Why “personhood” is a fuckin’ CROCK and how it can be used to arrest and harass women far outside the realm of conversations about abortion:
The principle at the heart of contemporary efforts to end legal abortion is that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses are persons or at least have separate rights that must be protected by the state. In each of the cases we identified, this same rationale provided the justification for the deprivation of pregnant women’s physical liberty, as well as of the right to medical decision making, medical privacy, bodily integrity and, in one case, the woman’s right to life.
Many of the pregnant women subjected to this mistreatment are themselves profoundly opposed to abortion. Yet it was precisely the legal arguments for recriminalizing abortion that were used to strip them of their rights to dignity and liberty in the context of labor and delivery. These cases, individually and collectively, highlight what is so often missed when the focus is on attacking or defending abortion, namely that all pregnant women are at risk of losing a wide range of fundamental rights that are at the core of constitutional personhood in the United States.
Jazmine Hughes talked to a bunch of cool women about Imposter Syndrome:
To be honest, I felt like I didn’t deserve my PhD and it took me awhile to even acknowledge my own self as a doctor, a title I had earned after 6+ years of doing research. I’m getting better at trusting myself and my abilities to do the kind of work I want to do. I finally switched my Gmail signature to read Sabriya Stukes, PhD. There are definitely still times when I can feel “the Impostor Syndrome” creep in but I’ve slowly learned how to deal with it. Every time I feel that self-doubt rising I allow myself the space to recognize it for what it is: a choice, a choice between believing a destructive voice inside my head, or choosing to quiet it with a much louder voice that says “you are going to fucking slay it,” do a Beyoncé hair flip and face the next challenge.
Sabina Stuykes, PhD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
I honestly cannot remember a better headline than “Buy Your Daughter All the Butch Dolls You Want, She Still Won’t Be Able to Get an Abortion in Texas”:
What I know now, as a grown woman who made Barbies kiss each other, was that the sort of toys I played with has ZERO effect on my life as a woman. The toys I played with didn’t prevent a transvaginal ultra sound when I wanted an abortion. It didn’t close the $8,000 pay gap between a former male co-worker and I with the same level of experience.
So should you buy your daughter a GoldieBlox? Sure. Why not? Or don’t. Shut up.
The Canadian literary scene joke book:
Q: What dogs keep the best time?
A: Sarah could hear her old Labrador barking, but she didn’t think twice about it. While her northern Ontario town was quiet, she lived right on the main strip, meaning anyone going to the main shop would have to pass by her place, waking up Bruno. Even as he aged, his ears were still sensitive, although his eyes were looking cloudier each day.
A cinematic history of white people crying in space.
WHY DO WE LOVE CONNIE BRITTON SO MUCH?
Good Morning America, Good afternoon Europe, (Good evening OZ & NZ?)
The piece about imposter syndrome is really good, but I would like to discuss another I-syndrome:
INTRUDER SYNDROME
Surely I can’t be the only one suffering from it? I have faith in my competence, I know I can do stuff, that’s never the problem.
It’s more that when I’m in professional settings, I keep getting the feeling that I’m not ALLOWED to be there. Behind every corner I expect someone to jump out and say: Hey, what made you think you could be part of this? We don’t want you here. You’re not a proper adult, and really, we would all like you to leave right now.
I’m sure there is lots of investigating to do re the whys & wherefores, but for now I’d just love to hear from others who feel constantly Unwelcome At The Proper People/Adult Party.
That´s very interesting
may I introduce another one?
For lack of a better name, I call it the Fear-of-sudden-body-swap-and-then-being-unabled-to-deal-with-the-situation-you´re-in-syndrome.
Basically I´m sometimes afraid of switching bodies with someone I know, or even don’t know, and then being found out in a professional or social situation (basically in the very moment the swap occurs) because of not having the knowledge, experience, memories etc. that the person I swapped bodies with had, thusly being diagnosed with dementia or something and carted of to the asylum or something similar.
Speaking as someone who used to be in that situation a lot (in a manner of speaking), you would be ASTONISHED at how little people notice this kind of thing. 🙂
THAT’s the one. I am not nearly successful enough to warrant feeling like an imposter, but I always feel like I’ve snuck in someplace I ought not be (in both professional and social situations).
I know that feeling. Wrestled it to the ground after years of effort, though. I eventually got to a place where I respond to the feeling (it does not go away) of not belonging with an specific attitude:
They will be so glad I showed up. Especially the ones who didn’t even know they needed me here until they were blessed by my presence. That’s how awesome I am. Unanticipated because I am awesome beyond imagination.
It’s all a mind game. I am not quite that arrogant. But I have learned to take on the attitude like a mantle.
Oooh, I like that one a LOT. Thank you 🙂
Living in the model of Kanye!
I feel this way in academia a lot! Even though I know I am smart and can do things, sometimes I get this creeping fear that somebody will be like “why are you in this department? you can’t do grad school, who did you think you were fooling?”
Interesting… this sort of sounds like my particular brand of social anxiety disorder. Like at a party where I don’t know many people, I feel like a total interloper, entirely unworthy of the attention of the engagingly cool cucumbers chatting each other up with ease.
It’s just that similar feeling of Not Belonging, although the “reasons” for it are sort of dissimilar.
I have a mix of that and Imposter syndrome, all bundled up into what I like to refer to as You’re Not Good Enough And They Don’t Like You syndrome. Basically, I assume that a) I’m not smart enough to be where I am, b) I’ll get told to leave at any moment and c) people only barely tolerate me at the best of times. At its worst, I keep wanting to apologize to complete strangers for the fact that they have to be in the same space as me, because surely I’m a nuisance and terrible to boot. (Honestly, I’ve had to bite my tongue to keep myself from apologizing for the fact someone had to dance with me… to the person who asked me for a dance.)
Loving how nobody ever takes into account the personhood of the actual legal human.
Psh, don’t be silly, it’s not a human, it’s a woman.
Only when they’re actual legal women. Somehow no one ignores the personhood of actual legal (white, cis) men.
We’re here to defend the precious and inviolable rights of the unborn. Whatever happens to the post-born, they’re sinners who had it coming.
NOTHING should deprive a woman of her civil and human rights, not pregnancy and not anything else. Nothing should deprive ANYBODY of their civil and human rights. THAT IS WHAT THOSE WORDS MEAN. IF you’re a HUMAN MEMBER OF A SOCIETY, YOU HAVE THEM.
If anybody feels like posting links to places where we can donate to support abortion/contraception access in states where this horseshit is rampant, I would super appreciate that today.
http://www.fundabortionnow.org
If you want to give money to support individual women who need abortions and cannot pay for them (either the procedure itself or all the other costs that come up when your closest clinic is five hours away and there’s an ultrasound and waiting period law, etc.), this link is to the national network of abortion funds, and they do just that.
For more politically-directed donations, the political arm of Planned Parenthood 4eva.
Yah – you can set up a monthly donation to Planned Parenthood. I did $15/mo. because I’m not a high roller, but at least I feel like I’m doing something 🙁
I’m in Texas, so these are Texas-specific: lilithfund.org and fundtexaschoice.org
If you’re in a place that has access to abortion services, please consider helping the women of Texas. We do *not* have access outside of the 3 largest cites. And Texas is a very big place, y’all. Some communities are a full day’s drive, one-way, from one of those large cities.
I made a list of the answers to your question the last time this came up- in addition to Fund Abortion Now/ the Lilith Fund and Planned Parenthood, see also:
Law Students for Reproductive Justice: http://lsrj.org/donate/
Emily’s List: http://www.emilyslist.org/
Center for Reproductive Rights: http://www.reproductiverights.org/
If only we had some sort of way of knowing whether women are people.
I have a Dorothy Sayers essay collection on my shelf called “Are Women Human?” and I have not yet read it, but the title is so damn perfect in a horrible, horrible way.
It’s really good! She’s just so scathing and full of common sense and clearly not prepared to take anyone’s nonsense.
I stumbled across that collection at ~19 and that tone really helped shape my attitude toward those who deny my rights and the value of feminism. Dorothy L. Sayers is just not having it, and neither am I.
IDK, the Turing Test?
I realized recently that I no longer double-check to see what it is AHP is writing about. I will simply read anything she deigns to publish.
HELLO IMPOSTOR SYNDROME, MY OLD FRIEND
That shit is no joke, you guys. I’m pretty sure I have it and I have it bad, but then again I’m also equally sure that I don’t deserve to be in my graduate program and they should have kicked me out a LONG time ago because I’m not even close to as smart as everyone else and also I suck at science.
I am amazed by people who know they deserve the praise and good things they get. YOU ARE MAGICAL AND I AM IN AWE.
gotta love imposter syndrome. there’s honestly a step in my 5-year-plan that goes, “quit your job and go back to school before they realize you’re an incompetent engineer” because it feels soooo inevitable that I’ll be fired otherwise
“I’m not even close to as smart as everyone else and also I suck ”
welcome to my brain – in school right now, I’m working through my exit exams before taking my nursing board exams, and I’m doing A-OK, especially compared to everyone else and how much studying I’m actually doing, and I basically chalk it all up to me being a good test taker, and am truly concerned that when I get into my first nursing job I will be FUCKING IT UP SO HARD and just hope I don’t kill anyone.
yep. i got out of bed once this weekend to go to lab because it is incredibly bad form to shirk responsibility no matter how shit you feel.
other than that, it was a lot of curling up and wasting my time pointlessly wondering when everyone would realize i can’t cut it and took the spot of someone more deserving of my program.
Mine is specialized. In several key areas I am utterly confident (mostly the ones involving academia and office type stuff), but if someone wants to give me a personal compliment I’m all HAHAHA WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO
oh jeez, imposter syndrome. I like to tell myself this isn’t something I succumb to, but then I read about it and I have that “OOF” moment where I think of all the times in the last week when people have complimented my work or accomplishments or just ME and I shrug it off for any number of reasons (they don’t really know, I’m just good at X which doesn’t mean I’m actually skilled, they’re my friends and are biased, etc etc). It’s so enlightening to hear how other women have dealt with it.
For me, I’ve started to be able to tell when my brain is shutting down my sense of accomplishment, and have been able to freeze it, a bit. It helps to take a moment after a compliment, to absorb it, not do a kneejerk excuse, and simply say “thank you.” with a smile. Small steps?
Jesus Christ, that article is enough to make you want to spend pregnancy and childbirth hiding in a cabin in the woods. Maybe those freebirthers are onto something.*
*they’re not, but I seriously can’t stop shaking whenever I read this article.
I know right??? I’m so glad I live in Canada and would be terrified to be pregnant in the US.
If I have another kid, I’m VERY glad I live in the Northeast. Also, I feel like we should start tagging all of the news about this #Gilead
Even after reading that Impostor Syndrome article, my little Impostor Syndrome Voice is saying Okay yes but those women were downplaying their accomplishments. You are actually still the biggest fraud in fraudtown. Uuuuuugh.
Laugh sob. This, exactly.
I was just going to say. My thought is always, they’re not impostors; they finished their Ph.D.s. You’re still an impostor because you didn’t finish yours and you’ll never get an opportunity like that again. Loser.
I’m applying again this fall, and have myself almost entirely talked out of even trying.
Yep.
Yep yep. Brain went: “They persevered! They achieved! Their success is actually their due. They have something you don’t have, because they have your same problems and they’ve still done better than you. They are brave survivors, whereas you are a broken trash human.”
…shut up, Brain.
One thought though on imposter syndrome. And I don’t mean this in a nasty way. It also presupposes that everyone AROUND you is superduper dumb and incompetent for not realizing you’re actually shite. And also that you’re a Master of Magic for managing to make them hire & then not fire you…So it all seems to lean on the Total Stupid of Everyone But You…
How does that work?
… or that people around you are just being “nice”. They know that you’re crap, they’re just looking the other way.
[Devil’s advocate] So really, your office/job is some kind of care in the community thing?
Maybe it’s because I’m not particularily ‘nice’ myself, but I never understood this whole “Oh, he’s only hiring/befriending/marrying me becuase he’s trying to be nice.”
When I don’t like something or somebody, I won’t say it to their faces, but I’d defo try to avoid them, and MOST defo not hire them.
Going on the principle that people only do things because there’s something in it for them, what do they have to gain by being ‘nice’ to you?
Yeah, I know what you’re going for.
Some days my brain would agree with you, other days I’m fabulous at logic-ing my way out of every objection that gets thrown my way.
I have been able to thwart imposter syndrome mostly with a variation of this – I don’t know what I’m doing, but neither do the rest of these assholes, so I might as well keep on doing it.
I have worked in a fair few jobs where people affirmatively neither knew nor cared if you were cripplingly incompetent. Federal contracting, in particular, did a lot to allay my concerns re: being a fraud who’d someday be caught out as inept and lazy, it’s like a support group for fakes
Pardon me, sir or madam, but as the current Mayor-Elect of Fraudtown, I do not see your name here on our resident rolls. Please cease your claim to the fine city, principality or municipality of Fraudtown and return from whence you came.
GOOD DAY.
I think that GoldieBlox article would have been really good if it had been about literally any other product on Earth. Because yes, we’re ridiculous in this culture about thinking that you can buy something mass-produced that will prove that you exist outside the machine. Good point. Adults should be doing things and not collecting stuff.
But children really don’t get that option. Playing is the only means children have of doing things, and the thing they’re doing is forming their sense of how reality works. The stuff that surrounds them — particularly the stuff that they identify as their own — *does* define and construct what kind of world they think they live in.
Also, it annoyed me a bit that the assumption was that parents were buying it as if it were a homework assignment to force on girls who would rather just play with their Barbies. Maybe parents buy it because they have daughters who like building things and also the colour purple and this is both.
THAT explains why my world is full of sticks.
Write your representative and insist that we need a Personhood Bill of Rights for Women. Send them the NY Times article.
Can you get imposter syndrome: the class version? Because I don’t have it at my job (hahah cause it’s not that prestigious!) but whenever I go somewhere expensive or to a fancy event or to a party at the house of someone with money I feel like at any given point, well dressed large men are going to appear behind me and physically escort me out of the building or event. Lest I get my POOR GERMS all over it. I’m not as poor as I was growing up (we were like, baloney sandwiches–singlewide trailer without working heat-shoplifting deodorant poor) but I still FEEL that poor on the inside.
I stayed at a very nice resort on vacation once – one of those tastefully gorgeous places where all the staff is chipper as shit and are constantly trying to bring you complimentary things and the floors are marble and ornate, etc and I was SO NERVOUS the entire time. I felt certain that everyone in the place would suddenly stop smiling and point at me and all hiss in unison “YOU DON’T BELOOOOONG!” while doing that Donald Sutherland face from the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
I think it can apply in lots of areas of life – I get it a lot with social stuff, being an OK person to hang out with/ be friends with/ be a partner too. I know exactly where I packed this particular set of emotional baggage, so I’m working on unpacking it or – failing being able to do that – just metaphorically throwing the suitcase into a river to float away forever. But yeah – it’s fair to say that people can feel cripplingly fraudulent in many areas of life.
Oh yes I can see that too! That’s not one that would have occurred to me, but it makes sense. I guess in any area, you can feel like a fraud due to your brain being a total douche about your past experiences.
I like the metaphor of tossing your baggage into the river. Then I start being like “oh man, throwing out perfectly good luggage though”.
Yes, I think you need to figure out how to build the knowledge that you are capable of constructing brand new luggage that is MUCH BETTER before it becomes clear that throwing away the old stuff is a good idea.
I have a story for you. It’s set in the late 1970s:
My friend, her dad is a professor. ‘Utterly incompetent at life, but has a title, and a post’ is how she describes him. They speak RP.
When she was a kid, my friend had a friend who we will call Tracy. Tracy was from a big family and my friend used to love going round to hers for tea; they had egg and chips, it was rowdy, and people swore! Tracy’s mum might have been a cleaner.
One day my friend was with her dad when she bumped in to Tracy and her mum.
Tracy’s mum curtsied.
My friend was mortified. She didn’t know what to say to her friend the next day; she had seen her embarrassed, but had no idea how to acknowledge that huge gap that had been made visible between them.
Oh my god. It’s amazing how much even a little gesture like that can reveal, class-wise!
Once I went to a party right after college in a nice part of town – kind of a friend of a friend situation. And I’m in this group of well scrubbed good looking young people talking about their summers in Italy or Kennebunkport and one girl turns to me and says “And how about you? Where do YOU summer?” I just kind of stammered ‘Um, at work?” And everyone was kind of politely embarrassed. Not sure if they were embarrassed FOR me or for themselves for assuming, honestly. Like, how do you explain that you have never in your life summered as a verb, and that no one you grew up with did either and the concept is incredibly foreign to you?
That’s also how I learned there was a place in the world called Kennebunkport though.
This is all sounding terribly familiar. I went to a party recently with my fiance, who is a doctor (resident). It was a party hosted by husband-and-wife doctors, and attended by doctors. While mingling, people kept asking me where I was in med school, or what rotation I was doing, and I kept saying “Oh, I’m just a fiancee,” and then mentally kicking myself. Just because these people all make gobs more money than I ever will does not mean I’m “just” anything! Why is it so hard to convince ourselves of that?
Let’s all go to Kennebunkport and discuss.
I’m down, but mostly cause I want to go to Maine. It has lobster rolls and, if I’ve been informed correctly, tons of monsters in the sewers.
Go to Maine! But as a born-Mainer who has never been to Kennebunkport and has never felt the need to, I think you could have a grand ol’ time in Portland and riding ferries and eating the best lobster rolls in the world up in Wiscasset. Kennebunkport is full of Bushes and also I think zumba instructors who are secretly running brothels (on second thought, maybe Kennebunkport is interesting after all).
Totally. And that’s how class sticks to you f o r e v e r. I find it fascinating-you could dress two people with basically the same characteristics in the exact same clothes and we’d all be able to peg them, very quickly, into their ‘brackets’. Maybe even before they opened their mouths.
Hahahaha ugh yes, truth. So many things give you away, especially conversation. I’m never actively trying to behave like I descended from the upper class or anything – I just don’t want to be the impolite rube causing everyone to drop their monocles. Monocles aren’t cheap. I mean, I assume they aren’t. I wouldn’t know! See, there’s another marker of my class right there, I don’t even know the going rate of a good monocle.
This comment is the best.
Like, couples from different class backgrounds who have been married for decades (spending the majority of their lives in the same “class”), and they’ll still be able to speak really acutely to the class differences between them.
Yup. I’ve seen it claimed that while interracial/interreligious/inter-whatever marriages are increasingly common, coupling up outside of your own class is as rare as ever. Here is a fascinating article talking to couples who’ve ‘married out’. Sample:
“Alice was born into wealth and power, but she’d never use it – she’s absolutely down to earth. Although I do catch her up now and then on her accent. I’ve looked through every dictionary I can find, and I just can’t find any R that would explain her pronunciation of bath.”
Aw.
Can you try linking the article again? It sounds really interesting!
I think this is it: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/oct/…
Oh I am such a doofus I was so pleased I’d gotten the link to work and all I made was a circular link. Yes, that is the correct one, thankyousorry.
Thanks. Fascinating.
Yeah, my husband and I are from different class backgrounds, but our siblings all ended up with people from similar backgrounds to themselves.
I think I saw a comment somewhere recently (here I think, might have been Jez or something) decrying the use of the word “summer” used as a verb. I wholeheartedly agreed then, and I wholeheartedly agree now.
Yeah, I was going to say I hope they were looking mortified at THEMSELVES for using that goddamn verb.
This is easy for me to say, because I do not have the same class-based impostor feeling, but what I try to remind myself when I feel accidentally slightly under-dressed for somewhere or like I’m being judged for sitting awkwardly alone and reading in a nice restaurant or something is that (a) any host worth anything is more worried about my feeling comfortable than about appearances and (b) in the case of hotel staff/waiters/etc. it actually is their job to make you feel comfortable, so they are pretty unlikely to pull a snooty-waiter-in-a-movie and announce in front of the whole restaurant that you are using the wrong fork.
I often eat alone in fine restaurants. With a book, of course. Wait staff is always wonderful. But your comment got me thinking. I would mentally dare a snooty server to give me an excuse. If he did, I would plaster my experience all over social media in excruciating detail. I would speak with the managers. All of them. I would find the address of the owner and send a registered letter with the server’s full name spelled out. The scenario trips my revenge trigger.
Exactly! No one has ever been less than charming about my introverted public dining, though I do sometimes worry that at some regular destinations they think I have no friends or family. I would probably be pretty vengeful if they did given that I still rage about the one guy at my favorite frozen yogurt place who in a very slow voice tried to explain the concept of neatly folding money so that it fits into a wallet to me when I paid with loose bills last year.
Weirdly, I never feel out of place (unless I’m woefully underdressed, and even then usually I feel fine) at a really fancy swanky place. I think the reason for this is, when I was a kid, I would go shopping with my Mum at a few Fancy Expensive Stores. We wouldn’t buy anything, would just browse, see some things we liked, maybe try something on, and then leave. We would actually buy clothes from other stores, at prices about 10% of Fancy Expensive Store. Anyway, I guess I learnt that regardless of those snobby shop ladies, I do belong in those spaces, if I choose. And that most of those outward signifiers aren’t as amazing/meaningful as they look.
Just don’t talk to me about intellectual, professional, crafting or kitchen-related imposter syndrome. Oh, and makeup ladies scare the SHIT out of me.
And it can even work the other way around. I often feel/fear that working-class people, or not very intellectual people (yes you can tar and feather me now), would really like me to Go Away Now Piss Off.
Oh and since I always dress in thrifted gear ánd am shit at fashion, (so snobby, so high-class, so incredibly poor) I do indeed feel like I’m not welcome in Posh Clothing Shops.
Ah, the wonders of not belonging to either end….blurgh poop.
If you’re ever feeling too relaxed in this scenario, you could introduce some paranoia about whether trying to avoid sounding overly wordy so that such people don’t automatically dislike you is in itself horribly patronising. You’re welcome!
GET OUT OF MY HEAD, CHARLES.
Your mom sounds rad.
oh man I hear you, I am like that too.
AAAAAAALLLL the time. I find it negatively impacts my interactions with my now-peers too because I worry they’re going to judge me for being low-class.
My parents used to take us along on business trips to fancy hotels we would never pay for on a pleasure trip, so I’m more or less immune, but they have a bunch of stories about the way hotel staff look at you while you’re pulling diaper bags out of a rented minivan in front of swanky properties.
I feel like this is the double-whammy of academia. In addition to my worries about my intellectual worth, I also carry the shadow of my first-generation college self with me, even now that I’m a real-live doctor of philosophy and I get to teach really smart 18-year-olds. My grad institution brought this into stark relief, as it’s a place mostly stocked with undergrads who are the children of professors. And I, the child of copper miners and farmers, got to teach them.
I’m mostly ok with the anxieties produced by both those circumstances now, but it’s incredibly weird for me when I attend events at the university president’s house and marvel at the idea of having a staff who helps the president’s wife put on events in their home. And then I have to make small talk with freakishly smart people who get multi-million-dollar grants from the government to cure cancer or reengineer the human brain or whatever it is they do, while cheerfully/sheepishly explaining that I read plays.
“The greatest pain sometimes comes from our own self-knowledge. What we are in the eyes of others and what we know ourselves to be.”
Impostor? Intruder? Not sure which. But this has stuck with me ever since I heard it in a TV series…. Funniest thing – someone once told me that it could actually be about feeling unappreciated and knowing that you’re better than others think. An interpretation that had never even crossed my always self-doubting mind.
(I quit a job three days after I was hired ’cause I didn’t think I spoke Portuguese nearly well enough (it was client support for Portuguese-speaking countries). Hated a lot of things about the place and the job, too, but mostly it was the fear that I would not be good enough.)
I think there may be something to that counter-theory. When I was finishing my dissertation and my chair was being the worst person in the world and demanding ridiculous things from me (like, oh, changing my topic entirely after FIVE YEARS of writing) and implying that my work wasn’t good enough (despite constant cheerleading from my other advisors, whose work I respected much more than the senior scholar who was my chair), I went full-on righteous rage and wrote the hell out of my intro and conclusion. Because, goddamn it, I knew I was good enough and smart enough and (mostly) hard-working enough and that my ideas were important and worthwhile, despite my fears that I was actually terrible.
Oh, a person most certainly *can* know that they are good, capable etc, despite their self-doubts. And they sure as hell can be under-appreciated. Been there, done that, most significantly at a job where my supervisor was one of the shittiest people I’ve ever met. And you’re so right – righteous rage is the way to go (sadly, am still working on that part ;))
What I meant as the opposite interpretation (which, in the context of the TV series wasn’t the correct one, anyway) is those deep, deep souls whom the world just doesn’t *get* and whose greatness we’re just too “ungreat”to grasp, much less appreciate. Basically, a variation on the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Of course, it’s also super duper easy to forget the following PROPER GEM:
“When we compare ourselves to others, do not forget that we compare our insides to their outsides.”
*mic drop* (not by me, but by that sentence 😉
Has anyone else made that beef cassarole recipe Nicole posted on the Hairpin ages ago? It’s so freaking good and I want to know how you guys eat it/what modifications you might have made. (I don’t add the cayanne pepper, only do about 1.5 tsp black pepper because my mouth is a delicate flower, and add some beans because why not. Serve on couscous.)
Would you be willing to post the recipe? I’d love to see it!
Edit: Is it this one? http://thehairpin.com/2012/02/my-dads-beef-and-yo…
Yes!
I had not seen this and I must try it!
Ugh that last link. We were able to bring my friend’s dog into the hospital to see her the day before she died. It was the best and the worst thing to watch.
Here is a question that I have about these medical procedures in that personhood article: I am guessing that if there is a court order, the patient’s consent becomes irrelevant or immaterial? Because surely these women are not consenting. And I am curious about medical ethics and whether or not there is an ethical duty on the part of the doctor to refuse to perform life-threatening procedures on non-consenting women. And is the doctor protect from malpractice suits if there is a court order? Because I would think one way to fight these would be to sue the ever-living-fuck out of the doctors who perform these procedures, but I also know that lawsuits cost a lot in terms of time and money and energy.
I don’t know the answer, but I have a similar question about how law enforcement even finds out about these things to begin with? For, say, the woman who miscarried because she fell down a flight of stairs, how would they even know? Are doctors now required to report all traumatic miscarriages, the way they have to report it if they suspect child abuse?
I think sometimes it’s a matter of the police coming along on ambulance calls – you fall down the stairs, you call 911, dispatch sends an ambulance and a cop. But it may also be that in some states they are required to report them.
Well, it might cost a lot, but I can see the ACLU getting a shitton of donations if they decide to get into it.
I’m don’t fully know the answers either, but here is a full description of the case of the sick 27-year-old forced to have a c-section mentioned in that article that I just found, and it hits on a bunch of these questions. The ACLU did get involved (after the woman’s death) and the hospital did have to pay a settlement.
It’s actually pretty wild – her original doctor refused to do the surgery, putting the hospital in the “ironic position of being in contempt of an order that the hospital itself had sought.”
Is anyone else getting the sponsored content about the “controversial ‘skinny pill'”? I never used adblock on the Toast but it’s kind of skeevy and makes me nervous scrolling down.
Also, <3 the shopping comic. It’s the best game.
Screenshot and send to Nick! Make sure you list what piece it appears on or if it is main page.
Done! Thanks.
Hey, me too! I’m glad for confirmation that Nick is still the right person to send it to because, um, I did.
I’ve been getting that one too, on the main page, although when I just refreshed to try and screencap it, it was replaced with something else. It is a most un-Toastly ad.
A good way to get over impostor syndrome is to see adult males commuting to work downtown via razr scooter.
Last week I saw one of my middle-aged neighbors out on her razr scooter getting some exercise. Wearing a helmet and crossing guard style vest while doing laps around our parking lot and pausing to take her pulse regularly. It made my day.
My little sister commutes on a razr scooter and she cut up her knee and elbow and sprained her wrist last week because she went down a hill and took out her phone to take a snapchat video, and I am like, “You know you are not allowed to make fun of anyone ever again right. You cannot make fun of the skateboarders you hate. You cannot make fun of the Segway tours your friend leads. You cannot make fun of the middle age men who can scooter faster than you. You are less cool than all of them.”
(She is 19, so that is at least a partial excuse for this behavior. I don’t think her brain has stopped growing yet.)
lol wut
I…really want a razor scooter for commuting. I don’t really like bicycling; inline skates have been my literal downfall many times; but these things actually look like fun. I’m afraid to get on most of the ones I’ve seen because I am a Fat Lady and they all have labels saying WEIGHT LIMIT n POUNDS, with n = a number I left behind 15 years ago at least.
My dad commutes to work via razr scooter, and he’s a tenured professor. He wears knee and elbow pads, as well as a helmet. He does this even on Halloween, when he teaches in vampire costume, complete with black satin cape. He wears the cape while zipping down the street on the scooter.
…man, I wish I’d shared that on the “most Dad thing your dad has ever done” post.
Connie Britton/Tami Taylor: as I made my way through Friday Night Lights, I simultaneously wanted her to be my mom, wanted her to be my best friend, and wanted to BE her. I don’t think there’s anyone else I can say that about.
I watched FNL with my older son when he was in middle/high school & it was great, because Tami Taylor just said all the perfect Mom stuff and I could be all “yeah, that!” and knew that he was getting the ideal parenting messages. Gonna have to rematch the series with my younger son now that he’s in high school, I guess.
I know I was second choice for my current job (project manager). Literally know; they hired someone else who was in my position for one week before he was lured away by a prior client company. Close to three years later at this job and I’ve done some good things but still fear the day when my boss realizes that I still am unsure.
If it helps, I’m helping hire people right now and our top three possibilities are all tied in terms of how great they are– I have no idea how my boss is going to choose. If one of them didn’t work out and we had to go back to the next choice it wouldn’t in anyway be a down grade.
Does the word “impostor” just look incredibly misspelled to anyone else?
Well, now it does. Maybe there’s some semantic satiation going on?
impostor imposter impostar impasta
I also have JSTOR open in all my other tabs, so I might just be overwhelmed.
*inception noise*
there’s a conspiracy theory for this!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/mandela-effect
This would explain my confusion when Anderson Cooper came out, as I definitely recalled him being publicly out already.
You guys, I am so proud of Cracked.com’s gradual swing into an insightful and well-written comedy site instead of immature nerdbro clickbait (even if most of their readership hasn’t seemed to catch up…obviously don’t read the comments). This piece is SO GOOD and this writer has done a couple of similar pieces in the past. I guess he’s one man I’ll hold my misandry for. http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-shortcuts-to-not-be…
So when a woman says something like “men are pigs” or they go on Twitter and share stories about how they’ve been abused, don’t bother saying “not all men,” because who does that help except you? It’s like saying “not all meteors” when one crashes into the earth and wipes out all the dinosaurs. No one gives a shit that all the other meteors raise their pinkies to drink tea; it’s kind of irrelevant, and misses the point entirely of what that one asshole meteor has been up to.
Cracked is surprisingly great. I really enjoy their podcast too.
I was thinking about this in relation to the piece that was just published here about the progressive dudebro at a party, showing/withdrawing his support for queer rights. One of the most essential ways people can be treated as human beings is to have the possibility of being an asshole without representing an entire category of people. Guys already have this. This is why “not all men” is ridiculous; that is already assumed, whereas people who are marginalized are often seen as representations of an entire group of people whose abilities, kindness, and right to humanity will be judged on every single individual a comfortably situated person encounters. Some of those marginalized people are also men, but their behavior is not seen as a reflection on the category of “men,” rather on the other aspects of their identity.
If I’m an asshole and someone decides that this means all women are assholes, they already thought that and they’re just glad to have me confirm it. And since I’m a white cishet ladyperson, really, it’s only my femaleness on which I’d be judged, whereas someone with a more intersectional identity has multiple places where that shitty judgment is happening.
This is the most succinct and insightful rebuttal of the “not all men” nonsense that I’ve seen yet.
Seriously, where is that GIF with the pointing to the top of the screen? THIS!
I love how angry the commenters get on Cracked’s slide into “omg not funny you just do brainwashed feminazi bullshit now, you guys used to be cool”-land.
This one is probably my favorite Cracked article: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-w…. The generic title hides the fact that it’s an article mainly about the difference between being a Nice Guy and a guy who is nice and also has other positive qualities, and how people only like one of those kinds of guys so maybe you should work on making yourself a better person before you complain about all those girls who won’t date you even though you’re so damn nice. It’s the kind of thing that I think most of us on this site know already (OBVIOUSLY Nice Guys are different than guys who are just nice human beings), but it feels like the kind of article that might have actually helped some people change their lives.
My favorite part:
“‘But I’m a great listener!’ Are you? Because you’re willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be in the proximity of a pretty girl (and spend every second imagining how soft her skin must be)? Well guess what, there’s another guy in her life who also knows how to do that, and he can play the guitar. Saying that you’re a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn’t make you sick. You’re like a new movie whose title is This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is ‘The actors are clearly visible.'”
Also I am going to just imagine the two married Canadian authors in that last piece are Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME
I turned on NPR this morning and MALLORY WAS ON and it was very exciting!
Right?????
What?! How did I miss that? I only heard a strangely compelling story about apple-grower cliques.
What? When? Where?
Here it is!
Thank you. The comments are hilaaaaaaaaarious.
So much whining!
“guyfarting” is fighting the good fight though
Man, there are an awful lot of people who misunderstand The Toast on a fundamental level.
Ohhhhh, THAT’S how you spell “Neda Ulaby”!
EDIT: oh god I can’t believe how bad the comments on NPR articles can be
It always amazes me. I go to NPR thinking the comments will be informed and respectful and funny and something like The Toast…and am constantly disappointed.
ETA: just finished reading the comments. Too many humorless berks who think they’re Better Than That and Why The Hell Isn’t NPR Better Wow It’s Really Gone Downhill Everything Must Be SERIOUS.
Did you ever take the quiz on what your NPR name would be? I did…it’s Marthaba Collverio.
*Gasps, swerves, crashes car!*
I saw “Texts from…” in the window of a bookstore on the plaza in Salem (MA) and wondered if that would be a good place to email about getting a reading scheduled
Read the Canadian piece on McSweeny last week and thought entirely of Nicole the whole time. Then realized we aren’t actually friends, only in my mind, and thought I should meet people.
Does anyone else ever see the titles of ads like “7 Fantastic Uses for Ghirardelli Squares” or “Controversial ‘Skinny Pill’ Sweeps the Nation” and have a vague flicker of hope that it’s actually a wonderfully absurdist article and not an advertisement?
I almost clicked on the skinny pill link before I realized it was sincere and not a Mallory piece.
this is really embarrassing but I turned off my Adblocker and turned on Javascript for TheToast and I still don’t see any ads and I want to see them 🙁
I need to know 7 Fantastic Uses for Ghirardelli Squares even though I can’t afford enough to use them other than putting them in my mouth when I’m lucky enough to have one given to me and delighting in the melting chocolate revealing whatever the inner layer is. (More than one square makes me sick anyway, I learned when I got a handful of free samples once.) But I need to dream!
7 USES FOR GHIRARDELLI SQUARES:
1. Teaching someone who challenged your spelling of “Ghirardelli” that you know better
2. Put one in your purse for yourself to eat
3. Put another one in your purse for someone else to eat
4. Stick one inside your oatmeal in the morning
5. Drop one in your coffee to see what that’s like
6. Leave one in your pocket and do the laundry, that’s using at least one square up
7. Leave one on your pillow in the morning, forget about it, and have a nice surprise when you go to bed
Mmmm Ghirardelli Coffee!
Yup skinny pill.
I assumed the Ghiradelli one was satire I cannot think of what possible uses you could put LITERAL ONE INCH SQUARES OF CHOCOLATE to, unless they’ve really thought outside the box and are suggesting chocolate tiling or something.
1. Eat it
2. Eat it
3. Eat it
4. Eat it
5. Eat it
6. Eat it
7. Or don’t, whatever.
Women not having personhood PLUS a dying lady greeting her horse?? ALL TISSUES AT MY DESK, COME TO ME.
Oh, God, weeping is right. Man. Last wishes are so sacred. What lovely nurses to help give her and her family (and the beautiful horse) what they needed. Aw, man, weeping again.
Also thanks for that Goldie Blox opinion piece. I am still mad with them about the Beastie Boys. Still mad! Also, perpetually mad with shame-driven consumerism. If you don’t buy this, you’re a horrible mom. Eff you. Don’t tell me what to do. How about this – if your child, especially daughter, is interested in coding, try this website! If she’s interested in building things, this is a cool toy! I just don’t like feeling manipulated. I feel like that’s kind of a constant thing with parenting magazines, websites and my own mother. And it is especially used on moms of young kids. And it sucks. Enough already.
The United States of America: where barely formed fetuses have more personhood than fully grown women do.
Hi, Nicole! I love the link roundup and I’d love to see something on Mexico here. I think it’s really important that the international community knows what’s going on with the missing students and the protests, because Mexican media are not doing a great job . This piece by Mexican journalist Esteban Illades on the New Inquiry is very good: http://t.co/EDPOSIufRz and The Guardian and the NYT also have pretty good coverage.
Thank you!
Can do! You can always email me links, in case I do not see comments!
I was able to find out about this through Twitter, didn’t see it on the NY Times homepage this weekend AT ALL.
Thank you for bringing this up and for sharing the link, majosevia!
This fetal personhood stuff makes me SO SO ANGRY. I am currently gestating a much-wanted fetus right now and I wish all the horrible parts of pregnancy on everyone who thinks women should be investigated after miscarriages or forced to carry dying babies to term or made to go through a humiliating circus to get an abortion – if they can get one at all.
So, to you horrible men and women, I wish constant abdominal pain from everything stretching all out of shape, endless fucking nausea, insomnia, sore backs, sore feet, tension headaches, the horrible uncertainty of the first trimester, the sadness and confusion of waiting for test results that may or may not show that your fetus has a chromosomal abnormality. I hope you suffer from bleeding gums and bleeding noses, I hope you vomit at the thought of an onion, I hope you have to get up seven times a night to pee, I hope you get both a long painful labour and then have to recover from a c-section while horrible nurses chide you for wanting to take pain medication and random people warn you you’ve ruined your baby for life because you should have tried harder to give birth vaginally, and then I hope you suffer terrible mastitis six or seven times in a row. And I hope you do it all on five or six hours of restless sleep for months and years and without the solace of a nice stiff drink at the end of the day.
Too much?
If anything, you’re being merciful.
No, not too much at all.
Loved NVC’s piece. Good example of how markets must grow endlessly.
So this is kind of the opposite of Impostor Syndrome, but it’s a great story. I like what it says about recognition of your own value and accomplishments, and is a way of comparing yourself to others that is more positive. I hope someday to have this kind of confidence:
My mentor told this story about one of his good friends from medical school who was from a small village in Africa (I heard this story at least a decade ago, so can no longer remember where he was from). At one particular medical school interview, this man was interviewed with two other candidates by a panel of doctors — pretty stressful. The panel asked the other two candidates why they deserved to get in to Prestigious Medical School and they spoke in great detail about their elite private school education and their many accomplishments. When they got to my mentor’s friend, he gestured to the two candidates next to him and said, “Well, I’m from a rural village in Africa and went to public schools, but I’m sitting in the same room with people like this so I must be doing something right.” He got in.
Wikipedia’s article on impostor syndrome opens with the specifier that it is also spelled “imposter syndrome.” So I guess no one knows really.
ETA: Orphaned comment, supposed to be in response to the person asking about spelling.
I was reading a review of The Feminine Mystique, and the reviewer said the main thing Betty Friedan nailed in the long term is that consumerism would come to stand in for liberation. And that was what we have going on today, judging by today’s articles on toys and “person hood”
When people try to get me into a debate on fetal personhood, I remind them that organ donation requires the consent of the donor, no matter how important the possible recipient might be. If I’m dead, you can’t use my lungs to save the life of a brilliant cancer researcher, or a talented musician, or a saintly mother of three, even if I’m the only donor match IN THE WHOLE WORLD, if I’ve said you can’t. But since I’m alive, people think it should be ok to force me to use all of my organs to support a fetus. I resent the idea that women only get complete legal control over their organs when they’re dead. Personhood really isn’t the point here.
Re: Impostor syndrome, a friend of mine gave a fantastic talk on the kinds of rhetoric we (or some of us) use in talking about our career paths and how changing that rhetoric changes one’s perspective on one’s accomplishments. It’s here and worth the read.
this was a nice, and reassuring, read. thanks for sharing!
I posted Jazmine Hughes’ Impostor Syndrome column to Facebook Friday and someone shot back — seconds later, so obviously she hadn’t had time even to glance at it — “EVERYONE has Impostor Syndrome!”
A. Maybe read the thing first.
B. NO THEY DO NOT, or the world wouldn’t be full of ill-informed people (almost exclusively white dudes) who sally up to me and instruct me on subjects in which I am an expert. Those peoples do not exhibit the signs of Impostor Syndrome; they exhibit an unassailable confidence that their input and instruction is always welcome and valuable, and that no one, not even someone who’s paid to inform them about the very subject on which they speak, could fail to benefit from their interference.
Or heck, maybe those loudmouths do have Impostor Syndrome, in which case I can only suggest that they should really learn to embrace it.
Oh impostor syndrome. I think I have developed impostor syndrome about my impostor syndrome – “everyone else just THINKS they are an impostor but I am the one true impostor!!!!” The one thing I have great confidence in is my perceived lack of skill.
Then again, spent last night fighting with MATLAB and telling myself that surely I was the only one who couldn’t do this analysis only to show up to class this morning and find out that it was basically a disaster for everyone. You would think I would catch on one of these days, but my brain enjoys making conspiracy theories up about just how much I’ve got everyone fooled.
Oh my god, I also get myself into these convoluted spirals of trying to comfort myself by saying “Well, it’s the people who DON’T doubt themselves that we should be wary of” and then at the slightest hint of self-confidence/thinking I’m great at something I attack myself with “SEE, YOU HAVE BECOME A *REAL* IMPOSTOR!!!”
(I'll also add, since I've been thinking about it all day: obviously the IDEAL solution is to reform society such that there is no such thing as "the girls' aisle" and "the boys' aisle" and all toys are equally un-gendered and children of all genders are equally encouraged to play with dolls, trucks, or Legos as they choose, and so forth. But, y'know, that will take some time, and in the meantime kids wanna build shit, so pink Legos it is.)
I hate to admit it, but I don’t get the shopping game… is the point to antagonize store clerks by reading the prices on their clothes out loud?
I hate to admit it, but I don't get the shopping game… is the point to antagonize store clerks by reading the prices on their clothes out loud?
It always amazes me. I go to NPR thinking the comments will be informed and respectful and funny and something like The Toast…and am constantly disappointed.
ETA: just finished reading the comments. Too many humorless berks who think they're Better Than That and Why The Hell Isn't NPR Better Wow It's Really Gone Downhill Everything Must Be SERIOUS.
Did you ever take the quiz on what your NPR name would be? I did…it's Marthaba Collverio.
Seriously, where is that GIF with the pointing to the top of the screen? THIS!
I'm also currently gestating a much-wanted fetus right now, and I love your wish list for all those horrible people pushing the fetal personhood garbage.
Being pregnant already makes my body feel weird in so many ways, a couple of them wonderful (baby kicking!) and most of them uncomfortable/painful and/or unsettling/scary. But then on top of the deep unsettling strangeness of pregnancy, to know that there is a giant political movement in this country that wants to say my little parasite is a legally and morally MORE of a person than I am…
It makes me angry, yes, but really it makes me very very afraid.