean, I know about the riots, but why are they happening?
Same. Everything I’ve seen about it is just like “whoa, look at these amazing photos!”
Massive oversimplification incoming, so caveat lector: Ukraine has a split personality, with the western side of the country leaning more toward Europe and retaining its own language, while eastern Ukraine is more oriented toward Russia and tends to speak Russian instead. Many, though not all, Russians feel that Ukraine is really part of Russia. A lot of political dissent in Ukraine stems from the combo of post-Soviet economic problems and disagreements about whether to ally the country more strongly with the EU or with Russia.
The current president, Viktor Yanukovych, is from the eastern side of the country, does not speak fluent Ukrainian, and is generally considered one of Putin’s buddies (he’s also a suspect in the nonfatal poisoning of the previous president, Viktor Yushchenko). He recently accepted an enormous bailout from Russia and rejected an agreement with the EU. Protesters in the Maidan moved in to object to his rejection of the EU deal (the area, in the center of the city and surrounded by government buildings, was the major gathering place for the peaceful Orange Revolution in 2004-5); police were sent in to clear them out but didn’t succeed; the protesters reacted to the police action by entrenching; and now here we are.
One very good story: “What’s Happening in Kiev Right Now Is Vladimir Putin’s Worst Nightmare.”
* Edited because sometimes I want to word more better.
Thank you very much for explaining (even if it is an oversimplification). I feel like I understand a lot better now.
i read the comments on the bitchmag piece, and x_0
I admit, “I think the real question we need to ask is where is Cathy Brennan hiding her horcruxes” made me chuckle.
OH MAN, they are crazy over there!!! I almost want to copy and paste quotes, but honestly they are TOO OFFENSIVE! I am afraid of traumatizing someone.
I initially thought the first negative one was satire…until I realized the comment was in total transphobic seriousness. ugh.
Ugh, just went back to read the comments and UGH UGH UGH.
I mean, there are lots and lots of horrible comments, but there are also tons of people actively fighting back against those horrible comments. And generally the people making the horrible comments are also making horrible arguments and are getting absolutely slapped down. I loved the comment where a neuroscientist went to town on one of the TERFs. So at least that’s kinda hopeful.
I think trans issues are approaching a tipping point.
Here I was, blissfully unaware that Cathy Brennan had done an interview with Bustle. I’ve been trying to push myself to not reflexively judge things without reading/watching/experiencing them, but I’m going to go ahead and violate that policy for her.
Apologies for quasi-self-referencing (I comment on TNC’s blog a fair amount and in that thread), but it is very illuminating in TNC’s comments the lengths to which people will go to twist that story to (1) fit their own narrative, and (2) avoid confronting racism. For example, there’s an almost feverish obsession with the idea that Dunn was over-charged by prosecutor Angela Corey. This is false because the jury was able to consider lesser charges and acceptance of self-defense rules out lesser charges as well. The only way that Dunn is not convicted in some way of the death of Jordan Davis is that the mere fact of black maleness makes a person fear for their life. And THAT is what people simply cannot talk about.
As David White points out in the comments: “People don’t want to hear that, man. We have a perfectly fine, non-racial explanation — overcharging. Everyone can walk away feeling reasonable as they lay the blame for this verdict at Angela Corey’s feet. Why are you trying to make us uncomfortable with the juror’s actual words?”
Oh man. After Trayvon Martin, I can not really cope with any kind of discussion where someone argues that these Stand Your Ground cases don’t aid and abet racists murders. I feel like it sounds kind of cowardly, but I can only lose my faith in humanity so many times, you know?
It’s a whole, whole lot more easy for people (and I think especially the liberal reformist proggy-type people the Atlantic draws) to deal with the idea that it’s all a big misunderstanding and you’re just not engaging The System right than that around a third of your average fellow people are just irredeemably foul. If everyone means well and it’s just because some paperwork didn’t get filed right that they’re desperately forced to do the wrong but necessary thing, that’s easy and gratifying to tackle; it’s a lot harder to deal with that maybe the world looks a little more like like Michael Dunn, and that being all fair and impartial and democratic also means empowering dudes who just want you fucken dead.
veeeery tempted to dig out some 19th-cen ladies for you, but where is THE TIME UGH.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, why are you so perfect? This whole thing is devastating and incomprehensible, and I’m only a white person (I mean, I’m not in fear of my OWN life or my children’s lives; I can’t even process how much worse this is for black Americans right now).
He is truly the best the writer to come out of Baltimore in .. this generation? the past 50 years? Let’s make some hyperbole here, people!
TNC + Anne Tyler = literary destination
Oooh! I’m not familiar with her work. I’ll have to add her to the List now.
[the List of People Whose Talent I Will Steal, muhahaha]
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national treasure. May he continue writing to his cutting, intelligent heart’s content forever and always.
”forgotten popular fiction written by women in the 18th and 19th centuries”
!!! I would read the shit out of that.
So excited for the series. It frankly could not possibly be more up my alley.
My very favorite English professor from college is an expert on essentially this exact thing! How weird would it be for me to send her an email like “YOU SHOULD WRITE A THING FOR THIS WEBSITE I LIKE” considering we haven’t spoken in like 3 years?
do it do it do ittttttt. ugh, it’s seriously my favorite topic ever (in the realm of 19th c lit, I mean).
Hmmm…I have a couple of novels in mind that include, among other crazy plot points: an artist’s hallucinatory vision of armies upon armies of women (which later provides inspiration for a painting), melodramatic trekking through Florida swampland, blatant misandry (“Marriage is a profession to a woman. And I have my work; I have my work!”), a colossal train wreck, surprise cross-dressing, and nineteenth-century ladies trying to Have It All.
Does that sound like the makings of something someone would read the shit out of?
I had a professor who had us read “Charlotte Temple” by Susanna Rowson (1791 says wiki) and on the first day we were reading it, we came in to see “TWILIGHT” written on giant letters on the board. He spent the whole class time explaining how this was the “Twilight” of the 18th century – insanely popular, sexy in a certain kind of way, completely ridiculous, and not very well written. It was really entertaining so someone write this please!
Just this past weekend I picked up a used copy of a collection of short fiction by women writers in that time period. I haven’t taken a close look at it yet, but this sign from the dash toast dot net has made me move it up on my reading list!
That Bitch Magazine piece. I can’t even…
I do not know where to start…
Aaaaaa! People are the worst.
I really don’t get it! If a person self-identifies as a woman…genuinely and for realsie reals… she’s a woman in my book. Who cares how she was born and raised? That’s hardly her choice and no one should try and make it her problem.
What’s WRONG with people?
I do not see how forcing a person to remain in a gender, that they do not feel they belong to, just because of the body parts they were born with, is going to help get rid of the idea that gender is a social construct. I just do not follow their logic.
“There is no gender, therefore you must remain a man.” It just makes no sense to me.
The Bitch piece is amazing but good lord, the TERFs in the comments. I can’t take it this morning. I had to close the window.
I am so excited about the David Attenborough piece. I have to save it for when I get home because streaming doesn’t work here, but I am SO EXCITED to watch it later.
You will not be disappointed by the Attenborough vid — it is WONDERFUL.
“dating the wrong guy… could mess with your chances at academic accolades — the very best kind of accolades you can earn.”
I think this was supposed to be over the top/sarcasm but it is too close to my personal life philosophy for me to be sure.
Given what I know of the author, she was being entirely serious.
I am happy about this on so many levels.
Poems Toasties would enjoy: http://bluemantle.tumblr.com/post/77048586844/rec…
And here we have people using radical feminism as a shield for their hatred of trans people. We COULD have thoughtful and interesting conversations about the construct of gender and how transitioning interacts with said construct, we COULD. Except, all these hateful people keep spewing their garbage “opinions” all over any opportunity that comes up.
I feel like if any of these so-called internet radfems picked up a book once in a while instead of latching on to quotes they’ve read on tumblr and Cathy Brennan’s twitter, some productive conversations could happen.
It’s the worst, I know! I remember you and I had a good convo about this in a Hairpin comment thread once. Radfems who AREN’T transphobes are accused of being traitors, and radfems who ARE transphobes literally seem to discuss nothing other than trans people.
(Cue Sinead O’Connor tearing up a picture of a cis male while saying “fight the real enemy.”)
Ugly laughing at my desk because of the Sinead O’Connor image.
It’s one of those things, like with anti-choicers, where if I cross my (metaphorical) eyes real hard I can see the line of their reasoning, but then I remember about reality.
I know, it is so frustrating. In our perfect feminist utopia where no one faces constraints or expectations of behavior based on the genitals they are born with, will people still identify with genders? Will there be people who will need medical intervention to mesh with their identities? I would like to know what people, especially trans people, think about these things!
But, also, we don’t live in that world. We live in a world that genders people automatically, and often gets it painfully wrong. I don’t know how they figure trans people having gender identities perpetuates that world any more than the TERFs who always emphasize their identities as women in their hateful comments.
There are a few trans women on tumblr (I know, I know, but hear me out!) who discuss these issues at length and they welcome questions/interactions from women who aren’t trans. I don’t really know how comfortable they’d feel with me posting their urls in The Toast comments section, but these conversations ARE happening and they’re really awesome. The one thing they DON’T do is talk about the not-so-subtly masked hatred in the radical feminism community, but who could blame them for not feeling safe enough to do so? I feel like that’s the job of women like me who are not trans but want to be an ally to the trans community.
Also I will say that yes, it is often helpful to name different types/experiences of oppression. I think the idea that trans women are in no way, shape, or form “different” does a disservice to all women, maybe especially trans women. They experience a lot of things that I do not experience! Being assigned female at birth and living as a woman IS different from the experience of being gendered male at birth and living as a woman later. I just don’t see this fact as a reason to be hateful toward anyone.
“The alpha female’s job is now complete. It’s down to the herd to franticly follow the walnut down the river gently frisking the foreground”
GENTLY FRISKING
You people, so intent on delving deeper into the misery out there, when you could just skip all the other links and only go to the Attenborough-curling joyscapade.
Also, this is what I’m finding charming today: http://www.qozop.com/
The photographer had older & younger generations of the same family trade clothes for side-by-side shots. It’s the best.
There are not one, but two trans women in my life. My daughter, and one of my bestest, oldest friends. On their behalf, I thank you, Mallory and Nicole, for your support.
“Indeed, if anyone is in harm’s way in public restrooms, it’s trans people, who can face abuse or assault no matter which restroom they choose.”
True. Without going into great detail, someone I knew was transitioning from male to female in an extremely small, rural and conservative population. Because everyone knew each other’s business (the blessing/curse of small town living) she was, on the whole, supported by community friends and managed to go about her business relatively unscathed.
Until, that is, when she tried to use a women’s public washroom. A woman had come out of one of the stalls, recognized her and proceeded to verbally attack and harangue her to the point of tears.
She moved shortly thereafter; this happened many years ago and I hope she has since found peace and acceptance.
Started to read that last link, got to the 1-year-old crying between his mother’s and sister’s bodies, had to stop. Poor boy, poor entire family.
Yes yes yes yes. I grew up in southern Idaho and went to school in northern Idaho, and I feel like she's talking directly to me in that article.
I am happy about this on so many levels.
I spent my first driving years in the northwest, including eight in northern Idaho. So much of that was working seasonal jobs hours from where I lived and driving home every weekend, hours through prairie and forest, rolling wheat fields and tiny towns. I now live on an island with less than 100 miles of road and miss those highways so much. I love where I live and there's perks (the ocean!), but that article hit me right in the heart. It was like a beautiful, personal tour of my homesickness.
Any mention of Cathy Brennan never fails to turn my stomach.
The rural highways piece is making me sooooo homesick!!
Same here!
Where I lived as a kid there was one highway and no freeway. Go south along the highway for 12 miles and it would take you "to town," population 2600. Go north for 25 miles and you'd find yourself "in Town," population 30K, biggest residential area in the whole county.
Nowadays I live five minutes from everything. I don't exactly miss those long drives to anywhere, but I do look back on them with a sort of romance.