Cord Jefferson’s piece about his mom is so beautiful and sad and moving and joyous I literally do not know what to do:
I thought about that woman and the people mocking her for the rest of the night, and during a post-dinner walk, I told my mother what was bothering me. “They were so mean to her,” I said when I got to the end of the story. “I just don’t know why they were being so mean to her.” My mother stopped walking and turned to face me, her lips pursed and her brow furrowed the way they always were when she was unsure of exactly how to put something. “The world is a mean place,” she said at last. “Sometimes people are mean, and sometimes things will be hard. One of your jobs is to try and make sure that that never makes you mean and hard, too.” She kissed my hand and we continued on our walk, and we never spoke of that woman or that day again.
prepping doctors for anti-vax patients:
The salt-and-pepper-haired Offit slipped straight into character and zeroed in on one young doctor.
“I know you doctors keep telling me that vaccines don’t cause autism. If that’s true, then why is it on this package insert?” he asked, playing the role of a parent who had read the blogs and heard the celebrities who connect the two.
Shifting in her seat, the designated victim shot Offit an unsure look.
Then she began citing studies and said that drug packaging inserts include many “temporally associated symptoms” that weren’t necessarily caused by the vaccine.
“Why?” Offit pressed. “Why would they put that there — just to scare me?”
The doctor kept trying. “They’re required by law,” she said. “I actually didn’t know the answer.”
yep, you talked to Mallory, I have not yet had a Business Skype with her in which she was fully dressed:
I spoke to Ortberg twice. The first time was on the phone over the summer. The second time was early on a Monday morning over Skype. She was in her house in the Bay Area, dressed in a white bathrobe and sipping tea.
On a father’s attempt to bring light to molestation in the Hasidic community, and the roadblocks he encountered:
In the fall of 2009, Kellner was notified of a summons issued by Rabbi Makevetzky to participate in what was described as the “case of Mr. Shloma Aron Kellner, may his light shine, and the Lebovits family in the matter of injury of the son.” Kellner assumed that the hearing was a trap, designed to force his son out of criminal court. He told the rabbi that he would coöperate only if someone else paid for the hearing—the rabbi charged a hundred and fifty dollars an hour—and for the cost of being represented by a secular lawyer. An acquaintance of one of Lebovits’s sons paid Kellner’s expenses. Then, Kellner said, the man came back with an offer: Kellner should accept two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to drop the criminal case. (Lebovits’s oldest son, Chaim, denied that this happened. He added that Kellner was always looking for money.)
Michelle Tea on confronting her stepfather, the Peeping Tom:
My family crumbled into the gap between what I knew happened — sexual abuse, a strange covert kind that messed with my mind for years, twisting my interior — and what they insisted happened — the poor judgment of a sad alcoholic who had since gotten sober and apologized and why was I so punishing, so full of hate that I couldn’t forgive this kindly, trembling man who now wanted to die — literally die because I would not forgive him and go back to calling him “Dad.” This information was delivered to me via my crying mother who also now wanted to die, because the family was shattered and the fault lay not in her husband’s actions, but in the refusal of her daughter to forgive, her insistence on naming this thing sexual abuse when no hand was ever put upon her.
Today in Ontario Townships Named by a Maudlin Irishman That Would Become Unintentionally Hilarious a Century Later: Township of Emo.
— Kath Halloran (@lifeonqueen) November 3, 2014
This just in, in “Jian Ghomeshi is an piece of human dirt” news: http://jam.canoe.ca/Celebrities/2014/11/03/220483…
“Have you ever accidentally stepped on a bug? You didn’t actually mean to kill it, but you don’t feel bad,” Ghomeshi says. “I feel that way sometimes when I snub some fans.”
barf barf barf barf
I do feel bad when I accidentally kill something though. That sad crunch of a snail shell fills me with guilt for up to twenty minutes.
Things die, often to feed me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be kind and caring and try to avoid unnecessary death.
Also, people aren’t bugs, their feelings aren’t bugs.
Stepping on snails is THE WORST. They’re so pretty and graceful and I know gardeners hate them, but….snaaaaaaillllllls.
Even as a committed gardener, I still don’t kill snails. My children love to pick them up and have them crawl over them.
Have been known to go out at night with a bucket and a torch and collect them and take them to the park across the road, though!
♥ ♥ ♥
When I was small, we had a raspberry bush in the backyard that was infested with snails, so the neighbourhood kids and I would collect them in buckets to keep as “pets.” (We also once found a grasshopper, but I accidentally knocked her pail out of the treehouse, and I feel guilty about it to this day.)
I do that with frogs! My parents’ house is opposite a pond, and every spring the frogs come back to spawn. Loads of them get squashed by cars, so I go out on wet spring nights and carry any frogs I can find across the road. It’s strangely rewarding. I miss it now I’ve moved away.
OKAY so at first I read torch as American English torch (as in, “to torch something”) and I was like…well that seems crueler than just stepping on them??? But then I remembered that torch also means “flashlight.” And so I fully agree with CleverManka & Dean Winchester; you are indeed awesome!
They’re just living their little snaily lives, grazing on leaves, seeking out the damp, and I come along in my big, clumsy, galumphing boots and end it all for them.
I like to move them off paths and into weed patches when I can.
I am a rescuer of slugs! Of course, my husband and I joke that I’m ruining their lives because it probably took them all day to crawl into the middle of the hiking path, and now I’m “helping” by making them start all over. I mean, I THINK I’m putting them on the right side, but I know NOTHING.
Did you know that snails are the horse-driven coaches for fairies? It’s true. If you see a snail’s trail, and it is silver, then you know that there is a fairy inside the shell-coach. Pass it on.
Yes, I always feel awful. I’m sorry, snail! It was dark and I didn’t realise you were there, and now I feel terrible.
That comment of his shows us all what a damaged person he is. No feelings. A Sociopath.
Ugh. UGH. UUUUUUUUGH.
I listened to Moxy Fruvous all the time as a kid and loved their music so much. Met them all after a concert one time when I was about 6 years old and I remember them as being really gracious and nice.
Everything about this story makes me want to scream and also barf forever.
My heart broke a little when I found out Ghomeshi was in Moxy Fruvous. A Canadian counselor at my summer camp gave me a mix tape of Moxy Fruvous songs when I was about 11, right when I was starting to feel really awkward and different from everyone else, and it was exactly what I needed.
I’m thankful at least that the rest of the band released a statement the other day saying how horrified they are by all of this, and distancing themselves from Garbagemonster Ghomeshi. Makes me feel like I can still hold onto my love for the band in some small part of my heart, focusing exclusively on Murray, Mike, and Dave.
Joining the chorus of people who feel awful when they step on bugs. In fact, I feel so bad about stepping on bugs that it took me until I read Owl Queen’s comment to realize HE IS COMPARING HUMAN BEINGS TO INSECTS WHAT.
Ugh. UGH.
I feel like there could be a link roundup every day focusing only on “Jian Ghomeshi is a piece of human dirt” news.
Jian Ghomeshi is the kind of person who doesn’t apologize to pets after stepping on their tails.
can somebody
anybody
explain to me
why a mild mental disorder
which is easily concealed to the point where maybe nobody knows I have it
is such a horrible problem?
I don’t know. Ableism, probably.
It is really, really disgusting that parents would rather risk their child dying from a horrible and entirely preventable disease than see them potentially mentally disabled. And it’s a horrible statement about our society in general. “I’d rather see my child dead than…” They all need to go spend time around actual autistic children. I teach a few in my karate school, and while they do require more attention to keep them occupied, they are totally sweet and have amazing memories for names/faces, even the Korean vocab we use. They’re never sulky or bratty like the atypical kids.
All those fucking Autism Speaks ads with parents treating their desire to murder/suicide with their autistic child as normal and healthy responses to having children like us.
Well, autism isn’t always a “mild mental disorder.” It is frequently entirely disabling, and many parents of people with severe autism are forced into being lifelong caregivers. The risk of dying of measles or the like is still quite small–the problem, for the most part, isn’t that individual unvaccinated children are at a significant risk, it’s the broader threat of a larger proportion of the population going unvaccinated. If you genuinely believed that vaccinating your child would put them at a significant risk for autism, not vaccinating isn’t an entirely crazy idea.
Autism as in “any autism spectrum disorder” can be one of 3 things, and only one of those things generally needs any care beyond some tutoring, speech therapy, and social skills help. Kids with PDD-NoS and Aspergers are, aside from being kind of weird, fairly functional from high school onward, and those are the kids accounting for “gasp look at all these diagnoses.” The old diagnostic criteria only applied to kids who never said a word or had screaming meltdowns; it’s only now that people know what to look for.
While I do think many of these campaigns treat autism in an awful way, and I am completely pro-vaccines, I think it is also unfair to qualify all children with autism by any one experience. It’s a wide-reaching disorder. While I am happy for anyone who is at the end of the spectrum where they are able to conceal any difficulties, there are many who are not in that same place. I know my mother would never say she regretted having my brother, or any of those terrible insinuations, but you try convincing her that a vaccine had nothing to do with why her 14-year-old son is still completely nonverbal to the point of almost nonfunctioning. It is a scary thing for her, and I’ve tried but she will not listen to rationality.
“is also unfair to qualify all children with autism by any one experience.”
Right but that goes the other direction, too. When someone says “I’d rather see my child dead than….” then they are speaking to everyone on the autism spectrum, not just people who are beyond some arbitrary and shifting “line” of “really bad, like super bad, not like YOU I mean, you’re not one of the bad ones, you know?”
Yes, you and I agree that people saying “I’d rather see my child dead than…” are contributing to a much bigger issue (including the anti-vaxxer thing, but also the huge problem of stigma) and I do not like those people. Like I said, my mom would never say anything to the effect of not wanting her son. However, the original comment above described autism as a “mild mental disorder” that was “easily concealed.” While this can be true for many, it is not true for all, and I wanted to point out how that can be seen as a trivialization my family’s experience.
While we are on the topic of an arbitrary line, I will also contend that the umbrella of autism is very wide and there may in fact be a need to more properly use the terminology for behaviors that better aligns with each person’s experience.
I don’t think vaccines are involved, but I am fresh from reading news articles, via FB, on the Oregon (U.S.) woman who threw her 6-year old autistic son to his death from a high bridge this past Monday. It sounds like she’d already asked for public assistance with her family and the son, as the father is in the hospital with a brain trauma and the son’s autism is of the severe, nonverbal-but-screaming variety. She had herself apprehended. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jillian-mccab…
This poor family. This life can be such a strain on the caregivers. I am so sad for her that she felt she couldn’t get the help that she needed and that she couldn’t care for her child and husband. This is why there are so many terrified parents out there. There is an utter sense of helplessness when a child has special needs of this magnitude.
My family is fortunate to live in an area with a lot of support, relatively speaking, from the public schools to nearby relatives, and it has still been very difficult. I cannot imagine what this woman was going through.
American Toasties! Vote if you are able! Flex your tiny tiny muscle of representative democracy.
My new polling place doesn’t have “I Voted” stickers. I’ve stuck them on the fridge of every place i’ve lived. :/
Ohhh, that would make me the angriest.
Mine doesn’t either. But they did have leftover Halloween candy, so I considered my disappointment abated.
LUCKY. No, I haven’t been buying candy pumpkins on sale every time I have an excuse to go to the grocery store…why do you ask?
Mine only had Spanish ones when I got there, so I’m going around today with “He votado hoy” stuck to my sweater. I don’t even speak Spanish.
I want one of those! It would piss off all the right people!
Mine has never had them and it makes me as sad as when I don’t get a sticker for donating blood either 🙁
My polling places have never had them either, and I have voted in three counties in two states over 11 years! I usually take a selfie with the “vote here” or “polling place” sign to mark the occasion.
I voted by mail! They sent me an email saying that they had it and it was valid, so I guess that’s it.
My Facebook feed today is nothing but a sea of “I voted” stickers so I’m not sure there are any unmotivated voters left in my social circle for me to hassle. But I know there are a bunch of them beyond my individual reach. Go vote!
I have to wait until I get out of work today because my legal address is still my parents’ house, but I am driving an hour there to make sure that I do!
Same! But I fully intend to leave work early to minimize rush hour ridiculousness.
This is the first year I get to vote in person! Woo!
This morning I was the 100th person at my polling place to put my ballot in the machine thing, and the kindliest, teensiest old lady who was monitoring it exclaimed, “THE 100th PERSON GETS A GOLD STAR” and then patted me on the boob a little while trying to put an “I Voted” sticker on me.
Massachusetts voters have four ballot questions to vote on, one of which would help guarantee all workers some sick time. GOTV folks.
and “no” to casinos. I hate casinos. And Massachusetts casino politics.
I really hope the whole “vote yes to vote no” thing on the casino question doesn’t confuse too many people!
me too. almost as bad as Florida “butterfly” ballots!
Done and done. How is this not already a thing in Massachusetts, of all places?
My theory: most working people in Massachusetts had decent jobs with sick time 30 years ago, but with the advent of “let ’em eat Cheetos” part-time jobs as the only option for a lot of people, the law hasn’t caught up yet. Maybe it will today, a little bit.
Hopefully!
The Republican election judges were 18-year-olds, probably in it for the $120 paycheck and “civic engagement” credit for school, which was delightful.
Now I have to figure out somewhere in Chicago to watch the results come in, which is my favorite kind of TV!
I voted on Halloween! It was great. (I love early voting! My early-voting location is a Fiesta Mart, for one thing, and pretty much universally everyone in the line is voting the same way as me which is kind of a pleasant novelty for a Texas Dem, and even though the line gets long people stay in a good mood, possibly because they know they have the option of getting out of line and voting a different day, but also possibly because when the line gets long it wraps around to the bakery department and the cakes are a nice distraction. … I may have brought home a pan de muertos. It was delicious.)
Did so at 7:30 this morning! I left early because I was expecting lines, but there were no lines whatsoever, and I was the youngest person there by a good 20-30 years. Come on, people. Y u no vote. 🙁
I have decided that when I retire I want to be one of the old ladies managing the voting stations and helping Make Democracy Happen. (You know, assuming we haven’t devolved into a Mad Max or Handmaid’s Tale situation by that point.)
Me too!
From when I’ve election judged in the past (as a young student who didn’t have a full-time job to miss), a much higher proportion of the 18-64 year-old voters vote early or absentee — which is usually denoted on the voter rolls — than seniors, which is why when you go in-person everyone seems so old. I still like to go in person, both for the sticker and because when I mail a ballot in early, I second-guess decisions about the ballot measures and local races and so on, but a lot of people prefer getting it out of the way.
I’m absentee so I don’t get a sticker, but I don’t have to stand in line so let’s call it even.
Midterm elections are when they sneak in the crazy propositions. Don’t let them get away with it!
Today was my very first time voting as a resident of a blue state. It gave me a little tingle.
Sad news friends, national treasure Tom Magliozzi of Car Talk passed away: http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/357428287/tom-magli…
There will never be a laugh quite like his.
May the sound of him cackling at his own jokes echo forever across our NPR affiliates. RIP.
The two of them remind me so much of my dad and his type of humor and how he laughs at his own jokes. I was surprisingly emotional about his passing.
I am so sad about this. Car Talk and What Do You Know were the soundtrack to so many childhood Saturday mornings in my mom’s car.
HA! We’re back 🙁
Car Talk will forever be the sound of Saturday morning to me; my dad played it every weekend on his little radio that he carried around while he tinkered and changed oil in the cars and such.
Same. Hopefully Dad Magazine will issue a special collector’s edition to memorialize Tom’s life.
Whenever our cars would break down, my dad would pretend to call into Car Talk. “Hello, I drive a 2008 Jeep Cherokee Classic and it’s making a EEEEk EEEEEk sound when I go uphill!”
His death has been making me legitimately sad these past two days. Like others in this thread, I grew up with my parents listening to him in the car pretty much every weekend, and their laughter has always made me happy. One of those institutions that you never really thought would go away.
How many Ontario Townships are there that are Named by a Maudlin Irishman That Would Become Unintentionally Hilarious a Century Later? Is this like a recurring feature that I’ve been missing out on?!
I’m looking forward to the series on Pennsylvania towns that make us snicker because the teenager in us thinks their name means sexual congress
Do you mean Intercourse or Blue Ball?
Or Bird-In-Hand, even!
(Incidentally, Google maps says it takes 17 minutes to get to one from the other.)
oh god that’d be like twenty pages long
Blue Ball heh heh
Actual town names in Saskatchewan: Love and Climax.
They should be sister cities with Cumming, Georgia
Um. There’s a lot of Ontario townships and people seriously ran out of ideas.
I give you “Tiny Township”, named after sone guy’s daughter’s baby name.
I’m partial to East Garafraxa, myself.
Yup. Growing up in rural Ontario was a daily adventure in comical arbitrary place names. Cf.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_townships_i…
Highlights include:
Mono Township
The Municipality of Tweed
The Town of Grimsby
North Dumfries Township
The Town of Puslinch
The Municipality of Oliver Paipoonge
is Oliver Paipoonge weird?
I grew up next to it so I lost perspective.
Hmm. I propose, as a metric for “weird” place names, the likelihood that an oversugared six-year-old would enjoy running around a house shouting them repeatedly. “OLIVER PAIPOONGE! OLIVER PAIPOONGE!” = pretty plausible.
There’s a Grimsby and a Dumfries in the UK! Perfectly normal names (okay, I am just habituated to weird-sounding things).
I love these. Does everyone in Tweed wear tweed?
There’s a tiny community north of Orillia, Ontario called Hamlet. It’s the hamlet of Hamlet.
It’s possible that a Maudlin Irishman named Bastard Township (or that it was named after a Maudlin Irishman).
I grew up (in Australia) about half an hour’s drive from the village of Woodenbong. We also had, in the area, Uki, Jiggi, Bonalbo, Meerschaum Vale, Whian Whian, The Pocket, and Coffee Camp. The only one I can explain is Coffee Camp – it was a timber-getters’ camp, and I guess they drank coffee there.
Straight-up bawling over the Cord Jefferson piece. But it’s also such a relief to see that ‘still, our age is not so barren of goodness that it does not also produce exemplary instances of decency.’ I’m not being arch; this is how one should — I should — transform humane feeling into humane action.
Yeah that piece was amazing. I hope no one comes over to ask me a question because I am actually crying at work.
I just read this article about generousity: http://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/6078101/giving-money…
Which is really stunning. I think the observation in that piece that hit me hardest was:
“Nevertheless, we find consistent evidence that ungenerous lifestyles associate with an apathy riddled by anxiety. Our interviews with Americans who do not practice generosity reveal that they are deeply unsettled by individual and social problems. Yet they do not think they have any obligation to respond, and even if they do, they feel inadequate to make a difference without sacrificing their ability to care for their own needs. Feeling vulnerable to broader societal problems, the instability of the marketplace, material scarcity, and the challenges that come with relational intimacy, they respond by hunkering down, either alone or with immediate family members, to simply try to weather the storm. They imagine other people as restrictions on their autonomy.”
Fear= selfishness. Courage equals kindness and giving. I know so many 30 somethings who feel other people weigh them down.
That story about Cord Jefferson’s mum got me. I really hate cancer.
My mother had an oncologist appointment yesterday (she’s currently in remission from two separate cancers) and texted shortly thereafter to tell me that she needed her gallbladder out, and I was so afraid that the two were connected. Luckily, it’s not, but I can relate to his feelings so, so much.
Fuck cancer.
Ugh, I’m so sorry to hear about your mother. I hope the operation is successful and that she remains in remission from the cancers.
Same. My dad has (thank everything and knocking on all wood) been cancer-free since April, but the way Cord described the mundanity of everyday life after you know a loved one is sick and you can’t help… woof, that hit me in a super real place. I had to go to a play rehearsal immediately after my dad called to tell me he had a tumor, and I remember just standing on the train platform and feeling like everyone around me was living in an alternate universe.
Same. Both my parents and my one remaining grandparent have all been in and out of hospital in the past few weeks, and I simultaneously want to drop everything to be with them and feel immensely useless because the cancer and the drugs and the pain doesn’t change based on whether I’m standing there awkwardly wringing my hands and fetching squash or not.
my therapist just died of cancer, now i am trying to avoid thinking/hearing/reading about it but it is pretty much impossible
Man, with all the great and highly-spoken of parents in this link roundup (Mallory’s mom, Cord Jefferson’s mom, Mr Kellner, etc), that last article was tough.
I literally had to stop about halfway through and make myself breathe deeply. It’s so, so, so upsetting, rage inducing, and unfair it makes me want to spit and cry.
I have such a complicated relationship with these kinds of pieces. My own mom is amazing though flawed, and our relationship is warm and friendly but will always be slightly distant since she and dad never really approved of my partner (for stupid, snobbish reasons). My partner’s mom passed away from cancer in 2006, and their relationship was incredibly difficult, and she wasn’t a very good person and not a terrific mom, though she did her best. So I don’t know. Some days those stories are so great to read and remind me how lucky I am that my parents are basically good and decent people who I basically have a good relationship with. Some days they break my heart for the relationship my partner only had as his mom was dying, because that was the only thing that made her realize they needed to fix things.
I read that Michelle Tea piece last night and immediately had to shower in scalding water. So good, so hard.
I read that Cord Jefferson piece yesterday afternoon. So many of the things he wrote sounded so familiar to me. My mom died of cancer when I was 20 and I’m estranged from a good portion of my family because of intermarriage. It took a good bit of psyching myself up to read it. It was worth it; it’s one of the best things I’ve read for a long time. It didn’t make me feel better about any of the circumstances, but I’m still glad I read it. I guess I have no point, other than to say, go read it and then hug your mom, if you can.
The piece on Cord Jefferson’s mum was lovely and sad and painful for many reasons, but the part about her gravest transgression – that of marrying a “coloured” person – was so sad and so infuriating at the same time. It’s unbelievable this went on so, so very recently… And then I turn around and I see it still goes on in some places, it’s just learnt to hide its ugly head a little better…
And then I think of the (way too many, and way too YOUNG) people I know who say “I’m not racist in the least bit but I can never be with a person of a different race” and then all the other (again – way too many and way too young to have the mentality of someone from a century ago) people who reply that it is perfectly normal and good and not racist in the bit to not be attracted to “differents”. Because the idea of race may not even be a scientific one but the colour of one’s skin is totally and absolutely what defines a person and they may be the most amazing human being ever, intelligent, kind and – gasp! – even beautiful, but there’s no escaping the horrific, off-putting truth that…
… their skin pigmentation is slightly different from mine!
I hate to break it to you, but racism doesn’t have to mean hating people of a different “race”; it means thinking of people in terms of race and defining them by it and all that follows from it.
/end rant. Sorry for this incoherent tirade, but this kind of unabashed bigotry is one of my biggest triggers…
HERE for this. Whenever I hear someone say, “oh I don’t like black girls” or whatever (citing a recent example someone said to me, not to name names but he’s a real douchebag in other areas too) it blows my mind. Like, you do realize that this entire group of people you’re claiming to not be attracted to isn’t actually a monolithic group, they are not all the same, they come from all different places, with different backgrounds, interests (SOME OF WHICH ARE DEFINITELY THE SAME AS YOURS), passions, skin colors, body types, educations, family structures, religions, sexual orientations, political affiliations, ETC ETC and KEEPING THIS IN MIND it is literally impossible for you to justify not liking or being attracted to them by anything other than skin color, which YES I BELIEVE MAKES YOU RACIST.
We have locked people out of the position and privilege of being desirable and valuable and therefore wanted based on really really stupid and horrible reasons, and it’s awful and horrible and I hate everything. I think a lot of sexuality (though certainly not all) is based on social constructions of desire, and that is a damn shame because that is a HELL of a lot of love we are missing out on as a result.
/end rant. Obvi it’s a lot more complicated than that but I’m tired and things are poop. Poop on things, especially racism.
Thank you so much for this! I’ve been getting beyond furious these days when I see supposedly intelligent and unprejudiced people saying that there is NOTHING racist about claiming that you’re just “not attracted” to a certain race. And then there’s the argument – it’s normal to only be attracted to one type. You know what? It’s sure as hell is not and if the very superficial physical part is the only thing you see and are attracted to in a person? Well, then there’s something HUGELY wrong with you. If someone told you “I cannot possibly date a blond person. Ever. I’m not attracted to them. Like EVER”, most of us would think they’re downright stupid and superficial. But it’s somehow perfectly normal when it comes to race?
And then I had another idiot who was actually blabbering about not being able to accept or whatever the verb was the “black mentality”. That was probably two years ago and I’m still fuming (that particular (very empathetic, according to her) idiot couldn’t see anything wrong with shooting pigeons just for fun. Not even killing them, when you’re not a good shoot, just maiming them, and leaving them to fly away and die a slow painful death). Because, apparently, ALL black people share the exact same “black mentality” and a person from Malawi has some magic “negro” connection to a black person from, say, San Francisco. And I, a white person from Southeastern Europe share the same “white” mentality with a white person from Chile. It’s just… so fucking ignorant and vile, and disgusting…
And how on earth can you discard a whole RACE (whatever that actually means)? Have you seen all of them to know they are just not attractive to you? And is it that the plainest, downright ugly white slob of a person is inherently more attractive than the most handsome black person, because… skin?! And where do you draw the line? What about people who only have one black parent? One black grandparent? Where, exactly, does this, stop? What amount of melanin is acceptable for you to deign to be attracted to someone?!
I sometimes think people like this are even worse than downright racists. At least those idiots are not lying to themselves and are not trying to persuade others that their particular brand of racism is perfectly a okay and actually go through their lives believing how wonderful and unprejudiced they are.
I’ve said it a million times and I’ll keep saying it till the day I die – not being bigoted isn’t “I don’t mind black people/gay people, etc./I like black people/gay people, etc/I have black/gay friends, so I cannot possible be prejudiced”. Not being bigoted is not thinking there is anything *to* mind, not attributing some sort of superiority to either of these things (your own race, orientation, etc.) and above all, not thinking of people in terms of and defining them by their race, sexual orientation and the rest of the way too many things we have invented to divided ourselves by. If you look at a person and those are only (or even the main) things you see in them… there is something very, very wrong with you. And with this world 🙁
YES to YOU.
on the other hand when I get really mad at this I think to myself, “well at least those assholes have made themselves really fucking visible so now we know who to avoid.”
Thanks 🙂 It actually felt pretty great saying it all out loud (not that I haven’t before, but not nearly enough.). I guess what really really drives me insane is how people like this actually have the gall to insist (and to really believe it themselves. And try to make me accept it, too) that they are not racist and that it’s a perfectly NATURAL thing.
Apparently racism (and bigotry in general) is a nasty little tumour that refuses to just go away and keeps mutating and mutating instead.
But when I get really mad I think of all the people who are not like this and of my beloved Brazil which so far is the country where I’ve most felt like this “raceless” world that I dream of (and never will live to see…) and I feel better. Because that raceless world where we’re all one great, wonderful mixture and no one is “pure” anything is coming and ain’t no bigot can do nothin’ ’bout it 😀
Yeah, I had to take a bathroom break in the middle. “We were barely out of our teens and we’d all been destroyed and wanted to take the whole, abusive world down with us.” Amazing. Devastating.
In the Judaism that I grew up with and still find comfort in, Mr Kellner is a truly righteous and wonderful man. I am also very, very glad not to have been raised Hasidic. I can’t think of anything more un-Jewish than protecting child molesters.
That Cord Jefferson piece was just stunning and his mom sounds like such an excellent human and now I want to leave work and hop on a bus to Pennsylvania and hug my mommy.
“It was in that moment — her freckled arms wrapped around my neck, her smile at my shoulder — that I felt like I never wanted to put her down.” IT IS TOO EARLY IN THE WEEK TO BE WEEPING AT MY COMPUTER.
The Michelle Tea piece and the piece on the NYC Hasidic community both shed light on how the damage caused by aftermath of abuse can sometimes be… if not worse, then similar in magnitude to that caused by the abuse itself. And they show how much cultural opinion really matters in the pursuit of justice, beyond just hoping that the judicial system does its job. Change needs to come from both a cultural and legislative perspective if justice is to be had.
Both pieces were so gently and well written that I feel physically ill. My heart goes out to the victims. No words of condolence that I can come up with would ever be sufficient.
It’s the attitude that the victim has broken the peace and made trouble by reporting their abuse, not the abuser by perpetrating it, that underpins those pieces. It crops up over and over and is so incredibly toxic.
“coöperate”
Oh, New Yorker house style, how grating you are.
Yeah, the first time I thought it was a typo, and then it just kept going? There is no umlaut in cooperate!
It’s not an umlaut, it’s a diaeresis!
The more I know!
I thought the water supply in NY was supposed to be really clean, how are they constantly getting diaresis
That’s Dutch spelling man… i.e. NOT English spelling.
There is a man in my office who writes it that way and does not understand that it’s annoying. Augh!
The place where I grew up is close to Emo. I always found the town’s name hilarious.
Exciting news in my email box this morning: “Texts from Jane Eyre” has shipped!
It will be here TODAY
I LOVED Cord Jefferson’s point about the fact that we see bravery as something soldiers have, but not something kind people have. Loving all people, truly caring about others, NOT thinking about people in terms of race… those are acts of bravery because our society still makes it dangerous to posses those qualities.
THIS! That was my big takeaway, too. Being kind to another in the face of ridicule, contempt or indifference is one of the greatest, humblest and loveliest acts we can do as human fucking beings.
Dammit, crying AGAIN.
Absolutely fascinating and comprehensive article about toxic masculinity in tech / the internet, and its historical underpinnings, or the “Dads of Tech” (not the fun kind of Peak Dad): http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/dads-tech
The opening line about Audre Lorde’s quote…I’m like, the point, you have missed it.
Oh God, this part of the Cord Jefferson piece sent me into full-on ugly cry mode:
“While your loved one is at home battling death, stand in a restaurant line behind a person complaining loudly that their burrito came with sour cream, even though they asked for no sour cream, and they guess they’ll just eat it with the sour cream, even though the calories, but maybe they should get a discount now, or, like, a soda?”
#gpoy every day, seriously. My mom is battling pancreatic cancer, and it’s pretty much all I can do most days at work to not flip tables over and yell about how little our damn PowerPoint decks matter. Fuck cancer for real.
Yep, it was that part exactly. That really is the weirdest part of it all- having to continue on in your regular life while something so much more enormous is going on. It made me so sad and so angry and so disoriented. I felt like I was always standing on one foot.
Much love to you and your mom. I hope she beats cancer’s ass and then takes a victory lap just to rub it in its smug stupid face. <3
Thank you so much, and I hope so too!! Sending hugs and fuzzies to you and your dad–knocking on all the wood for you! xo
My mom sent me a picture of herself working out this morning, after reading Cord’s piece yesterday it put me on the verge of tears:
That Cord Jefferson piece made me cry. I am currently crying at my desk. I don’t cry at work and this is a problem.
It also feels like exactly the kind of kick in the ass I need to get off this “fuck everyone” cynicism kick I’ve been on for no good reason. It’s no good for the people around me or for me and I’m just gonna try to be extra nice in thoughts & deeds today.
I just voted on my lunch hour! Shout out to DC, which has the most sensible, pain-free voting process of the entire country and yet lacks Federal representation!
1) You can register to vote and vote THE SAME DAY
2) My voting location was 2 blocks from my home, and that is not a rarity! They’re literally ALL OVER the city.
3) The poll workers were well informed and friendly.
4) There was no line!
5) I voted paper because I dont trust machines made by the Koch brothers.
I am wearing my sticker proudly today because I am AMERICAN and innumerable people gave their lives for me, an African American woman, to vote in this country. Everyone else should to!
#Patriotism
I am voting as soon as I get home this evening!
I am in DC and my polling location is generally terrible (it took me 2 hours last time, mainly because the poll workers insisted on not rearranging their alphabetical divisions even though my line had about 80 people waiting, and the A-K and L-S line only each had 2 or 3. BUT–DC has early voting, which is wonderful (you can even check the wait times at each location online in almost real-time!!), so I got it out of the way on Saturday. Easy peasy, in and out in 10 minutes with very kind and well-informed poll workers.
I’m both registering and voting in the District today! I attempted to register when I switched my driver’s license a couple months ago, but the paperwork must have gotten misplaced. Hooray for voting policies that don’t make that catastrophic!
Oh, Cord Jefferson! My heart, my heart is broken.
The thing that gets me is Cord’s mom’s forgiveness of her father after all the wrongs she went through at his hands. And then the person writing the last article. I have to say I feel much more in tune with her inability to forgive.
I have spent time in Emo.
It is rather lovely.
I actually found a really weird balance between the last article and the one on Cord Jefferson’s mom. Because my mom is a LOT like Cord Jefferson’s mom — somehow turned a lifetime of manure deliveries into the most goddamn beautiful garden you’ve ever seen, so sweet and kind and good will toward everyone — but after divorcing my emotionally abusive father, she never insisted that I keep in touch with him. I’m so grateful for that sense of self-preservation and good healthy boundaries.
Lots to appreciate, man.
(This was supposed to be in response to slavei)
OKAY so at first I read torch as American English torch (as in, "to torch something") and I was like…well that seems crueler than just stepping on them??? But then I remembered that torch also means "flashlight." And so I fully agree with CleverManka & Dean Winchester; you are indeed awesome!
Thanks 🙂 It actually felt pretty great saying it all out loud (not that I haven't before, but not nearly enough.). I guess what really really drives me insane is how people like this actually have the gall to insist (and to really believe it themselves. And try to make me accept it, too) that they are not racist and that it's a perfectly NATURAL thing.
Apparently racism (and bigotry in general) is a nasty little tumour that refuses to just go away and keeps mutating and mutating instead.
But when I get really mad I think of all the people who are not like this and of my beloved Brazil which so far is the country where I've most felt like this "raceless" world that I dream of (and never will live to see…) and I feel better. Because that raceless world where we're all one great, wonderful mixture and no one is "pure" anything is coming and ain't no bigot can do nothin' 'bout it 😀