Kalief Browder and the THREE YEARS he spent on Rikers Island for literally no reason other than because the system is racist and broken:
With each day he spent in jail, Browder imagined that he was getting closer to trial. Many states have so-called speedy-trial laws, which require trials to start within a certain time frame. New York State’s version is slightly different, and is known as the “ready rule.” This rule stipulates that all felony cases (except homicides) must be ready for trial within six months of arraignment, or else the charges can be dismissed. In practice, however, this time limit is subject to technicalities. The clock stops for many reasons—for example, when defense attorneys submit motions before trial—so that the amount of time that is officially held to have elapsed can be wildly different from the amount of time that really has. In 2011, seventy-four per cent of felony cases in the Bronx were older than six months.
Mormon feminism, past and present:
In another room, 45 women were reading a seven-page, single-spaced timeline of Mormon feminist history. “This faith that we love,” said Colleen Goodsell when she finished reading, “sometimes it slaps us in the face.”
For Anne Wunderli, their greatest setback was when the church, in 1970, took control of the budget of the Relief Society, the church-wide women’s organization. Before then, women of the church raised their own money and decided how to spend it. “We went from an empowerment situation to an infantilizing situation,” said Wunderli. The others agreed.
literally the most boring question imaginable, you should start doing drugs or something to spice up your life:
Q. Stolen Scarf: Seven or eight years ago, when I was in graduate school, I was in a small group meeting and another member of the group forgot her scarf at a meeting at my home. I thought it was beautiful, and not thinking much about it, I neglected to return it to her. I knew it was wrong, and I felt a little guilty about it, but she never asked if anyone had seen it, or knew where it was. Today, as I was pulling warm clothes out of my storage, I found the scarf and immediately felt a little guilty. What should I do with this scarf? I could send it back to her, but would that be weird? Do I fess up?
I used the firing of the racist dude as an excuse to get satellite radio, which I have always wanted and enjoyed in rental cars, so I listen to Hits 1 literally every second I am in my car (Morning MashUp 4 Lyfe), and as a result, have heard the new One Direction single MORE THAN A FEW TIMES.
The death of Maria Fernandes and the struggles of part-time workers:
“The image that these fast-food empires create of ‘Well, most of our people are just high school students and they are just trying to make a couple of extra dollars after they get out of school every day’ is a total bullshit,” says James Reif, partner at Gladstein, Reif & Meginniss, LLP. His firm is suing McDonald’s in a wage-theft case.
“Most part-time workers don’t want to work part-time. They want to work full-time,” says Reif. “If you look at McDonald’s workforce, the vast majority of people are not only not of high school age, they could be in their 30s or 40s or whatever. They could’ve been working there for years and they are always looking to work more time.”
I know Bugsy Siegel didn’t actually look like Warren Beatty, but I always EXPECT him to. Also, maybe these people know who killed him, but probably not:
Robbie, a 71-year-old realtor, hands me a sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings about his dad, Moe (“Czar of Vegas,” reads one headline). A treasured business card is embossed with Moe’s name and a glossy red bird. “The Flamingo,” it says. “Vice-president.” In the 1930s and ’40s, Bee and Moe lived a glamorous L.A. life. They had a huge Beverly Hills mansion with maids upstairs and down, a Cadillac custom painted to match Bee’s copper hair, a 5-carat diamond that hung on a chain around Bee’s neck. Now Robbie’s parents and their fortune are long gone, and he is the keeper of the artifacts they left behind. His second wife, Renee, joins us at the table as he pulls out a taped two-hour interview that his mother granted to documentary filmmakers in 1993. Most of the interview ended up on the cutting room floor, but there’s good stuff there, Robbie says. Next he offers me a ragged Xerox copy of a 79-page typewritten book proposal, which his mother called Bugsy’s Little Lunatic. The book was not written; the proposal never went to market.
The Toast was proud to sponsor this all-female ski movie. In that I sponsored it on our behalf and then told Mallory about it substantially later. I like skiing, and women, and ski movie, and they are so dude-heavy with, like, one “girl who skis like a dude,” I could take it no longer. SHRUG EMOTICON CREED ARMS.
Tell us more about The Toast sponsorship of this movie! Is there product placement? Do the skiiers warm up from the cold by reading some Two Monks Invent?
Our logo appears in the credits, and now I have a signed poster en route to me. I own basically all the ski movies, as we live in a ski town and host ski drifters, and they are either COMPLETELY bro-y or they are the new wave of ski movies which are more “spiritual,” which just means they have vague references to purported Native American legends and unrelated shots of very old Tibetan men drinking tea. However, the latter occasionally do include “A Tribe Called Red” songs, which gets you through.
If you like watching women jump off crazy things and make beautiful, sinuous lines in powder, please consider watching the lady ski movie.
I worked as a ski lift operator for Red Mountain in Rossland, BC for six years; that mountain’s reputation as an extreme backcountry paradise is well known in skier circles and the local women would KILL IT every day of the week AND do so with fucking babies slung on their backs.
Oh my goodness, now I miss that job…the stories, the shenanigans!
Nicole, you prepared us with the intro “most boring question / do some drugs” and I confess, I doubted you. But alas, it is incredible that that is the only thing weighing down this woman’s karma? I saw a dude on the train get up w/o his umbrella this morning and my 1st instinct was “Ooo that looks like hard-core rain prevention DIBS if he doesnt reach back” and then the much nicer woman next to me tapped him and reminded him to pick it up.
OMG AHP ALERT
http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/anna-ma…
ahhhhhhh I love Anna May Wong. I read this essay last night and was equal parts delighted (by AHP’s excellent research/writing) and pissed off (with longstanding racism in Hollywood). Literally every time I see an Asian person on TV I feel the need to tweet excitedly about it. And I basically never see any in big movies, so.
That whole article is so fantastic, as is AHP, as is Anna May Wong, etc. etc., Hollywood is a cesspool.
THANK YOU!! I sometimes think I should set up a Google alert for AHP so I’ll never miss anything by mistake.
you can subscribe via RSS to her on buzzfeed so you get all her posts!
The author of the New Yorker piece on Kaleef Browder was interviewed on Democracy Now this morning, along with his lawyer. He is a brave young man. They offered him several plea deals, all of which he rejected. He did not commit any crime and would not plead just to get out of jail. It is a great segment, and it even includes a few audio clips of Kaleef discussing what happened. A companion piece for the New Yorker article if you will.
(In related news, the only celebrity I’ve ever spotted in NYC since moving here two years ago is Amy Goodman (twice!) My husband doesn’t think that counts as a “celebrity” sighting, but you better believe he got all giddy last week when she walked past us on 23rd Street.)
I also moved here two years ago and have seen Jason Jones from The Daily Show, Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones, and Cristin Milioti, AKA The Dead Mother from HIMYM. Plus Piers Morgan filming a street segment, and a number of people on purpose (chiefly Stephen Colbert and Clark Gregg). When I was just visiting, I saw Rob Huebel on the street, then saw him perform at UCB the next night.
Basically, everyone I’ve seen by chance is TV famous, if that. And you know what? THAT’S OK.
I would become completely flustered if I saw Amy Goodman! She rules! Four years in NYC and the only celebs I’ve seen are Darryl Hammond, Stephen Root, and the guy who plays Gary Busey in Point Break Live! It’s a glamorous life.
That story is awful and appalling, from the totally wrongful arrest (“oh jk the robbery was actually two weeks ago” WHAT THE HELL) to the dragged out court dates to the prison treatment. The court appointed lawyer wouldn’t even go see him at Riker’s?! Everything about this whole system is so broken and fucked up. How do you even start to fix it?
And the “victim” apparently left the country shortly after Kalief’s arrest, which is the likely reason they kept pushing back a trial date. JUST LET THE KID GO! In what world is it better and more just to let a teenager rot in solitary confinement in a notoriously brutal correctional facility rather than waiving bail and sending him home to await trial? It’s appalling, and sadly Kalief’s story is not an aberration.
Yeah, probably the world where your candidacy for DA or State Attorney General or whatever rests on the back of how many successful convictions you got at court.
I’m only an occasional visitor, but my only celebrity spottings thus far have been Carson Daly and Sam Waterston.
I have seen Sam Waterston both of the 2 times I’ve been to New York. Does he just lurk on streetcorners to give tourists a tiny thrill, or what?
I lived in NYC for two years, and the only two celebrity sightings I had were 1) Parker Posey walking her dog, and then 2) Parker Posey walking her dog again, somewhere else, while I was telling my friend about how I had once seen Parker Posey walking her dog.
I saw Natalie Portman at BAM once, a few rows ahead of me, and I (mostly quietly) FAH-REAKED OUT. My mom and I bumped into Martha Stewart. I wasn’t paying attention but my mom was pretty excited. And I saw Alexis Bledel walk into a bank!
As for like, on purpose sightings: I saw Alan Cumming get pretty naked when he was in Macbeth. And I was in the second row (the only time I’ve ever paid to be so close to the stage) to see Orlando Bloom as Romeo in Romeo&Juliet last year, and the thirteen year old in me wanted to throw my bra at him.
Sadly, I have not seen Benedict Cumberbatch ANY of the times he’s been in NYC, DESPITE the fact that I always dress super nicely for our inevitable meet cute.
My first and only spontaneous celebrity sighting in three years of living in NYC: a group of LARPers with lightsabers chatting to Alec Baldwin in a douchey navy blue country clubbish sport jacket with gold buttons over casual clothing, walking his dogs with his heavily pregnant wife in Washington Square Park. A couple of weeks later, one of my friends spotted his wife (whose name, apropos of nothing, is Hilaria) again with her new baby.
I moved here just over two years ago – my celebrity sightings are Alec Baldwin (he cut in line at a bakery/coffeeshop because of course), Kate Upton (so tall!) and Glenn Close (looking glamorous in a giant black coat).
OH MY GOD the other Prudie question where the woman gained weight and told a coworker she was pregnant?!?! I mean, NEVER ASK A WOMAN IF SHE’S PREGNANT. Is this not just a rule of humanity? But what a mortifying situation. Seriously, stop asking people if they are pregnant.
I got asked that at a party this summer. Or, more precisely, a woman I know pointed at me from across the room, pointed at her stomach, rubbed it in a circle, and made an eyebrows-up inquisitive face at me.
In other news, I never wore that dress again.
Ugh!! I’m sorry. That is a truly obnoxious way to “ask” an obnoxious, rude, nunyabusiness question.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. Also, I would have taken that as “hey, this food is yummy” and mimed putting something in my mouth.
I would have mimed the middle finger, so you are probably a better person that I am
Oh, not that I am a better person, just that I really would not have gotten it!
Actually wait, if I had understood the question, I probably would have made an “I don’t understand” face and kept trying to get her to repeat herself, and when she finally point blank asked if I was pregnant, said “oh no! why do you think so?” and kind of forced her to say that I looked like I had gained a few, after which I would have acted really offended.
This is the best response. Can we make this mandatory?
I actually got the idea from Atwood’s “Blind Assassin.” The narrator describes how when interacting with the extremely wealthy and rude people she runs across, the best way to get them to stop saying something rude is to ask “I’m sorry, what did you say?” and make them repeat it louder.
I think she figured it out when I first looked stunned and then said, “Nope, that’s just my belly. Just my belly.”
OH MY GOD.
Almost all of us have been there. I got asked if I was pregnant — or actually told I must be — by someone after a yoga class, when I was wearing one of those fuzzy hoodies with a pocket over the tummy (never again). ALL the women around me told the guy off, though, so that made me feel a little better at least. Ladies in solidarity!
But you simply *mustn’t* let rude questions stop you from wearing the most comfortable clothing on the planet!
Sometimes I get offered seats on the subway because people think I’m pregnant. This is especially day-ruining because I’ve had friends who were actually, visibly pregnant in the city & were never offered seats.
I had a work colleague ask me when I was due. My daughter was five months old. And the colleague was an OB nurse.
I’ve been asked this multiple times (what can I say, I gain weight in my tummy!). Once I tried to gracefully reply by saying, “No! But you must have thought so because I’m glowing.” To which the asker reply “No, it’s because you look like you are.” So, there’s that.
Oh my god. “Here, I am offering you a graceful exit from this tunnel of doom you have constructed for yourself.” “Nope, I’m just going to keep running into the lights of the approaching train, thanks.”
Mormon feminism is SO INTERESTING, thank you. (And Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is super nice and super smart, in case anyone’s wondering. I don’t know her well, but one of my BFFs was a PhD student of hers and has literally nothing but gushy, wonderful things to say about her.)
LTU is a longtime HERO of mine from my history-major days, and it CHEESES ME OFF when she is not given proper attribution for that “well-behaved women” quote.
Right?! Have you read her essay about this? It’s so interesting.
I love blowing students’ minds when I explain the context of that quote. “Actually she was talking about how the lives of women who didn’t make it into court records are lost to history, and that she is working to recover the histories of those ‘well-behaved women.'”
Wait, they made a movie of The Midwife’s Tale?! Why was I not informed?
It’s really good!
That fast food worker piece is very sad and infuriating. Like, of course all these [white] [male] baby boomers don’t think adults work in fast food. They themselves only had to do it one or two summers before they got REAL jobs and lived an idyllic middle class life that they TOTALLY deserved and that they think still exists but that basically doesn’t.
ugh yes, I have family friends who talk about how food service jobs are “supposed to be a stepping stone” and they made $2.13 an hour for a summer and blah blah blah… completely ignoring the fact that $2.13 got you a lot further back then than $7.25 gets you now, and how much easier it was to find “real” jobs after working in food service back then.
and that one summer of making $2.13 an hour could pay for an entire year at a state university
I read somewhere that 1 hour of minimum-wage work in 1970 could pay for an entire college credit (on average), whereas now it takes 30 hours of work – almost an entire week – to pay for 1 college credit. I have no source for this but I believe it unconditionally because it sounds scary and gross and ugh, I will believe anything scarygross about the economy right now.
I know someone who paid her 1980s college tuition with part-time work for a house cleaning service. Better than fast-food wages, but not by much. Steep tuition increases began in 1988.
Christ, the part about people hiding the fact that they have children because they couldn’t get hired if their employer thought they had literally any external responsibilities that they might have to schedule around– no words. Employers are basically like “you need to structure your entire life to my convenience, and in return I’m going to treat you like shit.”
The minimum wage issue is thankfully starting to get some publicity, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to workplace problems. There needs to be a wholesale reexamination of worker-employer relations and the value of low-wage workers.
Also, the fast food industry totally and systematically encourages the idea that ‘real’ adults don’t work in fast food.
Okay, the Mormon feminism article talks about them singing “Woman, Arise” which is from the Utah Suffrage Songbook which is antique and difficult to find, but the fchorus goes:
Freedom’s daughter, rouse from slumber;
See, the curtains are withdrawn,
Which so long thy mind hath shrouded,
Lo! thy day begins to dawn.
Woman, ‘rise! thy penance o’er,
Sit thou in the dust no more;
Seize the scepter, hold the van,
Equal with thy brother, man.
And you sing it to the tune of this epic, super-Mormon hymn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4vJqC9TA9o
Sing it with your friends sometime. It’s great fun.
Let us now praise Western states with tiny populations that didn’t really want to let their wimmenfolk vote but were at least pragmatic enough to understand why it might benefit, y’know, everybody.
Wooo, Wyoming!
Utah’s suffrage history is kind of funny, because they actually gave women the right to vote in 1870, a fact that many Utahns like to state proudly, BUUUTT really it was just being used as a tool in the great polygamy war between the Federal Government and Brigham Young. Congress figured that if Utah women could vote they would vote to abolish polygamy, but NOPE, turns out a lot of them were pretty into polygamy. So then they took their right to vote away and they had to organize suffrage campaigns like everybody else.
So yeah, go Wyoming basically.
And this is why the Toast is the Best.
That is an excellent chorus and added to my mental library of Hymns This Atheist Likes Anyway.
I have just tried singing it(on my own, no friends present) and it ALSO goes to “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” and Handel’s “Austria”, which is an equally epic tune and one sadly tainted by being the tune for “Deutschland Ueber Alles”.
The 1D song has such an 80’s background vibe and I don’t even know if I like it, but I DO know that it is going to end up on my phone on repeat because that is the nature of my playlists.
The most surreal part of the Kalief Bowder article is the New Yorker cartoon about cavemen inventing golf right in the middle of it.
(Not the most awful or heart-wrenching part, I mean, just a part that’s super-weird, and reminds me about what the New Yorker’s audience is.)
EVERY DAMN TIME I’m reading a great, heavy New Yorker article, one of those unintelligible, ridiculous cartoons pops up and I just want to scream!! Can’t they leave them off the more dramatic pieces?
There’s sometihng sort of deeply gross about it. I keep finding myself trying to imagine the sort of person for whom an article like this and a cartoon about cavemen playing golf occupy the same cognitive space, and that person creeps me the hell out.
It is gross. I mean, imagine if you were reading about a friend or family member and one of those idiotic cartoons assaulted your eyeballs? I’d have to throw my computer out of the window.
I get the New Yorker on my Kindle, which is great b/c you can read a whole article at once (without “flip to page whatever”) and all of the cartoons are together in one section.
I was rereading the Cameron Todd Willingham piece the other day and found myself getting extremely upset every time I saw one of those cartoons. There were like six of them! In an article about a guy who was executed for setting a fire and killing his children based on bogus arson “expertise”! Who had a real arson expert go to the judicial system a week before his execution all, “Uh, this was totally an accidental fire” and was brushed off so they killed him anyway!
Great article, but fuck off to those cartoons.
Now I’m curious about ski movies–any recs?
As far as I know the only ski movie I’ve ever seen was Snowboard Academy (which I had to google because I thought it was called Ski Academy)
The only one I can think of is Aspen Extreme, which I’ve never seen, but I have online friends who are hardcore Paul Gross fans and will see anything he does even though the movie is reportedly terrible but it does have a young Paul Gross and I am told this makes it worthwhile if you carry enough love for him. But if you already love him, you already know about the movie, soooooo…
I suppose you could consider Better Off Dead to be kind of about skiing. Sort of. In places.
Because I don’t want to be at work today AT ALL, I decided to take this opportunity to Google “movies about skiing” and got this article from Men’s Journa (ugh, sorry), which lists their top eleven (eleven? wtf) ski movies, and Better Off Dead is the second one listed, so I feel somewhat vindicated by my suggestion. Of course, it also lists Aspen Extreme, so maybe this is a list of not necessarily the top eleven movies, but rather, eleven is all they could find and they didn’t want that last one to feel bad if they made a top-ten list.
Yassss young Paul Gross. That one looks familiar? IDK. Clearly I need to watch it again and bask in his beauty.
Your GIF is amazing and wonderful.
Aspen Extreme is amazing. Full stop. I always forget Paul Gross is in it when we pull it out for our season kick off fondue-and-Aspen-Extreme night.
Oh, good! Glad to hear that. Maybe I’ll give it a try…
Please keep clicking on Mens Journal you guys, I know it’s the man cave, but they actually pay me sometimes!
There aren’t a ton of places where women can get paid to write about adventure things and any time I get to scraw my girl name all over the walls of the man cave it’s a pretty happy day.
I was going to say Johnny Tsunami, but that’s about snowboarding.
Yeah, I’m realizing I know nothing about the ski movie genre aside from the South Park episode that made fun of them, which made them seem like most other 80s/90s uncool teens vs. cool teens movies.
This is one of the most amazing segments I’ve seen – and unfortunately, I only saw it for the first time yesterday after JP was killed in an avalanche. But, http://vimeo.com/32863936
Older Warren Miller movies are good (he sold the company to his son in 2003ish and things went downhill pretty fast). Teton Gravity Research puts out some solid stuff every year and if the Banff Mountain Film Festival has a tour stop near you, their short films will range from nature porn to inspiring stories to weird Australians.
did… did someone actually ask Prudie about the manners of Ms. Delano vis a vis discussing the events of FDR’s death with Eleanor Roosevelt?
Very relevant to their everyday life, I’m sure.
I know! I thought the same thing! Whatever happened to “Agree to disagree”? What kind of time do you have on your hands to write into Dear Prudie about that?
I am tied between wondering how anyone can have that much time to write into Dear Prudie about questions of historical manners, versus wanting to high-five the shit out of the writer because – I MEAN COME ON, THAT TAKES SOME HISTORY GEEK CHUTZPAH.
The entire letter was odd, but what really threw me was the last line, about the “future relative of a future dignitary, deceased in similar circumstances”. Are…are you asking hypothetically? Are you assembling your own political dynasty? Are you a time traveller who has earthshattering knowledge about future political scandals?
I want to know, but also very, very much do not want to know.
“I am the wife of a dignitary who is having an affair. I plan to give him a slow-acting poison that will kill him while he’s with his mistress, then ask about the circumstances of his death as if I have no idea. What should people tell me? I need to know so I can judge them for being impolite if they say too much.”
Now I want there to be an etiquette column solely about judging the manners of historical figures in actual historical situations. “Historical Judgments”, maybe?
Would read. Would read constantly. Would be happy to write, actually.
Dear Histry,
I have been invited to appear before the Pope, Emperor Charles V and assembled members of the Holy Roman Empire in the city of Worms in a few weeks. I’ve been promised Safe Passage, but I know these things go on forever and it’s probably going to get pretty awkward because we have some very different doctrinal views. Also, holding the diet there might cause middle schoolers to laugh for centuries afterward. I’m feeling pretty mixed about attending – what do you think I should do?
Sincerely,
95 Theses (Still Not Sorry)
I’d subscribe.
OMG please pitch this!
That New Yorker article is fucking killing me. I met a guy in Philadelphia who was in jail for ten months just waiting to be charged, before his case was dismissed and he was released. (The police had grabbed the wrong “black guy who happened to be nearby when a crime was committed”, surprisingly.) Ten months without even being charged, and then a, “Oops, nevermind, we meant to arrest someone else, sorry,” from the state.
Can you imagine trying to keep a job, an apartment, anything like that for ten months? Any kind of life plan you have for yourself that could withstand ten months of complete interruption?
And I don’t really have any doubt that prosecutors are basically letting guys languish in prison in the hopes that they’ll just confess to something in order to put an end to it.
Fuck.
That whole article was utterly amazing to me. I really cannot believe this, except that I totally can believe it. I don”t have any words for this. No amount of money could make up for this, even if the state does end up giving some kind of shitty “compensation.”
I hope that the kind of counseling he’s getting is PTSD treatment, but I’m similarly concerned about how generally bad we are at treating PTSD. This whole fucking system is an awful mess.
It’s really unconscionable that people can be kept in jail for so long (or at all) just awaiting trial because they can’t make bail.
Don’t they have to release you after 48 hours if they can’t charge you? That’s what The Good Wife tells me, at least.
Yeah, I don’t know, that’s what i thought, too. I guess there’s 1) probably more to the rule than that, and 2) probably more to it when you can’t afford anyone but a public defender.
that’s also what the closer told me!
My sister’s junior year of college, she lived with a girl whose boyfriend was going through the exact same thing as Kaleef Brouder, almost verbatim. He was arrested on suspicion of robbery when he wasn’t even in the city that night, mostly because he was a black kid living in a well-off white neighborhood. She’s tracked him bouncing around different prisons but I don’t know what’s happened to him since she didn’t keep in touch with her roommate. Daquan, I hope you’re okay.
The NYC (? possibly just in general?) legal system is not as tidy as Law and Order would have you believe.
omg thats breaking my heart
In related news about black kid in a white neighborhood, this is making me want to throw things, “NYPD officers in patrol cars trailed a group of black teens walking through Park Slope and told them over their loudspeakers to “get out of the neighborhood,” a resident who witnessed the incident said.”
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20141001/park-slo…
But what about the Dear Prudence letter from the woman whose boyfriend insists that she flash her breasts at truckers when they’re on the road and then doesn’t talk to her for days when she refuses?
And then the live chat participant who chimed in to say that “there are ways to talk through it to see if there’s a solution within the partner’s comfort zone” like hmm you’re uncomfortable showing your titties to total strangers who are driving past you in massive 18-wheelers? That’s kinda silly but we can work through it! How would you feel about showing just one titty? What if it were a smaller truck? What if it were both titties but you were wearing a Ronald Reagan mask?
I am going to burn everything, and then take to the sea.
Again, my inner Advice Lady always says DUMP THE DUDE. It’s an all-purpose advice that solves most all problems!
How…? wait pause. WHY is that a recurring problem you’re having w your significant other? Your bf doesn’t own your breasts, so he accordingly cannot offer them to strangers driving trucks. End of question.
Oh my goodness, I had not clicked through to see the next page, so I missed that.
I think the other person’s point was that if your partner says “hey, I have this fantasy, would you be willing to make it happen” and it is outside your comfort zone, you can explore further to see if there is a middle ground that you can find. But making a demand that you do something sexual and then pouting when you refuse is not a request, nor is it something to be tolerated in a partner. And when they bring up all the things they do for you, they are being manipulative. Burn it with fire.
That’s my whole problem with Dan Savage’s “GGG” movement (if movement is even the correct term). People have taken it to mean that you have to find ways to be comfortable with all of your partner’s sexual desires, or you are a bad partner.
I think people who interpret it that way are misunderstanding what he’s saying – being “game” isn’t about violating your boundaries just because your partner asks; it’s about being open to hearing your partner’s needs/kinks without immediately shutting down the conversation and, if the kinks are within reason and you’re up for it, maybe giving some of them a try.
To me, it’s a pretty common-sensical approach to accommodating and being accommodated – but I’m not ignoring that it’s an idea filtered through a broader societal message that women should be self-sacrificing if it means making other people happy, which is why I think a lot more women internalize it that way than men.
You are all extremely correct. Girl, dump him.
Also, I know most truck drivers would probably not object, but normally when a person exposes themselves to someone without that someone’s consent, that is Not Okay. Ladies taking their tops off has a different cultural context then dudes whipping it out on the train, but I got all indignant on the behalf of strangers who might not want to be part to be part of her boyfriend’s fantasy.
ALSO — Prudie just threw in there that she used to have a boyfriend who insisted they have PIV sex while he was driving???
Not to mention, it’s extremely common for truck drivers to take their partners or even their kids with them. The idea of truckers as these horny, amoral beasts who OF COURSE are male and OF COURSE want to see random strangers’ breasts has some classist aspects to it, I think.
Man, they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel at Dear Prudence, aren’t they?
Send the scarf back with a note saying “I found this cleaning out my closet; I think it’s yours. It must have somehow gotten packed up with my things years ago” Done.
If you have coworkers who pressure you to drink, get a club soda and cranberry juice. Or a Coke. Or club soda with a twist. Or basically anything that isn’t water in a water glass. It is stupid that people pressure other adults to drink, but there are easy ways to avoid it without having to resort to telling them your medical history.
honesly, adults pressuring other adults to drink has got to be one of the biggest fun-killers for me. Like – I’m in my late 30s, I know what I want to do, I don’t need peer pressure or drinking games to have fun. JFC.
I’d probably just elect to drink water (why put on a ruse for a bunch of jerks), and when they get annoying about why i’m not drinking I would give the hairiest eyeball ever known. And not say a word. Just sip my water slowly.
That’s basically my strategy.
That is also an effective way to handle it.
If I am being charitable, I think a lot of the “go on and have a drink” pressure is from people who want to make sure that their fellow event-goers are having a good time. The fact that a person can have a good time without consuming vast quantities of alcohol is not something that some people have a firm grasp on.
This is why I always make it very clear that when we’re playing Bad Movie drinking games, you have to drink when the rules say you do, but your drink does not have to be booze (tea, coffee, water, sports drink, etc.). I don’t care why–maybe you’re driving home, maybe it’s a medical thing, maybe you’re just not feeling it tonight, whatever. No means no.
When I was straight out of college and working at a startup that drank ALL THE TIME, I didn’t drink with my coworkers because I didn’t like to drink with people I wasn’t comfortable around. This is, of course, not a reason that you can tell people when they ask why you’re not drinking, but you SHOULDN’T NEED A REASON, GAH. I ended up baiting the people who kept pressuring me to drink by ordering drinks that looked less and less like alcohol until I just started ordering tea. This was fun, but in retrospect I wish I had just gone to my boss’s office and said: There may be alcoholics at this company. There may be people with health problems. There may be people who are pregnant, or people who don’t drink alcohol for religious reasons, and it is NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS WHY THEY DON’T DRINK, STOP ASKING.
(Ahem. It is possible I have gotten that out of my system and can go back to work now.)
I feel like that would be a great answer.
Q – Why aren’t you drinking?
A – Because I was taught that it is unprofessional to become inebriated around one’s coworkers. [sips water]
I stopped drinking more than 20 years ago, and quite literally the only time I’ve experienced anything remotely like pressure was when my mother pitched a minor hissy fit because I wasn’t going to drink the champagne for the toast at some family event, probably some significant anniversary or birthday, can’t remember. Luckily her passive-aggressive way of doing this was to have the fit at one of my siblings, so I could ignore it. (I toasted in water instead of champagne.)
It may be that when people hear that I don’t drink, they assume I’m a recovering alcoholic (I’m not), and they respect that. For whatever reason, I’ve never experienced it as a social problem.
Here is another terrible story about someone being thrown in jail without a fair and speedy trial, in case you had managed to brighten your day a little bit after reading the New Yorker article.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform-pri…
Everything about both of these stories makes me so, so sad. But yeah, being in jail for a year at a time without being indicted? That is inexcusable.
The idea that the 6 months is a pseudo weird 6 months that makes 4 actual weeks= 1 week or whatever is so awful. It should be 2 months to trial or something in real time, and if the judge and prosecutor can’t get their act together, oh well.
Also, Riker’s is a hell hole and always cold or hot and while I’m glad I went out there to help the NYPL provide library services for a while in grad school. Because of being understaffed and correction higher ups, they don’t serve RNDC, so Browder probably didn’t even receive library services at all, though he is supposed to. There was nothing more heart breaking than when the 16 and 17 year olds came to take out books. New York needs to get their act together and raise the age to 18 like most other states. Them and I think North Carolina are the outliers and it’s terrible. (though this would be awful for a 43 year old to lose 3 years of his life)
Ugh I’ll stop now, this is too long a comment as is.
Paraphrasing from the Democracy Now interview with the author this morning: Because Kalief was in solitary, he wasn’t able to attend classes offered at Rikers. He said the COs would occasionally slip worksheets under the door, which he would dutifully and carefully complete, only to find that no one came to collect them/review them/give any sort of feedback or guidance.
In one of the jails we could drop off books for people in the Bing, I believe it was GRVC, so if there had been library access to RNDC, maybe something could have been worked out. Clearly, solitary is torture no matter what but only giving them a couple of worksheets to occupy their time is beyond terrible. It would not be impossible to ensure that incarcerated people had some access to reading material.
NC is the only state in the nation that is *required* to try people beginning at the age of 16 as adults. A few other states can choose to do so or not, depending on the circumstances of the crime and the general dickishness of the DA’s office, but in North Carolina the entire category of “minor” ceases to exist upon your 16th birthday, full-on Disney From Hell style. (When it comes to criminal offenses. Obviously we don’t give 16-year-olds any of the responsibilities or privileges of adulthood. We just agree that there’s never any reason not to throw them in prison.)
Tireless lobbying on the part of the legal profession and the citizenry has *finally* yielded a new law that provides pre-trial diversion options to 16-18 year-olds arrested for nonviolent crimes, which means you no longer necessarily have to do motherfucking *time* for graffiti-tagging the abandoned buildings in your neighborhood. Huzzah.
that’s so awful. My dad was/ is involved with the effort to raise the age from 17 to 18 in Massachusetts and if it was that hard in MA, I can only imagine how difficult it was in NC. Glad that it’s better, but that is such a terrible low bar.
Though prosecutor and judge discretion might be somewhat better, but given black kids are more likely to be charged as adults if that’s an option, it’s not good enough (which you undoubtedly know).
ALSO omg DO NOT READ THIS unless you are impervious to itching and have a strong stomach for someone who scratched into HER BRAIN
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/the-…
Good god, every time I repress the memory of that article someone posts the link again! I still don’t understand how it would be possible to do that, but I’m not willing to think about it that hard.
Yeah, this article just will not die. It’s cool guys, I was never ever going to forget it after I read it the first time, we can stop posting it. (Just kidding, sort of…I think Atul Gawande is the best writer the NYer has and his articles are never anything except fascinating.)
I only read your comment and my entire scalp just started itching WHY
OH MY GOD that is terrifying
This is nothing to do with any of the links above, but I feel like Kristen Stewart stuff is always welcome here, yes? So this just now showed up on my Tumblr dash and I thought it needed to be seen by my fellow Toasties. Has anyone tried this?
Um, accurate for me at least.
Good one.
But obviously Kristen Stewart is AWESOMESEXUAL
So, you guys, I made the mistake of reading that piece about the Air France crash that was in yesterday’s round-up, and now I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD. I had nightmares about it last night, seriously. I can’t stop imagining what it was like for the pilots at the very end when they realized just how royally they’d fucked up and that there was nothing they could do to avoid the crash. The one pilot saying, “We’re dead” just before they hit the water keeps replaying over and over in my head. Then I start thinking about what it must have been like for the passengers on board, and the fact that so many of the bodies are still sitting at the bottom of the ocean. UGH. I have never been particularly scared of flying but this story just won’t leave me alone.
I know this is a late response but I wanted to try to comfort you a bit- I had my stepdad, who is a commercial pilot for a US- based airline, read that article, and he was flabbergasted. He gave me a litany of reasons why such problems are extremely unlikely to occur in the US:
– the US has much higher standards for pilots, so someone with as little experience as the pilot in the article would never be flying a commercial plane here. US-based airlines also have high yearly “flight hours” requirements
– Boeing planes (most commonly used here) are less automated than Airbus and the pilots are used to taking manual control of them frequently
– most pilots in the US are military veterans, so they have experience dealing with unusual and emergency situations and so are less likely to panic
– the pilots are frequently retrained so they know how to handle emergency situations, including the one in the article (stalling)
Hope that makes you feel better!
Aw, thank you so much (and thank your stepdad for me). That does help. Like I said before, I’m actually not too scared of flying normally, but for some reason that article really stuck in my head for days afterward. I’m glad to know that U.S. airlines have high standards for their pilots.
When I was in high school, I coveted my best friend’s winter hat. She wouldn’t lend it to me, ever. She wouldn’t tell me where she got it.
Finally one day she was hungry and I bought her lunch in exchange for her hat.
I called it my “birthright for a bowl of soup” hat. She always regretted it and I should have totally given it back to her, but I never did.
Then my ex-husband took it.
Otherwise I would probably give it back to her.
I love that you sponsored an all-female ski film. LOVE.
Does anyone have any advice for being not-annoyed when the pink permeates into yet another place this October? I’m drafting my “I support domestic violence awareness month” FB post, but it was on my employer’s intranet landing page this morning. Literally the first thing I see when I get to work, before the coffee can even kick in, and it was all I could do to suppress a hiss in my cubicle.
(Appropriate disclaimer about how much we all hate CANCER and want to see it gone. I’m just a monster who is annoyed with all the ways this “movement” has gone.)
I really hate the whole pinkwashing too. I also really hate the nebulous “awareness” raising that contains no facts or information. We all know breast cancer exists, good job. This morning I actually looked up the stats on cancer death rates because I was curious, which made me feel well-armed to reply to those posts (cancer in general is the #2 killer of women, of the different types of cancer, lung cancer is the #1 killer of women, though it can vary by ethnicity). But I have also found that on FB and Twitter, liberal use of the “I don’t want to see this” button or muting hashtags is very satisfying. I don’t have to see the thing I don’t want to see, and I don’t have to be the person who makes a social media post complaining about how other people’s social media content isn’t up to my standards.
Agreed 100% on all counts. The pink washing is horrible.
If anything needs an “awareness” movement, it’s women’s heart attacks and the very different form they take from men’s — not breast cancer. Heart attacks are the leading killer of women, not breast cancer, ugh.
NB Women don’t feel a chest pain so much as nausea, insomnia, and generalized weakness *that is unlike other such symptoms they have ever felt before*, as well as possibly pressure in the chest, but not the classic “chest pain” that men get.
Yes! I actually think it would be great to transform October from “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” to “Women’s Health Awareness Month” and teach things like that very fact. And the fact that a lot of diseases/illnesses that affect women are not very well studied/understood, either because they only affect women or because the assumption is that they affect women in the exact same way as men. Or, you know, the fact that the standard size of some medical devices is actually too large for the average woman, because it is designed to treat the average man (e.g. this article about artificial hearts too big for the average woman). Or even just taking the tiny step beyond “cancer is bad” to “cancer is bad, and here is how you can access screenings for various forms of cancer”.
Or, hey, even “Domestic Violence Awareness Month”, which has been in October since the 1980s, and which is a thing that might well kill fewer women if there was more “awareness”.
That’s the thing I’ve been grumbling about under my breath all morning, which is really great for my productivity when it comes to filling out this spreadsheet, let me tell you.
I think you could legit consider domestic violence to be part of women’s health issues, but I agree that it would also be great to see a lot more in the public about domestic violence, how to spot it, how to stop it, etc. I would fully support pink NFL uniforms if they came with PSAs about DV during commercial breaks.
Wow! I didn’t know that they were different! So yeah, I’d say we could do with more “awareness”! :-O
Whoever edited/wrote the Wikipedia article seems to agree with you. 🙂 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_awareness
The boring scarf question was also posted in one of Carolyn Hax’s live chats. I read too many advice columns.
Given that I turned to Carolyn when I despaired over one-straw-too-many of Prudie’s sex-shaming, kind-shaming, everything-shaming answers, I’m going to assume that she gave a superior answer? 😛
I hate it when businesses get in on cancer advertising. I once went to a deli with my mom, who had terminal cancer, only to find all the sandwich makers wearing hats imploring us to be aware of cancer. It was even printed on the cups! I assume the entire setup was designed by people who forgot that sometimes people with cancer want a goddamn sandwich.
And that’s a reply to ThatOtherWench above! Lotsa buttons.
Dudefriend just sent me this cool article. I said I’d probably trade my first born child for a pink pistachio peppercorn cookie, but proooobably not my part of my social security number or finger print.
What would you trade for pink pistachio peppercorn cookies?
Oh I walked past that this weekend & did not understand what was going on! I would definitely tell someone the last 4 of my social for a pink peppercorn pistachio cookie. Yum.
Here’s in insane thing happening on everyblock/one of the many beaches near my new house http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime-posts/sep30-a…
rabbits committing suicide because they’re not kosher! Santeria! Magic hats! All in my back yard!
The shortened URL for that Bugsy Siegel piece is literally mobster-murder-moll-secret which made me want to read it even MORE.
Ok I know this is more of a Cocktail Hour thread thing and apologies for hijacking but…is anyone in or around London THIS FRIDAY 3rd Oct and want 2 FREE tickets to see Xerxes by Handel at the English National Opera? See http://www.eno.org/xerxes. They are good, dress circle seats but I can’t go. I just want someone to have them. Please reply if you want them. Alice Coote is singing. She’s apparently amazing. xxx
Thanks for the link! Just watched a couple from SF Ballet rock through the Don Q act 3 pas de deux and variations. Very cool.
That is an excellent chorus and added to my mental library of Hymns This Atheist Likes Anyway.
I have just tried singing it(on my own, no friends present) and it ALSO goes to "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" and Handel's "Austria", which is an equally epic tune and one sadly tainted by being the tune for "Deutschland Ueber Alles".
Aw, thank you so much (and thank your stepdad for me). That does help. Like I said before, I'm actually not too scared of flying normally, but for some reason that article really stuck in my head for days afterward. I'm glad to know that U.S. airlines have high standards for their pilots.
You’re welcome! I was kind of freaked out by the article as well, but once I talked to my stepdad about it I felt much better so I thought that might help you too 🙂