The Root 100 is out for 2014! Congrats to everyone, but especially Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who may consider this honor to be even better than their status as Friends of The Toast. Now, here is The Root 101-200.
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Here is a very different kind of list from Vanity Fair. HAHAHA we already made fun of it yesterday.
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Man conducts extensive comparative research to settle question of refrigerating tomatoes w controversial result, people go bananas. (He’s probably right but I refuse to do it bc STODGY AND SET IN MY WAYS.)
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YEP. Serena!
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Fantastic interview with John Rechy:
You’ve said: “I was always an outlaw except now I want to live.” As a Mexican and a homosexual, you navigated two unrelenting worlds – the American class system, which we routinely deny even exists, and the Heterosexual Dictatorship. Was your first identity as an outlaw tinged with self-doubt?
No, I didn’t think of myself as being easily defined, and I have always rejected self-doubt. As I’ve always said, I shun “humility” as a fake pose. I wince when someone receiving an award, especially an Academy Award but also the office of President or an honor and dutifully—yes, dutifully—mouths the words “I am humbled.” No honor, no recognition, no award should humble anyone; it should elevate, not only the recipient but whoever is extending that honor, a grand synergy.
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“It was an execution, no doubt about it,” alleged Crawford’s father, John Crawford II. “It was flat-out murder. And when you see the footage, it will illustrate that.”
DeWine has said that releasing the footage would be “playing with dynamite” and prevent any trial from being fair. He has assigned a special prosecutor from the neighbouring Hamilton County to handle the case. A grand jury will begin hearing evidence on it later this month. A Beavercreek police spokesman said in a statement: “Preliminary indications are that the officers acted appropriately under the circumstances.”
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Can a book ever change a reader’s life for the worse (my vote is YES)? Also, um, gotta go buy a book now:
So what in the world were they thinking when they allowed me to read Howard W. Haggard’s “Devils, Drugs and Doctors,” an illustrated history of medicine that focused on plagues, venereal disease, mental illness and the horrifying extent to which women, in earlier eras, suffered the fatal agonies of unhygienic childbirth? Because I was a somewhat morbid child, this book, which I discovered in our attic, remained my favorite for years. And as I learned when I reread it recently, it was not only wildly inappropriate for a young person, but it might well have daunted and disturbed some adults. In fact the evidence suggests that many grown-ups liked it quite a bit. The vintage copy that I acquired not long ago was the 25th printingof an edition originally published in 1929.
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Emily Gould drew my attention to this Facebook thread in which people are not well-equipped to handle Susan Miller’s decision to briefly prioritize her health over telling you about the stars.
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Kelefa Sanneh wrote a really interesting profile of Bill Cosby for The New Yorker, which hits some (fleeting) notes (the rape allegations, for example) that will not be appearing in the new authorized biography.
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Oh, you should also read Sanneh on when gospel singers come out, bc it’s dynamite:
This past September, the television host known as Lexi broadcast an interview with Tonéx on the Word Network, a gospel channel, in which the singer made his clearest public statements so far about his sexual orientation, which had long been a subject of speculation and debate. In the interview, Tonéx sits on a pale-green couch, quietly but confidently answering questions that he had been avoiding for years.
Lexi asks, “Have you struggled with homosexuality?”
“Not ‘struggled,’ ” Tonéx says, cagily. “It wasn’t a struggle.”
Lexi perseveres. “Is being attracted to men under control?”
Tonéx repeats the phrase, weighing it. “ ‘Under control.’ ”
“You said you were attracted to men, at one point.”
“Am.”
“ ‘Am’?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So. Do you practice?”
“Like, piano?”
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#same RT @JournalistsLike: In feline news… pic.twitter.com/QoXSHlzlBS
— Caroline in the City (@carolinecox) September 10, 2014
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
bitchy cats are the greatest and how i feel inside most of the time
and i didnt know you could NOT refrigerate tomatoes…?
OH MY GOD
Ignore the naysayers, refrigerate all veggies!
“Judge finds Oscar Pistorius not guilty of murder but says athlete ‘negligent’ in shooting Reeva Steenkamp. Verdict adjourned until Friday ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/oscar-p…
I feel so sick
Was just about to post this. Fucking ridiculous. I wonder what kind of justice will be doled out Friday?!
wish I believed in hell so he could burn in it.
THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH FLAMES TO EXPRESS HOW I FEEL
Because it wasn’t “premeditated.” Bull. Shit. This is why abusers who murder their victims get lenient sentences: because it’s viewed as an act that occurs in the “heat of the moment” instead of as an escalation of abuse.
Heard this going on on the BBC World News this morning. What drove me crazy is that the judge ruled out murder charges in the morning, they left for an hour-and-a-half lunch (the journalists/experts on site observed that was unusually long), then returned for FIFTEEN MINUTES before adjourning until the following morning. Fucking ridiculous theater.
He neglected to refrain from shooting her? Sounds legit.
WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT ALL THE FUCKS. WHAT EVERY SINGLE FUCK THAT HAS EVER EXISTED AND EVER WILL EXIST. WHAT THE PLATONIC IDEAL OF A FUCK.
shooting someone 3 times doesn’t mean you wanted to hurt them, apparently
Ugghhhhh.
Worth noting, though, is that the picture at the top of the article right now appears to show him drooling as he cries.
That Telegraph line is a bit misleading. What Judge Masipa spelled out in her verdict was that the state’s case for premeditated murder did not meet the test of “unreasonable doubt”, therefore she would not be able to find, but she is one by one spelling through other possibilities, and on Friday I guess we’ll find out where she settled. I actually watched the livestream of Judge Masipa announcing her verdict. It is so abundantly clear how scathingly she views Pistorius. I mean, she is spelling things out letter by letter because she has to; if she leaves the tiniest uncertainty as to how she arrived at her verdict, it’ll all get overturned in appeal. She is constructing what has to be a very careful and convincing judgement.
Thank you for this comment.
Thanks – I mean, I share the raging angerfire too, but I also know that building legal cases and issuing verdicts is nowhere near as straightforward as, say, legal procedural TV makes it look. I think that it’s really important to know how proving guilt works; it shows how the legal system sometimes builds barriers for, amongst others, people who’ve been abused, or those who’ve lost their lives and no longer have their own voice to speak with; on the other hand, though, it behooves to know how the law tests to issue convictions because the More We Know the better we can support those going through the legal system. Humbly submitted, x.
Thank you for explaining that – for some reason I didn’t get an email alert so I’ve only just seen this, but your comment is really useful. I didn’t realise that and I haven’t seen the livestream but now I understand a lot more!
I woke up this morning, saw this headline on Yahoo! and went “fuck it, I’m going back to bed.” No good will come of today
That cat headline is easily the most accurate headline ever.
I could be actively on fire and my cats’ big concern would be “Hey, are you going to pet me? Pet me pet me pet me pet me PET ME PET ME PET ME HEY WHERE ARE YOU GOING COME BACK AND PET ME?”
Ug, it is SO RUDE to catch on fire when there is a CAT who needs PETS! How could you??
Are you my cat? When did you learn to type?
Go get a job and start contributing something other than excess hair to this household!
“pet me pet me pet me pet me pet me HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME I’LL RIP YOUR HAND OFF”
My cats will writhe desperately while you pet them and then stand up and walk away for a second before coming back to yowl for pets again.
Dude, if you liked it, WHY DID YOU GET UP AND WALK AWAY? Are you trying to play hard to get???
One of my cats spends her nights in bed next to me, but if I am moved by this display of devotion and decide to pet her, more often than not she’ll try to sink her teeth in my hand. I don’t get it.
Either you like my company enough to sleep next to me every night, in which case you shouldn’t object to the occasional head-scritch, or you’re repulsed by my very touch, in which case why on earth do you practically curl up on my chest on a daily basis?
And yet one night when I rolled over on top of her while half-asleep, she didn’t protest and waited calmly for me to roll back again. Cats! What’s up with them??
It is possible that she does not like your company, but simply your body heat. Or you have a comfy bed. Or she wants to make sure that the first thing you do upon exiting the bed is feed her.
Sometimes she’ll suddenly lunge at me, but instead of scratching she’ll grab my hand between her paws, pull it to her and lick it very aggressively, glaring at me the entire time. She’s a strange and unfathomable thing, but that’s why I love her.
maybe she thinks your hand is the “on” button for the human space heater to activate??
Do you think when PUAs are coming up with things like “last-minute resistance” and “negging,” they’re thinking of dealing with cats? Like if you’re not very bright, the line between “women often have cats,” “women often like cats,” and “women often are cats” is muddy somehow?
There’s something to that, I think – the way humans treat and think of cats is surprisingly analogous to the way men have historically treated and thought of women.
False, I have never gotten tuna from a man.
If a man gave me tuna, though, I’d be pretty darn well-inclined toward him.
Maybe this makes me more like a dog?
“Women are like cats because they act like they don’t have to love you, even though you own them.”
– my male friend, jokingly sarcastic obviously or he wouldn’t be a friend.
oh man my heart broke just a little anyways
I have one like this! He doesn’t like being held or being on laps but he LOOOVES pets and will do this crazy pacing move where he walks all around you while arching into your hand and purring like a monster and then walk out of reach and look back at you like, why is your hand gone?
Yes! Exactly! And headbutting you and WHY do you walk away like that???
Saffron does that, we’ll be having a lovely cuddle and then she’ll wander off, look aggrieved and fall over just out of my reach and want more cuddles.
One of my cats will purr while you pet him, then suddenly turn around and bite or scratch, and then meow unhappily because you stopped petting him. Dude. DUDE. You brought this on yourself.
My cat likes biting more than he likes being pet, so I know that when he rolls around on his back, stretching his little paws out towards me while sweetly chirruping at me, it’s a trap. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to stroke his soft little belly every single time, though, as I am only so strong.
I was sick on Tuesday and instead of cuddling with me and being nice Klaas-Jan just yowled for attention louder. Jerk cat teens.
dirtbag cat
he’s kind of a dirtbag as much as I want to think of him as a sweetheart
love is blind, cat does not know what you are referring to and is unauthorized to comment
I loved it. Also, am now thinking that perhaps I am part cat. Because seriously.
In other news, scientists “pretty sure” water is wet, say sources.
Any human who has ever had a cat the last few thousand years could have told them
I have begun an attempt to teach our Brains adorable tricks (shut up, she’s very smart and also easily bored, it’s good for her brain), starting with meowing back at me. Which yesterday consisted of me meowing at her for ten minutes while she stared at me blankly and plotted how to get the treats in my hand. (She did do it once! I consider this rousing success.)
Ohhh – I’d advise against it. I had an older cat and then got a new kitten; this was about 12 years ago. The kitten had the sweetest meow, and I encouraged her to use it all the time. The older cat picked up on this and started meowing for attention. Now the kitten is gone (12 years is a good life), but the older cat is around and WON’T STOP MEOWING. CONSTANTLY. DAY TO NIGHT. AND IT’S NOT HALF AS CUTE A MEOW.
I’ve taught multiple cats how to sit! It’s a good one to start with because it’s not an annoying behavior and it’s something they’ll do anyway if they stare at a treat in your hand long enough. “Come” and “stay” are also useful (although I’ve only taught one cat how to stay successfully). Another useful thing to program into your cats is a “treats time is over” signal–I brush my hands together while saying “All done!” when I’m out of treats, and the Smart Cat knows that she won’t get anything more after that and wanders off. The Less Smart Cat follows me for ten minutes, meowing for treats.
Maybe I’ll switch to sit. She was on that like a PRO yesterday.
We do names! It worked wonderfully when we had an only cat, but now that we have more than one it’s hard. Basically they’ll all come running if they hear cat #1’s name.
Ours answers to the words “cat,” “cute,” “fish,” and “so bitey.” And by answers, I mean his ears swivel when we say them and then he goes back to ignoring us. The word “treats” does provoke a reaction, however.
But whenever I cry even a little bit, he comes and sits on my lap and purrs, so he’s either got some empathy or just likes my delicious, delicious tears.
have you tried clicker training??
I have a Snapple-ish lid to click, yeah! But I haven’t quite figured out how to juggle that and the treat yet.
She did AWESOME at “sit,” today, btw! The hardest part was waiting for her to stop sitting so I could give the command again!
wooooo go cat!!!!!
I’ve done a bit of clicker training with my dogs, I have actual clickers from my aunt (who is a dog trainer), but I usually just use a high-pitched ‘Yip!’ instead – hands free, easier to respond quickly to mark the behavior.
Did anyone see this piece about two guy friends getting married in NZ? It’s ruffling some feathers, but I sorta love it. I mean, if you feel that you and your best friend have the type of relationship where you can share finances and take care of each other in sickness or in death, why the hell not? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_i…
I would think it was a lot cooler if they weren’t doing it to win a radio contest.
VERY GOOD POINT. Yeah, the “lol two guys getting married how funny” thing is no good, but I’d love to see more non-romantic life partners like this have their relationships considered equally important. We put so much value in romantic relationships, when well cared for friendships are just as important.
Yeah, we seem to have a weird fetish for radio contest marriages.
Mind you, it’s no “Hold Your Wee For A Wii.”
What about arranged marriages via radio votes?
they’ve been best mates since they were 6, and they look so happy in the photos!
I understand the point about the way the competition is promoting it though.
I really love that photo. So cute! I hope they never get around to divorcing and stay married forever.
I keep seeing the Bros from Questionable Content as their joint groom’s party. BROS BROS BROS
Aren’t they already announcing that they plan to stay married for 2 years and then divorce? I’m actually perfectly down with companionate marriages, but temp marriages kinda bug me. Dudes, at least *entertain* the idea that you might stand by your commitments.
I bet over the course of those two years they realize they’re truly in love with each other and stay married forever, I’ve read this fanfic before.
My favorite fanfic trope.
This is absolutely the plot of a romance novel. Marriage of convenience? Hijinks? C’moooooon.
While marrying platonic best friends seems quite nice, in this instance it gives the impression of ‘Hey look how crazy far we’d go for Rugby World Cup tickets! You think running around naked for ten minutes when it’s snowing is going far? We’re going to get GAY married! LOoooL!’ Seems to me they’re treating gay marriage as a big joke. I can see why gay rights groups are annoyed.
Also on the tomatoes thing: word to eating all tomatoes at room temp. This also applies to cheese. A friend recently taught me to wait for the cheese to reach room temp and the flavor is so much better! just glorious.
There is nothing better than some really glorious room temperature manchego. NOTHING.
Fruit of all kinds, too.
It’s true! It doesn’t really matter with low quality cheese (similar to low quality wine that way – I’ll take the Barefoot chardonnay ICE cold, please) but with the good shit it becomes some much more complex, and the texture is so much nicer too.
Poor Steve Bisciotti, I’m sorry this whole Ray-Rice-knocking-the-shit-out-of-a-woman-and-then-everyone-in-the-know-covering-it-up thing has been so hard on you
http://deadspin.com/oh-1633261562
Set them all on fire
That Bill Cosby piece left me really unsettled and I can’t entirely place why but I’m pretty sure it’s because of the sheer volume of really right-wing rhetoric. Like, I felt that he was just a few steps away from saying something about bootstraps.
I come bearing Coates! You are welcome.
Coates! This is already, unsurprisingly, a way better article and I’m only a third of the way in
Ahhhhhh much better, thank you!
Ack! Link not working for…oh, Chrome. Why you gotta hurt me this way?
The Coates article brought to us by Hththe1st (thanks!) ends with a Cosby bootstraps quote.
Tomato guy isn’t saying anything revolutionary — he’s just dressing up common sense. His point is just: if your tomatoes are really ripe when you buy them, they might start to go bad in a hot summertime kitchen, so refrigerate ripe tomatoes in the heat. Then let them come back to room temperature before you eat them. In all other situations, don’t refrigerate your tomatoes.
Not a newsflash, even with his “scientific” 11 blind taste testers. Though it does remind me again how very much I dislike the type of foodies who learn something and then turn it into a set of prescriptions (somehow, somehow you’re all doing it wrong over there in your kitchens!) when it is really common sense.
Yeah, this is definitely what I’ve always done too. Tomatoes pretty ripe, but you won’t get a chance to eat them for a few days? Refrigerator! Tomatoes ripe and you want to eat them now? Room! Then inside you!
Yes but you may have noticed common sense holds no place in the Internet Opinions Kitchen
Sources *cough* indicate that there is a copy of Devils, Drugs and Doctors available on archive.org, should anyone feel like changing their life for the worse without leaving the comfort of their couch. Or, er, office chair, as the case may be.
It’s in the public domain, no need for coughs!
https://archive.org/details/devilsdrugsdocto00hag…
You’re a national hero. I’m on page four and have already learned about the Medieval invention of a baptismal syringe for intrauterine baptisms. Wow.
It’s shaping up to be a great read! The author seems to be a big fan of Roman physician Soranus, which is a plus for the twelve-year-old inside all of us.
D:
what the everloving fuck
Well there goes my productiveness for a week 😀
I liked this piece about a body farm in Texas, where donated corpses are left to decompose in the name of science. One of them, Patty, lived the life of a total BAMF:
in her later years, she kept Plan B stocked in her guest bathroom, in case any woman in the neighborhood might need it
Patty continued singing in choirs, and amassing a library of titles she let the local kids borrow—from Agatha Christie mysteries to science fiction by Harlan Ellison.
Truly an example to follow!
a body farm in Texas, where donated corpses are left to decompose in the name of science
Hm. You know, I’ve known for a while that I planned to donate my body to science. This sounds like quite a nice option. Thank you for the link to that article.
There’s also one in Tennessee! Here is an info page about it, which notes, among other things, that body donation “does not prevent donation of other tissues or organs.” Neat!
Excellent. Thank you!
Also, this reminded me so much of Mundane’s World. Anyone else here read that?
I’m planning on donating myself to the UTK body farm! My sister’s currently a student there and her roommate works at the body farm. (My sister’s applying next semester.) Future forensic pathologists of America!
DUDE. I, too, want to donate my remains to a body farm! I knew we were friends for a reason. 😀
It’s an honour to help you dispose of your mortal coil in the manner most pleasing to you.
Have any of you read the Mistress of the Art of Death series set in England in the 1100s with a female lead who trained as a surgeon/autopsy specialist in Sicily? She reminisces regularly about a body farm!
YES! I LOVE these books so much.
And I learned all about body farms from Stiff which was so very excellent. (I’m currently reading Gulp and it’s making me lol on my morning commute. Especially as I’m on the flatulence chapter.)
Aaah, I love reading about body farms. And that piece was fantastic, so well written.
Also, yeah, Patty sounds pretty fucking cool.
I should also have mentioned Elaine, who owns her own smithy!
Elaine is bad-ass
“he was doing a lot of things to show me he really cared—and I don’t mean buying me shit, because I can buy my own stuff.”
Hell yeah
That was a lovely read. Thank you!
It’s where I’ll be going! “Send me to the vultures, Ma”
thank you for the link! that was really beautifully written.
Oh, yeah, men have to practice heterosexuality on the regular. If you don’t practice often, you could mess up and accidentally be attracted to another man by mistake.
Am I a practicing homosexual? No, I’ve reached expert level.
I have to get recertified as a bisexual because it’s been more than 6 months since I’ve kissed another woman 🙁
And once you fall behind on your CEU’s, the bisexual license renewal is an administrative nightmare.
That’s why we say “act like a man!” Because it’s an ACT 😉
Re: tomatoes, I do not understand why some people get so upset about other people’s eating/cooking preferences. Who. Fucking. Cares.
See also: the entire “You’re Doing It Wrong” series on Slate.
See also: Slate.com in its entirety
SPEAKING OF SLATE, there’s a letter in today’s Dear Prudie from a guy who thinks that his friends deliberately moved their dad into an 8th-floor apartment because they were hoping he would commit suicide by jumping off the balcony.
I mean, he did commit suicide by jumping off the balcony, but I feel like it’s quite a leap (sorry not sorry) to ascribe intent there??
Yeah, that was pretty wack. I like Prudie’s response to that one, but I was appalled by her response to the woman who wrote in about how aging is making her feel hideous: “You’re probably not *really* that ugly, but try plastic surgery!”
The worst part is that I don’t think they actually care how you make guacamole, it’s just that their headline writer is a monster. I finally unfollowed their twitter feed after one too many faux-exasperated “No, your shampoo isn’t giving you cancer!” tweets. WTF, I never thought it was.
The other day, they had something like, “Stop Believing the Farmer’s Almanac,” and I was like “….?” Biggest problem of our time, all these credulous fools believing the Farmer’s Almanac.
What’s the Farmers Almanac ever done to them? Geesh. I find it totally believable when it tells me stuff like when the moonrise is.
So happy for The Root!
Also, dear Toasty folk, I would really appreciate links/informed opinions in context of the following discussion I had with a couple of classmates.
A: You can’t be racists against white people.
B. You can, and it’s about class not race. Racism is a dogma and a political propaganda because racism is relative (eg You can’t be racists against Chinese in China. And South Africans are killing off whites right now.) Also, “checking your privilege” does not mean “You benefit from privilege, you don’t get an opinion” which seems very common right now.
Guys, I tried my best with what I learned (which isn’t much): I piped in about not invalidating lived experiences. I just felt it’s a challenging and uncomfortable discussion, which doesn’t mean it has to be avoided, but to hear person B so adamant and sounding all-knowing, I just.
So, in my opinion, B is…sort of right, but possibly a bit of a jerk? Obviously racism as a structural barrier that keeps people of some races marginalized and people of other races automatically privileged is “relative,” in that it functions to the benefit and detriment of various races in different ways. I’d just add: sometimes simultaneously. A Chinese person in China (ignoring what I’m sure is a shit-ton of ethnic specificity that I don’t know about Chinese people, but just for the sake of argument) is not automatically disadvantaged in their daily lives by being Chinese, sure. But the global racial structure does privilege whiteness over non-whiteness in ways that impact China as a whole, and thereby people living in it. Race is a construct and race is situational, but…the scope of world history has made it so that it’s pretty damn hard to sustain a structure that systematically disenfranchises white people.
It is unequivocally true that “checking your privilege” does NOT mean “you benefit from privilege, you don’t get an opinion.” It means “you give every indication of having arrived at your supposedly objective opinion through internalizing your right to your position of privilege, and you should probably get that shit squared away before you start telling other people that you’re Just Stating the Facts.” Everyone gets an opinion. Some people’s opinions are more informed than others, and one of the unfortunate consequences of privilege is that you tend to live in a little bit of an echo chamber, where people tell you your every half-baked, uninformed opinion is *amazingly valuable.” “Checking” privilege means making sure you’re not buying into that bullshit, not having no opinion whatsoever.
Thank you for this! It’s a lot to take in. The echo chamber comparison struck me especially.
Hoo boy. That second person has a lot going on. Bringing up the concept of intersectionality might be helpful? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality When dealing with folks who are impressed by confidence/academic language, I like to lead off with, “You know, I think the concept of intersectionality as posited by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s would help us out here,” because then you have CITATIONS and CONFIDENCE and FACTS.
I think it’s also fair to yield the point about other countries, at least at the beginning, and focus your conversation on your country. I pretty much only talk about racism in America and sometimes Canada because I don’t really know shit about other countries.
On checking your privilege, I’ve sometimes thought of it as like, my opinions on race as a white person aren’t really as informed as a person of color’s real lived experience of race and racism. It’s not that I don’t get an opinion, it’s just that like… well to circle back to the last paragraph, someone who has been to China probably has a better opinion about China than me, so I’m going to shut up and listen to them.
Oh, yes, thank you for bringing up intersectionality! And I agree about being informed by people’s lived experiences.
The academic definition of racism is “prejudice plus power”. Prejudice can go in all directions, but racism requires power, which means that in the US, it is basically impossible to be racist against a white person, though if you were someplace where white folks were a less-privileged minority and you had structures that disadvantaged them, that would be anti-white racism. But the colloquial definition of “racism” is generally “race-based prejudice”. Race-based prejudice is often very much tied into class-based prejudice, and of course racist systems often lead to members of certain races ending up in certain socio-economic classes (see poverty among Black Americans), but you can also look at the ways that poor white folks are treated differently than poor Black folks to see that it isn’t just class.
In terms of “check your privilege” – no, it doesn’t mean you don’t get an opinion when you have privilege. It means, to me, two things 1) consider the ways in which your privilege may be affecting your perspective and 2) consider shutting up when people who are more directly affected are speaking. One of the things about having privilege in our society is that we expect that we have a right to speak about everything and that our opinions are worth equal consideration, and that’s not always true.
I sometimes think it’s unfair to penalize people for not knowing the academic definition of racism, because it is different from the colloquial use, and not everyone has access to the level of education that introduces social justice vocabulary, you know? Not that you can’t explain, but espesh on the Internet, I see well-meaning progressives jump to YOU’RE A RACIST IDIOT immediately, and that seems both cruel and a really good way to cut off any possibility of discussion. I’ve met people who didn’t know what a novel was, for Heaven’s sake, and that’s so much more “basic” than SJW jargon.
I completely agree. I think if you’re in a sociology class, then you should probably be working off the academic definition, but in most other circumstances, you need to acknowledge the common definition. I think the fact that “racism” has two different but related meanings leads to an awful lot of well-meaning folks talking past each other or arguing about semantics instead of actually helping to dismantle racist structures.
Yep. Same goes for a lot of social liberalism (again, esp. on the Internet, where everything is heightened and you can get in arguments with strangers). I’ve been told before that unintentional offense is just as bad as intentional insult, and Christ on a cracker, if that’s true we are all DOOMED.
Thank you! It’s a lot to take in, and I never knew that definition of racism.
South Africans are killing off whites right now
*record scratch*
I just read that stupid Vanity Fair article and was it seriously super hard finding more than two “media disruptors” who don’t have a penis?
Silly Toastie, everyone knows women are mythical creatures!
I’ve actually been pondering that as a concept for a while — that “women” are mythical creatures invented by men, and there are good ones (subspecies “virgin”) and evil ones (subspecies “whore”), and the point of their existence is to pop out babies (“virgins” because they’re created to love and nurture; “whores” in order to trap innocent men) and they’re made to be attractive for men so that men will want them to have their babies, and they’re just sort of generally subservient to men because that’s what “women” were created to be.
There are also female human beings, and there’s a slight overlap in the two in that most (not all, but most) female human beings can give birth. But that’s where the overlap stops. And men tend to get upset when it’s pointed out to them that their fantasy creature doesn’t actually exist, that in reality there are only female human beings, not the mythical creature that men invented and like to mistake them for.
In today’s edition of “winterbymorning pokes around Google Maps”:
What on earth is the Wild Persephone Grazing Area? The only thing that turned up in my search was an ad for a used mattress. Satellite view shows only a couple of trees between two backyards. I am equal parts enchanted and confused.
Perhaps, long ago, before the city was founded, a Wild Persephone could sometimes be seen in the area, frolicking and grazing in the sunlight, then disappearing again when the first cold snap came. The two trees are left in her honor, and the neighbors on each side bought their homes in the hope that they would someday see her.
There’s a type of wallaby whose Latin name is “Petrogale persephone” but I’m reasonably sure no wild wallabies graze in Ottawa.
They are cute, though.
IDK but if you find a pomegranate tree there, I wouldn’t eat any
Ah! A golden opportunity to plug one of my favourite poems!
I smile and wait for November,
For when I come back to you.
Your clever cold hands and your hard black boots.
I don’t ask what the leather is made from.
I don’t think I want to know.
I haven’t read that poem in forever. Thank you for the reminder.
awesome, thanks
Wild Persephones will be the name of my all maiden folk group
I’m surprised it’s not already the title of a Dar Williams album.
The name reminded me of the song “Demeter’s Daughter”. Here’s a link to the songwriter singing http://www.annelister.com/albums/live/live.html
That is not the sort of mysterious thing you’d think you’d find in Ottawa! Somehow it’s even funnier that it’s bordered by Periodontal Associates and the Zen Centre.
I live 1 block away and I can confirm that there is no grazing area here.
Do you practice?
Like, piano?
*drops mic* INTERVIEW IS OVER
I thought that was such a great answer.
The article on Tonéx is SO GOOD. Good lord, that man is patience itself dealing with that interviewer.
I love room-temp tomatoes, and understand the need to save the ripe ones, because in the summer things go bad in my kitchen within hours, because it gets more sun than any room in the house.
Congratulations to the Root peeps! Yay!!!
Regarding books that can change your life for the worse, I read Lolita waaaay too young and it definitely messed with my head as a teenager. I was 14 when I read it the first time, close to the age of Dolores Haze (she is 12 when Humbert Humbert first meets her). I was not a sophisticated enough reader to appreciate unreliable narrators and language games and I identified with Dolores way too much, so it just read like a straight-up horror story with a good dose of gas-lighting thrown in (which was not a term I knew at the time, but something I could definitely feel in my bones). I didn’t get over it for years.
Anybody else have stories of books they wish they didn’t read? Ever or at that juncture in your life?
Mostly it’s just that I wished that I hadn’t read books I ended up disliking (like, I was upset that I had wasted my time). But there was one book called “The Thirteenth Tale” that I really wish I had not read. It was actually a really excellent book. But some parts had to do with family insanity and hoarding and living in filth and I have known hoarders/people who lived in filth and it was just too much for me. Um, other people might like it?
I read that a few weeks ago, and it was definitely unnerving, even as a grown up adult person. I can see where it could get into someone’s head in a not-healthy way.
I mean, it was a really good book, but yeah – unhealthy. I had to get it out of my apartment RIGHT AWAY.
there was a dreadful book about a man who falls in love with a genetically modified highly intelligent gorilla and ends up having sex with her…
also Beloved, by Toni Morrison, which I put down after she praises the male protagonists for raping cows instead of the female protagonist. #blechhhhh
Was it God’s Grace?? My roommates in college had to read that for a class and neither of them has ever recovered. It also was the source of my friend’s personal worst in terms of things people have said in her discussion classes. I would tell this story but it’s so ridiculously racist that I actually feel uncomfortable repeating it.
I think that’s where I stopped reading Beloved too!! It’s still on my bookshelf and it’s been there for years but I’ve never gone back to it, and always feel like I should because it’s Toni Morrison? I read Sula for a class and really liked it, but Beloved brings up so many uncomfortable feelings and I can’t remember exactly why and always it makes me wonder if that’s the reason I should go back and read it.
I scoured the library for books of scary stories when I was around 9-10 years old even though they scared the SHIT out of me and kept me awake and trembling at night. Sometimes I wonder how much taller I would be, or how much more I would remember of 5th grade math class, if I had been getting sufficient sleep in those formative years.
I wanted to burn ‘The Crimson Petal and the White”
It made me so unhappy and anxious- I can’t deal with children in danger
I read a lot of Oprah’s Book Club books (my mom had a shelf of them) in middle school and some of them are … quite adult. Fall on Your Knees was the most confusing/scarring.
When I was 12, my sister, cousin and I passed around a very sexy Jackie Collins novel (Lucky?) at the beach house our family rented for a week… BUT I DON’T REGRET A MINUTE OF THAT!
I read The Bluest Eye when I was far, far too young for it. Maybe 12? Maybe 13? Not a good time.
I regret reading The Glass House and everything by Augusten Burroughs (especially whichever one detailed animal abuse against Ernie the dog) and everything with animal abuse ever, really.
OH YES INDEED. “The Painted Bird” by Jerzy Kosinski. I could understand the words, but I could not process the book, and I have never, ever forgotten some of the more viscerally upsetting parts. A young Jewish boy’s parents ship him into the countryside to avoid the Nazis, horribly horrible things ensue. I don’t remember how I found it, but I read the whole thing and I was a SIXTH GRADER.
Oh god. Yeah. Accordion Crimes, Flowers for Algernon, AYN RAND, The Power of One, East of Eden, and all kinds of shit like that before the age of ELEVEN. The context is that I knew my dad was proud of me when I read “grownup” books, because he liked how smart I was and how fast I could read (why no, our family dynamic is fine, why do you ask?).
So the first time I learned about sex was probably while reading about rape/incest/sexual assault/sex-murder. I can’t believe my father allowed, and even encouraged me to read books like that when I was so young. I can’t blame the books entirely for my near-lifelong automatic fear and mistrust of men, but they can’t have helped.
I also Cannot Even with Lolita. I get what everyone says about it but….I have no interest in putting myself in the mind of a pedophile. No thanks.
Podkayne of Mars.
Podkayne of Mars pales in comparison to I Will Fear No Evil, or, The Book Where Heinlein Officially Lost It. The sex scenes are just so cloyingly horrifying. I forget which SF critic said it was like watching a Supreme Court judge spit up on himself.
Reading Margaret Atwood at age 12 made me think of her works as boring and kind of dumb, an opinion which was not subsequently improved by her unwillingness to consider Handmaid’s Tale as genre.
(i still think she’s kind of boring)
I read The Knife of Never Letting Go because I love post-apocalypse YA (and adult fiction, I guess) and I was totally into it and looking forward to the sequels until
… spoilers …
the lovable talking dog, who’s the protagonist’s best friend, is murdered horribly by the bad guy.
I was HORRIFIED. I am still horrified. I want to cry just thinking about it. I can’t handle it.
Post-apocalyptic YA also traumatized me–I liked everything else Garth Nix but “Shade’s Children” was so terrifying and anxiety-inducing. I think it was partly because one of the main characters has my name, but mostly because basically everyone dies.
Yes!!! Shade’s Children was horribly anxiety-inducing, I read it once and kept it because it was MY BOOK in MY LIBRARY but could never really look at it again. I remember The Rag Witch (was that what it was called?), one of his others that wasn’t the Abhorsen trilogy, also being rather upsetting.
I should mention I read this just a couple of years ago.
I can’t handle violence to animals, or any kind of animal death, in books/movies. I find it so upsetting.
Agreed, though dogs get me hardest. They’re just so … dogs. I find it extra horrifying to think of humans causing pain to dogs because they’ve co-evolved with us for so long, and are so dependent and symbiotic … I dunno.
Anyway, this might help: Does the dog die? will tell you if movies are safe for you (and me). So far as I know a similar thing doesn’t exist for books, though.
I read too much Stephen King when I was little (10-12ish). ‘Salem’s Lot and the Dark Half gave me nightmares for years.
Yeah man, I read Lolita in COLLEGE and I guess I still wasn’t old/sophisticated enough because it was fucking horrifying. Nabokov write beautifully but every time I think of that Vanity Fair quote about it being the “only convincing love story of our century,” I want to throw up.
I think it’s supposed to be kind of horrifying? I actually stand by a lot of my initial impressions of it, especially given that Nabokov believed a good reader was a person with a good memory, good attention to detail, and who *didn’t* emotionally identify with characters (among other things). If you read it like that, it’s not difficult to piece together that Dolores is being abused and that Humbert is totally trying to manipulate you. She’s crying every night, she doesn’t really know anything about seduction, he’s drugging her, he killed her mom, she ends up dead at the end, her name is ‘dolorous haze’ for chrissakes, etc. But Humbert is gently covering those things up with emotionally manipulative language and charm, so readers forget and don’t pay attention. Thinking that he loves her is a bunch of Nabokov’s ‘bad reader’ qualities all rolled up together. Of course, I swung entirely the other direction and identified too much with Dolores when I read it, which was also not the author’s point. But it’s definitely not a convincing love story unless you are totally willing to be swept up in it as a love story, I think.
I have always thought of Lolita as a portrait of a child molester as a monster of vanity.
American Psycho (read in college). I’ve been wishing to get certain images from that book out of my head for years.
“All My Darling Daughters” by Connie Willis. Connie Willis generally comes in two modes: cozy and joyously funny, or heartbreaking and sad. She has a third mode, eviscerating horror. This short story is definitely written in the third mode. It’s based loosely on the lives of the Barrett daughters (Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her sisters), only set in a private school in space. It has rape pets, sexual abuse, and a desperate bid on the part of the protagonist to save her younger sister. More than a decade later it still makes me sick to my stomach.
Which is to say it was really good about the normalization of sexual violence and I wish I had never read it.
I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover when I was 16, and Lawrence’s notion of how Normal Women should act during sex — completely passive — haunted me for quite some time. The explicitness of the sex scenes somehow made his worldview more convincing. Luckily, Lawrence only wrote about heterosexuality, so when I left that behind, I dumped him too.
A really disquieting article about the rape culture in Alaska. Three generations of rape and domestic abuse, which isn’t talked about, until now. This reminds me somewhat of the … “culture” I grew up in, in a small community in the midwest, but it wasn’t this bad. We talked about getting revenge on the men and boys who abused us. But these women (and men) haven’t even talked about it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/…
It makes me want to start a kickstarter for the girls and women up there, to get the fuck out of Alaska. I don’t know how to do that, though.
Maybe donate here? (Alaskan readers might know of a better resource). http://www.andvsa.org/
That’s a good one.
that article is really upsetting, but I think it is also a good rebuttal to the people who think that small towns/communities are inherently safer than big cities or that most/all rape/assault is committed by strangers
“She’s overreacting,” he said. “She just got touched by a couple of drunk people.” When he did reach Erickson, he told her he felt betrayed: Why hadn’t his daughter told him? Why had she waited so long to talk about it, and why to the entire state?
Gee, maybe because your immediate reaction was “she’s just overreacting.” Possibly that’s why she didn’t tell ya, Daddy-o.
I don’t think that’s a good idea. Rape, molestation and abuse are certainly a huge problem in rural Alaska, but I don’t think the solution is to take women who are strongly attached to their family and culture, and to the village way of life, and move them away from everything they’ve ever known. It’s difficult for people who grew up in the village to learn to live even in a fairly rural Alaskan town such as Fairbanks. Moving out of state is much, much harder.
Alaska native culture is certainly damaged – in some villages more than in others – but it is still of absolutely paramount importance to many Alaska Natives. Yes, these women are at great risk. Yes, their situation is often terrible. But to respond to it by moving them to the lower 48, where they can’t subsistence fish and hunt, where they have no family, where their children will never have even a hope of learning the language and the songs and the dances of their culture, would be to punish them for being at risk.
I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe a kickstarter is a good idea. But if you want rural Alaskan women to respond well to it, I think you should try to focus on improving the situation within the community.
That was a very powerful article. I will say, though, that for indigenous people, “getting the fuck out of Alaska” is probably not what they want or need. The amount of time and money white people have spent trying to hack apart indigenous communities to bring them “urban enlightenment” is part of why violence and substance abuse are so prevalent. It wasn’t just the abuse children suffered in Residential Schools that hurt people, it was the presence of the Lost Generation of kids who had had their culture forcibly removed, families that had been broken apart, generational bonds severed, and the community structure and practices that controlled interpersonal relations and violence forgotten or legislated away. I don’t have any statistics on it, but my general experience has been that people who are better connected to their ancestral culture are better able to resist substance abuse, violence, and the cycle of poverty. Most indigenous cultures cannot easily be removed from their geographic location and placed in a city, and urban indigenous people often struggle with how to practice and relate to their culture. Sending an indigenous abuse victim, for whom English may not be their primary language, to be alone a city that does not respect or support her culture and does not provide any of the cultural support systems she has grown up relying on is not a good across-the-board choice.
Sorry to go a bit nuts on you, this is not really a criticism of you I just hear “why don’t they just leave [whatever indigenous community] and get a job in Toronto instead of staying there and whining that their water is full of mercury?” alllll the time and I am sick of it.
Thank you for this!
I hear you.
I think I was expressing the visceral response I had … in growing up in an isolated community and experiencing some of this sort of thing. It took a teacher telling me “you can leave and never come back again” to make me realize I had some control. It also took hearing my grandmother say “if a man ever raised his hand to me, I’d throw him out of the house. I wouldn’t take that shit from anyone.”
But Alaska is much more of an isolated community and maybe the man who rapes and abuses also supplies the town with meat, in the form of hunting game, during the winter. If the man went away to jail … . The consequences could be severe in a subsistence economy.
Anyway, I had the experience of growing up and feeling trapped and isolated in a small town. If I could have left when I was 15, I would have. But I didn’t have the financial means to do it.
Yeah, fair enough. I know a woman from a small primarily-white community that is just as bad as the one in the article, but as it is a very left-wing, hippie-ish community the people who protest to the constant sexual abuse of girls get pegged as being “sex-negative” and “patriarchal” as well. This friend is an adult who works in the city but returns there and considers it her home. I think she should leave and have strongly suggested to another acquaintance who has two young children that he shouldn’t let them grow up there, so I definitely understand the response of telling people to get out of toxic communities.
One of the things I found fascinating about this article, was the ways in which race is elided. I can’t decide if it’s better or worse to leave undiscussed (but implied) the fact that the 4H group (which I had always thought of as white kids in the Mat-Su valley) is made up of Native kids. On the one hand, it also leaves room for the story to be built in all its horror, without making strictly it a Native problem (which is often how it gets discussed in the local press). On the other hand, it downplays swaths of history which explain why this is a problem most often discussed in relation to Native villages.
I also feel like it really lets law enforcement off the hook, and makes Parnell sound like a standup guy instead of a pro-life, deep red politician who rejected the expansion of Medicaid which could have paid for more village health personnel.
The article also avoids the discussion of the extremely ugly anti-Native racism that is woven into Alaskan culture. I’m white and I grew up in Anchorage, and this is incomparably, inconceivably privileged. In high school, I read an article in the Anchorage Daily News, which I remember going more or less this way. A native woman gets drunk on Fourth Ave. She wakes up in a van having been sexually assaulted. A rape kit is collected. The probable rapist walks because she couldn’t pick him out of a line up. Her broken glasses were found in his van, which happens to be the van the woman woke up in.
Holy shit, the Susan Miller Facebook thread is crazy. This is not really improving my perception of people who are super into horoscopes.
Here is where I reveal my secret that I don’t even believe in astrology but I love Susan Miller’s horoscopes and feel so sad when I see the vitriol she has been getting. From what I can tell, the poor woman has spent all summer pooping her brains out and subsisting only on rice and bananas and people can’t cut her a freaking break? I just want to send her a nice get well card.
The vehemence is just astounding, and also frankly disgusting.
My favorite comment so far:
“Susan! Please start juicing cabbage. It has enzymes in it that heal ulcers. It has been PROVEN. Lots of cabbage juice (at least one cabbage/day divided into 3 parts & 2 ribs celery per 1/3 c) The celery eliminates the gas produced by the cabbage…add something sweet. Drink immediately This is NOT going to hurt you. You will tolerate it very well. Do not let doctors persuade you not to do this. This has great potential to help you. Take a leap of faith and do it.”
CABBAGE! What CAN’T it do??
That one made me simultaneously laugh and twitch uncomfortably.
“It has been PROVEN” but “Do not let doctors persuade you not to do this.”
“This is NOT going to hurt you. You will tolerate it very well.” Well if YOU say so, strange lady on the internet, then it must be true! Why listen to the advice of medical professionals who know me intimately when I can just do what some astrology-loving wingnut says?
that is also the way I would phrase things if I was trying to get someone to poison themselves willingly
I don’t understand. Is it really just that they aren’t going to get this month’s horoscope? Half the comments make it sound like she’s fleeing the country ahead of an embezzlement scandal or something (“Obviously Susan has and, took the coward way out.. “). That is some pretty sky-high levels of anger for someone being sick and missing a deadline.
I fucking LOVE Serena Williams, she is a national treasure and that article was wonderful
Man, people are just TERRIBLE to Susan Miller:
Hey, susan, we are all sick too! Sick of your bullshit that is! And we get sick every month, around the same time as you! What a coincidence hey? Must be a lot of crap floating about….
Rude and disrespectful to your many followers. To remain silent like that says a lot about your team and how much change astrology zone’s infrastructure needs.. Inept at best, dishonest at worst.
But we know that’s not what crosses your mind. It’s “$$$$$$$$- let these pathetic readers click on my site checking me, I’ll get money one way or another”
No kidding! Just when you think, “ah, here’s a sane one”, BOOM!, people be terrible. If I were Susan, I’d kiss Facebook goodbye and find a new marketing gimmick that doesn’t require audience participation. And Susan, if you’re reading this, check it out: your new persona is going whole hog with the mystical seer shtick. Cut yourself off from civilization, chart your horoscopes in a lavishly appointed cave using pen and ink, hand those hard copies over to your personal assistant who will then techno them up and whiz them out to your subscribers.
And for those who can no longer hope to make anonymous contact and show up looking for recognition? Be like the Mighty Oz, and have some elaborate, “Sorry, Susan Miller cannot take your call” type doorman while secretly spying on said visitor, just in case it is someone important, like Mallory, Nicole, Nick or Maria (did I get that last one right?) and you wanna hang out and show off your fabulous hidey-hole.
“astrology zone’s infrastructure”
I’m not sure if “astrology zone” is the website but I’m much happier believing that it refers to the ENTIRETY of astrology things in the Universe and basically that person is calling for the complete overhaul of an entire wizarding system, like the Ministry of Magic.
Also, this may interest the ear-pierced amongst you:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/202965627/misandry-h…
(full disclosure, yes that’s my shop, sorry for shilling my wares, Mama needs to eat)
Don’t be sorry! You make really lovely things!
THANK YOU! <3
Count me in as also not realizing that people don’t refrigerate tomatoes. Like, have they never tasted the joy of a cold tomato?
Hey does anyone want an update on the Rob Ford saga? He has a tumour now.
Wishing good luck for the treatment, and hoping they can save that poor tumor before Rob Ford metastasizes
“Take advantage of every single day.”
by doing crack and embezzling public funds!
The best temperature for tomatoes is “off the vine, in the sun.” Otherwise, I’ve always refrigerated ’em, just cause that’s what I’ve always done? I’m of the opinion that if I cook something and it’s delicious, who cares if there’s a “better” ingredient or way to handle it? Delicious is good enough for me.
Ew, I’m getting an ad right now with the copy “Mike Michaud [Maine’s Democratic candidate for governor] wants to give your tax dollars to illegal immigrants”
I was watching a bunch of old Ill Doctrine videos the other day (it’s my internet version of stress-reading), and every other goddamn one came preceded by an RNC ad. “There are still people in this country who believe in opportunity: we’re called Republicans.” I thought my goddamn head was going to explode. UP IN MY JAY SMOOTH, YOUTUBE? FUCKING FOR REAL?
Where did it appear on the page?
Top right corner. I keep refreshing hoping I’ll get something new, but it keeps coming back.
Yeah. . . I live above a flower shop, so I very rarely leave ANY produce out. Instant fruit flies. Thankfully nothing worse.* Last time I left a tomato out, I was letting a lovely yellow cherry tomato ripen on purpose so I could plant its seeds, and it was decimated by fruit flies. Just deflated.
I planted it anyway and it make a dozen beautiful sprouts that are growing happily in my IKEA greenhouse, so, thanks fruitflies? Sorry about the snifters of cheap brandy I put out for you to drown in.
*My apartment has no outdoor access whatsoever, but occasionally a roly-poly or inchworm will ride in on the flowers and elevate up to my floor via airvent, arriving on my carpet to the complete bewilderment of my pets.
ooh, thanks for the explanation on how to let a tomato go to seed! I did not know this and will totally try it come springtime!
Good luck! I have zero gardening cred–at the same time I planted the yellow cherry tomato, I also planted a red plum tomato that I’d grown, but it was not super ripe, not beleaguered by fruitflies, and did not sprout at all.
My fruitfly killing advice is on point though. Snifters. Cheap fruity brandy. Dead flies, every time.
Sweet vermouth/ madiera/ port etc. has a pretty high kill ratio in our house. Same principle, I imagine.
I am now going to have to go out and buy Tonex albums. This makes me happy and excited.
Good luck! I have zero gardening cred–at the same time I planted the yellow cherry tomato, I also planted a red plum tomato that I'd grown, but it was not super ripe, not beleaguered by fruitflies, and did not sprout at all.
My fruitfly killing advice is on point though. Snifters. Cheap fruity brandy. Dead flies, every time.
I have a Snapple-ish lid to click, yeah! But I haven't quite figured out how to juggle that and the treat yet.
She did AWESOME at "sit," today, btw! The hardest part was waiting for her to stop sitting so I could give the command again!
I read 'Self' by Yann Martel when I was 11 because I'd liked 'Life of Pi'. I remember the rape scene really upsetting me. Something about the way he described the protagonist changing gender didn't sit right either – I was fine with the concept but was unsettled by the execution.
I was definitely too young for it, and realised that as I was reading, but I wouldn't reread it again now.
Not a book, but I saw 'Pretty Woman' on video when I was about 6 and staying the night at my friend's house. It upset me so much that I couldn't sleep and ended up calling my parents to come pick me up (I didn't admit that that was why though).
Thank you for this! It's a lot to take in. The echo chamber comparison struck me especially.
Oh, yes, thank you for bringing up intersectionality! And I agree about being informed by people's lived experiences.
Thank you! It's a lot to take in, and I never knew that definition of racism.
It is indeed a lot to take in, so thank you so much for this! I'm curious about the "expats" thing, though? Does this somehow mean: white immigrant people = expats, while Poc immigrant people = well, immigrants? Incidentally, we're a bunch of mixed race kids (or yeah, with person A, an immigrant from LA) in a country with lots of European and East Asian/SouthEast Asian immigrants.
🙂
The "expats" thing… yeah. It's weird. I think relatively rich, white people who emigrate from North America/Western Europe (or that sort of location, you know?) to anywhere else at all in the world = "expats", while anyone who's economically disadvantaged and possibly from a place deemed Other is an "immigrant", particularly if that person is in a country where they're considered a PoC.
It's a bit hard to talk about without specific examples, y'know? I know, for example, some Thai people who have economic and social advantages in their home country, and they consider themselves and others like them expats if they settled elsewhere. English is the lingua franca of the social elite in Thailand.
The word "immigrant" implies, perhaps, nothingness, neediness, which is often considered distasteful in this unkind world. I consider myself a 2nd generation immigrant in Britain because my experience is really not like those who've lived here for generations, there's liminality, code-switching, two sets of manners, but it's also nothing like my parents having to adjust to a whole new language and culture and suddenly being a POC. I don't consider us "expats" because our lives have been shaped by generations financial hardship, even if we are now semi-comfortable.
What's your take on those words?
Hmmm…To be honest, I personally refer to all of them as immigrants. I've only thought of heroes of the woeful olden days as expats. This is the first time I've encountered the idea that they could have, and have, connotations. The things we learn everyday, as they say! 🙂
I am always in respectful awe with 1st generation immigrants. The culture shock, coping with surroundings and language and work and just everything. I sort of understand the two sets of manners you mentioned: since my parents are 2nd gen immigrants themselves, I see how cultures of their parents very much alive in them. Although I don't have the, let's say voice (?), to talk about suddenly being POC: it's the other way around in our family, I'm afraid. One set of gramps are Scot and Spanish, another is Japanese and Filipino.
Man Angus, why you got to ruin everything.