I read the Dee Barnes piece on Straight Outta Compton, oh man:
That event isn’t depicted in Straight Outta Compton, but I don’t think it should have been, either. The truth is too ugly for a general audience. I didn’t want to see a depiction of me getting beat up, just like I didn’t want to see a depiction of Dre beating up Michel’le, his one-time girlfriend who recently summed up their relationship this way: “I was just a quiet girlfriend who got beat on and told to sit down and shut up.”
But what should have been addressed is that it occurred. When I was sitting there in the theater, and the movie’s timeline skipped by my attack without a glance, I was like, “Uhhh, what happened?” Like many of the women that knew and worked with N.W.A., I found myself a casualty of Straight Outta Compton’s revisionist history.
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A history of lesbian bars in the US:
Harlem in particular was a destination for wild nightlife. “Queer districts blossomed in black areas with less policing,” says Cookie Woolner, a historian who has written about African American queer women in the early 20th century. While white women could go to a bar in Harlem and be relatively safe from exposure, black women risked running into their neighbors. For that reason, they socialized in more private settings–mainly apartment parties.
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Love this senior beauty shop:
For these senior citizens, it’s not really about the makeup or the hair, it’s about the activity of getting ready. As a young person who cultivated her beauty routine at a college on a nowhere-to-go farm in central New York state, this is something I know well. We’d cheat our lip size with purple crayons and craft elaborate braids, only to realize hours later we’d rather stay in and watch TV instead. The ritual of beauty, rather than the look itself, is often most important. It’s no different between twentysomethings and ninetysomethings. “The seniors here will get dressed up for doctor’s appointments,” a stylist at the Hebrew Home told me.
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Cosmopolitan has been doing so much interesting shit these last few years:
Every year, thousands of women like Nicole seek help at what appear to be secular medical clinics but are actually Christian anti-abortion centers. Throughout the United States, there are at least 3,000 crisis pregnancy centers, many of which belong to two religious anti-abortion organizations — Care Net and Heartbeat International. Some women arrive at those centers in search of Christian counseling or free diapers, but the vast majority are looking for professional advice to help them navigate unplanned pregnancies.
Increasingly, pregnancy centers are what’s available. Around the country, access to abortion has eroded dramatically. As abortion regulations shutter medical clinics offering the full range of options, a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy finds herself in a very different landscape, one in which a pregnancy center is her most visible, most affordable — and sometimes the only — place to turn.
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This is quite a paragraph:
Probably every American who has eaten a hot dog has eaten Townsend trimmings. Ted’s father, Ray Townsend, died in 2014 at the age of 97 holding more than 120 patents — most concerned with meat processing — including a profitable device that could strip rind from pork and stuff a hot dog at fantastic speeds. At one point, 95 percent of all U.S. hot dogs were plumped with Townsend’s pork. The family became very wealthy.
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I MEAN, come ON, this is NOT A NORMAL PART of TV magic! (The Good Wife people are all shocked! that people care about Split Screengate).
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This is my friend Carrie’s new puppy watching The X-Files (because our late dog was a boy dog, Steve insists that we get a girl dog this time so he will not feel like he’s being disloyal to the profound pair-bond he and Denali shared, which is okay by me, because now I can insist on naming her Sansa):
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I watched the entire final table read of The Office (US) finale:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
What is the puppy’s opinion on the forthcoming new X-Files? I’d like to get all my entertainment news/thinkpieces/hot takes from Carrie’s puppy.
Me too. I’m waiting for the Carrie Pup enewsletter.
Dog thinkpieces! “What is this on the floor? Let’s eat it and see” and “there’s something in the yard and I think you ought to let me go chase it”
“This Human Acted Like She Would Throw The Ball. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!”
“What If That Thing You Thought Smelled Bad, Actually Smelled Really Good?”
and then you rolled in it and got the smell all over you?
Bitter Litter: What Your Human Won’t Tell You about that Delicious Cat Box Delicacy
Dog Magazine!! (Jaya and Matt, get on it)
Guarding Your Human: Beware those leaves blowing across the yard. Bark like you mean it. Like that leaf is a mortal threat to your beloved human. And don’t stop even if your human tells you to. She doesn’t know your job as well as you do. Keep barking. When you finally stop, don’t forget the final, quiet “bruff” after your human’s last exasperated “Quiet, godsdammit!” command. A proper guard dog of your breed must always have the last word. Just make it a gentle last word. You do semi-submit to your human and you love her very much, so spare her additional frustration at some point.
He’s quite disappointed that Agent Doggett will not return.
And even more disappointed that Agent Reyes will.
I love that these daily Carrie’s Puppy pictures give me a flash of such pure, satisfying happiness. This might be my favorite one yet. Sleepy puppy face!
its lil legs all stretched out!
Basically, if you made the hair a bit longer, and the body black, Carrie’s Puppy looks like the baby version of my own pup, and it gives me ineffable joy to see that same sleepy look on a baby face. What a darling. Border collie mixes for life.
I love that table read. Mike Schur seems like such a swell fella.
I loved it any time Mose would showed up in an episode.
Omg re: the senior beauty shop piece! I’m a visiting nurse and I see patients every so often at the Hebrew Home….it is an amazing place! Situated on probably the best piece of real estate in NYC, overlooking the Hudson and the Palisades, a sculpture garden and meditation walking paths…and this is just the grounds. There’s an Internet cafe, game room, gourmet food yadda yadda yadda. I was floored the first time I went there. I would move in tomorrow If I weren’t so underage and broke.
All I want is a puppy to watch The X-Files with.
That Cosmopolitan article is quite good. And infuriating. Pregnancy centers getting federal grants?!
The ad I Could Not Escape that showed up when I tried to read the article was extremely annoying (not a Toast problem, but note for other readers.)
Our next dog is going to be a girl dog too. My husband says he prefers their intense loyalty and authority.
(Our last, late dog considered herself the pack leader of the household, and kept him on a strict schedule with meals and walks at appointed times. She was quite firm about it. )
girl dogs are the best dogs. #matriarchy
we’d rather stay in and watch TV instead. The ritual of beauty, rather than the look itself, is often most important.
YES. I still have makeup play-dates with my BFFs where we just set an evening aside to play with different (usually outrageous) makeup styles that will never see the outside of the house.
Will Carrie Pup be launching an inspirational lifestyle blog? I’m usually pretty much 100% against those but I feel like Carrie Pup could pull off an awesome lifestyle blog. And one that’s actually inspirational.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
The only lifestyle Guru anyone needs; PUPY TALES.
Bullshit thing I learned from that Cosmopolitan piece: weekends and holidays don’t count toward the 72-hour waiting period.
Why the fuck not? You can think on weekends, too! I wonder how they defended this, because I’d love to hear the bullshit argument.
The thing is: I don’t think waiting periods are bad per se (I believe the Netherlands has one after 16 weeks). But they are terrible when there are so few clinics, because then it just becomes a practical nightmare. And not counting weekends and holidays is just bizarre.
This whole system seems designed to shunt women into becoming poor parents, full-stop. No funded birth control, no sex ed, no abortion, cagey on adoption, no material support beyond $24 (!!!!), no paid parental leave. Does America loathe women? Or just mothers?
Both! Also the poor!
I have seen it more as pushing women to place their babies for adoption so that Christian families can raise them with one mommy and one daddy. I grew up in churches that were heavily involved in CPCs and the big talk was always how adoption is the best option. It seemed like offering real support for single moms was off the table because they didn’t want that to feel like a viable option– those babies were supposed to be born and given to the types of families the churches thought were best.
See, that is my assumption often, but the piece also mentions a woman who went to one of those centers because she wanted to put the baby up for adoption and they TALKED HER OUT OF IT because didn’t she loooove her baby etc.
There are no words for my rage and disgust.
America loathes women who have sex and then have the gall to still physically exist after the dude has gratified himself.
America just straight-up loathes women.
Oh and then creates “female Viagra” in order to help women feel that sexual desire that no one wants them to have … none of this makes any sense.
The female Viagra is so that women will want to have sex when men want them to, without the men having to have to do anything to be desirable.
Though actually I have a friend who’s excited about the female Viagra because she has issues with her libido, but genuinely wants to feel the urge more often with her husband. So there is a real case for it.
Also one should note that it doesn’t work the same way as Viagra — where you pop one on demand. You’ve got to take a pill every day, like birth control, so men can’t wheedle you into taking a pill just for a special occasion, at any rate (or they’re idiots if they do).
Yeah there’s a case for something *like* it, but I’m not sure there’s really a case for something that produces a slight elevation in desire for 15% of the target population (heterosexual pre-menopausal women) and also carries the associated risk that you just might pass out…like, whenever.
I haven’t seen how bad the side effects are, but I’m glad it exists regardless for that 15% of the population who want it. Nothing would exist if the rule was you had to hold out until it worked for 100% of people, so yeah, I’m all for baby steps. Also this will make it easier to make similar drugs for other demographics.
I mean look, obviously I agree about a thing that can be helpful to people, of course. But there are a lot of percentages between 15 and 100, and for something like this — where the company is saying that at best the small handful of people that it effects are enjoying an average of 0.5 sexually-satisfying events per month, when 20% of the women tested experience the kind of side effects that would kill you if you drove a car, when its interactions with alcohol and hormonal birth control have hardly been studied at all, when we hardly have good tools for talking about sexual desire in the first place and especially for talking about female sexual desire — this doesn’t look very responsible to me at all, this looks more like something that is driven by cultural expectations about what sexual desire is supposed to be.
I would like this a bunch more, if I could. Esp “this looks more like something that is driven by cultural expectations about what sexual desire is supposed to be.”
Do you happen to remember the studies* describing female desire as basically sparked by variety, much more so than male desire? Reading about this drug approval, I keep thinking about that…it’s not you libido that’s broken, you’re just bored.
*citation needed, obviously.
Its about control of women and control of the poor, if women don’t have choices about their reproduction then they have less education and career opportunities.
If women get pregnant young, and have to keep it due to there being no other options, and there’s no support systems for working mothers and single parents then they have to take shitty low paying jobs that they can work around their kids; plus not be able to afford further education, and having to pay for child care, they can’t progress through education or taking jobs with more prospects (because those jobs expect you to work stupid hours and have no life outside of the office) or even save up money. Then they’ll never be in a position to make any real change and the old boys club get to keep running the country. And to top it all off by telling them its their fault because they just can’t work hard enough to stop being poor and its not the system that keeps fucking them.
It might not be a conscious conspiracy (Like it was in Ireland.) but it definitely shows where the ruling classes priorities are. (also the church selling babies to rich couples thing, they love that.)
Don’t forget this part: higher teen pregnancy rates in areas with abstinence only education. Basically, don’t teach kids about consent, don’t teach them about birth control, don’t let them terminate the pregnancy, don’t support them (or the child) once they give birth, don’t help them in terms of education and career opportunities and child care, don’t give them full health insurance…watch as both mother and child turn into two more cogs in the capitalist machine.
Then wave a sign claiming to love all children and that they all deserve a life.
Then bitch about how many sponges on the system there are and all these bloody criminals running around. And campaign to cut benefits because poor people ‘dont need any MORE help’
MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MINDS.
“MY life is going just fine. I don’t know what your problem is, lady, because everything has worked out for ME. You’re probably just not pulling yourself up by those bootstraps! LEAN IN.”
‘What do you mean you want to take time off to give birth and raise your child and still have a job to come back to? THAT SOUNDS LIKE AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE TO ME.’
Actually, on a slightly unrelated but not totally, did you know that men don’t automatically get paternity leave in the UK? Its only two weeks anyway, but your not entitled to it if your still on probabtion! I only found this out today! Women get it automatically regardless of probation status/time at the company (although your company may throw in more benefits if you’ve been there longer like wage top ups)
I live in the U.S. Most places have no paternity leave and even if you get maternity leave, it’s a fight. My cousin just had to go several rounds with her human resources dept because she found out the rules about her leave were different than they told her, so she’s had to cobble together maternity leave, sick leave, and vacation time to get some actual time off (she was on the way to the damn hospital and they wanted her to come in and do paperwork). But, of course, it’s not as simple as saying “let’s put all these leaves together so I can have a few weeks off.” Oh no, there’s different request processes she has to go through and she had to get her doctor to write an angry note, etc. Effing nightmare.
I mean yeah, Europe doesn’t have a patch the US when it comes to backwards ass working parent policies. I read an article awhile from a women who when through a similar thing as your cousin, she thought it was all sorted and then like a few days before the baby came (after like 2 years of saving vacation time) found out that her maternity leave wasn’t sorted so had to go in and fix it, and then like 2 days after the birth her company were insisting she bring in the birth certificate and all this bullshit. That is fucked up.
In most of Europe you just tell your company your pregnant, and they give you about a year, plus they have to let you off for pre-natal care; and then you tell the government when you’ll be off work and they pay you 60% of your salary for that time (or some percentage like that, plus your company may chose to top you the remaining amount so your on 100% of salary while your off). Its pretty good for women, but Paternity leave is still only two weeks which is shit.
And then there’s Sweden.
This sounds like a glorious dream
Don’t forget:
Then purchase shares in a privately owned prison and collect MILLIONS OF DOLLARS as huge percentages of these “lazy, entitled, low-intelligence” people are incarcerated.
Because the fun just goes on and on and on.
That’s fascinating. It just makes it fairly obvious, doesn’t it, that the purpose of the regulation is to make abortions as difficult as possible to procure? Remarkably blatant.
My grandmother is 89 years old and in good physical shape, though she is losing some cognitive ability. She goes to have her hair done every single Tuesday and won’t leave her apartment at the senior community where she lives without “putting her face on.” She has had the same stylist, same style, and same makeup routine since before I was born. The ritual is everything to her.
I love the idea of your grandma and her stylist growing old together.
They’re absolutely adorable. He did my hair for the very first play I was ever in. I <3 him.
My grandmother was exactly the same. Down to “putting her face on.” And when she was a bit younger she was the one who all the neighborhood old ladies came to for their weekly hair style. The same set of ladies came in her side door and down into her basement where she had cobbled together a stylist’s station next to her off-season clothes and shelves of canned tomatoes.
When my husband’s grandmother was left nearly immobile by a stroke, her hairstylist would come to grandma’s house to give her a weekly wash-and-set. We bought grandma a raspberry-coloured hairdressing cape because she could only see really bright colours towards the end. My grandma, on the other hand, gave up her wash-and-set because she thought it made her look old. Instead, she got a pixie cut that she rigorously maintained right until the end.
Once, my grandma thought she was having stroke (she had a sudden dizzy spell and it turned out to be an ear infection), so she called my brother to come get her and run her up to the hospital. He said when he arrived, she was sitting calmly at the kitchen table having changed into a nice sweater and jeans and was applying her trademark purple-ish Avon lipstick. She couldn’t see the doctor without what she called her war paint.
My grandma isn’t here anymore, but every Saturday morning she went to the “beauty shop” at some insanely early hour. She had the greatest hair – it turned snow white before I was even born (so, sometime in her 50s) and was this giant curly poof, like a cottonball. I was floored when I learned, as an adult, that she had actually been a redhead.
I suspect that my mom is going to keep the same stylist for her whole life. She’s been getting her hair done by him for over 30 years, and he also cuts my dad’s hair and cut mine until I went to college.
Thanks for that Vice article.Although I know we’re not as blessed with nightlife as we used to be, I didn’t realize HOW rare it’s become is in some places– personally I could not imagine my life without the gay and lesbian bar scene. This made me laugh though: “the places that are most likely to have dyke bars are the more backwater places that are less up-to-date with their queer theory and queer culture.” Thank goodness for living in a backwater!
“There is a direct connection between the oppression of black men and the violence perpetrated by black men against black women. It is a cycle of victimization and reenactment of violence that is rooted in racism and perpetuated by patriarchy.”
Well, I had never heard of Dee Barnes before but now I really want to read her memoir whenever it comes out.
Chemtrails! http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/news-san-fra…
Stop. Mother is a total believer and constantly takes pictures of the sky. She’s convinced They control the weather with chemtrails. Literally cannot bring her anywhere. And if we do get a nice day, guaranteed at some point she’ll come out with ‘Well at least THEY let us have some nice weather today.’.
She has a tutting thing that she does when she sees them and all.
…Does she not understand how condensation works?
Who knows, I’ve given up.
“Roddie knows this sounds like boilerplate conspiracy theory. ‘Don’t trust me,’ he says. ‘Assume I’m full of crap. I’m just some Irish guy.'”
Done and done Roddie.
My favorite part of that article is this:
“Roddie claims that during the Iraq War, the government inundated domestic groups with undercover agents. “They had agents in knitting groups,” he says. ”
I was in a knitting group during the Iraq War! Wait, am I secretly a government agent?
In Beacon, NY there is a little shared-space storefront with a senior beauty shop in the back room and a used record store in the front. So you’re in there perusing the goods as little old ladies come in an out, gossiping and hugging and admiring hairstyles etc. I love that place.
So I just finished Sense8 last night (I know, I know), and as the final credits rolled I realized with a start that they never actually explained *why* the bad guys were doing what they were doing. And now I’m a bit peeved because seriously, that’s kind of important information.
Not related to Sense8, but in the general vein of catching up with a TV show and realizing that very little was actually explained: what the HELL was with the Pretty Little Liars summer finale?!
It turns out WE ALL WERE THE LIARS
special message for the writers of this magnificent trainwreck of a show:
I will never forgive them for Ezra. He should have fallen down an elevator shaft at the abandoned doll factory/insane asylum four seasons ago.
I think season 1 was all about introducing the characters, with a bit of plot thrown in, and they’re planning on getting into the villians in season 2?
My main take away from Sense8 (apart from that it drags a bit) was WERE ALL THE VAGINAS REALLY NECESSARY? I have many opinions about how childbirth is portrayed in popular media (like no wonder were all terrified of giving birth since every depiction we’ve ever seen was shown as a horrific traumatic event.), but I also have opinions about two directors who have never (and probably will never, depending on modern medicines advancements….) pushed a baby out deciding that its necessary to their story telling to show obviously fake torn up vaginas for sheer shock value. It added nothing to story and just pissed me off.
Yeah, when they showed the first one I was like, “Oh wow, okay. That’s a bold choice.” But nine in a row? A little excessive!
I could be wrong, but I read somewhere the Wachowskis filmed several live births for the episode where all eight of them attend the concert and relive their births*. I thought it was heartbreaking and gorgeous and easily one of my favorite moments of the series. I cried a lot during it. Comments sections are universally divided against its effectiveness, but I am firmly on the side that it was an incredible scene.
*The last episode when they showed Riley giving birth to her child it did come across as gratuitous and out of place. Don’t know why that was necessary at all.
I think the scene was a good idea, and a very beautiful concept; but the vaginas just pulled me out of it completely. Like I understood what was happening, and we all know what happens, I don’t think it was necessary to show it, especially that many times.
I would love a source for that, I wonder who agreed to have their birth filmed for a tv show? To me its a very personal, private thing, and also for the child, their first moment in the world is being shown to millions of strangers? I don’t think I’d be ok with that
There is an interview with them here where they say that:
http://io9.com/the-wachowskis-say-they-filmed-a-l…
Eeeeeeeh I they’re saying that they filmed a scene in which a live birth occurs – not necessarily that they filmed an actual woman actually giving birth.
Hm yeah, perhaps. It is a little ambiguous between the title and the interview text.
Thanks! Interesting, I still don’t feel that its a thing that should be exploited for entertainment, but its just a personal thing for me
Y’know, I kind of thought it was amazing? Not trying to discredit or undermine your opinion at all, but I was positively blown away. I can’t really put my finger on why, except that it’s something so rarely seen in entertainment but so obviously like literally essential to human life? I don’t really think the physical ability of the creators to actually perform this act really has any bearing on its context/meaning? It’s not as if the births were like, gratuitously sexualized or anything. I viewed the depiction as one indicating respect and admiration for the birth process.
Also, that smug smile that Wolfgang’s character makes after his birth scene like, “yeah, kickass birth Mom, good job” was the best ever to me. YMMV.
Genuinely curious what the opinion split on this.
It’s definitely less important to explain the motivations of your villains than it is to spend extra time setting up the “hetero white love will save us all” ending.
ugh. for reals.
I am hoping we get more of that in season 2.
My understanding is that the villains are scared of sensates being the next evolutionary step in humanity, and want to wipe them out? And they have evil sensate dude working for them as he is just a sociopath.
WHICH REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER THING. Jonas is all like, “normal humans don’t have empathy and that’s why they’re so good at killing.”
But those sensates do a hell of a lot of murdering, and they seem quite effective at it. LOOKING AT YOU, SUN AND WOLFGANG.
And apparently absolutely none of them has read a single X-Men comic in the last half-century to help them understand how that would turn out.
Hey, I just finished it yesterday too! (I was away for a couple months in the land of no streaming.)
When Jonas explained to cop dude what sensates are, he basically implied that the bad guys were just jealous and had no super-empathy to keep them from being giant dickwads. It doesn’t really explain why they seem to have sensates like Whispers helping them. By the way, as a biologist, the whole evolutionary explanation of the sensates was just eye-rollingly terrible, only Naveen Andrews made it bearable to listen to. They’re a lot better off avoiding technical explanations, and focusing on the show’s strengths: the gorgeous people, places and cinematography; the characters; and their interactions.
I am really irritated at TGW people, who didn’t tell their highly paid professionals to suck it up and just appear in the same scenes already, like, 3 seasons ago. It really sours me on all four of them (Margulies, Panjabi, the Kings). Grow up.
An (mercifully) ex boyfriend of mine once introduced me to a friend of his who WORKED AT a “pregnancy crisis center” and oh my god I deserve a god damn medal for all the shit I did not say to her while the fire was pouring through my veins.
You have much more self-control than I do. MUCH more.
My best friend’s mother once invited me to come protest at an abortion clinic (or just Planned Parenthood, I don’t know what she had in mind). I managed to gracefully decline and have never let on that I would volunteer for such a clinic in a heartbeat. (My best friend’s mother is Very Catholic, while my best friend is only moderately so…as in we write gay porn together, and she’s very live-and-let-live.)
From the Cosmo article:
‘The needlepoint sampler in its bathroom says, “You will live with the guilt for the rest of your life knowing you made the choice to kill the precious life God placed in your womb for you to love.”‘
I… Wow. That is quite the needlepoint sampler.
I feel like they probably could have made that a bit more concise.
How about “Fuck you, but not literally, because that’s how you ended up here in the first place you miserable harlot”? Oh wait, that’s not really that much shorter, just more accurate.
It would be fun if someone were to make an alternative needlepoint sampler and then subtly make a switch.
“We are here to guilt you instead of providing meaningful support.”
I can just see the angry, intensely-focused face of the determined embroiderist who took time out of their scary paranoia -filled day to try to communicate to the heathen whores in the most direct language they know: needlepoint sampler in the toilet.
I can’t decide if it also has some sort of motif, flowers or scrolls or cherubs, or if it’s just straight text, all caps and running together because holy crap that is a LOT of letters to fit. This tickles me.
Right? I’ve done needlepoint! It takes forever. Wouldn’t you at least notice halfway through that it isn’t even well-phrased?
WHAT the FUCK. *rage combustion*
So one of the eccentric businessmen involved in that indoor rainforest project is the father of the richest douchebag I went to high school with. We were both on the debate team and HATED each other. Now every time I’m reminded of that project I think of his family’s failed hubris and smile inwardly.
*I would kind of like to go to a giant indoor rainforest, though.
Tomorrow we get to talk about the female Rangers, right? I realize that Ranger School is crazy impressive no matter what, and I probably should have always been impressed that there were humans that could do that sort of thing, but I pretty much don’t care about all of the guys who have done it, I pretty much only care that these two women managed it, I honestly get a little teary every time I think about it and want to go hug my friend from high school who graduated West Point because this sort of thing makes me miss her like crazy.
I got super emotional and teared up reading the articles about it, and every time I think about it, I get emotional again.
Amusingly, I have a friend who was in the army as an analyst, and when I showed her the articles her first response was: “They let them shave their hair! Sorry, I know it’s weird that’s my first reaction, but when I joined up women weren’t allowed to shave their hair!”
The Rangers thing got some people on my Facebook feed talking about whether women should be required to sign up for the draft. Two different men came at it with “Yes–if women want equal rights they should have to deal with the work men have to do.”
Right, because ~wanting equality~ is such an imposing demand, I guess you can have it if you want it, but be prepared! Equality is rough, and probably not for everyone! Amirite bros???
Wow, I had no idea men were still required to register for the draft!
Yep, I remember when my brother got his Selective Service Enrollment card in the mail after his 18th birthday. It was weird.
Yeah. I had to register with the Selective Service when I was eighteen, despite the likelihood that I would be classified 4F if there ever was a draft due to being deaf in one ear. There were even protests at the time, but they didn’t get a lot of publicity; Dan Savage did a comic with Ellen Forney in which there was a scene set at one such protest in Chicago, but I was living there at the time and didn’t hear about it. I was unhappy about doing so, because I didn’t like the idea of a draft being reinstated, and Reagan was starting to rattle sabers at the Soviet Union, but I didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to apply for federal college financial aid.
Eh, I always thought exempting women from the draft was kind of bullshit, and now that women can serve in ground combat there’s really no good reason for it.
I mean, sure, it’s sort of BS that we have this list of all of the dudes in our country for the explicit purpose of potentially asking them to stop whatever it is they’re doing, do something wildly unpleasant for a while, and maybe die as a result—– but not keep a list of women to potentially serve in SOME sort of fashion, even if it’s not *exactly* the same.
On the other hand, it’s pretty disingenuous that “being required to sign up for the draft” is being treated as some sort of terrible obligation for men in 2015. Given the political climate, given where the money comes from, given the trends in warfare increasingly away from boots on the ground…… it’s currently very unlikely that people currently registered will ever actually be drafted, and it doesn’t seem likely that things will change to make it any more likely going forward. And if something DID happen, I’m betting that something would happen to start including women at that point anyway.
Right, such a good point. Basically we are talking about filling out a form here, with almost no chance that it’ll lead to actually military service, and there’s still a raging debate about it.
That’s such a bullshit argument because there’s approximately a **zero** percent chance of a draft ever actually happening again. There’s absolutely no political will (among either political party) to institute it and alienate voters, and the top brass in the military doesn’t really want it, either. (A more selective volunteer force does a better job than a bunch of people who don’t want to be there). Short of some B-movie-style devastating Godzilla attack on the US, it just ain’t happening.
So, yeah, you have to register if you’re a guy, but you *know* you aren’t really ever going to be called up. It’s a mild inconvenience at most.
Personally, I would be perfectly fine with making both men and women register (and maybe having a mandatory one- or two-year service requirement for both men and women), if you could participate in community service programs like Americorps.
I’m not sure I’d support making women register purely for military service, considering the incredibly high rates of sexual assault in the military and the fact that they’re doing nothing about it.
When I was growing up, my mom’s best friend was a hairdresser. I don’t think she ever worked out of a typical salon, as she worked predominantly for senior homes & centres. A number of times she would take me and her daughter along to work, and even tween!Duchess could see how profoundly her work positively impacted the quality of life for all of her senior customers. She was like family to all of them! She knew everyone’s names, knew precisely how they liked to have their hair done, and was just a ray of sunshine.
Sadly, she passed away in 2001 from ovarian cancer, and to this day I miss her so much. 🙁 Not many consider being a hairdresser to be an impactful job, but I’ll never forget how doing what she loved touched so many people.
Pam + Jim 4ever <3 <3 <3 <3
Right?? I am re-watching S3 of The Office and I’d forgotten how good it is and how many feels I have about it.
I did not know I could hate pregnancy centers more than I already do, but –
Many pregnancy-center workers have told me their goal is for every woman to mother.
What the everloving fuck. It’s not enough to talk them out of abortion now, you have to insist that they raise the kid on their own, with no social services because fuck them, they should have considered the consequences first? With limited fucking health care and $24 of material support and fucking mandatory Christian counseling before you’ll even give them that much? (And do not tell me these same women will not get shit for being single mothers who just want to leech off the system.)
I just. Fuck. I cannot come up with a charitable interpretation of that. From individuals it might be misguided; from an organization it’s malicious.
I’m seething as well. And resolved to look into volunteering at my nearest Planned Parenthood. (I wish I’d done it while I was in Texas, where it would’ve made a hell of a difference, but then again, there are probably more of them in Oregon and they get less attention. I imagine.)
The PP in my neighborhood closed a few months after I started volunteering. The next nearest is 2 hours away. Don’t feel too bad.
…well, that’s considerably dystopian and horrifying.
The interpretation is that god created women to be mothers, so every woman’s true purpose is to be a mother, and they are helping women achieve their true purpose.
The Arcadia Smith story infuriated me. “You are a single mother and you think your boyfriend won’t stick around. But you could just be a single mother to two, right?” And then look, she was right, the boyfriend didn’t stick around.
Pardon me, I have to go stab something…
Toasties who know about such things? Can I volunteer to give manicures to old women? Is that a thing? Because they sound like the best people.
The assisted living center my grandfather lived in had signups for volunteers, including manicures/pedicures. Maybe a center near you has a volunteer roster?
YES YES YES. Absolutely.
Anyone heard Janelle Monae’s new protest song about black Americans killed by police? Goosebumps.
http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/08/18/3…
I love it but it also makes me feel sick, which it probably should.
That is an excellent way of putting it.
Speaking of Cosmo, PP shared this link on Facebook and I was like “I really like this new Cosmo!”
Wow, I had no idea men were still required to register for the draft!
Re: the lesbian bar article
There’s a mention of “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” by Lillian Faderman, which is a history of American lesbianism, and if any of y’all haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.
ETA: Also, I am here for ALL the crisis pregnancy center expose articles, here is my favorite (and by favorite I mean most horrifying) quote:
The younger women prayed over Nicole and asked to be invited to her baby shower.
WHAT THE HELL. That is pushy and presumptuous on like five different levels at once.
I hate those crisis centers so muuuuuuch, they are the worst of Christianism in one tightly compressed bundle.
Also, here’s one of my favorite conversations that my best friend back in Houston and I had:
Her: “If you got pregnant tomorrow, what would you do?”
Me: *considers this* “I’d get an abortion.”
Her: “Good.”
(she knows very well that it’s unlikely for me to be pregnant tomorrow, seeing how I don’t sleep with men anymore; nor was this a comment on my potential for motherhood, I assure you. We just have the same feelings about motherhood and our own lives.)
One of my favorite conversations about this was when I asked two good friends who were about to get married whether they want children anytime soon and they responded “Jesus christ no, just because you’re married doesn’t mean you can’t get an abortion”.
I once had a somewhat heated argument with a friend of my partner’s on our first meeting about why the fact that people were married didn’t mean that they automatically wanted children. (She was at university in Ireland and I was ranting about the abortion restrictions; she claimed it was fine because “most people don’t have sex until after marriage anyway”. NO.)
oy! As you probably already know — statistically most abortions go to women who already have a child or several children — and are often married. Birth control can fail on anybody (and I bet mothers are the best equipped to know if they don’t wish any extra chidlins!).
Approve approve approve of Sansa as a puppy name!! She (character and hypothetical puppy) will win the throne.
I made is quick Storify of Mallory’s emails to good old Steve because that whole thing made me laugh SO HARD: https://storify.com/Rosebud_nat/stevemails
Goddess Bless You
This was fantastic, thank you!
Thank you! The whole thing makes me giggle.
Eeeeee, I got a reply! In just under 17 minutes. What an industrious boy that Steve is.
Was there a dick pic?
This is completely off-topic, but I need to talk to someone about it and don’t have anyone else to talk to. I’ve been working at a Canadian university as a sessional/adjunct for the past 8 months, and while there have been some rough patches overall it’s been an ok experience. Not good enough to actually recommend that anyone else do this, but not completely awful. Except for today, I get a weird insinuation from the dept. head that there is something wrong with my paycheque, so I go to HR to try to sort it out because my job ends next week and I’m moving to the States. What I hear from HR is that someone (nobody will admit to it, the department told me HR made the mistake, HR told me payroll made the mistake, and payroll told me the department made the mistake, like a circle of non-responsibility) made a mistake with my pay and from May to July I was paid appx. double what I should have been.
Except that I didn’t notice, because the paycheques are all direct deposit and Mr. Floridagal does all of the day-to-day banking and I do the taxes. So payroll/HR said that a) they aren’t going to pay me for the work that I did this august and b) they want me to give them $7,500 like, NOW.
I’m so frustrated and upset, because I spent the past several months planning and saving up for the next month or so of intentional unemployment/vacation, and now this ruins all of my plans. Luckily I do actually have the $7,500 but I will be basically broke if I give it to them now. On the one hand, I don’t deserve the money and it does belong to the university and I need to give it back, that is clearly the only option. But the way the meeting went, I felt really bullied and accused, like they thought that I somehow did this on purpose, when it was clearly a mistake made by some unspecified person who refuses to fess up, and now someone else’s mistake is going to ruin my life (ok, that is probably overly dramatic but that is what it feels like right now.)
I don’t know what to do other than hide and cry, oh yeah and pack up for an international move that I am doing on Tuesday.
Everything feels like its ruined forever. Please give me advice! What do I do??
That SUCKS. Honestly, you might want to consult a lawyer.
Idk, I’m afraid that if I do that will be really expensive. I don’t know. Plus if I involve a lawyer that might piss off the university and then whatever small kindness they may have afforded me will be gone. I don’t want to make things worse.
An initial consultation with a lawyer might not cost that much. It’s good to know where you stand.
If you do have to return the money, then you can do that without the university ever knowing that you talked to an attorney. A lawyer won’t proceed with anything without your permission, as their client.
And if it turns out that you’re *not* under any legal obligation to return the money, then the fact that you have a lawyer might actually make them back off rather quickly.
Yeah, you don’t have to tell the university that you’re consulting a lawyer! It can be just to make sure you understand your rights and obligations. An initial consultation doesn’t mean you’re going to sue them or anything.
That makes sense. I think I’ll look into finding a lawyer, if even just for an inital consultation.
Are you working for a ridiculously bureaucratic English-speaking university in a French-speaking city? because if you are I can try to troubleshoot with you (can write my contact details and then delete.) Don’t work in HR or Payroll but can try to connect you with somewhat helpful people…Let me know.
I am in an english speaking university in a wine-valley city in a western province-I don’t want to actually say the same of the place so let me know if you want a better hint as to the name! there is only one university in the town I live in. I don’t know what to do at all and I would be so, so grateful for any advice!
Ah ok. I work at a university in QC, so not as helpful as I’d hoped to be. I just know that sometimes the general number or email for, say, payroll, is not half as helpful as having a specific person to get in touch with. Are adjuncts unionized where you are? If so I would contact them for sure.
I’m technically a postdoc, and we aren’t unionized. 🙁
I would also try to get SOMEONE on your side (whether it’s the coordinator for the department that employed you, a faculty member who’s been there longer – you say you’re a postdoc, do you have a supervisor? In these sorts of situations it can be really helpful to bounce ideas off someone who has been at the institution longer and might know of similar issues that have arisen in the past, and how to deal with them.
That’s a good idea. I might talk to the department admin assistant? She’s new to our department but has been working at the university for like 5 years, so maybe she has seen similar issues before. My supervisor is almost as new to the school as I am, so he probably hasn’t seen this before.
Yes, do that. It’s their mistake, to demand instant repayment is ridiculous. I second the above advice of consulting a lawyer – you can start by seeing if there’s a free legal aid clinic available on campus. Or you could ask the postdoc students’ association (again, if it exists…the uni I am thinking you might be working for is on the smaller side). But rouse some rabble. Complain to someone.
This is a great idea. University admins can be very well-connected and helpful.
I think a lawyer might be a good idea. Under BC law they can’t just hold back your wages for overpayment, you have to agree to it in writing, so don’t sign anything until you’ve talked to someone! The Law Foundation of BC might be a good place to start looking for help http://www.lawfoundationbc.org/legal-help/
Oh man they aren’t allowed to do that? Well they already did. I’ll try and talk to someone tomorrow-right now I’m just exhausted and frustrated with the whole situation. Thank you Toasties for your wonderful advice!!
I’m in BC too (and I think you live in my hometown!) The Canadian Bar Association -BC Branch operates a lawyer referral service wherein you can get legal advice on a specific problem for, I think, $25 for thirty minutes. Then if you decide to proceed, you go to regular fee structure. If you’re lucky, you may get all the answers you need in the 30 minutes allotted. The toll free number is 1-800-663-1919. Good luck, I hope it works out.
This happened to a good friend of mine once. In the US, not Canada, but otherwise the details are pretty much identical. She *did* have to pay the money back, there was no way around that, but she did *not* have to cough it up immediately. In the end she paid it back over a few months.
If you possibly can, I would politely, firmly, and unstoppably remind them that this is their error, not yours, and you are happy to fix their error for them, but you will be paying it back in installments. (Statement, not a question). You might further point out that since they made the mistake over 3 months, you will take an equal amount of time to pay them back (if that works for you — otherwise suggest a better time frame. But I think it is totally reasonable to point out their ongoing mistake and the time frame they did it in, as part of the process of coming to an agreement about a solution).
Good luck!
Jedi hugs for you–that just rots.
“Probably every American who has eaten a hot dog has eaten Townsend trimmings. Ted’s father, Ray Townsend, died in 2014…”
I don’t know what my braid did here, but I was certain you were about to tell me that I had eaten part of Ray Townsend.
You are not alone in this misinterpretation.
I AM GOING TO COLLEGE IN 16 HOURS
Im sorry y’all have had to deal with me freaking out in every Roundup but the thought of leaving my siblings is just gnawing at me.
Ill try and keep you updated in the Open Thread tomorrow.
I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOU! I’m sorry you’ll miss your siblings, but you’ll all survive and get to catch up with each other and also there are SO MANY WAYS to stay in touch these days! I hope you have a great time.
You are going to be so grand. Give yourself a week of being a little nerve-filled about everything, but keep your eyes open for, like, four good unexpected things to report in on during the 8/28 Open Thread.
And drink plenty of water, and get a plant or a stuffed animal for your room. 🙂
Apropos of nothing, I really enjoyed this New York Times piece about the Ashley Madison hack (“I can’t believe I’m paying the salaries of government workers who weren’t clever enough to get new emails to deceive their spouses”):
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/opinion/the-ash…
Related to this, I had a document review job once that involved sifting through a bunch of internal pharmaceutical company emails (in a room full of newly-minted, 20-something attorneys). One employee had used his work computer and email address to correspond with a Russian mail order bride, and we all clustered around and read the entirety of their online courtship aloud to each other with increasing hilarity. So, you know, maybe don’t do that at work, if you were thinking about it.
(I always wondered what happened with them… she seemed nice).
I have only had boy dogs because all of the girl dogs I have ever known have been weird.
Was there a dick pic?
Favorite makeup blog?
And that's a purpose to the beauty box subscription I hadn't considered–cutting down on impulse lipstick.
And apparently absolutely none of them has read a single X-Men comic in the last half-century to help them understand how that would turn out.
Yeah. I had to register with the Selective Service when I was eighteen, despite the likelihood that I would be classified 4F if there ever was a draft due to being deaf in one ear. There were even protests at the time, but they didn't get a lot of publicity; Dan Savage did a comic with Ellen Forney in which there was a scene set at one such protest in Chicago, but I was living there at the time and didn't hear about it. I was unhappy about doing so, because I didn't like the idea of a draft being reinstated, and Reagan was starting to rattle sabers at the Soviet Union, but I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to apply for federal college financial aid.
My fave is actually a perfume blog, Perfume-Smellin' Things, which has great, in-depth descriptions of scents. Other ones I frequently check are Jezebel's Millihelen and Into the Gloss. And yeah, the beauty box is definitely good for that; and if I don't end up liking the stuff that much, which happens more often than not with impulse buys anyway, this stuff is usually small enough that it doesn't feel like a waste.
I love the Manicures and Permanents piece. I love that these daily Carrie’s Puppy pictures give me a flash of such pure, satisfying happiness. This might be my favorite one yet. Sleepy puppy face!
https://www.pinterest.com/drhealthpress/