“Making films has never just been a job to me, it is my life. I have some interests outside of acting…but acting is what keeps me going, it’s what I do, it gives life purpose.” —Christopher Lee, 1922-2015
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The Life-Altering Decisions We Let 17-Year-Olds Make About Loans:
I was 17 years old as I sat at my parent’s kitchen table in somewhat rural Oregon with a pile of FAFSA paperwork in front of my bewildered parents, neither of whom had gone to university, who were trying their best to help me muddle through it.
“Sallie Mae can take care of it,” my high school guidance counselor told me. “Or the bank. You’ll just get the loans you need and then you’ll pay them back. It’s not a big deal. Everyone does it.” …
The year was 2005. I was a teenager who wanted to be a teacher. The economy had not yet crashed. I was not being greedy, I wasn’t reaching beyond my means. I was trying to do the thing that everyone said I needed to do to not live right on the edge of poverty like my parents.
Now, I’m still kind of there.
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I really want to thank you for all the supportive comments you left on the link roundup a couple of days ago. I expected nothing less than total support from Toast folks — your all-around awesomeness never surprises me — but it still meant a lot to read so many kind and encouraging comments about my name change. It’s going to be a long process to make it all official-like, and I’m planning to go back and read your notes when I start to feel down or impatient about how many hoops I have to jump through along the way. You guys are the best and I truly appreciate you.
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Let’s talk about the X-Files reboot now that the first little teaser photo has been released! I thought I was going to be cool about this, because I have grown and loved many a show since then, but nope, apparently I’m not.
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A Warrior Woman’s Work, by Jess Zimmerman, really knocked me back yesterday:
“The problem isn’t just that we’re shuttled into one of two locked rooms at birth, left to find our own way out if we don’t belong. The problem is also that the rooms have been stocked arbitrarily with clothes and books and props and posters of unattainable ideals. The fixtures have changed a bit over the centuries, but inhabiting your assigned gender can mean accepting a host of assumptions and stereotypes about what qualifies as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’
“Warrior women, like Furiosa and Britomart and many others, explode those assumptions. They offer one model (among many possible ones) for a form of womanhood that’s not dictated by courting expectations of femininity, or conspicuously flouting them, but simply by setting them aside. The message of the martial maid is not that women have to fight. It’s that fighting does not belong to men. Heroism does not belong to men. Being central to the story, acting instead of being acted upon, being something other than ‘beautiful enough’ or ‘insufficiently beautiful’: these are not privileges accorded to men alone. A sword in the hands of a woman doesn’t transform into a symbol of love.
“I never doubted being a girl, but I thought I was missing the mark, because I thought there was a mark to miss. But there are so, so many more ways of being a woman than I realized, so many more ways than I saw reflected in the stories that spoke to me. As it turned out, one of them was mine, and I was doing it exactly right.”
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“15 years after that astounding 1999 match, women’s soccer is still making slow progress toward being fully supported by FIFA, advertisers, and media outlets.
Media coverage of women’s soccer leaves a lot to be desired, too. First of all, there’s a lack of coverage of women’s sports, including soccer: an analysis found that out of an entire year of broadcasting, SportsCenter devoted just two percent of its airtime to women’s sports. Astoundingly popular EA Sports video game series FIFA is just now getting around to adding female players, just in time to capitalize on the 2015 World Cup. Even though the mainstream media has generally moved away from overtly cringe-inducing reporting on the women’s game, there’s still missteps like Fox Soccer, the broadcaster of the World Cup, comparing Louisa Necib to J. Lo in a list of 10 players to watch.”
PSA: The U.S. plays Sweden tonight at 8pm EST. Former USWNT coach Pia Sundhage is now coaching her native Sweden, and she had some things to say about her former players (“I told [Abby Wambach]: ‘If I stayed, you would be a sub. The best sub ever. But a sub.’” WAY HARSH, PIA). My love for the USWNT knows no bounds and I’m super pumped for this game and you should be, too. CANCEL YOUR EVENING PLANS AND WATCH IT WITH ME.
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Pretty good casting: Chris Hemsworth will play the receptionist in the all-female Ghostbusters film
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“When a child with disabilities is kept out of an activity, not only will it hurt them (and their families), but the typical children internalize this segregation as necessary. They will carry that lesson forward.” <–I don’t write a ton here about family stuff — Twitter sees a bit more of it — but this essay was a gut-punch for me and took a couple of sittings to get through. It’s important, though, and I think everyone should read it.
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Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings
by Juan Felipe Herrera (our new U.S. Poet Laureate!)
for Charles Fishman
Before you go further,
let me tell you what a poem brings,
first, you must know the secret, there is no poem
to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries,
yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this,
instead of going day by day against the razors, well,
the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket
sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from
the outside you think you are being entertained,
when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise,
your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold
standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course,
is always open for business too, except, as you can see,
it isn’t exactly business that pulls your spirit into
the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play,
you can even join in on the gossip—the mist, that is,
the mist becomes central to your existence.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
As if I wasn’t already excited about the all-female Ghostbusters reboot!
I don’t know why but I’m having an excessively hard time with blonde Scully.
Also, I’m really bummed out about Christopher Lee. I know he lived a long and eventful life, but I’m still sad he’s gone. He made such an impression, having been in so many wonderful things. And it’s a bit selfish of me, but I’m also sad he won’t be around to reprise King Haggard, whenever they finally get to making that long-promised live-action TLU.
I’ve seen a twitter post (from her) of a pic with red hair as well, so I am a bit confused! But very much looking forward to it anyway, I am in the middle of a DVD rewatch at the minute.
I assumed that blonde Scully is because Gillian Anderson is currently blonde for her ongoing role in Hannibal (as the amazingly-named Bedelia du Maurier, Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist).
OHHHH. You have just solved a mystery for me that I probably could have solved myself with some Googling. I’ve been confused every time people on the Internet are talking about GA and Hannibal, because I thought she was in that other show about a murderer that we don’t watch because it’s too scary for my husband. Turns out she’s in both!
Those are some pretty neat niches she’s got for herself: scary murdery stuff, and period pieces.
Sometimes both! Her real stock in trade is “brittle and ethereal, but somehow also dangerous.”
The thing about this #distractinglysexy controversy is that you never hear women complaining about how they can’t work because of all the hot male scientists around, so LOGIC DICTATES that all labs should just be composed of all women, right? If the problem is that men can’t think around our boners, the logical solution is just to remove all the men.
I’m sorry, science, but you can’t argue with logic.
Y’know. Sexual attraction is a thing. I had this one TA, and I loved it whenever he wrote something on the blackboard because well, dat ass.
I also passed the course, since I was an adult and was not completely debilitated by occasional sexual thoughts. Go figure!
Anyway, I’m happy women on twitter are finding such a creative and fun way of mocking Hunt’s comments.
Lots of grad students dated each other (and some even broke up and then had to work together!) and, you know, we all managed to do our jobs. We did our jobs. Because, even as a twenty-something emotionally immature nerd (speaking for myself only here), I was still able to be professional. Dating your professor is a whole other can of worms, but I have seen it done and you know, the world didn’t end and Jesus, why is it 2015 and we’re still addressing this?
It’s just such a nonsense thing to say that I have a hard time thinking he was serious. Like, was he trying to be charming? Or something? What knocks that out is the bit about crying. IDK. The whole thing was so dumb.
Extrapolating from my personal experience in and around the lab, at least some of those female scientists were experiencing white-hot rage and it was either cry or punch him in the face. You should be celebrating their admirable self-control, Tim Hunt!
(More seriously, the day when the world lets go of Ladies Crying Amirite will be a day to celebrate. Crying is a perfectly natural human reaction to a range of situations!)
I assumed this exact same thing. What was this guy criticizing–the person or the work? How was he doing it–constructively or dirtbagly? I’m going with the latter in both cases.
It could be that he doles out his critiques by yelling at people. And is then surprised when they cry. Maybe you’re bad at constructive criticism dude!
When was a ta, I had a crush on one of my students. He still got the C he deserved, big fringed eyes or not. Because I am a professional.
I don’t know that I’ve ever worked with hot male scientists but I 100% volunteer for that experiment.
My immediate lab group is 80% female. The only one who causes any problems is one of the 2 guys who is entitled as fuck and pitches a fit anytime one of the women ask him to do anything. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s an asshole or because we’re too distractingly sexy…
I am just saying, real scientists would approach this with rigor. Until we make all-female labs, and also labs with different amounts of sexy male scientists attempting to distract them, how can we know for sure? Anecdotal evidence is not reliable.
I’m imagining several clones of Carlos the Scientist.
I am living that experiment. I don’t work with a hot male scientist. But I married one! And I am able to work with him as a team in the care of our elderdogs, putting his tight little ass out of my mind long enough to hold a little dog still and clean bird poop off her ear, for example. Glamorous.
Awww poor little dog. My grandma always told me getting pooped on by a bird was good luck though.
Hot male scientists are few and far fuckin’ between, that’s for sure. But there is currently a rotation student in the lab that shares space with mine who looks like a cross between Feyd Rautha in David Lynch’s Dune & Robert Pattinson (in a good way) & I am fully capable of thinking, in passing, damn you’re pretty & then continuing my work like a grownup!
I recently had a female coworker ask me “so, have you noticed that every single guy on our field crew is pretty hot?” Why yes, coworker, I have. I most definitely have. Surprisingly, I am still able to work with them because I’m an adult not a hormonal pre-teen.
also, what if that dude just went home whenever he got distracted by a sexy lady scientist? that would work too, right?
Except if the dude was in the middle of an experiment the sexy lady scientist would have to take over. She could do it better than him, obviously, but she’s already pretty busy doing her own work and being sexy.
good point – best for the dude to just stay out of the way.
Yes, scientists enfeebled by uncontrolled libido and bigotry should just stay out of the way. Go sit over there where you can’t interfere. No, not there, further away. Keep going. Keep going. Until the real scientists can work without seeing or hearing you.
hahaah what if his lab gave him, like 6 personal “the ladies are too sexy” days every year, so he could go home and get his shit together
Only if they’re unpaid days.
I don’t want to distract too much from the primary idiocy of Hunt’s comments, but it also seems like he imagines a world where there are either no hot male scientists, or no gay male scientists. Single-sex environments don’t remove all opportunities for distracting attraction, right?
Oh dang, good point, I guess we are going to have to start making all gay and all lesbian science labs, too, just to be sure!
I don’t meant to make light of this whole issue, but actually I do think my “sexy science lab” paradigm is maayyyybe going to revolutionize the entire field of human inquiry.
Maybe humans are just too distracted by other humans! Robots should be doing all science!
I dunno, but as a depraved bisexual, I personally feel like I should receive a big, fat disability check from the government every month.
Who am I supposed to work with? There’s temptation at every turn!
I’m a narcissist, so you have a tiny inkling of how hard it is for me to get any work done. And I work for myself, so I’m not distracted by any libido-killing others. It’s just me and my tempting delectability 24/7 around here!
Seriously, I have worked with some very hot guys in my career. And you know what I did? I did my job because that’s what I get paid to do. No one’s paying these men to flirt and oogle and harass women and if they’re wasting their time being sexist assholes while the women are working, then why would an employer get rid of the women instead of them? It’s amazing that so many men are perfectly fine admitting in public that they’re not doing their jobs very well because they’re easily distracted.
If the problem is that men can’t think around our boners, the logical solution is just to remove all the men is, i’m pretty sure, the solution to, maybe, ALL of life’s problems *sigh*
I mean, it just looks like the rational reality of the situation to me. Objectively-speaking, how can we argue?
I can’t decide which Christopher Lee movie to watch first. (I mean, there’s sort of a dizzyingly large selection.) Think we’ll pick a Dracula and go from there.
Before the first LOTR movie came out, my best friend and I would sit there obsessively refreshing the official website to hear the different actor intros. Christopher Lee’s was the best. /end nostalgia moment
I did that too! I loved Viggo’s as well. His gravelly slightly-nasal voice is strangely mesmerizing to me.
I was looking on netflix last night to find something with him in and came up with The Skull, which he wasn’t in for long but it was a cracker.
OH MY GOD i did that too, and completely forgot that i did.
A memory of that deep, tonal, incredibly decisive “I’m Christopher Lee” just came charging out of my grey matter to remind me that yes: I refreshed that page a lot with my best friend too. Are you her?!
Possibly. I have been many best friends to many people. Were you in Rhode Island at the time?
Seriously though, it’s half-funny, half-sad that I can still remember all of the different intros. “Welcome. To Lord of the Rings Dot Net.” Each word uttered like a pronouncement of doom. I loved it and still do. (Also Billy Boyd’s.)
Alas, bighair, I am a lifelong midwesterner – we haven’t been best friends (yet). But in my neck of the woods, our “thing” was refreshing the site over and over until we heard Orlando Bloom’s intro – I don’t even remember his now, it was only Christopher Lee and Viggo that punctured my deeper consciousness. I read this on the internet somewhere recently and believe it 100%: an essential part of every fangirl’s maturation in the aughts was discovering that Aragorn is hotter than Legolas. That’s when you know you’re a Woman, and no longer a Girl.
That is the truth. I was never a big LOTR fan, so I had only seen the first one in my teens while I had the flu and I had zero recollection of the movie aside from thinking Legolas was dreamy. Then I watched the trilogy a year or two ago and realized Aragorn was the hot one and thus I was now truly an adult.
I always found Aragorn hotter, and I was around 12 when the first one came out. Have I been a Woman all along?
oh man, I did that constantly! sweet nostalgia 🙂
Oh man, those were good times. “Hello. I’m Christopher Lee. Welcome to Lord. of the Rings. Dot. Net.”
Did anyone else watch Cote d’Ivoire v Thailand yesterday?!?!? Great match!!
And I think I might have to cancel evening plans – food festival with potential new friends (also coworkers of MrKat over whom he holds authority) who have probably gotten a babysitter…darn it. I’m a jerk if I cancel that because of the match, yes? I didn’t KNOW! And apparently it’s being rebroadcast at 3 AM. How supportive!
Nothing would stand between me and a food festival, tbh. Maybe you could bring along a handheld radio and everyone could listen to the game? It’s a win-win solution.
No, cancel. I cancelled plans tonight that I made without thinking about the game schedule!!! watch the game. watch the game. watch the game.
Its the world cup!!!
Don’t cancel, they got a babysitter! Go, and feel smug and virtuous for not cancelling.
Cancel! I foolishly planned a date during Monday night’s USA/AUS game, and I almost canceled sooooo many times, but finally I decided to suck it up and go, and then I got to the bar and she was planted right in front of a tv showing the match and we had the best time. Anyway, I still vote cancel.
Admission: I did not get into X-Files until college. I was born in the early 90s if that gives you an idea, and we weren’t so much a TV household growing up. But they’re all on Amazon Prime and so I’ve been slowly, slowly working my way through. Here is my reaction:
I love X-Files. I love Scully with the fire of 1,000 suns. She is transcendent. And I love the dynamic between Mulder and Scully so much. Thy disagree 100% of the time but they care for and respect each other so completely. Of course you all already knew that. Here’s hoping the revival is good.
Screw Tim Hunt. That hashtag rocks but people still think like Tim Hunt. Tim Hunt still thinks like Tim Hunt. I’m glad universities are willing to force out bigots like that– having a Nobel-laureate professor is a big selling points for lots of schools– but I wish they’d fired him without the dignity of being able to “resign.” Not sorry.
As a practical question, can one be straight-up fired from an honorary position?
I am watching the X-Files for the first time right now, and agree with everything you say. Also her incredibly communicative eyebrows and facial expressions are the best.
where are you in the series? have you gotten to Bad Blood yet??
I have not got into the X-Files yet (I was born in 1989), but I know I will at some point! It’s just a matter of time.
To be fair to UCL (where I am currently studying) it’s got a few other Nobel laureates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laure…
X-Files is also on Netflix. Enjoy, all you new x-philes. Then, when you’ve watched all the episodes more than once, at least through season 7–seasons 8 and 9 really don’t count, Chris Carter couldn’t keep the mess of the mytharc by then watchable without the Mulder/Scully dynamic–and you’re all bereft… there’s fanfic .
And maybe this series?? Remains to be seen.
When I watched it on Netflix there were no subtitles in the episodes that included foreign languages though, so I recommend Amazon Prime instead if you have it.
I want someone to do a “If Gillian Anderson Were Your Girlfriend”, cause I’m such a fan of her in everything I’m seen her in.
Oops, I fucked up the link. http://fluky.gossamer.org
Can we talk about Rachel Dolezal? I’m so fascinated and horrified and confused.
I am stunned and fascinated and appalled and SO ENTERTAINED, because it’s developing layers. First there’s the “oh my god she did the thing” reaction and then after that there’s the reaction to the reactions — this morning Jaya retweeted something someone had posted on Tumblr about not shaming Rachel Dolezal for her “transracial identity” and I nearly fell out of my chair. WHAT IS THAT!? Can we not with the trans mocking!?
I think a weird thing though is that, uh, there actually seem to be people who believe sincerely in transracial identity, so maybe that wasn’t even a joke? And maybe that’s worse, or better, oh man I don’t know.
people throwing the term “transracial” around like a joke is bothering me a lot.
I honestly can’t wrap my head around people believing seriously in “transracial” identity, to me that tracks along the lines of a self-serving appropriation of social justice language for “don’t judge me” purposes, along the same lines as the people on in niche corners of the internet who expect equal representation as “transspecies” people who believe they were born human when they should have been a wolf or something. Race and species are just… what you are. It’s not about something being enforced upon you to say that you are a human being. It’s what you are. And I think it’s wildly offensive that someone heaped with white privilege is being defended as “transracial” in some corners of the internet now that she’s been called out for her massive appropriation of a culture and identity that isn’t hers.
Well, I agree, I think it’s only the sort of thing that a person who does not really understand anything about race or history or identity could come up with, but on the other hand, at least it’s sincere?
I don’t know, honestly, I guess it’s equally bad to sincerely believe in transracial identity as it is to mock transgender identity.
I do wonder how many of the people trying to say people are hypocrites for supporting Caitlyn Jenner but deriding Rachel Dolezal are doing it maliciously or out of confusion. I feel like a lot of those same people who don’t understand anything about race or history or identity are the ones asking.
Yeah, probably the vast majority of them are just doing it out of spite. Trying to show that someone who disagrees with you is in some way a hypocrite is a tried and true rhetorical technique for relieving your own anxiety at the thought that you might be wrong about something.
Ugh… #WrongSkin is now trending on twitter, and being used by Milo Yian-asshole (just in case you were thinking they might be in earnest). How can people even thing this is a thing you should do? Of course, it’s insulting to both POC and transgender people, so for them it probably seems like a win-win.
Ugh, basically.
…oh my god.
I mean, I am sort of in this camp? Not really. It’s mostly down to how to articulate the difference to others? I am honestly a little baffled about how to discuss it because of the trans thing. Because OBVIOUSLY it is not the same thing, race and gender, but a lot of the arguments ARE the same? Like, the things people say about her are the same things that terrible people have been saying about Caitlyn Jenner? Which makes it really hard to debate.
Some examples: “You can’t just wake up one morning and decide you’re a different race.” “You can’t put yourself in the center of an oppressed group when you’ve never experienced that oppression.” AND I AGREE WITH BOTH OF THESE STATEMENTS but I would not agree with them if this was about trans women? If it was “You can’t wake up one morning and decide you’re a different gender”? That would be wrong on many levels.
I am not remotely defending this woman. I know there is an immense difference between being a trans person and “passing” as a black person, particularly in this instance where she deliberately used her supposed ‘blackness’ to get jobs and scholarships that are specifically for black people. I am just finding it REALLY hard to articulate the difference when so many of the arguments sound the same, and people come at me with “you wouldn’t say that about a trans woman” and I’m like “This is not the same fucking thing” and they’re like “HOW?” and I’m like …. UGH I DON’T KNOW IT JUST ISN’T.
If you have effective things to say to this type of argument, I would very much appreciate them, is what I’m saying.
It’s definitely difficult to articulate, because we so often simplify things to “race and gender are both socially constructed categories” without taking the time to iron out the nuances of that thought. I think this post does a pretty decent job of unpacking the reasons that it’s possible to be transgender but being transracial is a whole different thing: http://soletstalkabout.com/post/121350496180/tran…
This is SUPER helpful, thank you. Just that one concept that you can have 25% stereotypically “female” qualities and still present and identify and in all ways be male, but you cannot be 25% black and present and identify as white because society sees you as ‘tainted’, is a really useful and concise way to delineate the difference.
Thank you so much for that link; that’s exactly what I needed.
No, I was totally having this same conversation with myself last night, but I didn’t want to say anything because Twitter is not the platform for that kind of nuance and I would have just been running my underinformed mouth anyway.
Basically I’m trying to figure out whether I’m going to be my great-grandchildren’s bigoted ancestor if I don’t accept someone’s transracial identity.
transracial totally still won’t be a thing in the future but if you’re worried about posterity watch your mouth about the otakukin
what the hell is the non-socialized essence of ‘black’. what does it mean to have a black mind. am i transblack because i like basketball and am scared of cops, am i going to kill myself if i don’t get a melanin injection. who is doing the best studies on the morphology of black brains as distinct from white now, is it still the bell curve guy
Well, race/ethnicity is unequivocally dependent on what your parents give you, both in ancestry and in culture. For example, one of my grandparents was from Ireland and another was from the Soviet Bloc. I have recipes, traditions, and bits of the language from the Eastern European side. That side does family reunions and made a big genealogical scrapbook with photos of the Old Country. The last time I celebrated St Patrick’s Day, I had to look up Irish recipes online. Sure, I mention being Irish when I do the White Person Ethnic Role-Call, but the Slavic side will always be domov muj. I choose to identify more with one ethnicity than the other, but both of them were there to begin with.
If both of your parents are, say, ethnically Han Chinese, your ethnicity is Han Chinese, and that’s that. You can’t suddenly decide that you, having 100% Han Chinese ancestry, are actually German just because your ethnic German neighbors invited you to dinner and you loved their spaetzle. If an ethnically Han baby were adopted by Germans and raised in that culture, that would be different:she’d likely identify more with German culture than Chinese, and that’s what the term trans-racial is supposed to mean: a kid of one race/ethnicity is brought up in the culture of another.
You can’t say you’re German if you didn’t grow up with either German ancestors or a deep and meaningful connection to German culture, because that experience is unique to Germans. The only experience unique to women is identifying as a woman. Intersex folks with androgen insensitivity look and sometimes identify as female, but have both XY chromosomes and testes. Butch women can be 100% AFAB and identify as female, but have a stereotypically masculine appearance. Drag queens, even really fishy ones, can be AMAB dudes who have never identified as female and just like playing dress-up. Biology and appearance aren’t reliable indicators of who’s a woman, so we have nothing to go on but whether the lady protests.
Just to clarify though, race and species are actually radically different, because species is a biological term, with a clear test-able definition, where as race really is an amalgamous ill-defined social construct, which is not to say that it isn’t a real barrier or anything, just that race and species are actually nothing alike. Race is not just what you are, it’s built over time, it’s enforced from the outside, it’s open to a huge range of interpretation and re interpretation. As someone who is mixed and has had a number of equally ‘valid’ (in as much as any concept of race can be valid) self definitions, I just wanted to point out that race really is fluid in a way that species can never be. Someone else might be able to say this more clearly, I hope.
Edit: and I may be misinterpreting the argument you were making, so I want to appologize in advance there. This is just one of those things that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Yeah, absolutely, I’m just saying that while gender and sexual identity are self-defined and thus something that can be fluid and can change based on your own preferences and experiences, species is absolute, and race, like culture, are not based solely in your personal self — they’re informed heavily by history, by group experience, by societal expectations and treatment (privilege, oppression, etc), so while it’s completely and totally fine to say “I was raised as a boy but in my heart I know I am a woman,” I think it’s extremely out of line to say “I was born to white European immigrant parents, but in my heart I know I am black,” because you’re not just defining yourself in terms of your own experience, you are appropriating generations worth of oppression and lived experience *that define the experience of being that race* for yourself and performing it, rather than living it.
I’m totally with you, basically, that race is fluid in a way species isn’t — but I think, like species, it’s something you can’t deny is yours the way you came to it. If this makes any sense. It’s early yet.
you couldn’t define your own gender until real recently, either, that was if anything more rigidly and consistently socially delineated than race. this still escapes the root question of what do you mean when you say you’re really black on the inside, exactly
Soooo “transracial” is a term that’s been used in the adoption community for decades; you still hear interracial/cross-racial/a bunch of other terms, but “transracial” is the most common now. And it should absolutely NOT be used to mock or appropriate the experiences of transgender people. But to lots and lots of us, that is not what it is or what it means.
This is really bothering me now.
Oh yikes, that sucks. I haven’t seen/heard the term until today, seeing people basically use it as a joke to mock transgender people and make jokes about Rachel Dolezal. And some seemingly-serious people who think it’s okay to claim another race’s lived experience as their own. :\
oh, shoot, I hadn’t thought of that, I only ever saw it in this particular appropriative context. That is a good point though, I will be more careful about it.
As a white woman with adopted sisters who are WOC, I found John Raible’s work to be very helpful itn working out how that shaped my perspective on the world. This in particular: https://johnraible.wordpress.com/about-john-w-rai…. However, I would NEVER claim to be anything except white or to say that I have the same lived experiences as POC.
(Nikki, this isn’t meant to be a direct reply to you as I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea. It just seemed like a good spot to put it in the thread.)
I’ve read a bunch of Raible’s work! Thanks for posting that here. 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing that link! It really hit the spot in so many ways that I have a hard time putting my finger on what resonated most. Very interesting, lots to ponder.
I am actually all about shaming her transracial identity because (a) she took up space, prominent space, that should have been held by a Black woman, and (b) it creates false equivalencies between race and gender in some really gross ways and (c) every Nikki has already said about cross-race adoption
It’s such a strange story. I find it kinda funny, honestly? But what pisses me off are all the people taking this as an excuse to mock trans people (by saying “she’s just transracial! It’s totally a thing!”) which, no. Just: no.
Well, I see the similarity in that asking people to prove their racial identity, like asking them to prove their gender, leads nowhere good. But hello! Black people can’t just decide to be white and get out from under discrimination! Good grief.
I don’t know whether to laugh or grimace so I’m settling for grimace-laughing.
It seems clear there’s some kind of mental or personality disorder at play. It’s not just the black face, which is awful enough, it’s the claiming someone else’s history of oppression. Just, oy.
this helps me enter the story a bit because I had a strange period in high school when I really, really wanted to be jewish. I wanted to enter into that story and identity. I may have even claimed to strangers that I was jewish. This is now very embarrassing to me, but at least I can partially blame an immature pre-frontal cortex?
Hey, but at least there’s a mechanism for that called conversion (though you probably still shouldn’t claim to have lost relatives in the Holocaust or whatever). You can’t just convert to being black by wearing a darker foundation and majoring in Africana Studies.
this is true! And I never really tried claiming the oppression and experience of belonging to that group, I just WANTED to belong to something bigger than myself. And I had a thing for the boys? But seriously, I am in the camp of laugh-grimacing.
Every detail about this story just brings up like a thousand more questions for me. How did she rope a stranger into pretending to be her dad? Surely her husband had met her extended family before, did he not feel like something was off???
My fav comment about this last nite was, “omg she for real acted like she was born by the river in a little tent”
There’s a photo supposedly of her wedding to a guy named Kevin, who is black, surrounded by her white parents and grandparents, and her parents’ four adopted black children. My question is, are she and Kevin still together? What are his thoughts on all of this?
I think I read (while raging) that she is divorced now
Fancy that…
If she had different jobs I’d be more willing to shrug and let people be, but her alleged blackness played a role in her being head of the local NAACP and her teaching African-American studies classes. How many black women would like to have those jobs, black women with PhD’s and Master’s?
Especially since she also talked about having Native American ancestry and being born in a teepee, it’s so over the top, I’m just laughing.
And her family (according to her) hunted for food with BOWS AND ARROWS!
The most perfect summation of this whole bizarre incident was going around twitter last night: only a white person could get this much attention for being black.
dunno about that just try throwing a pool party
I did a bitter bark-laugh when I read your comment. Oy. You’re not lying.
*whispers* it’s ok if I don’t keep up with women’s sports, so long as I also don’t keep up with men’s sports, right? isn’t it?
I find most, if not all sports extremely boring. Right there with you! Something something, I will fight for the right for you to play sports, even if I hate what you play, something something.
not everyone likes sportsball. I give not a fig about it, but I appreciate that not everybody gives a fig about independent local theatre, which I am passionate about. And I maintain friendships with people who like sportsball because they are interesting to me in other ways and also if my son grows up to be sportsy (it’s looking that way) I can send him with them to whatever game and not have to sit through it myself.
Including kids with disabilities so important, not just for the disabled kids, but for everyone else. People who are not disabled don’t even think about what they need to do to include disabled people in activities, because they’ve never been made aware. As an adult who in the last couple years has become disabled because of MS, I have had to decline party invitations held in places inaccessible to a wheel chair (you’d be surprised how many places there are still) and remind the organizer of work meetings that I need accommodation every single time.
So include the ALL kids! That’s the best time for everyone to learn
That teacher was not even trying! Makes me really angry. Like the time my kid’s Gen Ed teacher did not include the World’s Greatest Camel Expert (my kid, at the time) in the second grade “report on an animal” project because she was “not in the room at that time of day.”
Yes to all of this! When adults have never really interacted with disabled people the burden of teaching them generally falls on the disabled people themselves. I have a minor disability that doesn’t come up often but sometimes I don’t want to have to teach that class. And the reactions that I’ve gotten are sometimes so clueless that it’s easier to hide my disability and not have that discussion again. Teach kids early please!
This is so, so important. When I was growing up, one of my mom’s cousins had Cerebral Palsy (she’s somewhere between my mom’s age and mine), and my grandfather had limited mobility due to a WWII injury. In addition to THAT, my mom taught elementary school in an inclusion model – all the kids are together for most of the day, with some students going to see a counselor or physical therapist as needed. So, all that to say, I was surrounded by kids and adults of all different types and levels of ability, and it really opened my eyes to trying my absolute best to include everyone in activities they expressed interest in. I had a hard time adjusting to middle and high school, because suddenly the kids with just about any disability were just *gone* from my classes, except for things like choir and art. I hated that, because I was friends with some of them, and suddenly that was “weird” or “taboo” because they didn’t get to hang out with the rest of us. I just. UGH IT’S SO IMPORTANT TO ME I CAN’T HELP BUT YELL SORRY. INCLUSION FOR EVERYONE.
It really annoyed me when I was younger that a lot of schools/institutions treated the disabled kids differently that everyone else.
They’d be ‘inclusive’ in that everyone did the same stuff but, I always felt there was an attitude of ‘Oh you tried well done, here’s a special trophy for you’ with the disabled kids, or they’d participate in the same activities, but there’d be a different set of judgement criteria for them just so that they got a prize and ‘didn’t feel bad’. Its like that ‘everyone gets a trophy for showing up’ business, I’m competitive, I want to know exactly how I did compared to everyone else and what I need to improve so I win next time, its insulting to think that someones feelings are so fragile that being told someone did better than them will hurt them, yes even children or disabled people, respect that they can understand the concept of fair play if you explain it in a way that they understand
I used to work with horses, and there’s a lot of horse related activities for disabled people, which is great, I think its really beneficial for everyone! But for some reason no one ever wanted to teach them to ride properly or treat them like adults who could actually learn this stuff (its not hard like), it was always ‘Yay you patted the pony well done!!!’.
There’s a special Olympics equestrian program, again love it, but the expectations of some of the coaches are so low I can’t help but think its insulting to the athletes who actually want to compete, there’s no reason they can’t ride to good standard with good coaching and support (Like everyone else!) Stop lowering the bar, give everyone the help that they need to reach it!
(I may be way off the mark here and have insulted a huge about of people, understand that I do not advocate forcing everyone to comply to the same standard, I’m just saying that everyone and anyone, disabled or not, can work towards and achieve things with the right support and guidance, you don’t have to dumb things down.)
People have a bad habit of assuming that “disabled” means “incapable”. We also have a bad habit of categorizing people and assuming that everyone in one category is the same, so we put a huge variety of people with different conditions and aptitudes into one box labeled “disabled” and then assume that all of those people have the same needs and/or limitations. Some people are going to be able to meet the standard bar with help, and other people need to have it lowered, but we shouldn’t assume off the bat that it needs to be lowered just because someone is in the box we label “disabled.” (And vice-versa, we shouldn’t assume that just because we can’t see someone’s disability that they should be expected to meet the same standards other people do)
Somehow, people think that “without ability” or “with disability” means “without potential”. Like your entire personal development has a cap or a lid on it. Like you’ve reached your peak and now you’ll plateau the rest of your life.
NO. I am disabled. I am not dis-potentialled (this is now a word). I too can and will improve. I’m able to learn, to change. Disabled is not the same thing as staying the same forever. No one is still unless they’re dead.
Hearting this so hard. Gonna read it to a friend. (To help him understand me.)
I know the piece was about elementary-school aged children, but one week ago I attended a professional development event for college administrators about how to provide services to college students with disabilities.
The woman who ran it–who is a Director of a university disability support services office!–was awful. She explained how she told her students that “accommodations don’t exist in the real world, so you better try to get off them now” and reminded us never to promise any accommodations to anyone or offer to push someone who uses a wheelchair lest we open our schools to lawsuits.
By the end of the session, I was shaking with anger. I had hoped the session would be about how to make our schools more appealing and accessible for students with disabilities, but instead I got a whopping dose of ableism and cover-your-ass policy tactics.
“accommodations don’t exist in the real world”
wow
such confuse
I thought that was what ADA was for?? That director sounds awful!
My worst experiences with exclusion were in college, usually with residence life people who would set up a physical activity as team building and then be like “oh…you can just sit this out.” So, not part of the team then. Cool, cool.
SO PUMPED FOR THE GAME TONIGHT ahhhhhhhhh
I loved Pia’s interview. Abby SHOULD be a super sub, and the fact that she’s starting messes up the whole lineup (see: Christen Press at midfield? WHY). YOU TELL ‘EM PIA.
Also, this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_spot/2015/06/09/us…
I LOVE ABBY WAMBACH FIGHT ME
the thing is, it’s one thing to make her a sub because it’s good for the team and another to be like “I don’t coach you anymore, I’m going to talk to the press about how you SHOULD be sidelined even though I don’t make the decisions about this team anymore!”
I still really like Pia, she’s awesome. but I kinda felt bad for Abby Wambach after reading that — not that she needs my sympathy, because she is amazing.
Oh no I love her too!! I just think it’s a really weird decision to keep her on the field for 90 minutes when you have people like Amy Rodriguez sitting on the bench and you’ve jammed Christen Press into a wide midfield position where she’s clearly confused. Abby is SO intimidating, imagine bringing her on 70 minutes into a tough game. If I were the opposing defense, I’d be terrified.
I do see your point about Pia though. I think I was just so relieved to hear someone say something REASONABLE about this team after like 8 months of terrible lukewarm games and limp noodle Jill Ellis being all, “we just need to STAY THE COURSE.”
I totally agree with Wambach as a super sub. It’d be one thing if the US lacked attacking talent, but they clearly have the talent.
“it is strange that a country whose most successful recording artist is Iggy Azalea would rely on aesthetic arguments to criticize anyone” I am HOWLING
also this is the first game of the WWC I will get to watch on an actual TV so I am PUMPED
But I mean, Abby Wambach took off the first part of her club team’s season (not injured, just … because) and she did not look like a 90-minute player in the first game. I don’t think it’s especially harsh to start building your team around younger forwards – I love Abby and she’s had an incredible career, but she’s 35 and won’t be around forever. Anyway. That whole developing-younger-talent thing has been a problem for the US for a while now and I fear this is the tournament where it could finally catch up to them.
Anyone else sadder than they thought they would be at the death of Dusty Rhodes? I’m a pretty recent wrestling fan, but man. What a legend.
I don’t think it would be terrible to have Abby on the bench, I thought it was not really a comment the former coach needed to be making when that’s not in her hands anymore? idk. I still like Pia a lot.
Yeah, I can understand that. I feel like it’s not uncommon for coaches to comment on their former players, but the timing of the article isn’t ideal.
The #distractinglysexy hashtag is bugging me. Not in and of itself. But there’s a hashtag like this every few weeks celebrating women in STEM (girlswithtoys was a recent example, but there have been others) and this is the first one that’s exploded on my facebook page and it’s all dudes who are sharing it and I don’t know entirely how I feel about that.
Are they sharing in solidarity or is it more like, “Lookit all these sexy women in STEM!”, which would be totally missing the point?
No, they’re definitely sharing in solidarity. It just bugs me on some weird level that this is the hashtag/issue that got them to sit up and take notice.
I never doubted being a girl, but I thought I was missing the mark, because I thought there was a mark to miss. But there are so, so many more ways of being a woman than I realized, so many more ways than I saw reflected in the stories that spoke to me. As it turned out, one of them was mine, and I was doing it exactly right
Oh god, this. This so much. I went through a significantly long period of my life where I thought I was gender dysphoric because I didn’t feel like a girl even though I liked being a girl. Thank you so much for the link to that article.
That entire last part of the article was so spot on. Thank you indeed, Nicole, for linking!
When I was a kid, femininity was this test I didn’t really grasp the rules of, but that I knew I was failing at. So I rejected all femininity for a while, and I too projected myself onto the knights in the stories (and not the princesses because “they do nothing but embroider all day and embroidery is stupid”). It’s so important that kids get to see just how much variation there can be.
I almost cried out loud when I read about the role model she got closest to was Alanna, the Lionness. Tamora Pierce did that so right.
Oh my, I went through that same thing. I also wondered if I might be a lesbian (present-day conclusion: no) because I had never seen any representation of a straight woman who didn’t aspire to be feminine or pretty.
YES. In my teen years my mom was so afraid I was a budding lesbian because I wore baggy clothes and boots and flannels. No mom, I’m not gay, it was just the 90s! Sheesh!
When I was a kid, I understood “boy” and “girl” but I didn’t get boyish and girlish. Looking back, I think it caused social problems for me because I wasn’t fighting gender roles, I just didn’t understand them.
Then when I was a teenager and I liked wearing boy’s clothes (giant pants are comfy!), my dad tried to point out that I was wearing the wrong clothes, and I thought about it, and said, “I’m wearing it, and I’m a girl, therefore it’s girl’s clothes.” I wasn’t trying to be clever. Maybe I was stupid for not getting it, or not understanding the importance. But overall that perspective was excellent for my self-esteem.
So I guess there’s a plus to being such a bratty selfish kid– obviously I’m right and everyone else is doing it wrong!
yessss this was so spot on.
for me, also, there was definitely a time in my life when i thought maybe i was genderqueer or agender or something not cisgender (although i didn’t even know the words for it then), even though my body felt more or less right, i just felt like…not a good example of a girl? not attached to being a girl, not comfortable as a girl as i thought i was supposed to be.
then i realized that was because i was receiving a fuckton of mixed messages, most of them completely impossible to actually embody. i’m definitely cisgender, it’s just that our society’s expectations for femininity are fucking insane.
This is something I’ve been struggling a little bit with over the past… year or so, I’d say. I think maybe I am genderqueer or genderfluid? But I am also having a really hard time sorting out the lines between “I don’t feel like a woman because I’m not one [or not entirely/always a woman]”, “I don’t feel like a woman because, although I am a woman, I don’t fit the restrictive societal expectations of womanhood,” and “I don’t feel like a woman because, although I am a woman, I have been conditioned to believe womanhood is inferior and undesirable and so of course I don’t want that.”
our society’s expectations for femininity are fucking insane.
Can we…get that on a gigantic wall poster or something?
I very much relate to this!
In my case, it may have been partly because my family has a lot of women on the autism spectrum (e.g., my mom, grandmother, cousins, et al.), who had absolutely zero interest in stereotypically feminine things and didn’t care about hair, makeup, etc.
For a long time I felt like I was failing somehow at being a girl (even though I never felt like I *wasn’t* a girl), just because I wasn’t like a lot of the other girls I knew and had some stereotypically masculine interests.
I relate to that a lot. For a couple of years I thought I might be gender dysphoric because most of my friends (and society) were pressuring me to appear more femme, and I felt deeply uncomfortable and disconnected from my body when I tried to dress in a femme way. And I felt like I was objectifying myself by trying to fit myself into that box, because I’m not femme.
But then I realised I am a woman, it’s just that being a woman doesn’t necessarily have to mean what society says it means.
RE: Warrior Woman’s Work- D’aaaaw, I started fencing because of Alanna too! : ) : ) : )
(I wonder what, exactly she means by “didn’t compete at all until I was 18” though— didn’t even compete locally??? Because… that must have been really boring.)
Me too!
I don’t fence (SADLY), but I did read those books about a million times when I was in middle school. Also, I briefly got really into archery because of Daine.
I have “archery” and “horseback riding” on my list of skills to acquire at some point because of Pierce.
Also “magic”, but that seems more challenging : /
I still sometimes think purple fire is going to sprout on my hand when my nose itches.
(also, thank you Miiiiiizzzzzzzzz Chung for posting that– I’d skipped it because I haven’t seen Mad Max yet, but it was amazing and worth reading anyway)
(shutupshutupshutup things have been busy around tableland- yesterday involved a full work day, my mother’s semi-estranged twin brother dying, day 25 of my period (yes, 25 straight days of bleeding, yes i have seen the doctor for this), a UTI, and a dude (friend-of-a-friend) who reported my FB picture in retribution for me pointing out that him having his “redhead of the day” softcore porn album as “public” was pretty creepy, especially the picture of the scantily clad girl making out with a bear.) (I mean, I didn’t really know my uncle, I have antibiotics now, and my facebook picture is back, but Mad Max just hasn’t happened yet, but it will, I PROMISE)
Tim Hunt’s Lab
Down in the lab
the hormones are roiling
tensions are mounting
our beakers are boiling
who knows how long
these lab coats can stay on
with all these young women
those hussies in rayon
scientific method
has taken a back seat
and all of our data’s
no longer discrete
No one is keeping
their mind on titration
the new paradigm is
sexperimentation
Women of science
had better watch out!
Tim Hunt is lurking
tortured with doubt
about your emotions
and how you’ll react
when criticized mildly
and with great tact
If you happen to cry
he’ll feel it most keenly
he likes his lab dry
while he’s thinking obscenely
i’m going to write a grant for some sexperiments i’ve been designing.
Your poetry is a gift to the Link Roundups.
This might be a little forward, but I think I love you. <3 these poems you’ve been doing all week.
Is it something in the air
Or just your flowing nostril hair
That makes me sigh
Is it the sternness in your gaze
Or a blot on my assays
That makes me cry
Fantastic. Your poetry is a gift to us all.
<3 <3 <3
*wakka chika wakka chika*
“They say this cat Hunt is a bad mother – (Shut your mouth!)
But I’m talkin’ ’bout Hunt – (Then we can dig it!)”
I <3 you even more than that guy who writes limericks in the comments of New York Times articles.
Thank you for all your kind words, I aim to amuse, even though the scansion of this poem doesn’t quite work. But I don’t really have time to proofread, so the first draft is usually what you get.
I am so here for X-Files discussion right now. I cannot wait and am hoping with all of my heart after the Joel McHale announcement this week that Kumail Nanjiani will be given a bit part if only so I can hear him talk all about it on the X-Files Files. Also, can anyone confirm for me what writers they’ve gotten? From the start I heard rumors about both Morgans, Wong, and Gilligan but have not heard for certain.
I AM SO EXCITED.
I am very excited and a bit worried also! I didn’t much care for the relationship that Mulder and Scully had in that last movie. But I will watch this anyway, because I do not know how to walk away from a franchise I have enjoyed, even if it goes terrible (which I hope it doesn’t!)
That’s why I’m really really hoping they got some of the classic writers who can do both some pretty darn good Monster of the Week stuff as well as mythology whatnot (if they even want to go back there.)
I’m so excited! My bestie stalked the set earlier in the week and sent me so many good Mulder and Scully photos. I stared at the for about half an hour, unable to believe this is actually happening.
Kumail should have a major role, seriously! I genuinely believe his podcast helped bring back the X-Files. Also he is awesome!
I KNOW! He’s a wonderful actor who I think understands the sensibility of the X-Files enough where he would be perfect AND he’s really done a lot to hook new people and to get old fans like me to go back through the series. (I’d forgotten how good so many of the episodes are…I mean, I have my favorites but there were a bunch I’d forgotten like Die Hand Die Verletzt which was FABULOUS.)
There is an X-Files-themed podcast? Of course there is… I am so out of the loop with podcasts. How do I find all these wonderful things?
Also, I reeeeally hope those writer rumors are true ! Then I would be excited! The last movie was just so bad!
I keep hoping that someone might toss this link in because I found it really moving to read these stories, so I am going to just woman-up and introduce it myself: http://www.buzzfeed.com/msv30/what-it-feels-like-…
Edit because the link gets cut off: the title is “What it Feels like to be a Victim of Emotional Abuse”.
EDIT: This was supposed to go in the Rachel Dolezal thread above, but I need answers, so I’ll just leave it here!
Can anyone provide a really good answer that I can use on Facebook to people who are saying “Well, if Caitlin Jenner can be a woman, why can’t she be black?”– either genuinely or as a way of mocking the so-called PC Army promoting trans* equity? I can’t figure out how to even begin.
You could start here: https://twitter.com/mariam_abdulle/status/6093151…
I think that’s a great explanation of why “transracial” is NOT legitimate, but it doesn’t address why transgender IS legitimate.
as a trans person who is also white who has had to discuss this before, this is my stock response:
race is an immutable social construct in a way that gender is not. Race is ascribed to a person by society and directly shapes that person’s lived experiences and opportunities along and axis of power (white/not white). There is a distinct difference between being ‘transracial’ (which is virtually always a white person adopting a persona as a person of color) and ‘passing’ (which is a person of color letting others assume they are white as a means of survival in a white supremacist society). Transracialism is an extreme form of white privilege.
Gender is a different ballgame. For me, there are two main differences: first, there exists a second axis of power along which trans* people exist (trans vs. cis people) and second, trans* people exist in many/all cultures throughout the world. It’s a cross-cultural and cross-historical (that may not be a word BUT I AM USING IT ANYWAY) phenomenon. The fact that where people are gendered, some of them are never comfortable with the gender with which they have been coercively assigned at birth matters. The fact that those people are typically (though not uniformly) oppressed also matters.
So, transracial is not equivalent to transgender because transrracial exists as a form of one dominant group appropriating a marginalized group whereas trangender people are inherently (in this society) marginalized by virtue of being transgender.
Whew that was longwinded.
That’s PERFECT. Thank you!
This is very helpful, thank you. Just collecting smart arguments now, please chime in with your Smart Argument.
Well said!
WHAT. AUGGCH. (re: the people on your facebook) SHUT UP, WHITE PEOPLE. (and maybe a smattering of nonblack p.o.c.?)
Please. Just… well, I guess it’s good that they’re technically asking a question instead of making a declarative statement? Good on you for working on engaging with them. It’s necessary! I get just too pissed off, even though we’ve all been as clueless, raised in the bubble where subconsciously “white people” is a redundancy.
“why can’t she be black”
JUST. WHAT. AUGGCH!
The more that white people listen to people of color the less we’ll be so ignorant. I hope that’s happening.
I liked the Warrior Woman article a lot, but I’m a bit confused by,
“Fury Road has been lauded as a feminist movie, but it’s not: it’s simply an exceptionally good action movie that isn’t antifeminist. There’s nothing especially ideological about Fury Road; even the wives’ refrain of “We are not things,” subversive as it may be in the action film sphere, should in a better world be about as revolutionary as “one person, one vote.” ”
I mean, isn’t that what feminism is? It’s about equality. It’s about one person, one vote. It’s about eliminating objectification, and treating women as individuals. If Fury Road isn’t feminist, what would a feminist movie look like?
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of those “this isn’t feminist” arguments, including from Anita Sarkeesian and I’m like, okay we’re just going to have to agree to disagree here.
Yeah, this may just be the way I understand the term, but “feminist” is a *really low bar to jump.* You think women and men should have equal representation in movies, regardless of genre? Congratulations! That’s feminist. A movie has multiple women with their own story arcs, none of which revolve around a man? Would you look at that, it’s feminist again!
Most of the time I hear someone going “No, no, that’s not feminist,” it’s people trying to distance themselves from the idea of feminism as something bad and radical. “Oh, of course I believe in equal rights for women, but I’m not one of THOSE people.” The rest of the time, it’s usually people trying to absolve feminism of all its sins and pretend that feminism has no problems with intersectionality.
To me, feminism sets a really low bar because we need to highlight all the ways society STILL fails to jump that tiny bar.
Mm, it’s like sci-fi movies that “transcend the genre.” Sooooooo, do you like sci-fi?
Oh yes, and don’t forget sci-fi and fantasy books! “No, no, it’s not fantasy, it’s too deep and sophisticated” people enrage me even more than “no, no, it’s not feminism” people, which says something about my priorities…
Yeah, all of this. I think people have the misunderstanding that for something to be feminist, it has to be screaming “EQUALITY FOR WOMEN!!!” in your face the entire time, which, no.
I agree to everything above! And want to add that Fury Road pretty much *is* screaming EQUALITY through the whole movie. I’ve seen it 5 times now (no regrets!) and it’s explicit in its assertion that the patriarchy is a corrupted, awful creation that not only denies women of their authority, agency, and autonomy, but is harmful to men within the system as well. Angharad specifically yells this at Nux, when she points out that both she (and the wives) and he (and the War Boys) are all branded – They’re all being viewed as and treated as property.
Yes! Thank you for putting this into words. I found the movie explicitly feminist, too, but I was having a hard time explaining my stance.
I think the argument is sort of that since no one in the movie ever puts women below men, then the movie isn’t feminist because it’s a world where the correction of overbalance in favor of men doesn’t exist? Yes, the wives are property, but so are the warboys – no one is distinguishing between genders to show who is inferior and superior. All the assumption about who is inferior or superior seems to go along the lines of whether you have a half-life or a full life, or whether you are Immortan Joe’s progeny or Not Immortan Joe’s progeny.
And I get that argument, but even if the MOVIE exists in a time where feminism is no longer needed because the world is not male-centered, it’s survival-centered, then you could, I guess, argue that this society in Mad Max is not a feminist one. But right now, we exist in this world and this movie was created for this world, and since our current society does not accept women as equals, then this movie is feminist. It exists now, not in a hypothetical future dystopia.
idk man what’s the one question joe has about his dead kid
seems like there’s still some distinction there, even if the respective roles for people of either sex towards the bottom of society kinda suck similarly
Hm, maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I think Joe’s Citadel does explicitly oppress women and it’s specifically the wives who are trying to escape. The War Boys aren’t aware (or at least don’t acknowledge) how they’re being used and abused by the system.
To me it’s feminist and the beauty of this movie’s feminism is it states that hey, the same patriarchy that oppresses women also oppresses other people, even the men that would supposedly benefit from a gender segregated power source. The movie is about women rejecting and fighting the patriarchy, and that feminism is inclusive. At the end we see how lots of different people, not just women, benefit from overthrowing Joe’s reign, but the film starts with women and their battle.
I’m more-or-less in favor of raising the bar for feminism, though. I want a movement that tells people that fuck yeah, we need to get angry and we need to get to work, and sometimes that work will be radical.
“Most of the time I hear someone going “No, no, that’s not feminist,” it’s people trying to distance themselves from the idea of feminism as something bad and radical.”
I think that’s so accurate! Particularly when I hear women say they’re not feminists, or men who sneer when they say something about “the sisterhood” or feminazis or even just “feminism,” I want to scream FEMINISM IS NOT A DIRTY WORD!
I’m having trouble putting it into words, but I feel like the “it’s not feminist” people really mean that it’s not *politically* feminist. Like, the movie doesn’t have a feminist message, and the arc of the plot has nothing to do with feminism. Yes, they’re rescuing these abused women from an evil, patriarchal man, but that’s the *starting point* of the movie. It doesn’t bother trying to convince you that feminism is good or necessary.
Max doesn’t need to learn a lesson that Furiosa is a competent driver and warrior and leader. Nobody has to tell Max not to fuck the maidens-in-white. The maidens never have to PROVE that they can help. Nobody talks about how women are equals or anything, it’s just taken for granted.
Yeah, I don’t really understand this — surely in a better world, feminism wouldn’t be revolutionary either? That’s kind of the point of feminism.
I don’t know if anyone linked to this already, but The Toast got name-dropped in this Runner’s World article referencing this article. It made me happy to see some of my family members read and share the original one.
That article is awesome but ohhhh my gooodddd men are so CLUELESS. “I’d love it if a woman complimented me!!”
Fuck off.
Thankfully Katie has more patience than I do.
So, often on WaitWait interviews, Peter Sagel asks questions where it’s pretty damn clear he has a good idea of what the answer is, or where someone might go with it, and is asking the question not so much because he genuinely doesn’t know, but because he wants to give the interviewee the opportunity to address something directly in their own words.
I am hoping that at least some of his cluelessness here is that sort of thing, and/or trying to make the piece more accessible to male runners who haven’t ever really thought about this sort of thing, and might hear it better if it comes from a guy who frames it this way??
(I mean, the fact that that’s a thing that maybe he would think would be helpful is really annoying, but at least I get to keep the Peter Sagel of my imagination that way?)
“Canadian Kateri Vrakking, 42, alleged ‘ageism’ when she was passed over for the Pan Am Games in favour of a 19-year-old who qualified lower. Archery Canada reversed the call.”
YEP ARCHERY IS CORRUPT TOO
I mean, I never doubted it. It’s funny how people make such weird calls when they’ve got power.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/panamgames/2015/0…
Oh man, the student loan article. I am so there. Mr. Floridagal and I have mostly paid mine back, but his are enormous and honestly I feel like even though we spend probably 20% of our income on paying his off we never will, and I wish we could be less lazy and spend more on paying them off. He too got student loans because his parents (who are terrible with money, as we both know NOW, too bad we didn’t in retrospect) said that it was the only way to go to college and that he had to go to college, so he did it…and now we’re stuck in this weird zone of being “college student poor” that, as we approach 30, is gradually morphing into “regular poor”. It sucks, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m tired, tired of people suggesting that we eat only boxed macaroni and cheese for every meal so that we can pay these things off at a decent rate. You know what? We did that, for a year, and it was horrible.
At 30? Try at 40 and beyond.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. I’m sorry that my socioeconomic downward mobility spiral is happening at a difference pace than you think it should.
Nope, I’m saying what if it doesn’t get better? Let’s make common cause and burn this whole system of debt peonage to the ground.
Yeah…that’s what I’m saying too. I fully expect it to not get better.
I thought it would be fun to go to a fancy university for my master’s. It was I guess. But it added $75k to my student loans. NOT WORTH IT! I make exactly the same as my minor-state-school-attending colleagues. My payments are also around 20% of my take-home pay, now and for the next 20 years (been ten already). We do okay without it, but I can’t help but think things like, oh, we could get the air conditioner fixed if it weren’t for that loan payment! And then next year we could get the crumbling brick fixed! And then we could send the kids to summer camp! And then…
Yes, yes, yes. We’ll be paying off my husband’s student loans for a depressingly long time. We could pay it off sooner if we could buy a house (a monthly payment on a modest place would be maybe 2/3 of what we’re paying in rent, at most)…but no way in heck is anyone going to give us a mortgage until we get a little more established in our new careers.
It is expensive to be low-income.
I hear you. I have loans from college and law school– I’ve been paying steadily for years now (about $1,000/mo.) and I still owe more than $130K. I’m 35 and I’ll be paying mine off for at least 20-25 more years.
I would love to have kids but I don’t think that’s going to happen financially, sadly. (Not enough money to afford daycare).
I feel you! First off: great job paying most of your loans off! That is a super accomplishment. I have $77k left from law school and I hope to be done with it by March, so I feel you on the slog.
Second, on the feeling lazy/”only eat mac and cheese” external shame wheel: this is probably my least favorite part of student debt. There is no winning here. If you don’t take loans because your parents pay for you, you are entitled. If you don’t take loans because you decide to forego college, you’re to blame for being poor because how could you be anything else without college. If you take loans and live like a pauper to pay them back, don’t complain because what were you thinking taking loans in the first place. If you take loans and pay them back over time while spending your money on, say, edible food, you are lazy and fiscally irresponsible.
Fuck all that. If you’re anything like me, the educational experience for which you took loans was worth it in some ways and not in others, but it’s done now and you have the loans. And life goes on, and you are a person deserving of happiness, and you are more than the sum of your debts. I applaud your hard work in paying them back, and also your decision to live your life like your experience of it matters.
“external shame wheel” yes
I really enjoy the “Would you rather” series over at the Decoder. This week it’s Luke Danes or Christopher Hayden and last week was Mark Cohen or Roger Davis .
Christopher versus Luke is a tough call, but I have to admit that I strongly agree with this:
At the risk of sounding shallow here, I would much rather live in wealth with the trim and tight Christopher Hayden than be stuck in the claustrophobic town of Stars Hollow with a grumpy husband who smells like bacon grease all goddamn day.
WAIT why doesn’t anyone know where Dolezal’s adopted brother (who moved in with her? and then she told everyone was her son?) is. “He’s in college in town, or maybe Idaho, probably.” WHAT.
I want to respect this young man’s privacy and all, but I also want someone to check up on him and make sure he’s ok. And like, if he wants to share any thoughts on the matter, that would be fascinating, but mostly, like…where is this kid. Why am I more interested in his whereabouts than his parents.
cause he’s a KID and when people are like “oh my kid is uh…probably around, like somewhere??? idk, y this so important to u?” we all get paranoid/rightly suspicious and assume the worst, because we’re thinking of all the kids that have disappeared.
Apparently he moved out of his parents’ place when he was still a teenager? And hasn’t talked to them in several years? Everything about this family seems so fucked up.
I think I might have been of the last generation where university was worth the price. And even then I would have been paying off my loans forever if my uncle hadn’t left me some money in his will. I don’t know how parents or students today expect to pay the exorbitant prices for college education.
I made it in the last year of grants before they became loans and I am *so* thankful. I grew up having gone with a crash from comfortable to very much scraping by in my teens, and I’d have been petrified of taking on that amount of debt, I don’t think I’d have gone to university otherwise.
I went to university just before the maximum fees were raised from £3000 to £9000, and am very grateful for that; the level of debt students are getting into now is scary. (I still find the UK system much less frightening than the US one, though – at least repayments are income-linked.)
I was lucky(?) enough to come from a low income household and paid nothing in fees, which I’m eternally grateful for. Looking at 27,000 just in fees debt, plus cost of living….I don’t think I would have been able to go :/.
Hiiiiii anybody want to get pumped about non-USWNT teams? Growing up they were my everything, but as a Canadian, after the last Olympics, I simply must find somebody else to root for (Canada4ever, but also… France? Germany? Celia Sasic is something else! Maybe Nigeria but I’ve already got my hands full with Canadian underdog)
My co-worker’s cousin was supposed to be on the Thai team but she got injured. 🙁 That’s… pretty much all I have to add to the WWC discussion but I am watching and enjoying the games!
I always cheer for Korea too! And I root against alllll the European teams.
I’ve got my Ecuador jersey on and will be rooting for them tonight! Tomorrow will be my Costa Rica jersey!
He’s apparently in Gremlin’s 2: The New Batch, which I haven’t seen in ages. Looks like it’s going on my watch list for the weekend!
I relate to that a lot. For a couple of years I thought I might be gender dysphoric because most of my friends (and society) were pressuring me to appear more femme, and I felt deeply uncomfortable and disconnected from my body when I tried to dress in a femme way. And I felt like I was objectifying myself by trying to fit myself into that box, because I'm not femme.
But then I realised I am a woman, it's just that being a woman doesn't necessarily have to mean what society says it means.