READ THIS (on how students victimized by predatory colleges are fighting back):
Rebecca Carroll on her anger:
I’m angry that I was surrendered into adoption by a white mother whose exotification and resentment of black men resulted in my unwanted existence, and then adopted by white parents who are, for the most part, willfully colorblind. I’m angry that not one of these parents – or anyone left in either my birth or adoptive family – understands or thinks about what it feels like to be black in America. I’m angry that the same white friend who said to me years ago that letting go of my anger will set me free responded defensively to my efforts to engage with her about her own racial awareness as if I were attacking or bullying her: “What am I supposed to do, just sit back and take it?” (Well, actually, yes.)
“Canonization Fodder” – a Native perspective on Serro
WHY is this piece not called Life Is a Rich Tapestry:
A classically trained dancer with a sweet, expressive face, Lou Henry Hoover is one of the most well-loved personas in boylesque—burlesque strip shows starring male-identified performers, sometimes in drag but typically not—and also one of the most unusual. Not just because of the dance-school pedigree, but also because Lou is the drag persona of Ricki Mason a person who feels female (albeit what she calls “a real peacock of a butch”) in her day-to-day life and male when dancing (and stripping) onstage.
I really liked this piece in the Guardian which is just black people who go to Burning Man talking about being black people at Burning Man, what sucks, what’s good, what’s uncomfortable (I think it’s possible to be OH THIS SHIT IS SO RIDIC WHO DOES THIS NONSENSE while also respecting that there are cool people who have some kind of transformational experience of Burning Man that can still have an authenticity to it for them, or at least, I try to! My friend who has had the HARDEST life of anyone I know scrounges money all year to go, and it’s really important to her, so these are the end of my opinions about Burning Man):
Steven Thrasher
I don’t feel any more or less free at Burning Man than I do in the default world – there are a lot of rules here. I feel compelled to wear pants and no hat in New York. I feel compelled to wear no pants and a hat here. And I don’t feel any more or less black here. What I do feel is closer to whiteness, and a sense of guilt, in how racially and financially exclusive this place is, especially when I am coming and going.
I’ve always felt like a gross hypocrite preparing to “leave no trace” while raiding Reno like a prepper on my way to Black Rock City, engaging in more consumerism than I indulge in any other time of the year. But this year, I was aware of the stark racial differences. Except for the Burners, everyone in the Reno Wal Mart where I bought my supplies was Chicano. Every vendor on the road to the playa was Native American. Nearly every person at the Denny’s I ate at when we left was Chicano. Hardly any of those people will ever go to Burning Man.
This made me want to rewatch all the Almodóvar movies.
My friend Carrie’s new puppy has sticky-uppy-ears:
oh:
Scott Pelley: You’re talking about making part of the population exempt from income tax?
Donald Trump: That is correct.
Scott Pelley: You’re talking about cutting corporate income taxes?
Donald Trump: That is correct.
Scott Pelley: But there’s a $19 trillion federal debt.
Donald Trump: That’s right. We’re gonna grow the economy so much–
Scott Pelley: You can’t afford to do those things–
Donald Trump: –no, no, but if the economy grows the way it should grow, if I bring jobs back from China, from Japan, from Mexico, from so many countries, everybody’s taking our jobs.
Scott Pelley: How do you get ’em back?
Donald Trump: You get ’em back–
My joyous Star Trek: TOS rewatch ended with the worst and final episode of Star Trek, in which (not a joke) a woman is driven so insane by the promises of feminism that she has a psychotic break, takes over Kirk’s body, attempts to lead the Enterprise, and because she is so Hysterical and Petulant and Erratic, everyone figures out it’s a lady instead of Kirk, and then a nice man promises to take care of her and ushers her away, and then Kirk says: “Her life could have been as rich as any woman’s. If only… if only…”
die
OH, and here is a pic of Kirk filing his nails bc he’s secretly a lady:
WHAT IS IN THESE pic.twitter.com/XZPh8qnHbX
— plain jane (@thinkbri) September 28, 2015
LMM AND TA-NEHISI GOT MACARTHUR GENIUS GRANTS
Obviously this is the BEST, but also, I first interpreted this as “Lucy Maud Montgomery and…” which, also, was awesome. Impossible, but awesome.
Maybe LMM can make a better version of the Anne of Green Gables musical?
WHAT. Yes please. He can be the Cary Fukunaga of musical theatre, unconstrained by genre or subject matter.
Same!
Ditto!
so cool to see people who’s work I already admire win, but also a lot of fun to see who they pick who I have never heard of. For instance, Patrick Awuah looks like he is doing great work in Ghana. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/929/
IT IS A TRAGEDY I CAN ONLY ‘LIKE’ THIS COMMENT ONE TIME!
EDITED TO ADD: Fantastic interview with TNC:
Goldberg: Is winning this prize going to make you unbearable, or merely insufferable?
Coates: Unbearably insufferable. And I now have an excuse—I am a genius, after all. Thus my insufferableness is a blessing. You should be happy I’m even communicating with you.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/…
I am so delighted by that! And Lin-Manuel is giving some of his money to the charity for children that Eliza Hamilton helped start!
WELL NOW I’M GONNA CRY AT WORK
NOT ME THIS IS JUST SOME DUST
WHAT A GUY :’)
I love how the grants put fabricators and puppeteers on the same level as neuroscientists and biologists. Makes me feel okay with a maybe theater degree.
Oh my gosh, this is amazing, I was just scrolling through the Fellows for this year looking for LMM and MY ORGANIC CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR IS ON THERE! Bet he’s gonna be super happy during lecture this week
Hearty congratulations to your organic chemistry professor! I don’t know, I feel like it would be really hard to focus on lecturing about organic chemistry under those circumstances, but we should all have that kind of problem.
Also the brilliant poet Ellen Bryant Voigt, whom Toasties should know and love! Read her amazing novel-in-verse Kyrie, which is about the Spanish Flu pandemic.
I feel very smart right now because we were discussing Hamilton in class last week and I said that LMM was going to be a MacArthur genius soon and NOW HE IS
I’M LOOKING FOR TWO MINDS AT WORK.
Oh, what do you know? I FOUND THEM.
I am so happy about this!
So, last night I listened to this nifty new musical, has anyone heard of it, it’s called “Hamilton”?
(but seriously, yes, now on bandwagon, sorry it took so long, I did believe you all I just hadn’t yet had a chance)
Ditto. I finally was like, “OKAY Toasties, enough already!” and listened to the whole thing yesterday, and um, yep,okay, I’m in.
awh yay! Pride is not the word Im looking for!
Me too – started listening to it on Friday, have listened to it like six times since.
Same here. I finally decided to play a bit of it in my car on Saturday and then I got mad when I got to my destination before Act 1 was even done. I’ve listened to it a whole bunch since then.
This is a day late, but I wanted to thank you for including the link about the 43 in yesterday’s roundup. I watched their families marching in NYC last spring and almost nobody who saw them pass had even heard of the story.
From a protest last fall, here are the mini-biographies or obituaries of those very young men, many of them the first in their families to attend college.
http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/art…
“I feel compelled to wear no pants and a hat here.”
Nope.
Just cannot go to burning man. Not now. Not ever.
It’s super important to one of my dearest humans and the more I hear about it the more NOPE I become.
I’ve always had a serious amount of Nope for Burning Man. My Brother was obessesed with going for a few years, but the sheer expense of it all (especially travelling from abroad) meant he never got to go.
I really struggled to understand how it all worked; like you go camp in the desert, ok I get that, but you have to bring EVERYTHING you could possibly need including water? yeah no.
I grew up going to an annual womens camp (in the vein of Michigan’s womens camp) that was completely socialist and anarchist; Everyone paid what they could when they arrived and resources were pooled centrally to run everything (food, firewood, communal tent rental, childcare!), so once you arrived you didn’t have to think about money at all, it was brilliant! And since that’s my normal when someone says festival/hippy gathering, that’s what I think, but most other things are actually really expensive and you have to pay/trade for everything. That just sounds far to stressful for me.
I love camping, so that actually sounds really lovely!
Although my only stab at communal living was in a co-op during university with a bunch of stoners who were unsurprisingly very bad at sharing in chores or talking to one another like mature adults. By the end of that summer, I was sneaking out the back fire escape … so I might just be the kind of introvert who is better off doing things alone.
Some parts of burning man do strike me as potentially enjoyable: making unusual sculptures, dressing up in costumes, the desert landscape itself etc. etc. But it really does seem like a tech bro billionaire summer camp, and I just cannot see that being fun for everyone.
Its brilliant, I’m thinking its time to make a return as a functioning adult (Its mostly lesbians that I grew up around, so a bit like an whole field full of aunties!)
I have a bit of a block over the communal living, I just don’t think it would work with men (or straight people tbh); at least not in the format I knew it. Although there was always drama, and some serious characters, at womens camp, it rarely devolved into serious fights or political struggle; this may have been more about this specific community than just because it was all women, but I do think there was a real joy in being women out doing everything for themselves, with absolutely no need for men. And sure, women ran off with each others girlfriends, but the community was small enough that everyone had been with everyone else at some-point anyway, I imagine it would get a bit more intense and bunny boiler with straight people. It was also only for two weeks each year, so you could go and loose yourself completely and then come back to your real life and flushing toilet!
Elements of BM sound fun, but it all sounds so organised and formal, and expensive! I can only imagine the kinds of people that its full of (I’m sure its not all the vapid narcissists I’m imagining, but there’s probably enough of them that I don’t want to be there)
My one Burning Man friend is a laconic man who mostly keeps his thoughts to himself–he’s no quick-tongued wit, so I was astonished at how astutely he summed up my feelings on the matter while we were grocery shopping one day. I was standing paralyzed with indecision about kielbasa, and was theatrically complaining:”This is just too much sausage. There are to many sausages here!”
And he said, deadpan and without missing a beat, “Then you probably wouldn’t enjoy Burning Man.”
How can you defend pants???
Shirtcock happens. (Google that at your own risk.)
Ah, yes, this is called “Duckburging” or “pulling a Duckburg(-er)” where I’m from, because it’s apparently very fashionable in Donald Duck’s hometown.
Donald Trump! What! What…? WHAT?!
I wanted to pull out the most ridiculously, egregious, contradictory, inflammatory things he said, but really, that would just be me CTRL-Cing the whole damn Q&A.
Scott Pelley: You would drop a bomb on their nuclear reactor?
Donald Trump: I would do something.
I think whenever someone asks Trump ‘how’ he would do something, his thought process just involves that Shia Lebouf “JUST DO IT” montage/gif. Because literally his answers to every question basically boil down to “I’d do something”/”I’d do it somehow”/”I’d just do it!”, without any actual HOW, lol.
Well, and when anyone points out that we have a constitution, a congress, a SCOTUS that will not permit his shenanigans, “I’ll just make it happen!”
Dude, the world don’t work that way.
Unfortunately, for Donald Trump, the world usually does work that way, and I’m not sure he realizes how starkly his reality differs from actual realit.
And when it doesn’t work that way, he basically just forgets that he didn’t get his way.
It’s really a fascinating insight into what it’s like to be a rich white man in America. The rest of them are self-aware enough to surround themselves with several layers of carefully-cultivated humanity, but Trump just barrels on with his own reality.
Hark! It’s the Trump rallying cry, “What the hell do we care?”
I had to laugh at this interview, because it was too horrible to process in any other way at first glance.
The man has no actual anwers for HOW he’d do anything. It’s just “I’d do it. I’d do something. I’d do it better than anyone else.” The fact that he has people supporting him when all he’s actually proven that he can do is “argue on the level of a 5th grader” is pretty alarming.
And really, that’s just insulting to 5th graders, many of whom are much better at laying out clear plans than he is.
He’s the kid running for class president who promises to put Coke in all the drinking fountains.
(except with Trump, it’s actual coke…)
Sarah Jeong interviewed the PETA lawyer who wants to represent the selfie-taking monkey, and it is hilarious.
Does Naruto know about this lawsuit?
[pause]
Um, the… fact here is that Naruto is unable to come into court himself and so we are standing as Next Friend. Your question is silly, frankly. The issue is as I’ve stated it.
I had the weirdest time reading that transcript until I realized that the monkey is named Naruto & they weren’t referring to the anime character…
SAME.
Where is a gif of McNair from 1776 saying “Oh, sweet Jesus” when I need it? Cause that’s all I kept thinking to myself through that entire article.
hahaha at the PETA guy sanctimoniously annoyed at Sarah Jeong because she is pointing out the ridiculousness of their lawsuit. What a guy.
In my deepest bitter lawyer heart I want the judge to throw this out for failure to state a claim and impose ruinous rule 11 sanctions for deterrence. Fffffuck PETA.
In my deepest bitter lawyer heart I want the judge to throw this out for failure to state a claim and impose ruinous rule 11 sanctions for deterrence. Fffffuck PETA.
In world many people fan of naruto and i am also fan of naruto. In naruto series i like ZABUZA. I like zabuza sword. That sword look is awesome.
Well I know that face that Shatner’s making is the expression I always have when I’m secretly a lady and people won’t go away and let me file my nails in peace. I thought it was universal.
He really does nail (so to speak) the “…why are you talking to me instead of being somewhere else and not talking to me” expression.
As a ‘tired European’ I have vowed to stay as uninvolved with the US elections of 2016 as I possibly can, mainly for fear of becoming like that little ‘Bronco Bama’ girl in this 2012 video , and then without even living in the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmozeU19rnI
But…but…but…that utter…GARBAGE OF STUPIDITY I just read makes me feel like the European Union should do one of those leaflet-drops-by-plane they used to do in Vietnam, just to wake people up to the sheer just….[kgggk kgggk brain malfunction] of the things Trump says… #calltointernationalaction #wtf
I feel like the urging of the horrid & backwards Europeans (any of em, all of em) would only drive people further into Trump’s open arms.
HUGE luck to the Corinthian debt strikers! The stories from the for-profit colleges are just terrible.
and aaargh to the UK government which keeps trying to use the worst models from the US over here. 🙁
You said Corinthian and my brain translated CARDASSIAN
Too much Star Trek? Maybe?
Who else read this and wants to cry ?http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/the-good-soldier-why-a-suicidal-officer-had-to-go-awol-to-save-his-life-20150924?page=7
I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet, but it hits too close to home. (Like on a literal level too. Fort Drum is right there.)
It’s late, but I’ve had your link open and have been reading it in snippets all day, and wanted to say thanks for posting it! Very … wow. It’s causing complex thoughts on suicide in the military and depression and treatment.
It’s kind of a weird story in that it sets out to tell one story (suicidal soldier is prosecuted for saving his own life) and ends up telling a very different one (seemingly golden boy who’s fantasized about committing suicide since he was thirteen can’t escape guilt for finally doing something that he wants to do). By the end of the piece, even the writer has to admit that the parents really aren’t getting what their son is going through.
Did anyone watch the premiere of Trevor Noah on the Daily Show last night? I’m waiting for it to go online, but I am more than a little nervous about it…
He was adorable, and will clearly grow into the role. (And he looks distressingly like my brother when in profile, which made me want to pinch his cheeks all the more.)
Just watched it as I got ready this morning (from the Comedy Central app on my tablet, but it looks like ti’s on the website too now)!
He did fine! He’s a comfortable host, clearly a professional. Paid due tribute to Jon, was quite funny about the Pope and Boehner (“Nooo, I just got here! I just learned how to pronounce your name!”), introduced a new correspondent (and an old one), had a nice chat with Kevin Hart. I’d forgotten how short these episodes are, compared to Stephen’s new show! But he’ll do fine, I’m sure (especially since he clearly has a lot of the same crew supporting him and running the ol’ Daily Show machine). I just hope he doesn’t get bored and leaves. (I may have abandonment issues now!)
A friend of mine went to a “pity burn” in North Jersey a few weekends ago because getting money to go to actual Burning Man is a little obscene. As she described to me what went down I just kinda stood there with my jaw hanging open. I do not think it is the place for me, but she has invited me to go next year.
I feel like I should go to do a recon mission, but. I like wearing clothing. And not seeing that many people naked. So.
That article was really interesting.
A “pity burn” sounds like when you and your friends are all dissing each other, and someone’s kid sibling came along and wants to be included, so someone is like, “uh, you suck at coloring, I guess?”
It’s like that one scene in Mean Girls, only you’re doing it to someone else. “Um, well…you sometimes have really bad breath in the morning? I guess?”
Oh yeah, there’s one in Michigan that our friends go to and learning about it I thought it was just the funniest thing. I’m not saying I wouldn’t go, but I will say that I have other priorities for my limited vacation time.
it’s called a “regional burn” and they’re for keeping the community together in the off season and for people who will not or cannot go to The Burn. i, personally, don’t go to our regional because i can’t imagine a long weekend camping trip having anything on the experience that is living on the playa for a couple of weeks.
I would actually consider going to a regional burn, but not so much the thing itself. The last time I got a piece of dust in my eye, it required four days and eventual minor surgery to get it out, so the playa basically sounds like hell to me, even though Beloved Human would appreciate my company there.
good for you for knowing you wouldn’t like it and being cool with your Beloved Human going without you. it is also my partner’s idea of hell on earth so he makes sure i’ve get one last good meal, helps me load all of my crap in my car, and sends me on my way. all he asks is that i send him mail from the playa and to take 2 showers before i get back.
I think the NNJ one was specifically called the “pity burn,” but I appreciate the further information!
I would much rather go to a radical faerie commune, which does usually entail some casual nudity, than somewhere where I have to bring literally everything I need. It doesn’t surprise me some rad fae are going to burns, but a radfae Gathering seems like ten times the fun at a fraction of the cost.
I am just fine with some casual nudity, so long as I’m someplace where I can occasionally submerge my nudity in water.
I miss having an in at the family friendly nudist colony. They had the best pool.
Yes, nudist colonies come in the “family friendly” (I.e. no sexytimes and canoodling in public) variety. It was refreshing.
Having spent many years of my otherwise boring youth going to Pennsic (the Society for Creative Anachronism’s biggest event) I can tell you that you get 10,000 or so people together for 2 weeks and add alcohol and you’re going to see people naked no matter what. :/ So many images I cannot unsee.
Most of those literal babies have like 90 jobs. Bless their scrappy, youthful energy, they make me tired just reading about them.
I also comfort myself that many of them probably live in spaces the size of my walk-in closet. Hurray for the world outside of Brooklyn!
I was impressed with the guy who was making the list of impressive people as a “slacker”, and then I started reading his inspiring words to people wanting to do what he did and my eyes rolled very hard and fell out.
There is a distinct danger of that when dealing with the committed and enthusiastic youth of the world. But I’d probably have rolled my eyes at a young Alexander Hamilton, too.
I have to say, I’m usually suspicious of people who say shit about letting go of anger or forgiveness, especially because it’s almost always said by someone extremely privileged to someone oppressed along one or many axes.
Or they want something from you. :/
Truth.
Yep. Forgiveness and letting anger go are just fine as far as they go, and if it helps someone, then great. But I’ve got to the point where my eye starts twitching and I rant starts crowding up my throat at the very mention of the words because they are pretty much never in the context of ‘here are a range of ways for you to deal with shitty things that happened to you, how can I support you?’ They are more like ‘well your anger is inconvenient to me and I would prefer it if you forgave me/that other person so I don’t have to acknowledge those shitty things that happened to you. And if you don’t, I’m going to consider you an angry and unenlightened person so I can still ignore those things’.
I think Trump must be as high as those pets.
To be fair, all of Donald Trump’s proposals SOUND really stupid, but they’re not factually any stupider than any of Jeb Bush’s proposals.
Jeb Bush’s tax plan is literally exactly the same thing: cut everyone’s taxes, and then “the economy is gonna grow so great, it’s gonna be terrific guys, we’ll get all that money back,” but because we’ve all somehow decided that Jeb Bush is a nerd, newspapers feel compelled to address it as though it’s a serious policy proposal.
I guess the only real difference is that Trump actually insists that he’s going to get the overseas jobs back (how? Well, look, however he’s going to be terrific, it’s going to be YOOGE and TERRIFIC), while Jeb et al say, “we’ll cut all the taxes and unleash American entrepreneurship” and when you say, “and that’s going to bring back the American manufacturing base?” they sort of smile and wink about. “What do you mean? Why WOULDN’T it do that? Why are you even asking that? What a weird question!”
I think this goes a long way to explaining Trump’s popularity.
Okay someone explained this to me, please don’t think I’m researching Trump’s politics on personal time:
Right now, American businesses have a tax advantage to moving labor and manufacturing etc out of the country. He wants to remove that and instead give American businesses the tax advantage for keeping operations here in America. He also wants to back out of a ton of trade agreements that have sent labor out of this country, NAFTA for example. Plus something about tariffs, I think, to encourage American-made products.
However if this is the case I’m not sure why Trump isn’t bringing that up in his interviews.
I think that’s exactly the problem, Trump has a good line about imposing tariffs on, for instance, cars made in Mexico — he’s said in interviews that “if they make a car in Mexico, we’ll put a tax on it, and they’ll have to keep their factories in America”; that is a protectionist tariff, and that’s fine. He can’t call it a tariff, obviously, because the Republican Dogma is also anti-protectionist, which is probably the only difference between him and his fellow Republican candidates.
But none of that is in his TAX proposals, and it’s not clear (to me, anyway) that lowering corporate tax would actually nullify the tax advantage for overseas holdings — right now, as long as those companies don’t do anything with that money, the income is tax exempt, so unless the plan is to cut the corporate rate to zero (which it’s not), it’s still not going to reverse the tax advantage.
Besides that, “lowering onshore tax rates for corporations” IS part of the regular Republican dogma, and is occasionally even expressed in terms of “if we stop incentivizing offshoring, our companies will be more competitive”. Which would be true if someone was trying to do it, but the Republican party doesn’t actually care about incentivizing onshore development, all they care about is lowering corporate tax rates.
Ask Jeb Bush, for instance, if he thinks the corporate tax rates should be lowered, and he’ll tell you “yes, obviously”, so it’s not functionally any different.
Trump talks a good line about economic protectionism, but it’s mostly horseshit; his actual policies are just tax cuts for the wealthy and a lot of posturing about jobs.
I will give him that he’s actually pushing the line about offshoring a lot harder than any Republican ought to prefer, though.
Thanks for this. I should be doing more research. The odds of a Democratic president following a two-term democrat are pretty low, so I’m trying to eye the Republicans in the sense of which would I pick if it had to be one of them. Because it probably will be.
I wish Republicans had a more conservative conservative candidate, but I guess that’s just not their party playlist these days.
You can’t even impose a tax on Mexican cars without breaking NAFTA, though, that’s the rub. The interviewer even called him on it. Protectionist tariffs within North America aren’t just against Republican policy, they’re largely illegal by an international agreement.
So even the most feasible part of his plan is massively infeasible.
Yeah, I don’t know, I mean I guess you COULD do it, if you wanted to dissolve NAFTA (which you’d basically have to), but I am not sure that Trump or his supporters know or care what that would entail.
(I am not necessarily pro-NAFTA, but I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that we ought to just be dissolving lightly)
I wish people wouldn’t waste their time feeling guilty about going to Burning Man. At the very least they’re dumping tons of cash into the local economy and putting on a free freak show for the natives. Go! Have fun!
Did …. did Scott Pelley (slightly mis)quote “Hamilton” at the beginning of that Trump interview?
I have a few friends who go to Burning Man and LOVE it. It’s definitely not for me but I like seeing their creativity. They again they are generally not naked, at least not that I have seen…
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/29/mario…
ugh. Yet another high profile woman says she’s not a feminist because she doesn’t know the definition of the word feminist.
I have a love/hate relationship with peoples reactions to the word; I feel like a lot of people think that because it’s a female word that feminism is only for women (and that means Feminists want women to rule over men), and therefore say stupid things like ‘I believe in equality for men AND women, I’m not a feminist.’ but yes, YES YOU ARE. Feminist = Equality.
Explaining this annoys me, but I also enjoy watching what happens when you name something with a female word, everyone just zero’s in on the word; someone much smarter than me has probably written about this and explained it much better. Why should we have to change the name of what we think because people don’t understand? Sure we could change it to ‘Humanist’, but that means that ‘MAN’ is the default yet again.
(I recently had to smack down a guy friend of mine over his use of ‘Mankind’, he tried to say that Mankind = everyone)
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-pro…
I do not face anywhere near the same amount of harrassement this woman is facing, but what she says about methods we adopt to avoid it rings very true!
Any reaction is good for them, so one must learn to avoid any form of acknowledgement. Its gross, and causes me so much stress. I wear sun-glasses all year around, for many reasons, one of which is that it makes it easy to avoid making eye contact, and thus instigating an interaction, when men try to talk to me on the street.
Maybe this interview with an actress at the Guardian will cheer you up? http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/27/geena…
I’m literally drooling. I love Geena Davis so so so so so so much. Thank you!
And her final point is so true! Seeing women doing a job on TV makes women more likely to see it as a career path for them! Most of my career aspirations have been based on TV; Wanted to be a Lawyer cause of Ally McBeal, wanted to be a surgeon because of Grey’s Anatomy, and now I work in Advertising because of Mad Men. Its not a case of just wanting to be like people on TV, its more that I look at these people doing their jobs and thinks ‘Hey, I could do that!’ (Obvs those careers are very different from the TV shows, but it still gives you a tiny insight into what the job is!)
She is amazing. And I do really believe that what we see on TV influences how we see the world, so she’s absolutely right that the current percentages are a real problem.
There was a HILARIOUS interview with Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny awhile back, where the interviewer mentioned “The Scully effect-” an upswing of women going into science and medicine co-inciding with the years when The X-Files was popular, and when Duchovny went “well I think Mulder inspired men . . .” Anderson shot back with “to do what? Throw pencils at the ceiling? Hide in basements? Watch porn?”
Oh man do you have a link to this interview? That’s amazing.
Here: http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/david-duchovny-gil…
God she is so great it actually hurts
I feel like that, “oh, I’m not a feminist, I prefer HUMANIST” is really a sort of cop-out, because “feminism” comes with a set of sort of policies — if not specific policy proposals, certainly a number of things that feminists expect to see changed — while Humanism is just an abstract moral philosophy. Saying “I’m a Humanist, because I believe in equality, rather than a feminist” is like saying, “I believe that men and women are equal, but also I don’t want to have to do anything.”
There’s also a very specific image of A FEMINIST in pop-culture (ala Germain Geerer and other ‘Feminazi’s’ we all know.), that many actresses think would hurt their image to be associated with (Read the Geena Davis interview, she explains it just so much better than I ever could have)
I think its often women trying to be ‘likeable’, they don’t want to put men off by saying that they’re a feminst, they want men to think that they are not like those women and are ‘cool’. (SO MUCH PROBLEMS.)
Yeah, in their defense, they’re probably right that it’s going to hurt their image or disrupt their ability to work with certain actors or directors, which is why I personally try to reserve (some) of my rancor for actresses who hedge about it.
I am kind of irritated by the whole, “If you believe in equality, you’re a feminist!” thing. Actually, no. If you believe in equality and currently think society is structured to favour men and masculinity, and that this is something that should change, you might be a feminist.* Simply believing in equality doesn’t cut it for me.
* Alternatively, you might decide not to call yourself a feminist because your associations with the word “feminist” are privileged white women trying to make WOC, trans woman, sex working women and other less privileged women shut up and know their place, which is also a very legitimate point of view.
Cosigned.
There are, of course, white women who say ‘I am not a feminist. I just believe [exactly things that are the definition of feminism’. And that is frustrating. But I am also growing increasingly frustrated with ‘no, I will tell you how to define yourself in regards to this’. Mostly because of all the very good reasons one might not wish to call themselves a feminist (personally I call myself a feminist in general company but with people with whom I can dissect things a bit more i feel VERY uncomfortable with the term, as it applies to myself, and many prominent Feminists do NOT speak for me – that is probably another whole conversation, though). But also… well. She’s a woman. She gets to call herself what she likes. She may be wrong, but that is NONE OF MY BUSINESS. I think talking about how the system around us treats people who do or don’t identify as feminists is very legit, as well as ‘wow look at all the pressures on people to toe the line! Isn’t that disappointing!’, as is ‘well here is what people hear when someone says ‘humanist’ vs ‘feminist’, and here is the history of those words and their contexts, etc.
But it makes me uncomfortable how much of these kinds of conversations tend to be about picking apart a particular woman’s statements and being like ‘hahah look you are actually part of MY team, sucker!!’ (I don’t think this thread is doing that, I really am speaking generally, although I’m at the point where the phrase ‘if you believe in [thing I believe in], you’re a feminist’ is enough to make me twitchy by itself, now).
“A real peacock of a butch” *
*Reactions:
smiles and claps
has a fleeting moment of phrase envy
Is gone because I’m getting a damn sketchbook
I would like to see that sketch. Please?
OMGSQUEE Lou Henry Hoooooover! I live in Seattle (LHH’s stomping ground) and first saw him a few years ago with The Atomic Bombshells. The ladies were all lovely but I was so captivated by him. He’s so dreamy and sweet and cheeky, oh my, and then to see his “other” side, to see pictures of her wedding to Kitten La Rue (you’re welcome)… I basically swoon at his name and desperately hope to run into her one day on the street and for her to be like, “Oh, hello normal teacher lady, you happened to catch my eye, let’s go hang out and we can take a sassy selfie where you’re kissing my cheek and I’m making an adorable face!”
I suppose the difference is that elites know that Bush doesn’t really mean it. That he’s just saying what he has to say to get through the questions of the election season, and that once he’s elected President he’ll go back to following the Heritage line or what have you. Whereas Trump might genuinely be the loose cannon he claims to be.
Yeah, except, “cut everyone’s taxes — particularly rich people’s — and the economy is going to grow so great, it’s going to be terrific” IS the Heritage line. Donald Trump is just saying official Republican party dogma. He’s just making it sound stupid.
Well, more like providing a suitably rococo frame for its inherent resplendent stupidity.
I was all ready to lol at the Brooklyn 30-under-30 list from here at my office desk job, but then I actually read it and realized I’m an idiot and these people are awesome.
Me too!! Awesome diverse list. Impressed to see Aye Nako on there too, which is an awesome band.
That said, I never should have looked since I have daily anxiety about getting older and having done nothing… so.
Augh, those lists. I read them and I’m like, I am trying! I am applying for SO many postdocs, spending SO much time on writing the best possible cover letters/ CV that I can! And not getting anywhere. What is fundamentally wrong with me/what do these people have that I don’t even know what it’s named, much less how to get it? (It’s probably just money and a lack of imposter syndrome.)
I can’t take seriously any list that leaves off Almodóvar’s queer masterpiece “Law of Desire” which stars the great Carmen Maura. Also “Live Flesh” (with Javier Bardem!) should be on that list. Jeez.
10 years after seeing it I STILL think about the shower sex scene in Live Flesh. Almodovar is everything. Carmen Maura is everything. His films have been so important in my formation as a woman and a human being. His compassion for his characters is so touching.
Let’s face it, the Essential Almodovar is ALL Almodovar.
Trump: give money to the rich
U.S. Economy: why?
Trump: you gotta
I would like to request a trigger warning on any future links to the beautiful and successful infants of Brooklyn. The trigger warning should have one tat sleeve and complain about gentrification.
Kirk-as-a-lady looks freakily like my future stepfather-in-law, which I will try and keep in mind whenever he is yelling about whatever Fox News talking point or insisting he knows best about some topic that he actually knows nothing about.
I bought “kitty calming treats” from Petco and thought they were nonsense since they contain tryptophan and chamomile but in fact they are kitty Propofol. My cats were like zombies for days.
give your stepfather-in-law the cat treats. problems solved. you’re welcome.
Ooo, do you remember what brand? I love my boyfriend’s dumb jerkbutt cat, but he has a really annoying habit of stomping all over us at 6:00 am and meowing like a peasant from Les Mis, and it would be great to drug him. Just a little bit.
They were PetCo brand. Looking at their website, I’m not sure if they sell them anymore. I definitely remember that they had tryptophan in them.
I’m angry that I was surrendered into adoption by a white mother whose exotification and resentment of black men resulted in my unwanted existence
Seems like that lets her dad off the hook for any responsibility.
It’s possible she was placed for adoption without her biological father knowing of her existence. The author doesn’t owe us a full explanation.
Could be they’ve reconnected now. Someone presumably told her about her birth mother’s ‘exotification and resentment’; and it would explain his absence in the piece. Or perhaps he’s passed away, as she refers to what’s ‘left’ of her birth and adoptive families.
IDK, it isn’t anyone’s business; but I think curiosity is natural when someone details one parent so specifically but not the other.
Scott Pelley: Revolution is easy, governing is hard
Methinks someone has been listening to Cabinet Battle #1…
Washington: Winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder.
DEFINITELY. You know he had songs running through his head as he was prepping and giving that interview, subtly influencing everything he said.
That episode is the exact reason why I laugh hysterically every time someone says TNG WASN’T sexist. Or whenever they bring up that JJ Abrams quote about Trek being “too philosophical”: http://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/50514989060/jen…
No, TNG (The Next Generation) was pretty progressive. I love Spock in all his incarnations, but the original series, meh.
Reasons to laugh when someone says TOS wasn’t sexist: That episode, all following episodes, all preceding episodes.
Reasons to laugh when someone says TNG wasn’t sexist: Angel One, most Troi episodes.
Reasons to laugh when someone says DS9 wasn’t sexist: That time Quark saves feminism by cross-dressing.
Reasons to laugh when someone says VOY wasn’t sexist: Every episode where they abruptly changed Janeway’s characterization because they had less female writers than TOS and they didn’t know how to write a competent female leader.
Reasons to laugh when someone says ENT wasn’t sexist: Decontamination.
Reasons to laugh when someone says DS9 wasn’t sexist: That time Quark saves feminism by cross-dressing.
Ugh, “Profit and Lace.” All I can say is, at least it was just the one episode.
Yes, mostly that show was Kira being the best thing ever – except the pregnancy storyline, which would have been fine without the all-pervading NOPE of the completely inexplicable crush on Miles that went with it. But even when heavily pregnant, she still beat up Cardassians on the daily, and more importantly kept her character development.
Someone once applied the Bechdel test to all the Star Trek series episodes. The percent passing rises with each series until the last one, Enterprise, where it plummets down again.
I’m so torn on Star Trek, because on the one hand it was DEFINITELY sexist (and heteronormative, and still whiter than it should be, and etc etc etc) but on the OTHER hand it was definitely TRYING to be progressive and did a lot better than a lot of other shows at the time (particularly Original Series and the early Next Gen stuff, when Gene was still involved).
I feel like a lot of what I love about Star Trek is its potential- it’s such an optimistic view of the world, and you can tell it wanted to be better than it was. If we could just take the bits of it that were awesome, the ideals that formed the backbone and really take them to the next level and update them for current standards, it could be SO GOOD.
Or we could just have all the women in their underwear. Siiiiiiigh.
I think the thing I love about ToS (Ok one of the things) is that now, at this distance, it becomes such a clear lens for how narrow a privileged vision is, by definition. Everyone (ok most people) involved were trying SO HARD to be progressive, to be as creative as possible in imagining a future where all was peace and opportunity. And yet they still fall prey to such OBVIOUS tropes.
So viewed through the times it still has good things to say, but it’s also an important reminder to check in on ourselves and think about what our own limits are that we can’t see. AND to emphasise the importance of diversity in the actual people creating the things. It’s all well and good having a diverse cast, many of whom had actual input on plots and how things were treated. But you will still always have massive privileged gaffes, that way. Especially when the people that Rodennberry was actually answerable to in any real way were the execs, all white dudes.
I’ll just go back and watch Memory Alpha again with the rad Romulan lady captain who thinks Spock is well sexy but also doesn’t let it stop her from being badass (she loses, ofc, but that’s because Romulans = bad guys and so of course Kirk with his stupid half-formed plans win)
Guys, I finally found what I’ve been thinking of as “my” house and was halfway through the buying process (and about $1000 in) and then I got the HOA bylaws this morning. They’re SO restrictive. About lots of little things that seriously bug me (absolutely no street parking, so no guests ever, for example) but also this one big thing I can’t get past: no renting out rooms. I’m a single lady buying a 3-br house with the express intent of renting out two rooms. I am not ok with suddenly deciding the mortgage will be 100% mine to cover. So the deal is done. I have to back out.
I’m gonna have to start the whole process over and go back to looking for a house in a super competitive market where investors snatch every home I like away AND I now have a time limit because my roommate is planning to sell her house and move within the next month or so.
I know none that was about a link, but I’m just so weighed down by it right now 🙁
Oh man, that super sucks. I’m really sorry.
How awful! I know how stressful house-shopping is, and all the different red tape hoops to jump through! I’m so sorry you’re in this situation. 🙁 I can’t believe either the “no street parking ever” rule — if it isn’t too late, can you talk to neighbors about how that’s actually applied? And I can’t believe either they’re telling you you can’t rent out rooms in YOUR house, what the fuck. What a racket!
Oh, that’s the worst. HOAs are evil. I’m glad you found out now, before you were too far in, though.
I’m being told that pretty much every HOA has this kind of language and everyone just ignores it (most people never actually read the bylaws), so now I’m just confused and torn. It’s crazy to legally agree to something I know I’m not gonna do, but also apparently that’s what everyone in the neighborhood does (and a friend who moved to this neighborhood 6 months ago parks on the street every day with no issue). This is just so much insanity.
I know it sucks to back out, but if your HOA gets a new board/president and they are hell bent on enforcing the rules, you will be shit out of luck because you signed on the dotted line.
HOAs are the devil for sure.
The weird thing about “Turnabout Intruder” is how it seems to start out with a kind of interesting and thought-provoking idea: hey, how come there aren’t any women captains in Starfleet? Could the disappearance of Number One (Majel Barrett’s character in the first Trek pilot) have something to do with the disappearance of pants in women’s uniforms? Like, maybe there’s some really regressive dude in charge of Starfleet at the time? I mean, fuck it, it’s the last episode, why not spit in the eye of the network execs who wanted Number One gone as a condition of authorizing a second pilot? (They also wanted to get rid of Spock.) But no, the character who makes a really trenchant criticism of the space navy also is bugfuck crazy. Imagine if she’d done it and turned out to be a better captain.
My personal theory is there are no female captains because all the male captains I’ve seen in ToS are so gd emotional and irrational that the women can’t stand it and are getting on with things elsewhere. Not running star bases either because those dudes are even WORSE. The women have probably all run off to join and all-female commune planet somewhere.
I mourn the could-have-been ToS with Number One in charge. IT IS THE STAR TREK WE DESERVED. Stupid freaking studio execs.
Yeah, I don't know, I mean I guess you COULD do it, if you wanted to dissolve NAFTA (which you'd basically have to), but I am not sure that Trump or his supporters know or care what that would entail.(I am not necessarily pro-NAFTA, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that we ought to just be dissolving lightly)
I think reports of the tech-bro-billionaire-ness of it all have really been overblown by the media. Yes, there are those types there … but thankfully for the rest of us, they keep to themselves and their RVs. Most of it is just like you described! Art, costumes, the desert, and meeting really wonderful people. Having great conversations and skipping all the bullshit small talk. And wearing pants if you want to, although I must admit that my agenda is a pants-free agenda, especially in the Nevada desert during the daytime.
it is expensive, but for the most part the people are great! the richy mcrichersons keep to themselves anyway. I love the people I've met at burning man, and they are absolutely NOT vapid narcissists… more grounded, open, and intelligent than the average person you would meet anywhere else.
I think the NNJ one was specifically called the "pity burn," but I appreciate the further information!