One of our Toasties has a neurological condition and is training this sweet pup, Belle Starr, to be her service animal! She has already learned to carefully remove her owner’s shoes! Blow her kisses, please.
Friend of The Toast Morgan Jerkins made her New Yorker debut:
Growing up, I was close to all the women in my family, particularly my mother. But our closeness depended on an unspoken understanding that we each, from time to time, needed to be left alone to deal with our own selves. My room was the sanctuary where, away from the cacophony of life and the loud-talking relatives downstairs, I could learn how to define myself before the world did it for me. My mother and I both kept stacks of journals, but we neither meddled in each other’s diaries nor expressed the desire to do so. I wrote in them only when I was infatuated or heartbroken, and, for years, I thought my mother kept her journals to remember relatives’ telephone numbers, mailing addresses, and birthdays. It never occurred to me that she, too, was building and protecting a sense of self, until I asked her about it, just recently, after reading a short story. “It was a way to get my feelings out,” she told me, without feeling vulnerable to someone else. Diary writing for her was “like having a conversation,” she said, but with herself.
I am not smart enough to understand bridge, but this was legit fascinating:
Last summer, at an international event in Chicago, Boye Brogeland, a Norwegian player, became convinced that Fisher and Schwartz had made prescient bids and plays that they couldn’t have found with skillful sleuthing alone. “Bridge is such a logical game,” he told me. “When you do a lot of strange things in a very short period of time, and those strange things are successful—it just doesn’t happen.” He spent hours studying records of hands that he and his partner had played against Fisher and Schwartz, and concluded that they had been cheating. “I just didn’t know how they were doing it,” he said. (Fisher and Schwartz have denied all the allegations.)
You’ve probably seen the NY Times column on harassment in academia, which is great. If you have NOT seen the comments, save yourself, but they do completely back up the jist of the piece in every single way: men are awful.
In the wake of Nancy Reagan’s death, there’s obviously a lot of talk about the final days of Rock Hudson, which reminded me of this sweet and genuine tribute to him that Doris Day did:
Anne Helen Petersen really nailed the issues with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a Tina Fey movie, which is a way of saying that it’s witty, self-effacing, and blind to its own faults. It suffers from the same problems that afflict most films with female protagonists and/or “foil” characters of different ethnicities: It barely passes the Bechdel test and turns a story about a woman struggling to make sense of an alienating job and country into a romantic comedy, suggesting, in a not-so-vaguely insulting way, that the only way to make people interested in a serious subject is if there’s a love story mapped on top of it. The film also casts white actors in the two major Afghan roles, turning one into an exoticized sage and the other into a blundering buffoon.
I’ve been becoming more and more turned off by Tina Fey these last few years, and feel guilty that I’d ignored some stuff (the way she talked about sex workers in 30 Rock, the “bitch is the new black” thing, etc.) because of how much I enjoy her work. 30 Rock is still, in my opinion, one of the greatest comedies in the history of television, but she DOES have issues, and I feel like sex workers and writers of color have been talking about it for ages and a lot of us have been slow to catch up. It doesn’t mean she isn’t wildly talented or that her work is bad, but it means….something.
Remembering Brenda, the mother of Pride:
Howard was arrested in Chicago in 1988, while demonstrating for national health care and the fair treatment of women, people of color, and those living with HIV and AIDS. She was arrested in Georgia in 1991 for protesting the firing of a lesbian from the state attorney general’s office due to Georgia’s anti-sodomy law. She was arrested multiple times for social justice causes, but she always kept fighting.
While she was undoubtedly an accomplished activist, some of the work closest to her heart was in the bisexual community. Howard cofounded the New York Area Bisexual Network in 1988, an organization that, to this day, serves as a central communication hub for bisexual and bi-friendly groups in New York City and the tri-state area. She successfully lobbied for the inclusion of bisexuality in the 1993 March on Washington, at a time when the movement was focused primarily on gay men and lesbians.
Oral history of The Golden Girls (yesssss):
Stan Zimmerman: Casting those four—it was just magic in bottle. I remember back then, we didn’t have computers to look up the ratings. Remember, we didn’t know if it was going to be a hit. We knew it was funny, but you never know. And we wouldn’t know until we got in Monday what the ratings were. And they would say, “We’re No. 15 this week.” And we’d all go crazy. And next week they’d say, “We’re No. 8.” And then it was, “We’re No. 1.” And then it was “We’re No. 1” again.
Nathan: The ladies were happy to be at the top of their craft for a second time. Bea, Betty and Rue McClanahan were all big stars before, but work had gotten sporadic. ButGolden Girls made them stars again, and they loved it—not because of their egos but because of the work. Sometimes the shows were three, four, five minutes too long just because the live audience’s laughs were so huge. Those people had such a great time, which means the ladies had such a great time.
My friend Alyssa came out to visit this weekend, and she and Sansa became…very close:
Siblings Jack Gore, 10, and Phoebe Gore, 7, founders of the Gore & Gore Detective Agency, already have three solved cases under their belt. They’re organized, quick and know what it takes to build a solid reputation solving mysteries.
With only a few weeks in business — and using nothing more than a whiteboard, notepad, handmade fliers and a customized badge their grandfather, a retired lieutenant of the NYPD, gave them — the brother-and-sister duo have helped their neighbors find everything from a lost dog tag to an earring to a wad of cash.
The red-headed pair have only one demand from their would-be clients: “We don’t want them to waste our time,” Jack said. “We tell them, ‘no dishonesty.’ “
The man behind the monstrous Doug Stamper speaks:
“I remember the first time we went” to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Kelly told me earlier in the day, when we met for lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill, an oyster bar, established in 1856, across the street from the White House. “Someone said it was like being a member of the Rolling Stones almost. People went nuts. Chris Matthews called across the room: ‘Michael Kelly! Aaaaaaaa!’ That famous noise he makes.”
Later, “I got to meet Obama,” Kelly says. “Which was amazing. We’re in the receiving line [at the dinner], and the president says”—and here Kelly does his Obama voice—“Don’t worry, Michelle, I heard he’s not nearly as diabolical in real life.” Kelly laughs with un-Stamper-ish delight. “He gets the show before everybody. Well, he did this year. I don’t know if you remember this — last season, he tweeted, ‘Tomorrow: @HouseofCards. No spoilers, please.’ So this year, they sent it to him early.”
ICYMI, the first installment of “A Month of Blind Women”:
People often tell me that I’m tall, as if I might be in some doubt about the fact. But people never tell me that I’m blind. Blindness is assumed to be such an unmitigated tragedy that presumably I might burst into tears if reminded of it. Rather they tell me, usually in somewhat hushed and reverent tones, about cures. They’ve read something somewhere or seen something on TV about some doctor who has invented a cure for blindness. The public imagination translates a news item about some promising preliminary finding in lab rats into an announcement of a readily available cure for blindness of every kind.
oh okay and then we gave Sansa a bath:
Is anyone else confused by Sansa’s actual size? She seems massive at points but in the bath pic looks like a normal overgrown puppy. Is she 90% fur?
Sansa expands and contracts based on her emotions and the needs of her family. She could be the size of Clifford if the situation called for it, or she could be the size of a mouse if she needed to be secreted through a dicey situation.
Best comment ever, best username ever (I’m only two comments in, but still).
Her size is like Worf’s strength on Star TrekL TNG: appropriate to the current plot.
She’s like a real life Disreputable Dog!
I think she’s 75% fur, and 25% muzzle (in my opinion, the best part of any dog, because it’s the best part to scruffle…right under her giant chinny chin chin).
I’m not making cooing sounds and scratching gestures at my monitor, what makes you think I would be doing that?
i think FreeRangeMenses’s theory is perfectly cromulent. she is most definitely a size shifter.
For real! Wet Sansa is delightful though, no surprise there.
Maybe I am too used to my parents’ Newfoundland puppy, but I was thinking I was surprised at how little Sansa’s size changed while wet…
I had not previously realised how much of Sansa’s size was down to fluff.
She has already learned to carefully remove her owner’s shoes!
THE CLEVEREST DARLING
My partner has a colleague who is very into bridge. I should forward the New Yorker thing.
She really is just 100% pure fluffbeast.
Fluffbeast is my favorite breed of dog.
I read an interview with Tina Fey in the Guardian about five or six years ago where she used the expression “dumber than a French whore” and “tr*nny’ss hands” to say that a woman had big hands. Uuurrrggghhh. It’s like literally everyone is on her hitlist except your standard middle-class white woman.
🙁 Ugh. I keep having arguments with my sister about 30 Rock’s humour. She thinks it’s poking fun at unpleasant attitudes and is just light-hearted and funny; I think it’s mean-spirited and punches down far more than it has to. That anecdote has not changed my views.
I felt at the time I was watching 30 Rock that Liz Lemon was a send-up of actually-racist supposed liberals who think they’re so progressive but don’t know how to talk to a black person… and the more I read from Tina Fey the more I think I gave her too much credit.
I think a lot of the time she is meant to be, but I feel like the show’s getting too much enjoyment out of the fact that it gets to say these offensive things, if that makes sense. There’s a bit in one of the early episodes where TGS staff have to attend sensitivity training and are asked for examples of slurs; on hearing them, the trainer shouts “YES!” with delight and then hastily adds “These are all terrible”. And that’s what I feel like 30 Rock is doing – it’s enjoying the illict thrill of being racist, sexist, transphobic and so on, but making sure it has stuff it can point to and say, “Look, it was just a joke! We don’t really think that”.
(I like a lot of things about 30 Rock, and I may be being unfair. A lot of the punchlines just make me a bit too uncomfortable.)
I feel this way about a lot of comedy, and also unfortunately a lot of white-authored fiction set in the South pre-Civil Rights. Like, no, I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and say that “that’s just how it was back then” is not actually a valid reason for the whole white cast to be dropping the n-word all the time.
See also: Laurie R. King’s latest Mary Russell novel, in which Mary marvels her way through Japan that some of the people she meets can in fact say the letter L when they speak English. Ugh.
Oh. Oh no. ;(
I completely agree with this. I think the show’s writers are self-aware enough to send up “self-identified liberal who actually has a ton of discomfort around their own privilege,” but not self-aware enough to fully grasp that when making that joke, it’s not okay to punch down. If Liz Lemon is oblivious/awkward/offensive around issues of race, she–the privileged party in this situation–should be the butt of the joke, not the people around her whom she’s offending.
Yeah, I understand why people loved 30 Rock, and any time a comedy doesn’t dumb down its subject material for its audience (and proves it can be successful) I think it makes a huge step for the kind of TV and movies that get greenlit in the future. That said, the show never sat well with me. I wasn’t really able to articulate why at the time, although I remember I initially found any jokes about Liz Lemon *still being single despite her age!* painful.
I’ve tried it repeatedly because so many people I respect seem to love it, but I always end up turning it off in disgust after one too many jokes about how pathetic and ugly and un-date-able Tina Fey’s character is. Admittedly, it’s not really my kind of humor in general.
Also I am minorly conflicted about the academic sexual harassment stuff given that OBVIOUSLY I THINK IT’S A BAD THING but also my parents first met when my dad interviewed my mum for a PhD position, although she ended up being supervised by someone who was not my dad (who turned out to be a shit supervisor, and she graduated with an MPhil instead of a PhD.) So.
I do judge my dad for the fact that my mum was not the first female postgraduate that he’d dated, though.
Yes. I mean, I don’t have a personal story like yours but I do know of a ridiculous number of hetersexual couples in academia (humanities and stem) where one partner (the older male one, almost invariably) was the professor or even supervisor of the other (always the younger, female half of the couple) when they met and got together. And…in every individual case, I desperately want (and sometimes need to, for my personal/professional sanity) to believe that these were mature individuals who just happened to find each other at the right time when they happened to be in awkwardly hierarchical positions, and that he didn’t generally creep on graduate students and that her professional boundaries and personal autonomy were respected at every turn. But in the aggregate, I sort of have to face the fact that this probably wasn’t true even just in this subset of cases where I happen to know one or more of the people involved.
I pretty much just file it under, “my parents loved each other and had a partnership in which both felt supported and cared for, but at the time they got together, the normal, ordinary balance of power between men and women was sufficiently unequal that it’s hard for me to recognise free and informed consent.” I mean, it wasn’t just academia: it was still a time when women could hardly get a mortgage without a man’s signature, when it wasn’t widely accepted that a woman could not consent to sex with her husband, and when (apparently) most of the men at the BBC and at most of the other powerful organisations of the establishment regarded things like the age of consent as a mega hassle that only uncool people bothered about. So.
The fact that my mum was in her late twenties and a qualified and experienced teacher and pursuing a postgraduate degree meant that she saw herself as having way more power and options than most women, and certainly more than she’d been brought up to expect.
My department had a reverse gender story, although it was long before my time and so may have just been a rumor. If it was true, all involved must have handled the matter maturely because both people involved taught in my department.
I think neither faculty-grad student relationships nor the prevalence of harassment are shocking because you have people working closely together on intellectually interesting but obscure things. To me, that makes it all the worse that programs are so poorly prepared for harassment. These situations are very predictable, which means there’s no excuse for not having well thought out, clearly communicated solutions to both the situations of a mutually-desired relationship or situations of harassment. It’s a choice that departments have made, almost certainly because they were run by an old boys network that believed creeping on grad students was one of their entitlements.
Mine did not get together (ETA) UNTIL (that was a pretty important edit!) after they had both left the institution, but they met when he was a TA and she was an undergraduate. So yes to all this.
I was just thinking last night about Mean Girls, which I love, but how in particular there’s the one coach sleeping with two different students, and the whole thing is played for laughs all the way up to the end, and how I just feel really not okay about that.
::sigh:: Another thing to toss on the pile of things I can no longer enjoy without reservation.
Yeaaaah rewatching that movie recently, that part really stood out. Generally all the bits with the female asian students are pretty… bad.
I’ve recently reached the bit in 30 Rock (I am very slow to get around to things) where it’s revealed that Frank was molested by his teacher as a 12-year-old, and he insists they were in love and the two of them get together when she’s released from prison. It made me really uncomfortable. I assume the fact that it’s an older woman and a young boy rather than a man and a girl makes it unthreatening/”funny”, but I was really not okay with it. (Thinking about it, Friends did that too. Maybe it is a comedy trope – ha, women can’t be sexual predators! Men always want sexual attention!)
But everyone at TGS is obviously creeped out by it, and to me it always seems like Frank insisting they were in love is presented as him being brainwashed. Plus Frank’s mother is ready to kill the teacher for what she did to him, and the teacher herself is clearly made out to be psychologically unwell.
So far I’ve just seen the episode where she’s introduced and one episode in which Frank casually mentions his girlfriend, so maybe it gets more attention later; I did think that he sounded brainwashed, but there was also a line from Pete about how teachers having relationships with students is cool when it’s a female teacher and a male student, and nobody seems that freaked out by it.
I tried for a long time to defend Tina Fey – mostly to myself because I recognized some of these failings. But being a great comedian and being a feminist in some ways does not excuse the rest of it. And, worse, she seems completely uninterested in recognizing that these criticisms might be valid.
DUMBER THAN A FRENCH WHORE??
I happen to be doing associative work with sex workers in Paris at the moment, and my heart just fell through my ribs when I read that. What a random, unfunny, absurd bit of cruelty.
What non-profit are you working with?
I have been half-watching Kimmy Schmidt — the only other Tina Fey thing I saw was Mean Girls — and it’s just . . . awkwardly bad. And I remember her doing this big “well I won’t apologize” (probably for the Native American thing, but maybe for Dong?) bit and . . . ok, you don’t apologize, but do you ever improve? Seems like no.
People keep telling me that I have to watch Kimmy Schmidt and I get it, it’s funny, but everything I read about it’s racial portrayals (and honestly, even what I saw of the very first episode) turns me off.
It’s slightly amusing, but it’s not that funny and you’re not missing much. I’m just barely curious enough to finish watching s1, but just go and watch Master of None instead if you need a Netflix sitcom.
I remember seeing Date Night and enjoying the scene where she pretended to be a stripper to infiltrate the club because she does physical comedy so well. But then I read about her statements in regards to sex workers and then there was the horrible Bill Cosby thing at the Golden Globes and I haven’t been able to enjoy her since. Amy Poehler is walking that line for me, but I still enjoy Leslie Knope.
Part of the joy of watching “House of Cards” is seeing Michael Kelly crank up the Creepy Doug Stamper dial into the stratosphere.
YES I live for Doug Stamper scenes. I wish I could perfect his blank stare. He has NO EMOTION.
He is so good, and I hate how attracted I am to a character so horrendous.
Same same same, I howled “DOUG YOU ARE A CREEP” so many times this season.
I love to hate Doug. I hate him so much and yet he’s the one doing the most interesting, creepy, horrible shit in the show and I can’t look away.
his ability to make everything creepy is delightful to me. he made listening to his voicemail creepy. he made donating to charity creepy.
I got out of HoC after the first season, but Michael Kelly will always be the idiot CO from Generation Kill to me. Hearing that he’s some sort of mastermind on HoC boggles.
Oh, my goodness, the Gore siblings! They are living my childhood dream life. The first story I ever “wrote” (dictated to my mother) was a Nate the Great knockoff, and my sister and I used to play Nancy Drew and Nancy Drew; neither of us wanted to be Bess or George, so our compromise was that we were identically-named sisters.
All this to say, six-year-old me is extremely jealous.
Identically-named sisters! Ahh! 😀
My brother and I played Hardy Boys. I am older and he is already conveniently named Joe.
Jack added that he also gets inspiration from watching “intense” episodes of “Law & Order.”
“I can tell if someone is telling a lie by watching their eyes,” he said.
!!!
My brother and always played Encyclopedia Brown when we were little! We would sit under a clump of shrubs in our neighborhood with a sign that read, “Cases 10 cents per day plus expenses – no case too small.” We only charged 10 cents because we didn’t have as much experience as Encyclopedia.
I entertained similar ideas. The problem with growing up reading all these vintage detective mysteries is that we don’t know what inflation is yet. We should have been charging 75 cents!
I’m 38 and totally jealous.
Ahaha. I also had this dream. Once, my friends and I formed the Four Friends’ Detective Club and tried to solve the gripping mystery of who wrote an encouraging messsamplage on our Sunday School Claudine classroom chalkboard. Our strategy of walking up to every person in the church and asking for a handwriting sample ultimately poved fruitful, mostly because no one was trying to evade us. Alas, that was the end of my detective ambitions. I’ve since realized that I’m not observant enough for the job. I once didn’t notice that my friend had gotten a piano for a whole week, so…
Encyclopedia Brown and his sister… Encyclopedia Brown. They even have a cop dad!! This story made my day.
My sisters and I played Nancy Drew too, only I always insisted on being George. It’s one of the many many data points that made my coming out completely unsurprising to them.
I have cousins via marriage (I feel the need to specify that I’m not actually related to the crazy mother, although my uncle’s not much better) who are named Ashley Nicole and Nichole Ashley. Yeah, you read that right. Not only do they have the same two names in reverse, but there’s an inexplicable ‘h’ in the younger one’s name. Ashley, on the other hand, (you know, the name that has many variants available–Ashlee, Ashleigh, etc.) is exactly the same for them both. It doesn’t matter how long their mother has been married/continues to be married to my uncle, this will always weird me out.
ETA: This tangent is brought to you by the “identically-named sisters” comment, if that wasn’t clear. I realized after posting that it kind of just sounds like I randomly brought up my cousins.
I think Sansa is the first animal I have seen in a bathtub that doesn’t look entirely forlorn.
That harassment in STEM article, man… I only dipped my toe in STEM, really, and have yet to pursue grad school (if ever), but that whole article rings disturbingly true. I saw a male professor, part of a research team, repeatedly push boundaries with his undergrad (in a different country). It seemed consensual if you didn’t think about the power or age difference. The two leaders of the project, both amazing, strong women, seemed uncomfortable but never commented on it directly. And of course the male members of our team noticed with varying degrees of discomfort but I didn’t know what to do aside from say “no, whatever’s happening, it’s not ok” whenever they speculated. I’m still mad about it. I could have done more.
I know of a case where a group of female grad students sued the advisor…and lost. He continues to be an advisor, and presumably continues his pattern of behavior.
The collection of Toastpups on display today is overwhelming me with joy and fluff. Best BEASTS. <3 <3 <3
I most definitely was a little Encyclopedia Brown/Nancy Drew/Harriet the Spy wannabe in my neighbourhood. I tried to spy on my neighbours to no avail, yet kept avid notes about their comings and goings anyway. I carried around a crappy old briefcase filled with, I’m sure, just a yellow legal pad and pencils. My brother and I charged kids a quarter to solve their mysteries.
hey you know what a good question is? How come no one’s done of these Avengers-style “let’s get all of history’s teen / preteen crime solvers together as adults” TV shows yet? I would watch that.
Just leave those goddamn Bobbsey Twins out of the mix and I’m in.
in my imagination, most of this movie is a grown-up Encyclopedia Brown bickering with a grown-up Harriet the Spy about whether or not the best course of action is going out and securing information through a caper or by sitting back and thoughtfully considering the information that they already have.
Wait hold up is Veronica Mars just Harriet the Spy but in high school?
if they’re older and sexy, maybe a sexually fraught moment together in a DUMBWAITER (I was very excited when I finally learned what those were)?!
here for it
I can’t help but read Harriet as gay, so maybe it can be her and Nancy Drew in the dumbwaiter?
the dumbwaiter does not discriminate what kind of sexy spy stuff goes down (or up, as it were)! Sally Kimball could be on the case too!
Harriet & Sally Kimball 4ever
My new OTP
Can we call the Three Investigators though? Odds are at least one of them had to grow up hot.
(I love Jupiter Ascending, but I will never stop finding it hilarious just for the fact that Jupiter Jones is a name I’m used to having a totally different context for.)
hahahaha ohhhh man the Three Investigators!
I approve of this, but I think it’s ending up a little dude-heavy.
Trixie Belden to the rescue
dang are most of the girl detectives from the 70s, though?
Trixie et al started in the late 40s or 50s, though? What with all those reformed bad boys from juvie gone straight
yeah but still, I mean, I was imagining a good strong older generation of mentors (i.e., Nancy Drew is the matriarch of the detective agency, &c.), but also a younger generation of people who are adults now but were kid detectives in like the 80s and 90s.
Fair enough; I would def sign onto a Melrose-Place-with-case-files model.
(in case you were wondering whether or not, in the ten minutes immediately subsequent to my making that first comment, I not only elaborated the premise but also plotted out the entire first season of an ongoing dramedy on the CW, the answer is yes.)
not that I’ve also spent my morning thinking about it: I imagine that Nancy is a no-nonsense kind of leader and the Hardy Boys mostly dick around. Harriet’s extremely anti-authority and constantly has sexually tense arguments with bossy Sally and/or laidback Encyclopedia Brown.
just me?
I read the Mystery Kids and Mystery Club series when I was younger, which were published in the early/mid-nineties; their members could be the younger cohort!
I read Harriet the Spy and enthused about it to my mom, and she was horrified: “She sneaks into people’s houses to spy on them??” Which put a pretty quick damper on my feelings about that book. I still fondly remember the parts about her daily routine, though, like her cake and milk after school, which just sounds so indulgent and comfortable.
I did this too! I think I even had a Harriet the Spy official spy kit (I was 10 when the movie came out) and totally found all the best surveillance/hiding spots in the development-neighborhood I lived in.
Oof. I got into a pretty unpleasant argument with a friend a little while back about Tina Fey’s treatment of both sex workers and trans people. It’s unfortunate how tricky it can be to criticize a piece of art that a friend loves dearly without them taking it as a blanket condemnation on both the piece of art and them personally for liking it. And I really, dearly love 30 Rock and think Tina Fey is a genius, but… every time a sex worker or a trans person appears on the show they’re there to be a punchline, and often a pretty cruel, dehumanizing punchline.
Wish I’d managed to have a more productive conversation than the one we had… cuz I don’t think people who love 30 Rock are bad people (I’ve probably watched it more times than any other show), but there is definitely a conversation to be had around some of the show’s issues.
(Also it breaks my heart every time Tina Fey is in some terrrrible comedy these days. I always go see them and sit in the audience crying out “why won’t you let me love you??”)
I do love 30 Rock–it’s one of the few shows I laugh out loud at occasionally.
But there have been moments where certain jokes, like the ones at the expense of trans people, don’t sit right with me. I can understand why people are upset by them, but it’s not enough to cancel out my enjoyment of the show as a whole. To me it’s like having an A average and getting a D on one test.
I feel much the same way about 30 Rock and her work in general. Her resistance to justified criticism is baffling, but at the same time, she gets pilloried for being a woman in comedy who is not Being All Things To All Women. The same criticisms could be thrown at any number of male comedy writers and performers, and are, but without that edge of ‘how could you do this to ME, personally??? Now I cannot enjoy any of your work at all, ever!’ Everyone wants her to be perfect, rather than yet another funny person with an extremely limited awareness of her privilege.
See also: Louis C.K.
Louis C.K. is alleged to be a serial harasser, so that seems a bit more than wanting him to be perfect (http://defamer.gawker.com/louis-c-k-will-call-you-up-to-talk-about-his-alleged-s-1687820755)
Except Paul, Jenna’s lover and eventual husband. He may be a caricature at first, but by the end I loved the hell out of that character and think the his crazy matched Jenna’s crazy.
I generally love 30 Rock, but was also bothered by their depictions of Latino people, jokes made at their expense (the little league team Tracey coaches, for example).
I think I understand maybe…60% of the bridge article? But what I understand is fascinating, and, I will be honest, as a longtime fan of games that encourage/demand cheating, I tend to think it’s half the fun of the game, so the anti-cheating measures sound a little over-the-top to me. I spent some time in the Dominican Republic and picked up domino and casino (the card game, not the place) habits, and the SOP in Dominican games is that everyone is cheating and the thing that separates you is how well you do it. I love it, and I’d be much less interested in the anti-cheating versions of those games. But I also play those games at a table with a beer and my friends, rather than at a competitive level.
My math teacher in high school was a bridge player (I think he used to play pretty high level bridge) and tried to teach a bunch of us, but it is really complicated. That article was fascinating, but I also almost feel sorry for the cheaters: they had to keep track of all the complicated bidding rules AND read all the cheating signals correctly!
I don’t play bridge, but I kind of feel like my eventual slide into bridge fandom is inevitable. I’m just the type. (That is, the type to play badly and never even try to cheat and talk about it constantly to my incredibly patient friends.)
I mean, if you know it’s how you’ll end up, it’s best just to embrace it now. That’s why I go around yelling at kids playing on lawns. (Not necessarily my lawn. Just…lawns.)
“But this is my lawn!”
“I don’t care. Go read a book. ONE ABOUT A GIRL, NOT A BOY AND A DOG. Damn kids.”
Yeah! A real book, with paper pages, you damn snake person.
I’ve tried to learn, even took lessons, but you really have to devote a lot of time to it. Maybe someday.
I think the best way to learn bridge is to play in a low-stress way with other people who already know it. Learning with other people who are learning seems like it would be super difficult — how are you supposed to figure out how to respond to things if no one knows how to respond?!
You could read the Roald Dahl story, “My Lady Love, My Dove”
More good bridge-based literature: Louis Sachar’s The Cardturner.
I had friends who tried to teach me bridge twice in university, because they wanted to play and they needed a fourth person. It didn’t work. Possibly because I was drunk both times, or because they started with “it’s just like euchre, except [list of differences that is longer than the actual rules of euchre].”
I was told it was just like spades but with goofy bidding and the Trump suit changes.
I never bothered to learn but I was very good at spades in highschool (being the official past time)
My brother and sister taught me euchre starting with: “It’s kind of like bridge, but nobody ends up crying”.
Clearly they never played euchre with my father.
My colleagues all play bridge on Thursdays during lunch. I have been invited and have had the rules explained to me, and then had all of the “here’s what is being communicated not-so-secretly by these card choices” stuff explained to me. And I will gladly watch bridge but oh boy the idea of playing it overwhelms me.
Casino like Jane Austen’s characters sometimes play? That would be cool. I have wondered what casino and lottery tickets were like.
Sort of. Here’s a site with some of the rules, and the similarities and differences. I had actually completely forgotten that part of Austen! It’s a great game. Gets very intense.
Did people see this column on death and the prosperity gospel? I think it is AMAZING, and I think the prosperity gospel is kind of amazingly gross, but also like as a non-Christian, I don’t get an opinion. But it’s haunting me, and maybe others would like to be haunted this morning!
I read that a few weeks ago and it’s both fascinating and scary. I was raised Catholic and the notion that good people get earthly rewards is just so far from what I was taught (which was more like, follow God’s teaching! Good chance you’ll get fed to lions, though). I’ve also heard her book on the subject is fascinating.
Prosperity gospel is a folk religion variant that replaces the gospel of Jesus Christ with the just-world hypothesis. It is bullshit, it is dangerous, it preys on the vulnerable, and it is abusive.
I am sorry for such an angry reply, but few things make me angrier than prosperity gospel.
Your phrasing is a beautifully succinct description of the problems with the prosperity gospel, and your anger justified.
I too appreciate this accurate summary. I’m fortunate not to have been hurt by anyone close to me who fell prey to it, but I was forced to attend Joel Osteen’s church for a while and even as a kid, I knew it was bullshit that didn’t match up with everything I’d been taught in my fundamental Baptist upbringing (and it was the same parent who brought me to all those churches; but he was vulnerable to that kind of sermon — specifically, the message that he could follow some kind of formula to make his angry teenage daughter love him, without actually changing any of his own behavior).
tl;dr I always enjoyed calling Joel Osteen the Antichrist.
Yeah, it’s awful. John Oliver’s evisceration of prosperity gospel churches was epic, too.
Also in related media is the amazing documentary, Marjoe:
“Southern evangelist Marjoe Gortner allows the filmmakers to record him swindling people out of money. Raised to be a child preacher on the revival-tent circuit, Gortner made a small fortune for his parents. Later, he began preaching on his own in a lively, rock star-influenced style, but, since he lacked actual religious faith, money became his sole motivator. As he stages his final revival tour, Marjoe provides a rare glimpse inside the business of evangelism.”
I think Marjoe the person is more complicated than the description makes it sound and the filmmakers have a very light touch in terms of showing his ethical struggles, which are based in part in the prosperity doctrine and his extreme discomfort with the idea of preaching eternal damnation as well as the fact that his parents pretty much exploited him for money starting at age 4. It’s a very naturalistic sort of documentary that has stayed with me far more than I thought it would when I first watched it. It is also one of the most early 70s things I’ve ever seen.
Don’t know if it’s on Netflix streaming because I’m a half-luddite and only have the disc subscription, but it’s definitely on disc. Seeing one preacher equate the fact that he has a Cadillac with God’s love and approval (at LENGTH) is worth the price of admission alone.
OH YES, I listened to a Liar City podcast episode on him, and it was absolutely fascinating, one of the best podcast episodes I’ve ever heard (but it was personal to me, relating to such oppressive religious backgrounds).
They also talked about how he’d been horribly abused, as in tortured, by his parents when he was a toddler, and that’s why he appeared to be a “child prodigy” at preaching. Fucking horrible, and so horribly typical of so many religious “miracles.”
I’d love to see the documentary, I hope I come across it sometime.
You do get to have an opinion. Sometimes the opinion of an outsider is more true. Go ahead and opine.
This Christian shares your opinion, fwiw
No, but I definitely have feels about the prosperity gospel (aka word/faith movement, aka name it claim it). Mainly, that it’s twisted theology that has hurt a lot of people.
Oh my god thank you so much for sharing. Thank you.
I grew up in a church that sometimes dabbled in prosperity talk and my parents often skipped sermons they knew would get too into it. It’s still somehow gotten absorbed into my … eh, let’s call it agnostic theism. Kate Bowler’s words punched me in the gut.
I think that it’s just as justifiable to have an opinion on the prosperity gospel as a non-Christian as it is to have an opinion on Amway as a non-distributor.
Anyone else feel like Donald Trump is the prosperity gospel in action?
Yes.
Per my early voting experience last week: “who is the rich man? he’s the richest millionaire in the world, I heard, I want to vote for him” implying he must be Good and Right to be wealthy and therefore must be a great leader.
(The pastor in Atlanta who had multiple expensive cars and houses and his parishioners were mostly destitute, but they apparently thought he deserved that wealth and by following him and giving him their money as tithes, they would eventually become wealthy too.) (And then he got busted for criminal activities of some kind or another – fraud, I think?)
Yes and no. Adherents of the prosperity gospel are often vulnerable people desperately trying to believe things will get better for them with sufficient faith. I think that describes some Trump supporters, maybe even a lot of them. But I don’t think Trump himself ever bothered with such a belief system; he just got his, acted like a dick, and adopted a spare dusting of Christian language once he started campaigning.
Not only are you allowed to have an opinion, your opinion is correct. The prosperity gospel is not only gross and abusive, but antithetical to Scripture and downright heretical. It’s a vile, self-serving mess of hollow promises and outright lies, promulgated by those who, at best, want to justify their own comfortable, selfish lifestyle, and at worst, want to take advantage of the faith of the less fortunate in order to accrue massive wealth for themselves.
(I’ve been feeling very Lutheran lately)
George Eliot who was a lapsed Christian had an opinion, and it was this:
The notion that duty looks stern, but all the while has her hand full of sugar-plums, with which she will reward us by and by, is the favourite cant of optimists, who try to make out that this tangled wilderness of life has a plan as easy to trace as that of a Dutch garden; but it really undermines all true moral development by perpetually substituting something extrinsic as a motive to action, instead of the immediate impulse of love or justice, which alone makes an action truly moral.
UNDERMINES ALL TRUE MORAL DEVELOPMENT
I actually don’t think that only the proper impulse can make an action truly moral. But I do think prosperity gospel is creepy and horrible (though as a non-Christian I also feel weird about having an opinion here).
I agree about impulses and actions and morality. But I keep encountering pop psychology articles about how providing extrinsic motivation reduces intrinsic motivation, and I think that’s maybe more the core of what Eliot’s getting at. Even if the metaphorical suger-plums don’t prevent actions from being moral, they could prevent the actor from developing impulses of love and justice, which means they will be less inclined to act morally in any circumstance where they don’t believe they’ll be rewarded for doing so.
(Also a non-Christian, though I grew up Christian, so I don’t feel too bad about my opinion-having.)
I wish George Eliot was around to comment insightfully about all the things.
A DETECTIVE CLUB. I’m flailing helplessly.
I’ve been having a conversation with a friend of mine about the blatant racism in a lot of American movies, and unfortunately, in the work of American female comedians who are celebrated by a lot of the internet, I was talking about Amy Schumer, and she said Tina Fey’s book has the same problem.
Maybe its just the media I’m used to watching (smart american TV, mostly British comedy/satire), but I’m used to a person being racist/sexist as the butt of a joke; as in ‘This is a terrible person saying a terrible thing’ or ‘look at the uncomfortable white person saying something stupid’. So I’m always shocked with the casual nature of non-funny racist jokes in US comedy, Trainwreck is perfect example, and I’m still wondering why no one is talking about it, Amy is horrifically racist in that movie, and I kept waiting for the punchline that never happened. In fact we’re supposed to like her even though a large part of her character is that she’s racist. That just annoyed me and I pretty much gave up on the movie after the cinema scene.
And maybe it because the British are so polite, that its really not cool to tell or laugh at racist jokes in an unironic way anymore, but it seems to me that its still totally ok in the US?
I think it’s partly the thing of “other culture’s racism shows up in stark relief compares to your own culture”. Fifteen years ago I used to date an American, and I was horrified by a lot of American culture and the jokes that she and her friends used to make, and she was horrified by a lot of UK culture and the jokes that me and my friends used to make. The lines between “obviously ironic”, “total blindspot” and “bit risque, but still just about hahaha” was in totally different places.
I mean, I can never get over the fact that Apu in The Simpsons has a fake-Indian accent. That was generally recognised as not-a-funny-joke-for-laughing over here well before I became an adult! But I know there’s tons and tons of stuff about race and colonialism in the UK that makes your average progressive white American cringe (never mind a person of colour.)
Oh yeah, there’s a lot of racism in the UK and Ireland as well, I just feel it isn’t as blatant in the media (well, apart from the newspapers), in person I’ve heard people say ridiculous shit, but it wouldn’t be allowed on the BBC.
I suppose it is cultural thing; I was just surprised because so much of the internet and the ‘feminist-sphere’ is dominated by America-centric view, but no one is calling this stuff out? Like when I see a twitter-storm in a tea-cup over something a comedian said or a joke someone made, I usually look at it in its original context and its not that bad, sure it was a bit off colour, but the intention usually wasn’t to offend, its just people getting offended because other people said their offended and so on. And then there’s an entire movie of Amy Schumer being deliberately super racist and everyone is like ‘Yaaayy Trainwreck is so awesome!’
Having spent several years int he UK coming from America, I found that the opposite was true. People would publicly and explicitly say things that are just beyond the pale of “things I would say in front of people I do not know and for sure know share my awful views” in America.
Right?? That’s been my experience as an American in the UK, too. Maybe they don’t do it amongst themselves, and just save it for us, because they assume all Americans are huge fucking racists who share their vile views.
I feel like your experiences, when seen alongside Selma’s, provide support for msbias’s theory that racism is more evident when seen in the context of another culture. Each of you saw more racism in the other culture. Now, it’s possible that each of you happened to run into massive racists in your second culture but not in your home culture, but that seems fairly unlikely.
I also think that specifically having the centralized control of the BBC makes a difference. Specifically the difference between having a general overarching sense of standards put forth by thoughtful people and having a competing marketplace for eyeballs where what matters is what the advertisers will put money on. And that then has an affect on the other television and radio producers in the UK, especially with the still-powerful sense of public decorum.
I feel like the thing with Trainwreck was you weren’t necessarily supposed to LIKE her, but you were supposed to relate to her. Ha ha, I can be a mess and a jerk sometimes too, and a little bit racist! Yeah, she gets me! Which I find extra awkward because I do relate to Tina Fey characters a lot, she’s nailed that professional white woman narrowly-defined-feminist thing so well. She gets me…wait, is that something she thinks I’d say? Oh shit…
But yeah, lots of jokes seem to fall right on that line of you can interpret it as “look at this terrible person saying this terrible thing” or “ha ha, terrible thing!” Just enough so no one has to take responsibility for a *ist joke.
Yup. This is exactly how I feel about both Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. Because Jack Donaghy is obviously a caricature, but it still feels like we’re really supposed to be laughing with him, not at him, most of the time.
See I didn’t get the impression that her racism was supposed to be a character flaw; like yes, she’s definitely supposed to be a ‘flawed’ woman who we like anyway because she’s ‘trying’, and her other flaws are painted in that way, and maybe that was the intention with her racism and they just didn’t pull it off?
I mean I did relate to her character in other ways, and the same for Tina Fey. And I think its ok to like some of a persons work and still have problems with other parts of it, we don’t have to write off Tina Fey or Amy Schumer just because they’re not perfect embodiments of intersectional feminism
I think it’s definitely true that we don’t have to write off like Tina Fey and Amy Schumer just because they’re not perfect. However, I do think it’s important that I pay attention and if these people continually tell racist jokes and refuse to listen to criticism and learn, I start to question whether I want to give them anymore of my time and attention. I do feel like it’s one thing to screw up and it’s another thing to do it blatantly in spite of other people talking back and explaining why it’s hurtful.
And it’s hard, especially in Tina Fey’s case for me, because she can be absolutely brilliant and relatable.
I wonder if it’s a little bit that thing where British comedy goes more for grotesques than a lot of American comedy? I think the classic American comedy is a bit more, “Yes, they’re terrible, but you kind of have a soft spot for them, don’t you?”, whereas the classic British comedy is much more, “No, they’re just awful.” When someone in The Office or 2012 says something cringingly racist, they’re just a twat, not someone we’re kinda supposed to sympathise with.
Which is not necessarily less racist, really, the idea that racism is only ever committed by totally unsympathetic characters.
ETA: Though, I mean, there’s also the whole genre of “extremely posh privately educated Oxbridge men mock working class people”, of which Grimsby is the latest example. So definitely not coming from any position of moral highground here.
Yes, I think that’s it; British sitcoms have more terrible people who are just terrible, whereas US shows have more ‘Loveable assholes’.
So yeah, there isn’t less racism, but we’re told, as an audience, that we’re not supposed to like people who are terrible and happen to be racist. (I was thinking about this while watching Him & Her over the weekend, Laura is a despicable person, and she says some really terrible things, but she’s the ‘villain’ of the show and its understood that everyone knows she’s terrible.)
Oh god, the classism is a whole ‘nother story. And the xenophobia. Like ok, comedians aren’t making outright jokes about people because of their skin colour, but there’s still a whole lot of problematic comedy out there!
I think it’s definitely still okay in the US. I’m slowly realizing that I’ve been shifting my own movie-watching preferences away from US comedy movies because of it. I have some friends who are really into stand-up and the like, and I’m realizing that part of me is always waiting for “okay, is someone going to make a lazy, offensive joke about something race-related?” whenever I watch.
Yeah I don’t really watch any mainstream US comedy; more because it tends to be super broad and lean on stereotypes and the lowest common denominator for humour. US stand up has a very different structure to UK stand up, and I think the UK model and culture allows for more nuance (Dara O’Brien talks about it in one of his books, but it basically boils down to: US comedians focus on getting a tight 10min set that they can use to get on the late night shows and then get their own sitcom, where as comedians in the UK focus on developing a new show for Edinburgh each year, then tour for the year while occasionally doing TV.). And most comedy films coming out of Hollywood are just terrible star-vehicles.
I feel like the best comedians, or at least the ones I like, admit their privilege and that becomes part of the joke. Like I tried to watch Chelsea Handlers Africa thing, and I got about 5 minutes in and turned it off because her entire shtick was ‘I’m such a fabulous person for going to Africa to save all the natives ‘ without acknowledging her white saviour complex (There’s a funny take: ‘I went to Africa to save the Africans, but turns out Africans don’t need saving by an un-skilled white person’). Someone I know tried to sell me the ‘Chelsea Does….’, but I just can’t be bothered.
I find Chelsea Handler very hard to watch. She has her moments but most of the time she’s just loud and brash and ignorant. Loud and brash can be done well; she doesn’t do it well at all.
You might like Veep since Armando Iannucci brings his British sensibilities to it–everyone is pretty much irredeemably incompetent and it’s a really sharp takedown of US politics.
Yes! Loud, brash and over confident can be brilliant (I’ve just fallen in love with Chelsea Peretti who does it amazingly!)
Veep is on my list; I’ve only just started watching The Think Of It/In The Loop, and I do love them, although the improvising does make for some awkward mumbling moments that I could do without
I don’t think the British are more polite than US sitcoms. I would agree there are problems with the liberal racism in U.S comedies but I think it’s important to point out how white UK comedies (exceptions being the IT Crowd and Bad Education). Look at the cast of shows like Miranda, Gavin and Stacy, Black Books, Vicar of Dibley etc.
Also you have a fair amount of us comedies that are at least addressing the issues of race and racism (Master of None, The Mindy Project every once in a blue moon, Fresh Off the Boat and Blackish) whereas I haven’t seen that happen in British comedies granted I don’t watch all of them so maybe it’s happened.
So white. And so posh. You don’t even realise until you start learning more about the comedians/writers themselves, but they literally all went to school together.
And its a pity, because there’s some brilliant POC comedians in the UK, and you can’t say its representative of the population, because most of those shows are made in London and London is an insanely diverse city.
There are some comedies that are straying into that area (Desi Rascals is the only one I can think of off the top of my head), but yes, largely British sitcoms stay away from cultural issues like race, apart from the obligatory ‘I’m not a racist’ running joke that all sitcoms must contain (which always follows the same formula of: white person makes some off-handed generalisation about POC, other white people tell them they’re racist, white person tries and fails to defend themselves, and it becomes a running joke among the white characters, until a POC turns up and everyone looks uncomfortable.). I want to say its because of volume, if you look at the sheer amount of Sitcoms made in the US vs the UK, but its probably also because its just not a priority for the writers/showrunners/people in charge here, and that is a problem that should be addressed.
I suspect there may be a bit of bias there in that the British comedies that get sold and shown internationally are more likely to be the all-white ones. If you think of stuff like Rev, Dinnerladies and Two Pints of Lager, you’ve got the classic “of course there is One Person Of Colour in an otherwise all-white cast”.
There was also stuff like Red Dwarf (50% POC core cast (not counting Holly), but race never mentioned or incidental, which I guess is the same as The IT Crowd), The Real McCoy and Goodness Gracious Me (sketch rather than sitcom) and the Kumars back in the 1990s and early 2000s, but then posh whiteness reasserted itself. :-\
I live in Ireland so I do see a lot of British comedies. Also everything you named ended at least 10 years ago (the Kumars) and in the case of the Real McCoy and Goodness Gracious Me around 20 years ago so I think there is still a point to be made about the lack of race in UK comedies.
Yes, I was citing those as “it’s frustrating that all this good stuff happened 20 years ago, but it didn’t actually change the culture”!
Ah gotcha!
Yeah, but British TV is still more diverse than Irish TV.
I think Baz Ashmawy is the only Irish POC I can name off the top of my head (There are more, but at most there was 3 POC on tv when I was kid.)
ETA: Samantha Mumba.
Don’t even get me started on how Ireland portrays the “New Irish”. I could go on for days starting with my complaint about how newspapers always always always clarify if the person wasn’t born in Ireland especially with crime reporting.
Ha. Irish Media is its own special world. It would take years to deconstruct all the bullshit.
To me Ireland will always be at least 20 years behind the rest of the world; it was such a homogeneous society for so long, I think they’re only just getting the idea that people who aren’t white are actually real and not just some legend from the storybooks, and in the meantime there’s now first and second generation immigrants.
I’m less optimistic. Ireland has never been 100% homogenous, there have been immigrants in Ireland forever, especially Dublin and the language has not budged at all plus there are so many laws on the books that encourage this separation.
Oof, yeah – I haven’t lived there, but have met/dated/been around several Irishmen and their friends and the language they used was….outdated. At one point the (horrible) guy I was dating accused me of being too sensitive (bc of course he did) and I just sat there, open-mouthed, saying, “Well, maybe if you didn’t use ridiculously racist language, I wouldn’t have anything to be sensitive about?”
Yes. And if you call them on it, they’ll say they’re just messing or having a laugh. Irish people can be cruel and mean in their humour and if you can’t take it you’re ‘no craic’.
Ah sure, its only a laugh like 😉
I haven’t lived in Ireland in a few years now, so I’m a bit out of touch with exactly what’s going on, but I can’t imagine it’s moved on much. What laws are there? I’m not aware of any, but I’ve never really researched it
I’d say the big ones are the referendum that removed the entitlement to citizenship by birth and the school admissions laws that lets the public schools (which are still largely run by the Church) give preference on the basis of religion, legacy (if parents went) and to preserve ethos of the school.
There are a lot of things I love about Ireland but they have a ways to go on the welcoming immigrants front.
<3<3<3 Red Dwarf! (It’s cold outside, no kind of atmosphere…)
“Some Girls” is recent but it’s not well-known internationally (I only heard about it on the Internet).
It’s also one of the very few examples I can think of, which is telling.
Does anyone have any thoughts on diversity in British shows that are aimed at teens and young adults vs. British shows aimed at adults? I’ve noticed that the latter skew very white, but the former seem to be slightly more diverse.
Animals with jobs continue to be one of my favorite things in the whole world! Congrats, Belle Star, and also to your human, and keep up the good work!
(I know this comment makes me sound like a Wine Mom on Facebook, but animals with jobs make me really happy and emotional.)
Have you watched Dogs with Jobs on Netflix yet? DO IT. It will change your life.
*clinks wine glass against yours*
I heartily concur, animals with jobs are a true delight ( I laughed when I read your “Wine Mom on Facebook” and glanced to see who was wickedly funny and saw that it was you, AGAIN!)
Small detectives! That brother and sister are living their best life. I am tempted to send the article to my sister.
And I also found that bridge article fascinating and the explanation of how bridge works was SO HELPFUL for reading old novels. Now I have kind of an idea of what Juror # 4 in “12 Angry Men” was actually doing!
I am looking at apartments and one has Occasional Dogs- I should probably just go with that one, right?
Hopefully it is not “dogs every once in a while” and is instead “Dogs for every occasion, like the cats in Neko Atsume”
Wait, what does “Occasional Dogs” MEAN, in this instance?
One of the roommates dogsits sometimes and the landlady’s dog comes downstairs sometimes, too. They are both really nice dogs, but they’re not around all day and I would not have to do any work but could pat them and throw balls for them whenever they wanted.
Wow, that sounds like an ideal dog situation. 🙂
Unfortunately, I just learned that the apartment is no longer available- the person whose lease I’d have been taking over is staying. 🙁
Back to the drawing board!
(At least I got some dog time last week.)
Tina Fey, sigggggghhhhhhh. You nailed exactly how I am feeling about her, Nicole. I looked up to her for a really long time, but it’s not something I can do anymore, even though I still adore 30 Rock. It makes me really sad that she doesn’t even seem interested in learning from her mistakes.
Belle Starr UPDATE:
She loves untieing shoes and generously unties guest shoes as well as mine.
She is also super skilled at finding socks wherever they are and relocating them to her bed.
The blue blankie she is shown with was in her bed but she enjoys dragging it all over the house..
She starts her official school in two weeks
She loves untieing shoes and generously unties guest shoes as well as mine.
so considerate! ♥
Yay! Also, Belle Starr is a fabulous name. Just be careful when she starts collecting horses as well as the socks! That’s liable to bring down a whole posse of ornery folk.
Seriously though, it already sounds like she’s pretty great. Best of luck to you both with all her training. Super excited for you.
Have the cats accepted her overtures of friendship yet?
The cats are establishing a Neutral Zone, very like Romulans/Klingons, and consider all intrusions a violation of the Genevacat Conventions
“very like Romulans”
Cats are so…. predictably treacherous.
I love this wee update (please do more, we’re rooting for you!) and wishing you all the best in your journey!
Belle of the West! <3
“She starts her official school in two weeks”
I would like pictures when she graduates. With the diploma. Please please please.
Please let there be a tiny puppy cap and gown. Please let there be a tiny puppy cap and gown. Please let there be a tiny puppy cap and gown.
My dog does that with the socks (and shoes)! But only when I’m out. I come home to a bed covered with socks and shoes if I forget to close the closet door before I leave.
I…somehow missed the Nancy Reagan/Rock Hudson story last year. I…wow. I mean, it fits right in with all the other failures on AIDS the Reagan administration perpetrated, but it seems particularly cruel.
Then again, that administration did fund all kinds of horrifying shit and looked the other way when nuns were raped and murdered with American tax money, so why should I be surprised?
What’s especially disturbing is that this was a person they’d known for years, who would have put a human face on an issue that was very foreign to them, and they still couldn’t manage to do the decent thing.
There is virtually nothing awful you could tell me about the Reagan administration that I would not believe, at this point.
This bit in the Buzzfeed piece: ‘He was living in a country where, as Shilts detailed, the president of American Airlines opened a breakfast at the Republican National Convention by joking that “gay” stood for “got AIDS yet?”’ in combination with the piece in the link roundup last week about the survivors of the AIDS epidemic has me feeling pretty raw this morning.
I remember hearing people say that in the 80s/90s. Frequently.
JKR is putting up four stories about American wizarding history this week on Pottermore
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO REACT TO THIS i am having all the feelings what if they’re terrible
What if they’re terrible – Pretty much why I have avoided all post-books information/revelations.
ergo, fanfiction to solve all and any terrible bits
I don’t know if I can really deal with how well (or poorly) she touches on or references race and immigration waves vis a vis US history. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that could be done with that but I don’t know if she has the background knowledge and quite frankly, I’m not entirely sure I’d blame her given how well fellow USians know that history.
I’ll still read the wiki summaries anyway. -_-;
Imagine a wizarding history that takes into account migrations of different communities and regions! Kind of like if the world in D.J. Older’s Shadowshaper was part of a larger context. How the Great Migration reshaped primarily White wizarding communities in big cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and California. Whether or not the muggle/non-muggle (or whatever she says USians call it. “nonmaj? w/e) is still a big thing in the US because everyone is still het up about race, like how class identity is fractured in the US and we never developed a Labor party when other western countries did largely because US unions also preferred to marginalize people of color.
I’m just saying.
[I’m clearly unfocused at work on a Monday]
Revelation: American wizards refer to familiars as “majimals.”
instead of Animagus, shapeshifting US wizards are referred to as Animorphs. Sometimes they’re featured in children’s books.
Yes, I need this 50-book crossover series immediately.
I’m still not over the name “Ilvermorny” as the American wizarding school. I’m assuming it would’ve been founded either during colonial days or shortly after the Revolution, but linguistically I can’t see that it has anything in common with other US institutions/places that were named during that time period. It is baffling to me.
Also, apparently we have a Magical Congress here in the US. Which raises MANY questions, among them: a) was it founded simultaneously along side the muggle/no-maj government, or modeled after it? b) does the American wizarding community recognize state boundaries or do they have their own separate system? and c) were any of the founding fathers wizards? (My guesses are after, yes, and Benjamin Franklin.)
Augh, I can’t decide whether Wizard Ben Franklin is perfect and right, or if I just want everyone to think Franklin was a wizard when in fact he was just super great at science or something.
Maybe both, both is good, and Science Wizards are the best wizards.
I want to believe that Ben Franklin was a Muggle, who conned his way into Ilvermorny and nobody was ever the wiser.
Also, Angelica Schuyler was definitely a witch, likely finishing her education at Hogwarts. Why else would she marry an Englishman?
Headcanon(s) accepted immediately and without reservation.
Benjamin Franklin and magic are mentioned in J Gregory Keyes’ Newton’s Cannon series, which I enjoyed, in case you’re interested in checking it out.
I can only assume there is going to be nothing about different Native American (as in “Sioux do this, Iroquois do that,” not just a blanket homogenization) or Black magical traditions and this makes me v sad.
The article says that skin-walkers will be addressed and I am SO CONCERNED this will probably end terribly
SKINWALKERS
UGGGGGGGGGGGH
ONE culture in ONE part of the continent has ONE legend that gets butchered and appropriated every goddamn time somebody wants a ~mystical Indian flair~ for their shitty fantasy
Ghost dancers, too. Not to mention spirit guides.
There could be soooo much on different magical traditions of Black communities that it makes me both excited at the potential and sad about the likely execution.
Traditions of slave-descended Black magical communities vs. and developing alongside traditions of more recent Afro-Caribbean immigrant groups! I’m imagining the wizarding academic conferences around this, and it makes me really happy.
A Historically Black magicians’ school in a Gullah community! Creole witches laughing their heads off at AHS Coven! Respectful portrayals of voudun/santeria! We could’ve had it aaaaaal.
*nerdgasm*
I want her to franchise out the series – bring in authors to write THESE stories and just slap the “Pottermore” name on them. Interview different writers, have a generally-agreed-upon structure in terms of style and the Laws of Writing Wizardry and just let the designated writers run loose. Because these stories sound awesome and like something JKR absolutely cannot do justice to.
AGH I’M REALLY EXCITED.
Mostly to learn about how the Salem witch trials shaped modern wizarding identity.
I wonder if she’ll go there. I mean, the Harry Potter books don’t exactly cover Pendle or any of the other British trials, but I’m definitely HERE FOR IT if she does.
I’m starting a PhD program in September, so that article on harassment in academia made me distinctly apprehensive. I appreciated, though, that it offered some tangible suggestions for what to do if you find yourself in that kind of situation (be clear from the start, document everything). Does anyone have any additional advice/cautionary tales?
Go directly to whatever passes for HR and, yes, document things.
My instinct is to comfort you a little (without wanting to minimize the problem): I had a young male supervisor (ten years my senior), and while he was not without his flaws (he went off on a rant or two about affirmative action), he was never inappropriate with me in any way and I never felt he treated me differently because of my gender.
That’s good to hear, particularly as nearly all of my potential supervisors are men, and most are younger.
Somewhere on Captain Awkward, there’s something about red flags, and the way that potential abusers test the waters for compatibility/compliance, and someone else pointed out that we all do this all the time. We all test the waters with new acquaintances by dropping hints about the things we find interesting (“Yeah, I read it on this website I read occasionally, the Toast” “OMG, you read the Toast? I LOVE the Toast!” “SQUEEEE new best friend!”) Abusers and boundary pushers do the same, but negatively: “You can stay a little bit longer, surely? Have another drink!” “I don’t know all this fuss about sexual harassment, it’s gone completely over-the-top, if you ask me.” “Women in labs, eh? Haha! Haha! Eh, only joking, don’t worry.” If you are a bad audience for this kind of thing – you don’t even have to challenge it directly, sometimes, just show that you’re not going along with it, “Hm, not really, I think it’s really important that sexual harassment gets challenged, it’s so damaging to good teamwork, isn’t it?” – you are signalling, “You needn’t try with me. I am a bad target for this.”
Above all, trust your instincts. If someone skeeves you out, even if you can’t put your finger on it, listen to that feeling and socially or physically distance yourself from them. Don’t say, “but I’m probably just being ridiculous” or “oversensitive” or “imagining it”. Believe in your own ability to spot creepy gits. If there is someone who makes you feel like they’re watching you just a little too long, in not quite the right way, start asserting professional boundaries at them just a little bit harder. Confirm meetings in slightly cooler language, and emphasise the work that needs doing. Distinguish in your speech between “my friends” and “my colleagues”, or between “my classmates” and “my superviser”. Smile and say thanks but no thanks to ambiguous work/social events, or if that feels too much, stick to non-alcoholic drinks and if the person you’re worried about keeps trying to talk to you, steer them back onto work-related topics.
Of course, what this can mean is “be less vulnerable, and they’ll move on to someone more vulnerable.” And, where possible, support other women too: have conversations with other women, and ignore them if they say, “oversensitive”, “ridiculous” or “imagining it”, and listen when they say, “I don’t know, just … you know? I can’t put my finger on it” or “Oh God, HIM! Yeah.” Be a safe person for other people to express nebulous concerns to: you don’t even have to get into huge he-said/she-said stuff, just things like, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve been in that kind of situation, and it makes you feel crap, doesn’t it?”
And remember that none of this is work that women SHOULD have to do as part of their professional or student lives: it is extra labour that you might have to do on top of your actual work because men are shit. So recognise it as extra work and feel justifiably angry about any energy you have to put into managing your male colleagues or professor’s FEELINGS, which men in your position get to save for their studies.
I’m not in academia but a big harassment grievance went down in my workplace a while back. The coworker in question was getting tons of verbal abuse from her supervisor but didn’t have anything in writing. She ended up downloading a tape recorder app on her phone and leaving it on during a meeting. Of course the legality of this tactic varies by state.
Try to find a 5th year whom you can ask for the lowdown on advisers. My fiance is finishing his PhD in a chemistry field right now. There are a couple of professors who are notorious – one for just sort of being a dick to everyone and screaming a lot, and the other for pressuring out young women in particular.
Pretty much everyone, including sometimes other professors, and most certainly the director, knows these are problematic advisers to work under. And in his program, students almost always have other choices. However, the issue is new students don’t hear about this kind of common knowledge until they are already entrenched in a lab, and then it is a very difficult, political process to try to switch advisers. A lot of them end up mastering out instead.
By the 5th year, most students know all of the program’s dirty secrets, and because they are likely on their way out they will tell you them. Honestly, most of them I know would be pretty receptive to a first year asking general questions about the different professors or labs. Even a general question about a troublemaker will probably garner something insightful.
Like Hedwig said, I do not want to minimize the problem, but I have a young male PI that I have a wonderful relationship with and has never, to my knowledge, treated myself or any of the other women in my lab differently because of our gender. I will circle back to him later.
I agree strongly with the recommendation of talking to older students – people will tell you what’s up. I know of faculty at other schools who have histories of inappropriate behavior because a) some of these guys are totally shameless and b) things travel fast. Also as others have said, trust your instincts and talk to other people about misgivings if you have them. I worked with a postdoc that I really didn’t like, got super weird vibes from, and was always very condescending to me. At the time, I was the only undergraduate in the lab, and I chalked his behavior up to not liking me because I was an undergrad (when this started, there were also very few women in the lab). Over a year later, a female grad student finally spoke up and it became clear that all the women in the lab (and only the women in the lab) had very, very similar troubling interactions with him. This was a case where the single things were not super egregious, but it was startling when the full pattern was revealed. If someone hadn’t spoken up and said “hey, has anyone else had this experience, or is it just a problem with me?” we would have never figured that out.
Circling back to my current (young-ish male) PI, the aforementioned creepy postdoc interviewed for a faculty position at my current institution about a year ago. This was incredibly stressful to me, mostly because I didn’t think he’d be a good faculty member or mentor, but I wasn’t sure how to bring this up, and was worried about people taking me seriously or overreacting. I finally told my PI and he was incredible about it – he was really upset by the guy’s behavior, agreed that everything I described was unacceptable, and was very firm that this was not the kind of person he thinks should be in a position of power in our department. It was incredibly affirming and comforting to me.
So tldr: there are a lot of shitty people, talk to other students, don’t blame yourself or minimize it if you think something’s wrong. But I think and really, really hope that as this is becoming more and more clear people are taking it seriously and do view it as a problem, so hopefully change is slowly but surely coming
From what I’ve heard and experienced, it really varies greatly by field – in my weird interdisciplinary social science/tech area, I’ve had absolutely no issues, within my school or at conferences and other academic-related things. YMMV though because my advisor and most of my committee are female. But I’ve definitely encountered faculty who are toxic in other ways, related to the general unhealthiness of academia as an environment. I just keep my distance and avoid giving them any power over my work and academic progress as much as possible. r/gradschool is decent for this kind of stuff too, although of course you have to deal with general reddit-ness there.
Whyyyyyy did I not heed Nicole’s advice not to read the comments. I should really know this by now. But no, apparently without overly-intense, sudden love letters from (male) advisers to (female) researchers our species would die out. Also, dontcha know that academic types are socially maladapted/have ASD and should be indulged because we need their brainy brains?
*sigh*
That one about how the “mating ritual” unfairly falls on men and women need to stop complaining and “do their part”! Whaat.
Women Doing Their Part, Step 1: Women taking over all the senior research jobs?
Yes. Sadly, I read the piece a few days ago, and skimmed the comments, but it didn’t take much skimming (read: none) to instantly come across comments defending these men, making excuses for them, claiming that they are all on the Autism spectrum (WTFdude)…
I have no follow-up sentence. I’m now just re-fuming over the comments. *ditto sigh*
Ugh, I particularly hate the “but aspergers!” excuse because a) no, they don’t ALL have it, and b) there are plenty of intelligent, lovely people with ASD that don’t harrass women? Aperger’s doesnt automatically make you an asshole. Its such an insulting insinuation.
Yes! I know people with Asperger’s. Yes, it can be a little harder for them to grasp the more subtle social interactions (something I’m no natural at either, I should add). But knowing that a feelingsdump e-mail to someone whose career you have power over is inappropriate does not take an inordinate amount of social acumen!
Also, the people I know with Asperger’s try really, really hard not to use that as an excuse for making people uncomfortable. Their reaction to “it makes me uncomfortable when you do this thing” is “oh shit, I was unaware that I was doing that. Thank you for being honest with me, I’m going to try not to do this thing that makes you uncomfortable. Good talk, friend.” And then we all enjoy the lovely boundaries that we’ve set up to create an environment where everybody feels valued and respected.
Especially because it’s not like academic institutions don’t lay that stuff out clearly in ways that don’t require people to grasp subtle social cues, either. As a TA, I got very clear instructions about boundaries with my students. If people disregard those instructions it has nothing to do with whether or not they are on the autism spectrum.
There are SO MANY comments along the lines of “These silly women! Surely if they simply reject the man’s advances, he will stop harassing them and there will be no negative consequences. I mean, duh!”
Which is frustrating cause the author straight up addresses that potential comment in the article, multiple times, by saying shit like “they never stop.”
If it makes you feel any better, if you have the comments appear by top-rated, all the most-liked comments are by people tearing the misogynists to shreds.
That helped me. Some.
Even the NYT Picks comments were TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. There were only 17–couldn’t they pick 17 non-sexist comments?!? So infuriating, and incredibly disappointing.
How could any comment that contains THIS possibly be a NYT Pick?!? (Don’t read if you don’t want to be filled with rage.)
Frankly I think this article is gynocentric, bordering on heterophobic and pathetic. Between heterosexuals it is men who typically signal first that they would like a relationship they have with a woman to become romantic. An equally pathetic, androcentric article could be written by a man stating: “I’m a reasonably attractive and friendly guy but none of my female work colleagues has ever asked me out. Could they possibly all be asexual or a lesbian? I’m thinking of leaving to transfer to a field populated by actual warm-blooded human beings like myself.” But a man wouldn’t write that because men generally understand what women are like and don’t expect them to change to suit themselves.
Very obvious that us Good men are single because youse Wimmens all cold blooded Asexual pathetic heterophobes Sciencey.
“men generally understand what women are like and don’t expect them to change to suit themselves.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Oh no, he’s completely right, expecting women to change would require them to acknowledge that women are people with their own lives and priorities and fitting some random man’s demanding, specific requirements would mean work and sacrifice on behalf of the women. This type of man doesn’t want women to change for him, he will loudly argue that women should be meeting his expectations from the get-go.
HETEROPHOBIC
oh my godddddddd
GYNOCENTRIC
Which he says like it’s a bad thing. Men are so confusing.
I always see a lot of comments like “I BET HE HAS ASPERGER’S DON’T JUDGE HIM” and very, very few along the lines of “Yes, I have Asperger’s and it’s hard for me to not sexually harass people.”
In other words, it only seems to come up as a way to shut people down who complain, rather than as accounts of people who are authentically struggling not to make mistakes.
I don’t have the expertise or experience to say whether or not Asperger’s would be a challenge here; certainly, the people I know don’t have an issue not being awful.
My favorite:
“Even male scientist [sic] get to fall in love”
*gags*
Every line in that STEM academic harassment piece I could pull and quote and come up with a personal experience to share. (I was lucky in undergrad, the only harassment I’ve encountered in STEM was at the hands of other students or peer coworkers– no professors or managers.)
If I’m only going to comment on one:
“Female scientists like me will be solicited for constructive solutions that don’t involve anybody getting fired.”
This is a huge corollary problem to the problem of harassment. No one says that we stop harassment by stopping the men who harass; the onus is always put on women to brainstorm ways of making STEM more “female-friendly,” of recruiting enough new women that the stats look good while ignoring the “leak in the pipeline,” as it’s called.
There was a female scientist on the radio yesterday saying that there’s a problem with science, and particular physics and chemistry, being taught in ways that just aren’t “female-friendly”. And I kind of thought, no, the problem is that it’s full of men.
I am very good at maths and started A level Maths, but I was one of only two girls in a class of 12, and the other girl was a twin of one of the boys. Literally nobody in the class spoke to me for a year! I never, ever had a problem with the substance of what was taught in maths or physics, and in fact really liked both, but I like working with and being surrounded by women, so I’d have found a degree in maths pretty depressing. I have no interest in being the lone woman in the room attempting to fix the problem, sorry!
Yeah, I hate the idea that anything has to be “female-friendly” for women to partake in it because women are not a monolith and what I find “friendly” is different from what other women find “friendly,” which is why some women major in engineering and some major in classics and some don’t go to college and some have like a MD/PhD/MBA. I’m always reminded of this SMBC comic when the “female-friendly” discussion starts, but I think even the comic misses the mark. We need to make STEM not-unfriendly– remove harassers, hire women– rather than some nebulous pink/feminine “friendly.”
After reading your last line about a nebulous pink version of STEM I couldn’t help but imagine a commercial for STEM: for girls! Hey girls, are you ready for a STEM field that fits your needs? [video of lady scientists in pink lab coats looking into magenta microscopes that are bedazzled] A field where you can study girl science while still looking fierce? Check out Girl STEM: It’s STEM for girls! [Female scientist in pink lab coat carefully holds a pipette, camera opens the shot so you see she is using it to carefully apply a bit of sparkly nail polish.]
And so on and so forth.
I think you mean Flower STEM, that’s the only stem ladies care for, eh??? EH???
Did you design the BIC for ladies thing? Because this is terrifyingly real.
Um, you think you’re joking?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-n…
ETA: I mean, your version is actually better because it involves women looking into microscopes.
“A film using images of lipstick, killer heels and a handsome male laboratory worker to encourage women to pursue science careers has been condemned as sexist and demeaning.”
i’m not even gonna run the plug-in to watch it. that right there is enough for me *sigh*
Ack! That video actually made me shriek a little. The exploding blush! The handsome lab assistant lowering his glasses and giving the lady scientists a once over! The stilettos!
I remembered the fuss about it but never actually watched it at the time, and now I have and it was SO MUCH WORSE than I was expecting!
JESUS CHRIST.
Those shoes are not appropriate laboratory wear. I’m choosing to focus on this because anything else will make my brain explode and my soul shrivel.
There was a great fake ad like that on SNL years ago, for “Chess for Girls”. (Which involved glitter, ponies, hair-braiding, etc.)
“The problem is that it’s full of men” Yep. My husband was telling me about a program at Harvey Mudd which has gotten their computer science program up to 40% women- they track people in the program, splitting up the people who’ve been programming since they were 8 and the ones who, like, want to go to school and learn that sort of thing. And it’s made a huge difference! Probably because the women in the program are exposed to about 95% less mansplaining (well, that’s my working theory…)
Fun fact about men, women, and undergrad CS classes – women drop out with higher grades than many of the men who stay in.
I grew up thinking computer programming was the most boring thing in the entire world because both my mom and my dad were computer science people. Now I’ve married a CS person, and it’s so interesting when on occasion his coworkers meet my mom, because she’s such an alien creature to them- A) because she’s so much older than their coworkers and B) because she’s female. Probably also C) because she totally kicks ass, but I’m biased 😛
She’s said on more than one occasion that there were more women in her classes in the late 70s/ early 80s than there are in comp. sci programs now- the universities definitely have some work to do on their end.
take a pic of a room full of science dudes. cross out all the dudes. you now have a pic of femlae friendly science.
(too cynical: yes/no?)
no. definitely no.
Also – I apologize for adding this to your Mondays – but if you thought the NYT article had too much sunshine and optimism, the author followed up with this soul-crushing tweet:
https://twitter.com/HopeJahren/status/70656533116…
Getting email frm HS girls getting lovenotes frm teachers. GO talk to your daughters & nieces abt how u are prepared to support them TODAY.
It’s that “without getting anyone fired” part, too. It means “this isn’t a real problem” and “this is just about people not getting along.”
Rather than making very clear that WRONG THINGS are happening.
Well, I may now survive this Monday having seen Sansa the Bath dog.
Dem Debate thread, anyone? I’m having serious election fatigue, but I stuck it out for the sheer appreciation of our embarrassment of riches this cycle. Two incredible candidates — neither perfect, but both poised to do great things. Whereas, of course, the other side is just an embarrassment. I know the fact that it was in Flint was pretty on the nose, but they stuck to the topic of Flint and government accountability very directly and comprehensively for the better part of an hour. Plus the Flint choir singing the national anthem made me cry in the first 30 seconds.
Yeah, still no mention of abortion though. Wtf already.
Yes, I so appreciated that they were both acting like the intelligent adults they are, and that dick size did not come up.
I was pissed at Sanders being all “hush, I’m speaking,” but that’s mild compared to basically anything in a GOP debate.
Was he actually talking? I didn’t watch the debate, I’m in the wrong place for it, but if she was legit interrupting what’s the proper response? Because yeah, ‘hush i’m speaking’ sounds like something i’d say to my 3 year old, but I don’t know what other people do. In a better world, I’d look to the GOP to see what a bunch of men do to each other in the same situation but we all know that’s useless.
Here’s the clip, if you want to see for yourself. The actual words weren’t the problem IMO, but with tone and gesture it came off as really dismissive to me.
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/6/11170930/democratic-d…
Ok thanks. I can see what people are getting at, but I’m wondering what he could have said differently that wouldn’t have come off the same way. The exchanges just after it sounded more reasonable but again, I don’t have a lot of practice watching debates.
Well, I think both the tone and gesture were inappropriate. In theory, he’s angry about the issue he’s discussing, not Hillary Clinton. The tone needs to change when he’s addressing her, even if she is interrupting. Also, President Obama did this very well in debates the last time he was running–Romney interrupted a LOT–and his response was more along the lines of “if I could please finish my thought before your rebuttal,” and much more respectful. “Excuse me, I’m talking,” isn’t something you’d say to a colleague or your boss or your friend (in most cases) if they interrupt, you soften it with some indication that you respect the other person. He didn’t do that at all.
Yes, he was just starting to answer the question when Clinton tried to jump in.
Then he said “Excuse me, I’m talking.” As the Economist pointed out, it’s hard to get too ruffled about an exchange that begins with excuse me.
Also, can we stop saying it’s sexist for him to say “hey, it’s my turn to talk, so let me talk”? People are reading way too much into it, and overanalyzing his tone. Yes, he was exasperated that he was being interrupted about 10 seconds into his answer. It has nothing to do with Hillary being a woman.
Clinton was talking over both Bernie and Anderson Cooper–he was trying to go to commercial for about a minute at one point and she just wouldn’t stop. He’d say “Madam Secretary, we need to go to–” and she’d smirk and nod and just keep talking (and she was really repeating things she’d already said at that point). To me that’s much more problematic.
I find it kind of endearing that he never interrupts her in debates, but does that “oooh oooh call on me” thing with his index finger, like he’s trying to signal a waiter.
I know! It is endearing. To me it looks like the eager kid in class who wants the teacher to pick him. When you look at that, it’s hard to then say “oh, he was so dismissive of her.”
I think it has way more to do with tone and gestures than the words, and they reminded a lot of women of how they’d been overridden in a similar manner. It doesn’t necessarily mean Bernie was sexist for it, but it brought up a lot of memories of sexist behavior.
Yeah it was definitely the kind of thing that touches a nerve, especially if like me you were in the room while the debate was playing but your attention was elsewhere*.
*on Pokémon Yellow. You were paying attention to Pokémon Yellow.
I come from a family of men who regularly interrupt and refuse to listen to me when I am speaking, they are the very definition of mansplainers.
I find it pretty unfair to see people making it an issue when Bernie Sanders asks a woman who is in the process of interrupting him to please let him speak. I am sure he has mansplained to some woman in his life at some point, but this was not an example of that. To make an issue out of this exchange feels cheap.
I never called it mansplaining. This is an entirely subjective issue — some people may find it offensive, abrasive, sexist, and worth making an issue of; others think he was well in his rights to protest. Either response is correct for the individual who feels that way. The only way I’d call it cheap is if some on Hillary’s side are insincerely making a fuss in order to make Bernie look bad (which I don’t doubt is happening, this is a presidential campaign).
Sorry, I shouldn’t have used mansplain that way, it’s just that I am personally fairly sensitive to being interrupted by mansplainers when I am trying to make a point (I see mansplaining and men constantly interrupting as having a lot of overlap) and that’s not what I saw here. I should have said that it didn’t look like she was being overridden.
I find it ironic and unfair that Sanders is receiving so much criticism for politely asking a woman not to interrupt him, and like others, I wonder how else he was supposed to ask her to let him finish his sentence.
I have to say I’m really glad you brought this up, because everyone I know on Facebook is praising this as a moment of heroism on Sanders’ part, and as much as I support and respect him, it did NOT feel that way watching this as a woman.
Did you see Rick Snyder throwing a hissy fit on Twitter because they were calling him out? The party of Muscular He-Men With Very Big Penises has a shockingly large number of incredibly thin-skinned representatives.
I am here for any and all Snyder hissy fits, tantrums, and general discomfort (or extreme discomfort, because, seriously, he has ruined the lives of innocent children. If he’s not extremely uncomfortable, we’re failing). That man should be in jail. I will now go search the Twitters.
From Reductress: STUDY: Most Women Dress For Other Women, Specifically For Nicole.
That looks like a pretty funny site! “The Five Women You’ll Date When All the Men Are Dead”, ha ha–wait, what?
I am going to waste soooooo much time there…after work. Probably.
“Are you depressed or just really into sleeping right now?”
RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
Anyone know if Gore & Gore are hiring? I’m willing to do the grunt work. Fetch lemonade etc.
Samsa appears to agree with my husky, who believes that no dog is too big to be a lap dog!
Also you guyzzzz have you seen the new information about Peeple? That was the app that seemed like it was a satire of apps, but was really about rating strangers on the internet, and then everyone complained about it and the people making it said, “Okay, we’ll fix it,” and instead they made it worrrrrrse.
how could it possibly be worse
what did they do
They set it up so that you can “opt out” of the service, meaning that your reviews are not posted, OR if you want to you can veto reviews you don’t like, which seems fine, AT FIRST.
But after the release, a person can buy a “truth license” so that they can read all of the reviews, even the ones that you have refused or opted out of. So, before you couldn’t opt out of it, but now it seems like you CAN opt out of it, except there are actual literal secret reviews of yourself that people are sharing behind your back.
TRUTH LICENSE
In the world where Peeple is a satire, that’s too over the top to be believable.
SET IT ON FIRE!
If I’m reading this thing correctly, you can opt out simply by not signing up in the first place, in which case your reviews won’t be seen because they don’t have an account to sit on. Which would be fine–it would essentially leave the app to be populated by haters. (That’s assuming that someone doesn’t sign up for an account for you, if they have access to your Facebook login info, or that they don’t spoof their own info.)
(That’s assuming that someone doesn’t sign up for an account for you, if they have access to your Facebook login info, or that they don’t spoof their own info.)
DING DING DING
Deets, brah.
OMG, how did i not hear about this? Probably the same way the inventor can utter the phrase “the ultimate social experiment” and not have visions of third reich eugenics – sheer obliviousness.
At least you can delete your account now? Given the secret reviews, tho, why on EARTH would anybody opt-in?
Didn’t John Oliver do a hysterical segment on this? So glad to hear they still haven’t found sense.
Lunch break = immediately look for this.
I gave up on Tina Fey after listening to the audiobook of Bossypants (which she read herself). The utterly gleeful and smug way in which she says “whoooorrre”, and the frequency of the term, will do that for you.
Bossypants completely turned me off to Tina Fey. I can’t believe that book got so much acclaim. She is pretty unapologetic about her racism and misogyny “for the laffs” yet still held up as some sort of girl-power hero.
I think she embodies a particular type of white feminism that’s pretty common (looking a you Amy Schumer, Lena Dunham, HRC etc), wherein a white woman who has legitimately dealt with a ton of misogyny in her field is shockingly incapable of seeing parallels between the sexism she faces and other types of discrimination that she actively contributes to.
Bossypants got so much acclaim that I gave in and read it and, like you, was completely turned off of Tina Fey. So now when I see someone recommend it, I counter with other recommendations instead.
Share those recommendations, please! I will admit that I loved Bossypants and laughed frequently throughout, but I’m 100% here for other things that might also make me laugh throughout. Still love Tina Fey, but with a tiny bit of stink-eye now.
Well, the first one I always go to for “so you wanna read a comedy lady’s memoir that’s not Bossypants” is Samantha Bee’s most excellent “I Know I Am But What Are You.” It’s a really great, self-aware, and effing hilarious book. I highly recommend the audiobook version, especially for when she’s talking about her dirtbag teen years. (I feel like she does a much better job than Tina Fey owning up to her past bullshit because, let’s face it, we’re all human and we all have past bullshit we need to own up to.)
Ordered! She is a golden creature! I just learned we are the same age and felt inordinately proud of myself for sharing a birth year with her. Oh, and ETA: Lizz WInstead’s Lizz Free of Die was a book I really loved, but I can’t speak to whether it will rankle the Fey-averse or not.
(you are not alone, I also liked Bossypants and can’t remember when she says “whore” in the manner described)
same! i liked bossypants, but it was also in my more naive years, and i wasn’t as much dialed into sex-negativity and sex-work stigma. and now, those are the main reasons i dislike her.
This is the thing I need to go back and be watchful for, because I cut my teeth as a writer doing *very* sex-positive work & generally feel attuned to those issues, but they never stood out for me in her comedy (again, maybe because those parts simply didn’t register as funny and thus were spit out). Weird.
Ah, OK, so I actually know the woman who wrote the article about harassment in STEM? Not well–like, I’ve talked to her at conferences and read her papers. But I wonder if I also would know the prof who wrote his “truth bomb.”
I’ve had wonderful male and female mentors whose guidance and support I will cherish forever. I also have a short list of people I know to avoid–people who have harrassed me and/or my friends. I try to be vocal warning others about those people, without jeopardizing myself or my harrassed friends, and I ask myself every day if I’m doing enough. I know that feeling of shock at getting an unsolicited declaration too well. I hate how the shock and confusion paralyzed me at the time, because being resourceful, quick-thinking, and above all professional are really important to me. I hate how shame wracked me afterward, and how I worried about what impact this would have on my work. I hate that my own stories aren’t even close to the worst ones I know.
I don’t know what the answer is, but there has to be a better solution than what we’ve got going now. It’s better than it used to be, but it’s not good enough yet.
With every new project Tina Fey does, I become more confident that everything she does is about being the role model her younger self needed. And she’s good at it! As I said on Twitter this weekend, I think that’s why I get so conflicted about her. She’s basically a somewhat older me, in both demographics and sensibilities, so I think she’s almost who I need (or my younger self needed) to see – but, for all the reasons others have given, not quite.
On a somewhat related note, I’m so frustrated that Saturday Night Live, which I haven’t found even a little funny since I was a kid (with a kid sense of humor, so who knows if it was funny then or not), is basically the only way for female comedians to break into the mainstream these days unless you’re Amy Schumer, with whom I can never be okay after watching a video of her standup bit that’s just several minutes of the most tired racist jokes about black women imaginable.
Amy Schumer is so frustrating to me. There have been a couple of her sketches that I thought were funny/timely — the checking with your boss/his priest/a boyscout before you can get birth control one, the one about women reaching a certain age in Hollywood and then no longer being fuckable…and part of me admires a woman who does comedy while being racy/sexually open…
…and yet, yes, so much of her stand-up is racist, or makes cheap jokes at the expense of others. I really didn’t want to watch Trainwreck and yet someone made me watch Trainwreck and it was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. I’m so sick of movies/TV where someone is an asshole 98% of the time, and blames everyone else for their life being shitty, and not their own selfish actions, and then they have, like ONE GLIMMERING MOMENT of Being Not Awful and that apparently redeems years of horrible, damaging behavior.
I went to see Trainwreck because of Bill Hader, because Bill Hader is awesome, and I enjoyed it enough, but there were a lot of women in the theater laughing hysterically whereas I was just chuckling here and there. I definitely enjoyed the non-Amy characters more than the main character. I didn’t know Mike Birbiglia was in it, so that made me happy. And I got a kick out of all of the sports figures giving Bill Hader the pep-talk-slash-game-analysis.
I go back and forth with Amy Schumer herself. My initial reaction to her was “meh, don’t like her.” Then I saw more of her and thought “she’s okay.” After she stole Kathleen Madigan’s joke about Oprah and the food slapper, I have a harder time giving her the benefit of the doubt. The new Bud Light commercials with Seth Rogen are not helping.
Re breaking into the mainstream: I disagree completely that SNL is the only path forward to the mainstream, though perhaps it is the quickest. To wit: Tig Notaro. Chelsea Peretti. Chelsea Handler (ugh but she’s had quite a career). No SNL credits, no?
Audio for the Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt oral argument is up! https://www.oyez.org/cases/2015/15-274
Ooh I listened to that Friday! It was fascinating. Maddening, at times. I was pretty much alone in my office that day, cursing to myself.
I have PTSD, and (parts of) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt were SO important to me. A comedy! About being a real person out in the world after trauma and not pretending it doesn’t affect you but also not letting it define you or your future. A comedy!!! A lot of the jokes about Kimmy felt like the kind of dark-yet-hopeful humor we use in support groups. Jessica Jones was great, and very true and evocative, but its treatment of PTSD seems more like it’s for other people, to show them what it’s like– Unbreakable feels like it’s *for me.*
…When it’s about Kimmy. But other parts of the show are so racist I almost feel like writing off the whole thing. Why can’t Tina Fey be less terrible? 🙁
I don’t have PTSD (I don’t think), but I had an extremely religious and isolating childhood. So, both of them resonate with me. But I think you hit right on it.
Kimmy Schmidt is how I describe my life to others (slightly darkly funny, but mostly hopeful). Jessica Jones is how it actually is. But yeah, the racist bullshit in Kimmy is the worst and almost completely ruins an otherwise good and cathartic show.
I saw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot this weekend, and I… liked it. One, because I’m white and sometimes thoughtless about these things and did not know that Fahim was played by a white actor (though I wasn’t sure what to make of Molina’s character). The love story angle didn’t bother me, personally — it didn’t really feel like a rom com (which is not a genre I favor), the female characters have sexual agency, and sex/romance is not the protagonist’s motivation.
Plenty of valid criticism of the movie, Fey, and 30 Rock here, though, and I’m curious to read Kim Barker’s book.
I have a friend who is a woman of color and a professor of a type of engineering I can barely spell, let alone understand. Her husband is a white dude and also an engineer, and on the very rare occasions we hang out, he spends a lot of time saying terrible things about women, women in STEM fields, and people of color. Needless to say, he’s not allowed in my home anymore. It’s awkward because I like her and their baby. But like. He just can’t shut up. It makes me so sad for her.
Personally, I think he’s jealous of her PhD, because he doesn’t have one and frankly isn’t smart enough to get one.
O_o. It is so awkward to like only half of a couple, especially when the reason that you don’t like the other half is because of how they treat the good half. All my sympathy.
I mentioned this in the Open Thread on Friday, but it ended up on Page 3 so may not have been seen.
I’ve been seeing large, full-page-width ads on here lately. If they’re on the front page they’re blocking entire content (links to pieces), which is super annoying. This is on Chrome on an Android tablet, if it helps any.
Oh yes, I tweeted The Toast about this last week. The one that keeps making it impossible to read The Toast on my iPhone is a pop-up ad for Marvel, which goes to the App Store when I try to click on the X and then shuts the whole window. 🙁
Mine are the kind where the top and bottom are like, “Scroll down to continue reading”. I don’t remember what the ads for. They show up infrequently, but it’s a massive nuisance when they show up on the front page.
Don’t tweet this at the Toast account because no one checks the @ replies; send any problems to Marco our Tech Goth, who can help you!
I wondered if that was the case! But I couldn’t get onto the site to comment or find an email, so tweeting was the only available option at the time.
Yes, I got one that acted unpleasantly like malware. “YOUR COMPUTER HAS A VIRUS, OH NO, CLICK HERE TO FIX IT”
Housekeeping: I was reading something elsewhere on the internet the other day when something popped up saying “it looks like you’re using an adblocker. Please turn it off in order to view the content.” I have never installed an adblocker, and currently I see ads on the Toast. However, I want to make sure that there’s not some…other kind of adblocking activity in my browser that’s inadvertently stealing Toast revenue! Was the other site’s notification a glitch of some sort or is there some setting I should check? (I use Safari and I have Flash disabled, which I’ve been told is OK, ad-revenue-wise?)
Safari blocks 3rd party website’s cookies by default, which can sometimes make it harder for ad services to track you (sadly not harder enough, though). Without knowing what site you were getting the message from it’s hard to say, but it’s possible that they had an unusually strict “YOU MUST TAKE OUR COOKIES!” rule that tripped the ad blocker detectors. They may also have been doing something awful with Flash, but to that I say they can rot. Arbitrarily executing Flash content is an awful, awful way to browse the internet.
That, or a script failed to load (it happens), which caused the ad blocker detector to think you’d actually blocked it instead. I’d say not to worry about it (especially when it comes to The Toast) if you’re not *actually* using an ad blocker, and if that site keeps telling you you’ve got a blocker enabled, maybe email them and ask them if they’ve perhaps gone overboard with their blocker detection.
(This cycle of escalation is suuuuuuper fun, by which I mean it’s no fun at all.)
This is informative, thank you! It was forbes.com, so not being able to read their articles for whatever reason is no great loss to my life.
“YOU MUST TAKE OUR COOKIES” made me laugh.
They are particularly annoying about stuff like this! I usually just go Incognito when clicking on their links (and other sites that Ask A Manager links out to, since a lot of them have this problem). Super irritating.
Reminds me of my favorite browser-related comic:
Fuck Forbes. Their ads were caught installing malware after they asked people to turn off their ad-blockers.
And look, I love the Toast, I donate $$ to keep the lights on here, but you should probably get an adblocker. It’s just not safe to browse the web without one, at least until publishers start getting serious about serving ads securely.
Oh dang!
Is there a particular blocker you recommend?
I actually recommend a combination of a few. I use uBlock to block ads, and Ghostery to block tracking scripts (and to give me the frickin’ heebie-jeebies when I see the number of tracking scripts that are actually on a lot of sites). Make sure to dig into the settings on both of them when you install them; their default behavior is to phone home with information about what they blocked (no information about you, but still more than I like to give up), but you can turn that off on both.
It’s late, but there’s an essay on housekeeping from a philosophical standpoint that I really liked, and I don’t think you’d need a background in philosophy to read it. An excerpt:
The contempt for the house cultivated by this history is not easy to do away with. Personal ambition alone, and especially money alone, won’t solve the underlying problem. Although we don’t pay people enough for housework, the real problem is that we think that money will be enough to cover over our contempt and forgetfulness for the work itself—that we can somehow avoid our forgetfulness of the house itself. This forgetfulness is written into all our thoughts about the properly ambitious work outside the house that people are meant to desire; and the most pressing result is that, again, it obscures the simple practical necessity that someone—a human being—did or will do the domestic work that orders the space around you, right now, both for the place you sit to read this, and if you’re lucky, for the place you’ll sleep tonight.
I absolutely want to read this, but the link doesn’t seem to be working.
Mea culpa, DogModerne has it right.
Your link links me back to the link roundup. Is it me?
I searched for the first line and found it, I think: http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2016_…
You did, thanks! Didn’t catch it until it was too late to edit.
I used to live with a big Northern-breed dog (two, actually–one was a temporary foster) and would strongly recommend that *now* is the time to begin teaching Sansa about the joys of making up songs with your dog’s name in them.
For example (to the tune of “Pocket Full of Sunshine”):
I got a dog, got a dog name of Sansa
She’s a hippy hoppy fluffy puppy she’s a dancer
Oh, oh-woah-oh
She’s got big paws and a sweet and squishy face, oh
She tends to shed all over the place, oh
Woah, oh-woah-oh
When I do this with Mongo (“I pet his chest and his head like a bongo”), he dances with me. It’s the best thing in my life.
OH MY VERY GOODNESS. CAT MAX FURRY ROAD.
http://terriblenerd.tumblr.com/post/139248472159/…
#immortantubbs
#damnittubbs
How about Father Ted: Fury Road on Youtube?
Yessss. Boyfriend and I had a bet going that, after an hour of Netflix debate, if he could pick a movie that I found suitable to watch, I would do the dishes. He picked Fury Road. Reader, I washed those dishes.
I don’t entirely understand the issue with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot’s casting (note: not the writing, but the casting). I’ve always understood Pashtuns to be basically white, although with the caveat that I think white is such a broad category that it captures a lot of groups whose lived experience doesn’t fold neatly into the social constructions of whiteness. I’m also assuming that the two Afghani characters are Pashtun since there are other ethnic groups that are believed to be Central Asian and that look more Central Asiatic (a lot of the history is speculative), but Afghani-otherwise-not-specified usually means Pashtun. It seems more Othering than progressive to me to insist that Afghani characters can only be portrayed by Afghani actors, especially when people are all using that generic term rather than being specific. It’s like there’s something just so different about Afghani that actors from regions of the world with similar appearance can’t play them. Especially because there were certainly historical times when someone of Molina’s ethnic background would not have been understood as white.
This isn’t intended to defend the casting exactly. I have mixed feelings about it. But it’s more to advocate that I think the issue is less cut and dry than being portrayed and the way in which I’m seeing people write about it has its own problems.
Also, the problem with the characters sounds like it’s a writing issue that casting Afghani actors would not have helped.
Like other ethnicities, there are light- and dark-skinned Pashtun. For example, this man’s photo came up when I googled Pashtun.
No way in hell the majority of people would codify him as white.
In Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, Pashtun may be considered white (or not), but to a North American audience, they’re decidedly NOT. Alfred Molina is not Pashtun; he’s half Italian and half Spanish, and while Italians may have experienced historical othering, at least in the US, they have since accessed whiteness. (Important to note Molina is also British; I’m not sure what their historical stance on Italians has been or is.) Christopher Abbott is Eastern European (othered by western Europeans to this day but not necessarily othered by North Americans) and Portugese, and (IMO) does not pass for any Middle Eastern or Central Asian ethnicity, let alone Pashtun. Both their roles were whitewashed, not to mention I’ve also read there is brownface (Molina appeared in brownface in another film back in 2010 or 2011, also playing a Middle Eastern character), and that is racist and jingoist as hell. Anyhoo, that is why there is criticism regarding casting. While I agree those critiquing could have been more specific in regards to ethnicity, I firmly disagree that it’s othering to insist on more regionally-, ethnically-, or even (in this case) nationality-accurate casting for those roles. There was no excuse for two white men to be cast as Afghanis of any ethnicity.
“Some auctions result in a “no-trump” contract, meaning that the hand will be played without a supersuit.”
Amused
Forget the supersuit, where can I get one of these No Trump contract auctions?
Weirdly timely re: Tina Fey, as I started rewatching 30 Rock the other night but pledged to be a little more mindful about the issues people have pointed out in her work. I’m a garbage disposal for comedy–I want it all in my face all the time–and so if stuff is in there that doesn’t make me laugh I tend not to be pulled up short by it ’cause I’m trying to cram more in my maw (see also: My philosophy of popcorn). But I’m going to chew it more slowly this time and see how it lands.
Thank you for the multiple puppies! I made a doctor’s appt. for the first time in 20 years today and need those virtual snuggles to keep from wigging out.
Go you! I understand the wigging out impulse. But I wish you more pleasant impulses. Your doctor works for *you*. They have expertise about human bodies that you do not, but you have expertise about your unique human body and living in it that they do not. Chin up, yours is the superior expertise.
I also wig out a bit for doc visits. I make a written list or agenda. Having it in my pocket calms me so I’m more likely to remember everything. Or I could actually look at it in order to remember everything. Sometimes I just hand it to the doc. Is it that kind of wigging out?
::Toasthugs::
Thanks for this! I’ve been keeping a running Post-It list of things to mention, but now that I’ve made the appointment I’m convinced that I have zika and hantavirus and lyme disease and pleurisy and also that I’ll get lost on the way there, be hit by lightning because I’m going on foot, fall into an open sewer and probably get some kind of C.H.U.D. fungus, and just generally NERVES! But it will ultimately be good, and I ordered myself a bright red popcorn popper to celebrate (and remind me that I get to do this whole dance with the dentist again, too!). Nothing like Adulting to bring out the kid in a person.
UGH GRUMBLE
It me, LadyPoopjokes, Destroyer of Hearts, Sugarcoater of Hard Truths, just popping in to say that my sad lost duckling of an ex found my commenting history (because of course he did) and took great offense at my callous failure to speak glowingly of him to anonymous internet people whom he will never meet, so I’ve deleted anything he might use against me and am currently brainstorming witty new scatological usernames.
I can’t imagine what thoughtless things I might’ve said about him on the internet had my wonderful new roommate not texted me at that exact moment to invite me to meet her down the street for bottomless mimosae. She is a true gem.
>:(
That’s…. really controlling on his part. I didn’t think sad lost ducklings could be so manipulative.
Right?? It’s possible that my frequent use of baby bird metaphors may be tied to my general fear and mistrust of birds.
He’s really good at framing the things he does/says as being natural, sensitive reactions to the hurtful things I do, to the point that I find myself coming to his defense even while discussing them here, but to his credit he did say that he stopped himself from reading further since those comments weren’t meant for his eyes, but. You know. Better safe than sorry. Which is why I chose to be so furtive and uncommunicative about my breakup plans, which is why he was so upset about how I dumped him, etc. etc.
Anyway, other than that, things are progressing quite nicely! It’s been over a week at my lovely new place, the cat loves the yard, the roommate loves the cat, I’m doing my best to focus exclusively on my feelings and not his for once, I can do what I want when I want, I treated myself to a memory foam pillowtop, and I just ordered shoes with cheeseburgers on them, so it’s hard to even find time to be manipulated! 😀
Grr, gnashing of teeth as appropriate for the first item
However:
MIMOSAE
Good lord, I am so sorry, I had to go through this once.
Two things!
1. It is my 30th birthday today, yay? (???)
2. This exists: http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html It is a contest for writing the worst imaginable first sentence of a (nonexistent) novel. The archives are so funny. There is some serious Mallory Ortberg-esque facility with the English language. Please, Toasties, enter this.
I look forward to spending a good deal of time wading through these particular archives. Already:
“Mom,” I asked my mom. “What’s for breakfast?”
“You know I haven’t made breakfast since your father died in a mysterious car crash a year ago on your birthday,” she said sadly. “You have his eyes.”
ETA “They had the mettle of men, and yet they ate the biscuits of dogs.”
ahhhh that was the best.
!!! I did not know this existed, and this despite religiously following the Bulwer-Lytton contest! (http://www.bulwer-lytton.com). So happy to have a new archive of atrocious fake fiction to peruse.
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday!
I need a Belle or Sansa in my life. My building super has a sweet little mutt he keeps in the dog run behind our building while he works, and I use every excuse to to back there and play with him, but it’s not the same as my own doggie.
You guys, this is tangentially related to the academia sexual harassment thing, but this guy I’m seeing knows that I’m a health scientist and he started mainsplaining to me about medications. And which kinds of conditions can be cured or not. Why? Why do they do this? He KNOWS that I have created prototypes of new drugs. He’s not in healthcare at all. Like. I know you googled that really intensely for a month in your free time? But I’ve been studying it for 14 years? Is my lipstick throwing you off? Actual scientist. I know I don’t look like Bill Nye, but actual scientist here.
Rosalind Franklin, lend me strength.
My brother does this to me. As I got further into my career, I realised he literally doesn’t believe that there is any topic on which he doesn’t know more than me, except maybe feminism. I think it was when I hit thirty that I realised that there are actually topics on which I know he has expertise and on which I will defer to him, but that there are almost no topics on which he will defer to me. I have started just saying, “I literally run training courses on this stuff for my job. It is hilarious that you think you know it better than me!”
Actually, the funniest one was last summer when he was arguing with me about the layout of my house, and how the window in the baby’s room definitely looked out to the side, not the back. Everyone noticed that.
However, brothers are different from guys you’re seeing! Does he have many fine qualities?
It’s only been a few weeks. He does have good qualities, but come on. Come on.
That would be a deal breaker for me. Although I have a degree in art history and everyone thinks they know more about aesthetics than I do. Maybe it’s just the human condition.
No! I would never assume that I know more, come on, like, wtf do I know about art history? I know that art exists and has existed for a while, and I would feel like an idiot trying to explain it to you.
Yeah it’s kind of deal-breaker-y for me, but also like, how do you date a gender that just swims in privilege.
My partner has informed me that his bridge-playing colleague was in the next room, losing his own match, while Fisher and Schwartz were winning the World Junior Teams bridge championship in 2010 (as described in the first paragraph of the linked article).
Unfortunately, I just learned that the apartment is no longer available- the person whose lease I'd have been taking over is staying. 🙁
Back to the drawing board!
(At least I got some dog time last week.)
I generally love 30 Rock, but was also bothered by their depictions of Latino people, jokes made at their expense (the little league team Tracey coaches, for example).
I want her to franchise out the series – bring in authors to write THESE stories and just slap the "Pottermore" name on them. Interview different writers, have a generally-agreed-upon structure in terms of style and the Laws of Writing Wizardry and just let the designated writers run loose. Because these stories sound awesome and like something JKR absolutely cannot do justice to.