Sometimes, things work out (UPDATE: almost) as they should. Hamilton stays on the $10, Jackson is off the $20 (when I first wrote this we didn’t know he’d still be on the back, blegh), and Harriet Tubman becomes the first woman and the first black person to grace the (paper) currency of the United States.
where do you work i’m coming over right now:
Every month, I get my period. Every month, I have to carry around my pads. Nothing too surprising. Some early mornings, I forget to bring my pads because I’m in such a rush, blah blah blah.
One day, I left my pads at work in the back office under our computer desk. As I go back to grab it, I find the pads shoved all the way to the back of the little shelf. I think it’s just an accident So, I grab it and pull it back towards the front of the shelf.
I leave for a bit and come back to grab (and use) it and find it all the way pushed to the back of the shelf.
As I’m grabbing it, my male manager comes up to me and tells me I need to put them away. I tell him that I have my period and I’d like to leave them there so I have them when I need them.
Things got out of hand. He told me I’m “gross” and “unprofessional” for bringing them to work and putting them in the same area where he works, and because he saw them.
When I told him I’d call and ask HR if I could have them (in my work space) in the back office, he raised his voice and said “CALL HR! CALL THEM!” And he then said “Know your place! I’m above you!”
hi:
Meeting Hiddleston is almost as good as YouTubing him. He’s an imposing six-foot-two (“Farther to fall”) and is unfailingly kind to our waiter, begging off his efforts to freshen our table: “Honestly, don’t dirty any more plates. Keep these plates dirty, and I’ll be fine.” It’s not hard to fathom how he’s acquired a rabid fan base, members of which call themselves the Hiddlestoners and cut together clips of him sexily speaking foreign languages, particularly French; doing impressions of other actors, like Chris Evans and Alan Rickman; and, of course, performing his expert hip gyrations, which are so enthusiastic that on one Korean talk show he knocked over every chair in his vicinity.
Relevant to our interests: the “scandalous” women of the 1990s:
Anita Hill’s crime was accusing her former employer, Clarence Thomas—who had recently been nominated to replace Thurgood Marshall as a Supreme Court Justice—of sexual harassment. Thomas was sworn in despite Anita Hill’s testimony, and Anita Hill became a national joke. The headlines that didn’t approach her story with obvious vitriol were, often as not, simply dismissive: “SEX AND THE BOSS,” announced People Magazine cover story on the hearings, as if that had anything to do with Anita Hill. (The following month, the magazine boasted another cover featuring Clarence and Virginia Thomas locked in a blissful, marital embrace, promising to tell the story of “HOW WE SURVIVED”).
Horrifying, and I hope we know more soon:
The United Nations refugee agency said on Wednesday that 500 people may have died in the choppy waters of the Mediterranean last week, when a large boat packed with migrants from Africa and the Middle East capsized in an unknown location between Libya and Italy.
If confirmed, it would be the worst humanitarian calamity in Europe’s migrant crisis since more than 800 people died last April near Libyan shores as they tried to reach Italy.
The agency based its findings on interviews with 41 survivors of the shipwreck, although it was not able to verify the episode independently. The migrants — 23 Somalis, 11 Ethiopians, six Egyptians and a Sudanese — were picked up by a merchant ship near Greece on April 16 after days of drifting at sea. They were transferred to a migrant camp in Kalamata, a city on the Greek mainland.
A Toastie’s former prof (and a devoted dog rescuer) is dealing with breast cancer and if you can help her out with money or good vibes, that would be much appreciated!
You know who ELSE needs your help today? Akilah Hughes.
This is awful and also people of faith who do not support this nonsense need to be noisy and loud about it (THIS IS AWFUL AND BAD AND NOT RIGHT):
In the first week of April, Mississippi passed a new law making it expressly legal for doctors, psychologists, and counselors to opt out of any procedure or choose not to take on any patient if doing so would compromise their conscience. The law is specifically designed to protect medical professionals who object to gay marriage and non-marital sex.Tennessee’s general assembly just passed a similar law, which would only apply to counselors, and a now-dead Florida bill would have protected religious health-care organizations from having to “administer, recommend, or deliver a medical treatment or procedure that would be contrary to the religious or moral convictions or policies of the facility.”
This legislation is part of a wave of religious-freedom bills that have been introduced and passed in the past year or so, almost all inspired by objections to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Some of these measures are just for show—pastors could never be legally compelled to perform a gay-marriage ceremony in the way some bills have suggested, for example. But some represent a relatively novel approach to religious-freedom legislation: They offer legal cover to people of faith who don’t want to provide certain goods or services to LGBT people, especially when doing so might seem like a tacit endorsement of their relationships and sex lives.
Medical exemptions, though, deserve to be considered in a category of their own. Doctors and therapists interact with people at their most vulnerable, and their training and expertise gives them incredible power over patients. The advice they provide—or refuse to provide—to an LGBT patient could influence the treatment that person seeks. It could make that person less likely to seek primary care or identify themselves as LGBT to other doctors, which can lead to the “failure to screen, diagnose, or treat important medical problems,” according to the American Medical Association. The medical community has a problem: What should hospitals, private practices, and medical associations do about doctors and therapists who say it’s against their beliefs to provide care to LGBT patients?
no it wouldn’t:
Man, I remain shocked at how bad things were in the ’90s, when I was too young to really follow or understand. The Mad Men equivalent for that era will shock our children in the 2040s.
I am already imagining the miniseries and tv shows (or whatever is the dominant art form at the time) about the run up to the Iraq war in 2022 or 2023. Talk about a time that was incredibly formative for my politics, but is hard to explain to people who were too young to experience it.
YES! This is why I have so much love for Sarah Vowell’s early books, they really do an excellent job of capturing the unique political pitch of the era. And the movie conventioneers which is awful but kind of great.
(also older lefties who still say “well…” if you attach the word president to Bush’s name. <3)
The older lefties have a point!
He should get an asterix next to his name for sure. (This older lefty hopes everyone enjoys that totally timely reference!)
My question is, what would be the exemplary 90s setting for this show in the same way an ad agency in New York was for Mad Men? I don’t know, something finance-related, or political?
Venture capital firm? Or maybe a hedge fund.
Too early for dotcoms? Maybe an Enron expy.
Law firm.
Honestly, I think if we got everybody to forget that Ally McBeal existed, and then re-released it, it would be seen as a grim satire, rather than about 90% sincere.
I tried watching it when it came up on Netflix and even as a person who still holds affection for Friends, I couldn’t watch it. I’m so embarrassed for younger me. Oof.
I also did this. Was that show sexist even for the 90s? I kept thinking they were trying to show the struggle of having obviously absurd sexist bosses, but then I wasn’t so sure the show was on the same page about “obviously absurd.”
Yes, it was problematic even in its first run. Very much so.
Very VERY much so, not even including the ridiculously teeny skirts.
I… wait… that show *wasn’t* grim satire??
The whole thing will take place on BBS and Usenet groups.
Finance, but the whole conceit of the show is you never really know what they do?
As long as it involves a lot of business travel, so we can gawp at the pre-security theater airport scenes.
People meeting their loved ones AT THE GATE?!?! WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE??!?!
See, now I want this show to be set at an airport.
– Chicken Soup For The Soul books and Beanie Babies on display at the bookstore
– Dudes in fedoras drinking martinis at the hippest airport bar they can find during that swing revival time
– Cameos by old Don Draper and Roger Sterling, complaining that no one dresses up for flights anymore, and you can’t pinch the stewardesses, excuse me, FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
Hats. 90s-period Sally Draper wearing lots of hats. Every scene, a bigger hat. Eventually, she can’t be seen.
I TRIED TO FORGET SWING REVIVAL. GOOD FUCKING HEAVENS.
I am now trying to figure out a way to bleach the eyeballs in my mind for remembering when grown-ass men danced — WITHOUT IRONY — to Zoot Suit Riot during the Clinton Administration.
And those fucking Chicken Soup books.
Kind of like Barney’s job on HIMYM?
*scoff* PLEASE.
I would totally watch this.
Also, one of my favorite-if-problematic series of books involves An Incident in 1996 that takes the technology level back to basically steam (no electricity, no internal combustion, etc) and people were discussing whether or not they could live then.
And I was like, at this point, I couldn’t live in the world *before* that happened. I remember 1996. I remember dial-up modem speeds being a major concern. Noooooooope.
What series is that?
is the first book in the series Dies The Fire (by Stirling)? Reading that (yes, very problematic) series while living in Oregon was pretty cool though (the Willamette Valley is the only urban corridor that isn’t a total death zone).
Oh, I enjoyed this terrible book!
Green Day concert?
I feel like the children of the 2040s will watch Friends and be like “What the actual fuck, grandpa?”
Friends has aged terribly in a decade. It’ll be so much worse in a few more. “Well, sweetie, that’s just how people viewed gender/race/sexuality back then”
The homophobia in ‘classic’ Friends is unbelievable
I love Friends as much as the next person who graduated high school in 1996 and man it’s a fucking embarrassment. Like it definitely has lots of funny stuff but the homophobia, transphobia, and Ross being clearly an abusive manipulative asshole really make it difficult.
Yeah, it’s really uncomfortable to watch now, and realize how incredibly terrible it is. My teenage siblings tried watching it, and couldn’t for the same reasons.
1997 here, and yeah, though I didn’t watch watch it; it was somehow always on. I went back and watched it on Netflix and there was literally at least one gay joke and at least fat joke in every.single.episode.
I graduated in 1997 and I hated it even then. And I loved some really shitty sitcoms. People love watching it in the break room and it still grates on my very soul.
Oh god the entire thing with Chandler’s dad. Oh god.
I recently revisited Friends and came away with the impression that there are no episodes that won’t make you cringe at least once per five minutes.
Yeah absolutely. I often watch Friends when I can’t sleep because it’s not like I can get really wrapped up in it and I have to fast-forward at least once per episode if not through entire sub-plots. I will always watch Ross getting stuck in his leather pants though.
I went to the college of the alumni creators of both Friends and Will & Grace, and have been to lectures by both of these guys (my dorm was designed by the latter. Art school is weird). Especially Friends, but also W&G, was literally started as a satire of terrible people they actually knew, but then the vast public loved it and didn’t get the joke, so the show just went on and on losing sight of the fact that these people are terrible. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.
Of 90s sitcoms, I stand firmly by Frasier. And the gay jokes have aged much better (thanks David Hyde Pierce!)
that is really interesting. somehow, I’m not surprised that they started as satires – and ohhh my heart lies with Frasier! <3 <3
I met David Hyde Pierce in an airport once, ohhhh 18 years ago or so when I was a wee teenaged thing, and I thought I was going to faint from delight.
I also went to that college and hadn’t heard that before but totally believe it. I still can’t believe they enshrined the not real W&G set in the library for a long time. I also stand behind Frasier.
I feel like that now, TBH. (I have always hated that show, though).
“They didn’t know any better back then. I mean, they did, but social media hadn’t been invented at that point so publicly shaming bigots wasn’t a huge thing back then. It’s okay, honey, I’m glad they’re showing those episodes to you in law school to illustrate prejudice and oppression. It’s good that you know now, but yes, we watched that show. It was very popular.”
I couldn’t watch it when it first aired but now all the racism and fat shaming and homophobia just enter the “problematic stuff in fiction from the past” part of my brain, along with all the Victorian novels and such. You know, Friends, Little Dorrit, same diff. I am not sure this is justified.
My housemates still love Friends and watch it with great fondness.
Between this article and the O.J. series I have so many complicated feelings about Marcia Clark these days. And I’m peeved at Tina Fey for mocking Clark and Darden in the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Way to be cruel to two people who really didn’t deserve the vitriol lobbed at them.
I just wrote a piece about Kimmy Schmidt and Tina Fey’s reluctance to look deeper, and her Marcia Clark was my main example. I mean, perhaps my expectations of her are just too high, but as a feminist I think you owe it to yourself to ask yourself if a woman is being dismissed for sexist reasons.
oh link please if it is up somewhere!
It should go up the day after tomorrow… but in Dutch, I’m afraid!
I want to read this!
You’re all so kind 🙂 I’ll link it when it goes up, but it will be in Dutch, alas – maybe I should ask if I can put an English translation on my own blog!
I would LOVE to read this!
Thank you 🙂 As I mentioned above, the piece is in Dutch, though, but I might translate it for my own blog if the outlet agrees.
You have a point. But as An Old, I sometimes feel like the truly shocking thing is how little has changed between then and now.
To this day I can’t really tell apart Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch. And I confess that both of them look like very pale aliens to me. I think it’s something in the face shape.
This fills me with joy!
well, the easiest way to tell them apart is the Benedict Cumberbatch looks like an otter transformed by a witch’s curse into a pasty Englishman, and Tom Hiddleston looks like a weasel transformed by a witch’s curse into a pasty Englishman.
Someone described Cumberbatch as the middle picture on every Animorphs cover.
accurate
Cannot unsee!
Hiddleston is *wan*, Cumberbatch is *pallid*. That’s how you remember!
I predict that Marvel will eventually come out with a Doctor Strange vs. Loki movie purely as an excuse to have Cumberbatch and Hiddleston shoot smoldering glances at each other for ninety minutes.
I have long said that I want a movie that consists of nothing more than Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch staring at each other for an hour and a half. Actual dialogue would just be gravy.
I look forward to this exact thing.
Hiddleston is my marriage clause but Bimblesnoot Cumberbund was as well at one point….
I would pay for this. I would see it several times.
I find Hiddleston is an attractive alien, and Cumberbatch is a terrifying-looking alien, though. Sort of like alien Schwarzenegger/DeVito twins.
I’m not doubting you at all, nor am I criticizing, but I’m kinda baffled! To my subjective eye, Hiddleston is obviously and outstandingly good-looking, while Cumberbatch is what I might describe, if pressed, as probably an acquired taste.
Honestly I just did a quick google on both of them, and….still nothing. “Pasty white dudes with long faces” is a category that is just…null. I don’t think I could pick either one of them out of a lineup. (And oh lord, I find neither of them attractive at all, which means I end up skipping over a lot of Buzzfeed content.)
Life is a rich tapestry, indeed.
Ditto! Tom Hiddleston is attractive; Benedict Cumberbatch does nothing for me (although I do like him a lot in Cabin Pressure).
I am one of a small number of people that are forever trying to get more people to listen to Cabin Pressure. Like nearly everyone else, I started listening because of Cumberbatch and kept listening because it was genuinely good! It’s so damn funny and sweet.
On the other hand, it’s funny to watch a thread on facebook become all Cabin Pressure people. “Regardez-vous, le bear polare!”
Between the dames and the horses sometimes I don’t even know why I put my hat on.
The lemon is in play!
Cumberbatch is a lizard. Hiddles is a cockerspaniel.
As someone who is faceblind I second this
The main difference is that Tom HIddleston has a chin.
So this is more OT but my brain won’t shut up about it until tomorrow:
I was on the subway last night coming home from a show (Shuffle Along, which was SO GOOD, btw) and a middle aged guy on the subway was looking at me funny but that’s par for the course so I went back to the game on my phone.
Then I saw a flash and looked and he was holding his phone at eye level and smirking at me, so I stared him down–idk why I thought this would do anything–and he stared right back and smirked even more and if definitely felt like a taunt. My stomach turned.
So I posit to you, toasties:
Is it more paranoid to think the pic is of me or more naive to think it isn’t?
I’m trying to shake the grossed out feeling but warranted or not, it’s not going away just yet.
Holy shit, that’s creepy. The smirk makes me think it’s a pic of you, I’m afraid.
I don’t say this to creep you out further, but I think he took a picture. :/
I wish I could time travel back to that moment and clothesline this dude, ugh. I wish I could just rip my shirt hulk style and fight all these losers.
Ugh, I am sorry to be a third, here, but that dude definitely took a pic. And knew that doing so was wrong and gross and DID IT ANYWAY. Consequences: not for menpeople!
I’m so sorry that happened to you 🙁 I’ve had strangers take pictures of me too and it’s really, really uncomfortable and I never know what to do.
I mean, yes, you’re right, he was taking a picture of you—- but because of the flash, you can be assured that it isn’t a very GOOD picture of you, if that’s any consolation?
Not sure if that makes it better or worse, tbh.
Haha, the little denial factory in my head is saying, “maybe he’s an artist and he’s going to paint a tasteful portrait…that must be why he took it…right?”
Also the flash creeped me out because it makes me think he wanted me to know. He could have been subtle and I probably wouldn’t have known what happened.
Yeah, that’s probably the point. Honestly, if that ever happened to me, I don’t know how I’d react. I HOPE that I’d have the courage to say “Excuse me, did you just take my picture? Would you prefer a posed shot?” and hold up two middle fingers. Or at LEAST say “Excuse me, did you just take a photo of me?” Because honestly, I feel like creepy people can’t STAND being called out on their creepiness and will totally flake if an explanation is demanded. But I don’t know that I’d actually react that way in the heat of the moment. So sorry for you, that’s gross.
All of this is reminding me a bit of when my husband and I were at the beach, lounging around in our teeny suits, and this guy was skulking around alone with a camera. I, of course, just because uncomfortable and wanted to put on my clothes.
My husband decided to confront him because something something men. The guys was like “buddy, I’m taking pictures of my kids” and they had quite a disagreement and eventually he showed the pics on his camera and they were indeed pictures of his kids, and, so, I dunno. Don’t take pictures of my husband at the beach? The unabashedness of men, creepy and uncreepy, is mysterious?
The posed shot line is SO GOOD. And yes, I think creeps often lose their gumption when challenged. The one and only time I called out a group of guys (for touching my face) at a club, they reversed directions so hard it was laughable. “We didn’t do that! We respect women.” <— Actually their words.
Oh geez that is creepy and yeah he definitely took that photo.
I think the fantasy version of me that doesn’t freeze when upset would grab my own phone, fake-dial and just say “okay, I got him, he’s right in front of me” while holding his stare
Fantasy me was going to dump the remaining contents of my iced tea lemonade on him, but real me didn’t want to make a mess on the subway for other nice, unassuming people, and he got off at the next stop so by the time I was finished mentally plotting, he was gone.
Huh I guess I’m extra angry already today because fantasy-me grabbed his phone and threw it out the fantasy window.
That is so incredibly creepy and I wish I could be reassuring. But I am really glad that Shuffle Along was good, and I’d love to hear more about that, if that’s more relaxing for you to focus on. If not, don’t worry about it.
Well, obviously the cast is amazing, the show is very witty, and the history of the original Shuffle Along musical is pretty interesting.
The music was good, but the dancing was INCREDIBLE. There were minutes-long tap sequences that were killer. I didn’t want them to end.
Ugh, that is definitely a creeper. Sorry that happened.
I was coming home last week (also from a Broadway show, coincidentally), and I was standing by the train doors, so I could see the phone screen of the lady sitting in the seat next to the doors. She was holding her phone in her lap as though reading something, but she was surreptitiously taking photos of the people on the other side of the car – or their shoes or something? I really couldn’t decide what to do about it (say something to her? ignore? move so I couldn’t see?) and, perhaps unwisely, went with the classic New Yorker of “stare at own phone and ignore everything happening in vicinity.” So weird.
Very likely it was of you. This is what the middle finger was invented for.
I’ve had my pic taken on the train before. Probably for many stupid reasons like “look at this fat lady right here LOOK AT HER BEING FAT.” It is the worst. 🙁
eeeeuuuuurgh I’m so sorry. What a gross human.
Oh god, men who smirk make we want to HULKSMASH everything around me.
Heyyy Salt Lake City Toasties (COUGH Nicole): I’m going to be hanging out there with my in-laws and my spawn for a few days next week while my husband drives across the country with the car and the animals before our final stop in Boise. Anyone want to meet up for either an adult or child playdate?
I hope you like Boise. It’s pretty good, as far as towns go. The trendy donut shop does story times with the trendy bookstore. (It’s at the same time as the library’s story times, though, which annoys me to no end.) http://www.gurudonuts.com/#!tasty-tales/pv5t7
Might Toasties be interested in this lovely piece about being a female musician with bipolar disorder? https://takeyourstage.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/ba…
Man, I was so jazzed about Andrew Jackson getting the boot. It’s fucked up that he was ever on currency in the first place! Not only was he just an awful dude but he also drove the country into a depression! Still A+ choice with Harriet Tubman, but come on guys.
Did you see this tweet about Andrew Jackson? I thought it was a nice, pithy burn.
snrk. That is really great.
Ugh, the ‘actually he didn’t like paper money so he’d be fine with it’ guy.
THAT’S NOT THE POINT, GUY.
We will be getting lots of women! I’m so excited about this that it minimizes my outrage about Jackson still being on the $20 to some extent
Wallets full of women. Binders are so bulky.
And MARION ANDERSON ON THE FIVE AND LUCRETIA COFFIN MOTT AND SOJOURNER MOTHERFUCKING TRUTH ON THE TEN (plus a bunch of suffragettes who were so racist IDK if they count as progress, but let’s focus on the good).
WHAT I got so excited about Tubman on the 20 that I assumed that was the end of the good news. SOJOURNER TRUTH.
Look around, look around, etc.
God damn it Grumbly I JUST got that out of my head and oh what am I saying it’s never out of my head. The revolution’s happening indeed.
SQUEEE! So excited.
YAY! But the others–while definitely let some racist shit slip as beautifully outlined by The-Toast–DID work in the anti-slavery movement and were members/founds of the American Equal Rights Association along side Fredrick Douglass. ECS and Susan B were all participants/representatives of the American Anti-Slavery Society. And they got pissed and said some **super** cringy & unacceptable things when the 15th amendment didn’t go far enough. Imperfect certainly, but let’s not erase their effective activism as abolitionists and suffragettes as blanketly terrible. I think it’s good that they’re all going to be together, because it shows the collectivist nature of activism.
SOJOURNER MOTHERFUCKING TRUTH is actually who I voted for the $20, so I’m ELATED that she’s at least going to be on the $10. I think there’s a direct line (rhetorically, linguistically, as part of literature) between #blackgirlmagic and “Ain’t I a Woman.” She’s magnificent.
Thank you! Yes, suffragists said some terrible racist things but they also did some good things. People are complicated!
Also I’m an irrepressible pedant and have to point out that Sojournor Truth probably never actually said “ain’t I a woman” in those words. On the other hand, it’s become such a legend that it can still have influence on culture today. Also this is in no way meant to imply she wasn’t magnificent. She absolutely was!
PS posting this as a guest because the “login to intense debate” link on my phone does nothing. Anyone else have this problem?
I want a totebag that says “Irrepressible Pedant” on one side and “Dirtbag” on the other.
omg I would 100% buy an “Irrepressible Pedant” totebag. Or bumper sticker. Or T-shirt.
Pretty sure my boyfriend would buy me anything that said “irrepressible pedant” on it, lol
I keep a little pouch full of tampons right on my desk. I never bother zipping it up, so there are always very clearly tampax super plus tamps peaking out. I have an autoimmune disease that fucks with my body so I actually haven’t had a period in months, but I keep the tampons there, as a silent fuck you to the smarmy, awful white startup bros in my office.
When I worked in the office (I’m at home now) my drawer was full of them and all the office laydeez knew where to come if they needed one.
It is always such a relief to know someone has extras, just in case! Not all heroes wear capes.
I read that as “wear cups” and thought RIGHT ON I hate the DivaCup (for me).
I have not tried the diva cup and idk if I can. I am 100% on board with the fact that it’s not a monthly purchase/is environmentally friendly/whatever, but I just can’t get past the knowledge that I would have Tupperware in my vagina. I have friends that swear by it though. To each her own.
Personally, I adore my DivaCup. It means I don’t have to buy a box of tampons every month which is expensive for a student surviving on loans alone. Also, one time I pushed a tampon out of the tube just for fun and found green fuzzy stuff on it so the idea of sticking nice clean tupperware up there is so much more appetizing than fuzzy green tampons.
O_o
I lack the words to describe how terrifying “green fuzzy stuff” on a tampon is to me.
Question: Do you only have boxes with a very small amount of tampons in the US? Also, how much do they cost?
Because over here, most people use tampons without applicators, and those can be bought in boxes of 64 for not more than 4 €.
I think the cost is similar. But one $30 cup will last for years, so when you’re on a tight budget, it can make a real difference!
Oh, absolutely! I’m just always baffled because, from what I read on the Internet, it seems as if women in the US have to buy new boxes of tampons every month, and I was wondering if you maybe really don’t have large boxes.
The applicator-less tampons are not as common (or as cheap) in the U.S. A box of 40 applicator-less tampons is about $6.20 on Amazon, while a box of 50 applicator tampons (at least the brand I use) is $8.25–so about $0.15 vs. $0.16 per tampon. I think the price differential is much greater in Europe.
You can get the type without applicators at some places, but I was always very bad at planning and ended up buying tampons at drugstores which had limited selections and I really can’t do cardboard so if I use tampons they have to be the fancy plastic ones which are probably around $5 for 18. And also my period is devilishly long and heavy so I easily went through lots of tampons when I still used them. So my cup makes me happy. Especially because I split a 2 for the price of 1 pack with my friend.
My vagina is very special and does not like applicator-less tampons. I can use them — I’ll use them preferentially over cardboard — but I much prefer the fancy plastic ones and if this were the worst of my environmental sins, well, so be it. (It isn’t the worst, but it’s the one I feel by far the least guilt about.)
There was also this horrible thing about a decade ago (was it that long?) when OB the major brand of applicator-less tampons just sort of stopped making them/delivering them? I can only use OB and it was a nightmare.
WAS THAT WHAT HAPPENED. I thought I was going nuts when they just…weren’t on the shelf anymore. Any shelf. Anywhere.
Fuzzy green tampons? I think I have sympathetic TSS just reading the words.
My menstrual cup has never felt so right.
Ugh, fuzz sounds horrifying. I respect your stance on the DivaCup!
Hahahaha I love the diva cup but “having tupperware in my vagina” definitely made me laugh out loud. It actually is kind of true, hahaha!
I hated the Diva cup. But I love Instead cups–they’re shaped more like diaphragms and I found them to be far more comfortable and user-friendly than the Diva Cup. They’re not bulky so they’re easier to carry and insert and they offer the same advantages–you can put ’em in before your period starts. They are reusable. And you can even do the freaky-deaky with them in.
Hello yes fellow Instead user here!!!!!!! I looooove them!
I find that Insteads leak far more (especially when doing any other bodily functions) and that if I’m crampy, having them go over my cervix is really painful.
(ETA: YMMV, everyone, obviously)
You truly are the heroine we need
I keep them in the drawer all jumbled up with the gum and phone charger which everyone is always borrowing. Yeah, reach right in there around the vagina things! Wooo!
I now want to label a drawer “vagina things” and keep all kinds of random shit in there, along with a few tampons just for accuracy.
Stash your most valuable possessions in there, and you can guarantee they remain safe.
It’s amazing how many tings you can put in a vagina if you really try!
Nature’s pocket!
When we got new desks at my old job, we were all very excited that they had drawers. The coworker who was known for having the candy stash (which our boss constantly visited) was like, “Now I can hide all the candy under a layer of tampons and he won’t go in there anymore!”
…it didn’t work.
Haha, me too! Same drawer as my biz cards, the extra camera, Advil, camera card reader that everyone borrows, rubber bands, mints, etc.
I have pads in my drawer at work. Right next to a bunch of painkillers, for obvious reasons. I mean, it’s just convenient to have them there, instead of having to remember to put them in your bag!
Right on. Way to….stick it….to the man? hee hee…
I have an IUD and so I very rarely get periods, and even when I do it’s not enough blood to require a tampon or pad. That’s fine for me, but sometimes I feel so bad about breaking the lady-code by never carrying any or having them around the office. I should just pick some up for other people even if I don’t use them myself.
I saw Mr Hiddleston live at a Q and A session and he was surprisingly boring (and also didn’t dance, boo). Lots of philosophising about the Importance of Art and the Theatrrrre, and a fair few un-woke and defensive comments about his privileged background sprinkled in too. WITH THAT BEING SAID – I would climb that man like a TREE if ever the opportunity presented itself, and he was really good in High-rise.
I get bored pretty quickly when actors talk seriously about Their Craft in interviews, so I find this very disappointing. I find I’m generally disappointed by actors in interviews, though, so I try and avoid that kind of thing and just leave everybody as 100% their characters in my head (unless a trusted source suggests to me that watching the actor the human talk is actually charming and worth it).
Actors talking seriously about Their Craft is in the same brain cupboard for me as poets talking about writing poetry in their poems and I strongly dislike both.
Ok, I can agree with this except “Digging” by Seamus Heaney.
I’d also add musicians talking about their music. Inside baseball-y stuff in the arts is just powerfully dull to me. I feel like there are only a limited number of ways to talk about the artistic process so everything comes off cliched and boring and unilluminating.
Agreed. I’m honestly mystified by why people even ask those questions – who cares? Like, shit comes to you, you do whatever your art is, and eventually it’s as close to done as it’s ever gonna get.
Just to represent the other point of view, I find these things fascinating. Apparently I’m in a small weird minority.
I do, too, and perhaps because I’m inside baseball in the arts so it’s all 100% my jam? (also hello, goodmorning, I’m just now reading yesterday’s LR!)
There might be a bit of that in in for me too, but I also really enjoy it for things that I know much less about, so idk really? Just a personal preference I suppose.
I have the biggest stupidest crush on him, but I have long suspected he’s actually quite boring. Tbh I think part of the reason I and many other people have big stupid crushes on him is because, as the article points out, he’s kind of anonymous – in interviews he comes across as nice and that’s about it – so you can kind of project the image of your perfect boyfriend onto him and there’s not a lot to get in the way.
Also yeah he is genuinely a good actor – I saw him in Coriolanus and he was absolutely fantastic.
mmm I saw the Coriolanus cinema broadcast and he was a damn fine Caius Marcius.
I think it’s largely because he’s so talented at acting, and also pretty damn bright from all evidence, that I expected him to be a scintillating interviewee. The moral of the story is clearly that expectations can only lead to crushing disappointment.
Men should know when to sit there, be pretty, and only comment when spoken to. Only speak about Shakespeare and how smart I am! 😉
Other acceptable topics of conversation for men include what they’re about to cook, and the book I’ve just finished reading.
Here to fawn over Coriolanus, will ignore every piece of actual evidence that this man could ever be boring. He’s clearly faking it in interviews to get some peace from journalists/papparazzi.
I’m not even sure what it is about him that I find SO appealing? He’s not unattractive, but would we say he’s classically handsome? Idk, you look at Henry Cavill and you’re like, yeah, that’s a dude who has seen God’s favor. And Tom is *cute* but I would also mount that man like a trusty steed.
I feel like Henry Cavill is almost TOO perfect looking. Like, in the Superman vs. Batman photocalls he just looks so … shellacked. Although I liked him better on The Tudors when his hair was kind of mussy and he was a reformed jerk who had Internal Conflicts.
Agreed. In his solo Superman movie, he was so perfectly pretty that I actually found it distracting. He looks like a Ken doll.
He also seems to be far more stiff and awkward when he’s in bulked-up mode, like he doesn’t quite feel comfortable in his own skin anymore; and I think that affects his performances.
I remember reading somewhere that Hiddleston is this era’s Gene Wilder—obviously they perform in totally different areas, but there’s a physical resemblance, a kind of weird quirky lanky energy and the sense that you just don’t know what that would be like, which is very alluring.
YES AGREED! And I had a crush on Gene Wilder so this all makes sense.
Oh wow, I hadn’t even considered this comparison but you are so right.
OT, but: Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner were the best couple
I imprinted on him from her memoir.
I have had looong conversations about this with various people and have concluded that it’s all in the eyes. Cavill has dead eyes, which offsets the perfectness of his jawline. Hiddleston actually has a spark of life in his eyes which, when added to his reasonably cute face and other assets, make him much more attractive overall.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Hiddleston’s eyes have *mischief* in them, which sold him as Loki for me. (other twinkly/mischievous-eyed peeps include but are not limited to: Nicole Beharie, Sam Neill, Cary Grant)
ETA: please add your own to this list! 😀 😀 😀
Oh Nicole Beharie! Such an actress. The way she moves her mouth. I do hope we see her again soon in a role that is worthy of her talents.
Daniel Craig!
Gwendolyn Christie.
EVA GREEN
Cavill has dead eyes, which offsets the perfectness of his jawline.
I’d like you to write critiques of all men in this exact style. 10/10 would subscribe.
He does have dead eyes, but he was so spunky and interesting in Man From UNCLE. I won’t lie, I’ve never seen him in anything else, but from all accounts, he’s kind of robotic otherwise. Something about Napoleon Solo just spoke to him, apparently.
See, I thought Man From UNCLE was absolutely dire, thanks in no small part to Cavill. The words and the actions and the costuming and even the way he walked should all have added up to make Napoleon Solo spring off the screen and into my heart but alas, it just did not happen.
This whole thread is making me examine the weirdly negative feelings I didn’t know I had about Henry Cavill.
But how did you feel about Armie Hammer? Because he came out smelling like roses, I thought. I kind of marvel at how Guy Ritchie could take the fact that Illya Kuryakin was everybody’s precious cinnamon roll in the 1960s and make it happen again, but with basically the opposite characterization.
Me and my bff use ‘not unattractive’ to refer to dudes who are clearly insanely handsome. So this made me laugh.
‘I would climb that man like a TREE if ever the opportunity presented itself
Amen.
Also, maybe it’s the banality of evil they speak of that he comes across as boring. But I like to imagine it’s the kind of evil that results in delicious unspeakable acts in dark corners or tied to four poster beds on rolling English estates.
I met Hiddles last night, and he smelled GLORIOUS. So that’s something
What did he smell like? Details!
Smell is my deal-breaker, I am not attracted to men who don’t smell *right* to me.
I’m so bad at description, but it was a really light cologne. Almost like linen!
Just very clean and fresh. It was the main thing we all commented on.
He’s also quite nice. But yeah mainly, smells gooooooood.
what what WHAT
a fair few un-woke and defensive comments about his privileged background sprinkled in too
Yeah, the fact that Hiddleston is one of the many privately-educated actors who is being quite defensive and generally disappointing in response to the current debates about Why Do All of Our Actors Come From Eton is not great. “Hiddleston said the class privilege debate is “socially divisive in a way it shouldn’t be, because I think wherever you are from you should be able to follow your passion. Wherever you went to school, if you have something authentic to contribute, you should be allowed to.”” NOBODY IS SAYING YOU SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED, JUST ASKING WHY YOU ARE SO OVERREPRESENTED. http://www.designntrend.com/articles/69015/201601…
numismatic correction: Harriet Tubman is the first woman on US PAPER currency: Susan B. Anthony (1979) and Sacagawea (2000) dollar coins are still out there, somewhere
She isn’t even that! Martha Washington was on the $1 Silver Certificate (1880s-1890s) and Pocahontas was on the back of the $20 (1860s). But obviously neither of those stuck around.
Excerpt from a fictional interview I had with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew about the $20 redesign:
“Don’t you think, that we, as a country, should get Andrew Jackson, who is a gross racist, off our money?”
“Absolutely. Once we, as a country, have earned that. For now, it seems pretty ON THE MONEY as far as how we are doing racism-wise.”
At this point, Jack Lew went for a high five which I did not accept.
Jack Lew also made it clear that he absolutely despises Andrew Jackson and thinks it is so funny that he is on the money because of Jackson’s opposition to paper money and the national bank.
“He would HATE this!” he said with maniacal glee.
Jackson also, famously, did not believe in paper money (because paper is for peasants, and silver and gold coins are for God’s Chosen Americans, dontcha know). So in addition to him being a racist and all around terrible, he would in no way have wanted to be on a paper bill. I have always been baffled about how he ended up on there.
Jackson’s own likely opposition to being on the $20 is the one thing that makes his presence there more tolerable to me.
The Treasury and Jackson scholars are actually baffled by that as well. No seriously, they’ve completely lost any record of why he was chosen when they redesigned the bills in 1928. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/20…
“Jackson’s ghost came to me in a dream and begged me to take him off paper money and so that’s why we’re putting him on the back of the $20”
would have been acceptable too
I do not believe in an afterlife but the idea of Jackson being perpetually pissed off because he is on paper money makes his continued presence on the $20 almost bearable.
I heard he’s going to be there in “reduced size” on the back, and the design is going to take years to finalize, so if we keep up the yelling about how terrible and what a disgraceful human being he was, maybe he’ll be the size of a fingernail when it goes to print. I could live with that.
The White House is on the back of the $20 right now, so maybe we should just stick him in one of the windows. Behind a curtain.
He could be the micro-printed security feature!
This is a hilarious imaginary convo on an unhilarious subject.
Guys this is OT but I am having a rough week. My partner’s father passed away over Easter after a battle with cancer at 58, and we had the funeral on Monday, which was pretty rough. Work has been a shit show. And one of my friends is mad at me for not picking her to be a bridesmaid and even though I have good reasons and I know picking bridesmaids (esp for a teeny intimate ceremony) is not indicative of how I feel about all my friends, I am sad and guilty and angry over it!
so sorry you’re going through this. I hope work and friend resentment improve soon. I wish you and your partner comfort as you heal and grieve, as well.
Thank you!
It always seems like BAD things like to all pile up at once. Try to just keep living your life and doing your thing and all the silly work stuff and friend stuff will I’m sure fade away into remember whens. I’m sorry about your father-in-law – cancer sucks.
It’s the pits!
<3 yasss thank you
*hug*
I am sorry about your father-in-partnership. I wish you and your love and the family peace and healing. Hopefully, work stuff will smooth out and get easier. Your friend needs to get a grip, because that kind of pettiness is a really good reason for not asking her in the first place – your wedding is not about affirming her role in your life.
I so so needed to hear this, thank you. You’re right, and I said to myself when selecting bridesmaids that if anything disagreeable happened I didn’t also want to be handling her behaviour and this is just confirming that decision!
I am super excited about the $20! However, both Martha Washington ($1 Silver Certificate) and Pocahontas ($20) have been on US paper currency (forever ago and very briefly) and Sacagawea was on the $1 coins. And of course, the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin. So Harriet is the first black woman to appear, but she is neither the first woman nor the first woman of color to be on US currency.
Rock on, Harriet!! (Burn in hell, Jackson!)
Susan B Anthony has been on coins as well, I seem to recall?
The little free paper they hand out in the subways had an article on the currency change and then it listed the women formerly/currently on the currency: the four you mention, plus Helen Keller on the back of the Alabama state quarter.
Effing depressing! The small circle of light was that the free-paper folks rightly described Keller as “author and activist” and not “inspirational politically-bland figure” I guess?
One of Keller’s essays was in the book “We Who Dared Say No To War,” and I was rather ashamed that it was the first time that I had read anything by her. She really was an amazingly interesting person, and the focus “Miracle Worker” part of her life really doesn’t do justice to the complex and talented woman she grew up to be.
It occasionally makes me happy in a rich-tapestry sort of way to be reminded that the most left-wing person ever to appear on US currency is on the Alabama state quarter.
Also the Susan B Anthony dollar coin.
shoved aside to make room for Sacagawea on the dollar coin, replaced JFK on the half dollar. (SBA is a far far better person to be on the currency than JFK, to be sure, but who among us even has a half dollar?)
Who even knew they were still minting half-dollars? I haven’t seen one of those things in years and years.
The tooth fairy used to bring me half dollars! So I guess I probably have a stack of them somewhere.
OH NO I was wrong! My source was wrong and I trusted it! Breaking news, Toast, SBA is not on the half-dollar, it’s still overly-revered JFK.
Crushed!
They were really pushing those Sacagawea coins when they first came out, though! Someone at the Treasury really thought they could get us to use dollar coins like Europeans instead of bills that fall apart all the time. I assume no one told that person about the time we tried to switch over to the metric system.
In high school I had this HILARIOUS recurring bit where I told people that my idea of a good pick-up line was to lean suggestively on something and give them some awesome eyebrows and say in a low voice, “so, you think we’ll go metric this year?”
BONUS a nerdy dude I was friends with knew this hilarious bit of mine and used it on me once. Poor nerdy dude. It’s not your fault I was just secretly in love with straight girls.
Hahaha you also made me laugh out loud. I like your sense of humor!
I’m actually going to try this, if I can practice it enough to keep a straight face. I will report back with my findings.
The trick (if there is one) is to use whatever voice YOU think would be sexy.
BONUS BONUS story, all my friends (including the straight girl I was hopelessly, secretly, banally in love with) knew about this pickup line of mine, and I actually deployed it on said straight girl, but she thought I was joking, and I predictably played it off as a joke anyway to save face for us both. (We are still friends. The hopeless secret banal love eventually dared to speak its name, and we are still friends. A miracle.)
I have this window shrunk into a narrow sidebar, so your parenthetical looks like this:
(We are
still friends.
The
hopeless
secret
banal love
eventually
dared to
speak its
name, and
we are
still
friends. A
miracle.)
So, that’s pretty much a William Carlos Williams poem right there.
I remember buying a stamp at a post office vending machine with a $20, and getting a bucketful of $1 coins in change. I had a hell of a time spending them – there is no slot in the cash register! The waiter thinks I’m trying to stiff him! Ah, fun times.
I was SO FURIOUS when that happened to me! The early 2000s were a dark time, and the ice cream place next to the post office in my town was 100% over people sheepishly buying ice cream with coins.
I don’t know if it still does, been ages since I’ve been through there, but if you buy a bus ticket from the machines in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC, you got your change in $ coins. I always liked that. 🙂
The train ticket machines in Chicago were doing that for a while! It would really weigh down your pockets for the rest of the excursion. I like dollar coins, but not to have fifteen of them at once.
The transit system where I am gives out quarters as change. I would love it if dollar coins were an option. (Or, you know, paper money, but that seems like an impossible dream for these beat up old ticket machines.)
BRB going to see if the MetroCard machines still do this too.
I would love to have a stash of dollar coins because I take the toll road twice a week and I REFUSE to buy a SmartPass.
The vending machine in our office used to do dollar coins as change too, which was fine by me, because I basically only use cash for vending machines or tipping street musicians, and dollar coins are great for that. (Now our machine takes credit cards)
We are saving our Sacagawea coins in a little jar, hidden for now, awaiting the time that the Tooth Fairy will start making visits to our house. I just feel like the Tooth Fairy is more of a coin-carrying kind of Fairy who leaves paper money to the diurnal humans.
Excellent plan!
I definitely still have a stack of Susan B. Anthony dollars from the tooth fairy!
Our Tooth Fairy traded in gold dollar coins, but was not finicky about whose picture was on them. Presidents spend just as well as Sacajawea.
NB: You can buy a roll from your bank once your supply starts running low, if needed. When my kids were losing their teeth, they were still producing the coins and you could get uncirculated rolls full of super-shiny coins. They were almost magical.
Good to know, thanks!
We are also considering that our Tooth Fairy might leave a shiny golden dollar PLUS another Coin Of The World. For extra sparkle and delight?
That’s a great idea! I would have loved that as a little girl.
I know! I just got one George Washington, although when possible, my Tooth Fairy made sure to leave a Bicentennial quarter (I was born in 1976 so I still have a stash somewhere of un-spend-able 1976 quarters, which I still love).
I TOO AM A BICENTENNIAL BABY AND I TOO HAD A STASH OF 1976 COINS FOR YEARS.
Apparently this serendipitous fact requires typographical shouting. I definitely spent them eventually, though.
They pushed them pretty heavily, but what they didn’t do was start pulling the dollar bills out of circulation (or just not replacing the old ones). If you are going to change the currency you can’t give people the option of sticking with the old way.
Yup. We’ve switched to coins for $1 and $2 in Canada, and it seems pretty obvious that the reason we aren’t still dealing with one and two dollar bills here is that they very sensibly quit printing them when they introduced the coins.
The ticket machines on the T in Boston give change in dollar coins and I always try to spend them ASAP because I don’t enjoy carrying them around. I’ve lived in countries on the Euro and didn’t mind the 1 and 2 euro coins, but for some reason the Sacagawea coins seem like more of a nuisance. Maybe they’re heavier or thicker than the European ones?
They are heavier and larger than even the 2 Euro coins and its a pain.
They’re also significantly heavier and larger than the common US coins. When I have a handful of Euro coins, there’s a certain sense that it all makes, gradation wise.
A handful of US coins is nonsense, all screwy wrt size and weight, and trying to pay with them makes me feel foolish. Coins are only for dropping in the jar when you get home! Not for spending! Don’t bother holding on to anything but the quarters, until you have a jar full to exchange for Real Money.
Euros really do make so much sense. Even more than pounds do, at least in my understanding. It’s probably because they started from scratch and didn’t have to deal with all the drama that goes into creating new currency in the US (4 years until we can even see a design of the Tubman $20?!)
You know what happened to all those coins? We shipped them to countries that use the US dollar in place of printing their own currency! I was in Ecuador several years ago and made most of my transactions using Sacajawea dollars.
I got one in change last summer when I took the ferry from Seattle to the Kitsap Peninsula! It was SO WEIRD. And then later THAT SAME DAY, I got a two-dollar bill in change when I bought something. Twilight Zone, I’m telling you.
Harriet Tubman! Susan B. Anthony! Elizabeth Cady Stanton! Lucretia Mott! Alice Paul! Sojourner Truth! Marian Anderson! Eleanor Roosevelt! Martin Luther King Jr.!
They are all going to be on our money that we use all the time! Kids are going to be born that will think that the money we currently have is a joke because all they know is money with women and POC on them! I’m so happy!
Man, I am so excited about it! Honestly, I kind of wish we did a little more of what the English do, and have the people on the currency rotate more frequently, and include figures of cultural importance as well as political figures. Let’s see Mark Twain on one! (Heck, put him on the $50 with Grant, they were bros), or a Julia Ward Howe one!
oh good heavens I would easily pay $50 for a tiny portrait of Twain and Grant together.
With Twain giving Grant bunny ears.
There are so many Big Deal figures in US history that have never been on currency! Seconded on Mark Twain, and I’m also thinking Frederick Douglass, Frances Perkins, Cesar Chavez, Black Elk, plus a whole bunch of astronauts, painters, and writers.
It kind of reminds me of the statues in the US Capitol from each state– every state is supposed to have statues of two of their most prominent historical citizens, but like half of them are just “some dude who was a mediocre governor in 1842,” most of whom would get like two paragraphs in a book on their state’s history today. Whereas those same states have produced plenty of people who are widely admired but who weren’t elected officials.
I can’t imagine “them” putting Cesar Chavez on currency.
OTOH, I couldn’t imagine Harriet Tubman 20 years ago, so I guess things do evolve eventually.
I could definitely see it happening in a decade or so. There are already a number of states where his birthday is an official holiday.
Portland named a street after him.
Oh man, let’s pick a bill and put Douglass on the front and Twain on the back, with ludicrous amounts of micro-printed excerpts of their writing in the scroll-work.
“conscience clauses” offend me really deeply, I don’t understand…I guess I don’t really understand a religious principle that says, “well, you’ve taken on this tremendous responsibility to help and care for others, but it’s okay for you to shirk that responsibility sometimes if you feel like the person doesn’t deserve it.”
“Religious freedom” is really the grossest euphemism for denying the humanity of others.
the thing is, I am not in favor of denying the humanity of others, I am opposed to that, full stop.
BUT ALSO I am so mad about these things because I am grossly offended when people shirk their responsibilities? Like if you are a doctor, you are supposed to treat people even though you hate them. That is what it means to be a doctor, you took a motherfucking OATH. What kind of fucking conscience do you have that lets you VIOLATE YOUR FUCKING OATHS?
I don’t know it makes me so mad like, I guess I can understand respecting someone who disagrees with me about basic principles of humanity — I don’t like that person, but I can respect them as having a morality? But I flat-out cannot respect a person who takes an oath and then expects that their are circumstances under which they don’t have to follow it.
Absolutely. There is definitely a difference between a cake baker refusing to do a gay wedding and a person who literally holds life and death in their hands choosing whom they do and do not want to help. It goes against everything doctors are supposed to stand for. I would still be angry with the baker, and I think rightly so, but at least they are not making cakes with arsenic in them? (Presumably.)
Yeah, it’s not like anyone made them become a doctor or a shrink or whatever. And once they did their career ceased to BE about their personal feelings, because that is what an oath is. They are now in service to others in that area of their life, because in order to be a doctor you’d have to be. If they can’t handle that then tough titty as far as I am concerned.
This entirely. If you’re not on board with all the responsibilities of the job, FFS there are plenty of other careers open to you. The thing is, I think there’s an actual movement of other-haters who are going into “helping” professions specifically so they can not help certain kinds of people. (Can’t remember the source, but I think especially in the field of pharmacy.) All I can say is, since they are all people who believe in hell, I look forward to them ultimately burning in it.
Not to mention how outrageous it is that the circumstances under which they want to apply their “religious freedom” to break their fucking oath isn’t like “that guy is a serial killer/pedophile” but “ew he sleeps with another man so I don’t want to treat his sinus infection.” How fucking dare you — just get out, get out, leave this country.
There are doctors and nurses in this town who treated the fucking Marathon bomber when he was brought to the ER, and continued to treat him for as long as it took to get him stable. They did not get to refuse because they disapproved.
If those doctors can take their responsibility seriously enough to treat that guy, those other doctors in those horrifically close-minded states? They can keep it together to treat LGBT people, or people who want to have some sex without being married, or people who need or want birth control.
it’s okay for you to shirk that responsibility sometimes if you feel like the person doesn’t deserve it.
*sigh* that is actually what it is, isn’t it?
I once had a patient (as an RN, not as a midwife) who was on the Village Voice’s list of Worst Slumlords, many years running. For privacy reasons I can’t relate what brought him to the hospital, but I will describe it as sub-stellar behavior. For privacy reasons, I can’t tell you how he landed on that VV list. I couldn’t stand to breathe the same air as that piece of dreck. But I still did my damn job.
How weak, how unformed, how vulnerable must be the consciences of those who feel so threatened by the presence of something they call evil, that they need to OPT OUT of treating, e.g., chlamydia in a person just because that person is not married. It takes literally five seconds to treat chlamydia, and if untreated the infection can lead to sterility. OH WELL.
Exactly you’ve got a fucking responsibility.
Even the baker who doesn’t want to bake a gay wedding cake, like I guess I understand that, that guy is an asshole, but privately I also think that if you are a baker you’ve got a responsibility to bake cakes for the people, so I still consider it a kind of betrayal of your duty.
I want to think that the baker would still give bread to a starving gay person (although I could be wrong).
Starving gay celibate person? Maybe.
I don’t think they believe one can be gay and celibate.
The official teaching of the US Catholic Bishops is that gay celibate people are not sinners. And I am related to many evangelicals who believe that God does indeed make some people who are gay, and that is their cross to bear, and they must bear that cross without falling into sin.
nothing makes me want to engage in lesbian orgies more than that.
Oh yeah, man. I’ve heard it taught that this was Paul’s “thorn in his flesh” and why he never married/was a misogynistic douchebag, but hey he stayed celibate (how do we know he stayed celibate? BECAUSE I SAID SO) so let that be an example to you.
Yeah, I’m just having so much trouble reconciling this law with my lived experience working in healthcare. Working in hospitals exposes you to some really problematic people, as well as a lot of really crazy situations affecting non-problematic people. The idea that it’s a couple of unmarried kids with STI’s that would wind up being the thing that gives a healthcare provider the vapors is completely baffling to me.
Seriously, this makes absolutely no sense to me. Do doctors also have the option of not treating convicted criminals? Do they have the option of not treating politicians who don’t share their views? Do they have the option of not treating a person of a different faith?
Why does the state find it acceptable to draw boundaries around sexual orientation, but not any other kind of behaviour an individual may find immoral???
I feel like “What would Jesus do?” is a totally appropriate question here. When he was going around healing the sick I don’t think he first asked whether any of them were having sex outside of marriage.
I feel like there’s a couple of famous incidents where Jesus actually stood up for people that society otherwise condemned? I’m trying to remember exactly, I don’t know, something about being friends with prostitutes and tax collectors?
pedantic Christian bore
There are a number of stories in scripture that tend to be interpreted that way these days. Jesus! Caring about outcasts! Screw your religio-social norms!
However, scrape the surface of that interpretation and under the liberal veneer is an anti-semitic hermeneutic that frames 1st century Judaism as intolerant and legalistic in contrast to Jesus and his band of merry followers (who, oh look, retro-actively are read as ‘christian).
/end pedantic Christian bore
That is fine, I am sure there are plenty of places where Jewish tradition would also stand up for the poor and the outcast, but for the most part it’s not the Jews who are agitating for exceptions to their medical responsibilities.
One of my favorite bits of medical trivia is how many pregnant Christian women would seek out Jewish doctors to deliver their babies (in the 19th/ early 20th c.), because it was well known that they would “save the life of the mother”.
(As opposed to other doctors who were strictly anti-abortion and would prioritize saving the fetus at all costs).
In the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s servant, he doesn’t cross-examine the centurion to find out if their relationship is sexual or not. He just marvels at the depth of the centurion’s faith and heals the servant long distance.
It also seems really inconsistent with the message of the Gospels.
Like, Jesus was friends with tax collectors, who were not generally beloved, and he hung out with women and treated them like equals (the whole “Mary Magdelene was a prostitute” thing isn’t actually in the text, it came from a Pope many years later).
He straight up SAID “whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me” and also things like “do not judge” and “love your neighbor as yourself”. How do you reconcile those teachings with a belief that you have the right to withhold medical care from someone you deem to be a sinner? (Especially when “all have sinned and fall short”)
Yeah, Mary Magdelene wasn’t a prostitute, but there is the adulteress in John (often commonly taken as a prostitute, and also the one who was incorrectly conflated with Mary Magdelene).
But yeah, and ALSO tax collectors in Roman days were incredibly bad guys, like they were not just civil servants who had an unpleasant responsibility to collect revenues for the Empire — they were basically part of a mercenary cohort who was subcontracted by Rome to extort as much money as possible from conquered populations.
Haven’t these people seen Star Trek? You’re a doctor! You have to treat the Romulan! If the Romulan says “but why are you treating me, I am your enemy” then okay, you’re allowed to be a bit smug in your response, unless you’re Beverly because she was always too cool to be smug, but you still treat the damn Romulan!
<3
Sadly, I am pretty sure these a-holes have never seen Star Trek. Maybe we should push for compulsory viewings in public middle school? (That I’m sure some would want to opt-out of with an effing conscience clause.)
Med School Required Reading:
Dang, Publishers Weekly, way to seriously phone in that blurb. (More like Publishers Weakly, amirite?)
What Would Bones Do
Beverly had the “sassy raised eyebrow” game, though <3
My dad was attracted to Beverly Crusher and I was always appalled that he would want to tell his children such things.
And now I have a child. Poor thing.
Your dad is a man of excellent taste, if you ask me.
I feel like we need an amendment to all these bills, wherein anyone who wants to take advantage of the clause has to post a huge sign in front of their business that says “I’M JUST SCREWING AROUND HERE, TAKE YOUR BUSINESS ELSEWHERE IF YOU’RE AN ADULT WHO’S GOT SHIT TO DO”
But of course the whole point is that lots of people don’t really have the option of going to a different psychologist or whatever. I mean I live in a large city and have good insurance and still have a hell of a time getting an appointment.
AGREE TOTALLY. Don’t let me waste my time. MY conscience has feelings too, and it permits me to comparison shop.
HEY, these phobic pricks have RIGHTS that they are FREE to exercise without fear of retribution or repercussion! HOW DARE YOU take your business elsewhere??? That’s even worse bigotry! Lo, I am slain!
I feel like this is such a complete redefinition of what conscience and conscientious objections even mean. I’m sure there are religious/historical scholars who would have a better lens on this, but your conscience should bind YOU, not other people. How does waiting on or serving or treating someone else violate your beliefs? It seems like your conscience should only affect your own personal life and not anyone else’s. I would be very interested in a historical take on this and how that’s been interpreted in the past.
(I’m trying to engage with this on the terms given; obviously I vehemently disagree with the whole premise but I’m really curious about how “conscience” is interpreted.)
Did this whole idea start with abortion? Because that’s definitely a case where they’re not content with the idea that if you don’t want one, don’t have one, it instead has to be forced on everyone else. (And has extended to contraception and so on.) Does a book on this exist? Because if so, I want to read it.
Yeah right? Like, I don’t believe it’s right to take another person’s life except in extreme cases of self defense, and that’s why I won’t join the army — I’m not going to accept a responsibility that’s going to put me in conflict with my conscience. And there are exceptions for conscientious objectors, but if there weren’t I would probably go to jail rather than accept being drafted, because that’s how conscience works. If you don’t think your conscience will let you do your job then you quit your fucking job, man, that is what morality is! It’s when you do the right thing even though there are negative personal consequences! It is not when you do the right thing and then petition the government to make those consequences go away!.
And religious freedom would then mean the government can’t force you to return to practicing medicine, because then you might have to provide actual medical care to actual human beings with whom you disagreed. But you still have to quit your job if you’re not willing to do it, man.
To jump onto what braak also replies to you: Conscientious objectors, in a draft situation, are indeed often drafted into actual military service, it’s just not combat. They’re still part of the military system (medical staff, chaplains, administrative staff) but they don’t kill people, because ending the life of another human being ends the life of another human being. (And of course if you can’t even do those kinds of military jobs, yes, you go to jail.)
You should definitely read When Abortion was a Crime by Leslie Regan, which I have recommended in Toast comments before, and which I will surely recommend again.
Yeah, see, this is what makes sense to me. It’s only them and they are only allowed to opt out of that one piece of it. Not be like, I am offended by treating someone who shot or was shot and therefore I cannot participate at all (and you’d be court martialed or something if you tried, right?).
And thank you for the recommendation!
I had a great uncle that served in World War II as a medic because he refused to be put in a situation where he might have to kill someone, so.
I don’t know about it, if there WERE a draft I think I’d have to have a real deep think about whether or not it counted if I were participating in the army in general (and also whether or not it counts that I’m just paying taxes for the army), but there isn’t a draft so I am letting it slide for now.
I have had a lot of overly-anxious, ruminative thinking about the advice I would give my son should he be drafted (which could not legally happen for the next 13 years! But I am prepared!).
yeah it’s a messy question but it seems to me very unlikely that the US is going to face a draft any time soon or even late.
MASH had lots of great episodes about the doctors struggling with the morality of patching up soldiers just enough that those boys could then go back to the front and get shot at again, and how much culpability the army surgeons had to bear in the whole mess.
Note: they still did their damn jobs.
It is absolutely rage inducing. I just cannot comprehend how it is a-okay to go “nah, I can’t do this area of my job, that I am paid to do, because my interpretation of my religion says so.” HOW?! WHY?!
Once, while still in university, I had to go get the morning after pill. I walked into the pharmacy (a big, chain pharmacy) and asked about it, only to be told that the only pharmacist on duty would not give it to me because it violated their religious beliefs. Luckily, I could travel to another pharmacy across town that would give it to me, but what if I couldn’t?! Some people can’t! How is one person’s adherence to religious principles more important than mine, or any other person’s health?
I get why you are upset, but in practice, the alternative is doctors providing substandard care or actively sabotaging the care of patients they deem less human. if I could have been told ahead of time that my doctors were going to misdiagnose/mistreat my health issues because I am a fat woman I could have tried to find a non-shitty doctor years ago. Obviously, the ideal solution would be for people to be less shit, or just to fire the people with moral objections to doing their jobs, but those both seem unlikely to ever happen.
Well, the correct alternative, in my opinion, is for those people to quit their jobs.
Relying on shit people to not be shit seems like the blindest of optimism.
I’m not relying on them to do anything, I am expressing anger at the fact that they’re bad people.
NO, the correct alternative is for then to have to file a statement every year to say whether they are going to exercise their ‘conscience’ clause, and for the state board to revoke their license until they rescind that “religious privilege”
by which I mean, I am not necessarily proposing a practicable alternative to conscience clauses so much as I am saying that I am personally disgusted by the notion that people would demand them for something like this.
Whereas I see them as preferable to expecting bigots to uphold their hippocratic oath because at least this way, you aren’t being made to place your well-being in the hands of someone who hates you.
Yeah I understand what you’re saying, I’m not sure why these are mutually-exclusive conditions though.
I mean theoretically there ought to be safeguards within the profession to ensure that people uphold their hippocratic oaths, I know those aren’t foolproof but an unenforceable expectation of integrity seems preferable to no expectation at all?
The unenforcable expectation of integrity has lead to some pretty severe disparities in the quality of healthcare that is being provided. I can’t stop people from being bigots, and I can’t trust bigots to provide care to the people they are bigoted against, but at least this way some of the bigots are keeping themselves away from the people they are most likely to harm.
I mean it’s not like you can call up the hospital and say “hey, is the doctor on rotation today a big asshole? OK, I’ll just find a different provider, I’m sure my insurance will be totally chill about that.” Especially if you live in a rural area where there may not be another provider. At the very least there should be some way for people who encounter an unethical healthcare provider to file a complaint. Of course we aren’t really at that place yet, but if we’re going to make a law, maybe make one that makes doctors more accountable, rather than one that says “Oh, you had a terrible/ possibly life-threatening experience? Haha that’s totally legal, you’re SOL.”
It seems to me like this should fall under the category of malpractice.
Oh yeah, how would these laws relate to malpractice? Because I can imagine scenarios where the delay/ inconvenience involved in finding an alternate provider could have demonstrable health effects.
How about Bessie Smith dying because the nearest hospital wouldn’t take black patients, and she died before she could get to the one that did?
The problem is that the “terrible/possibly life-threatening experience, you’re SOL” happens with or without conscience clauses. Bigoted doctors don’t just grit their teeth and be the best doctors they can be, they provide sub-standard/actively harmful care to patients they are bigoted against. And like you say, we aren’t at a place where people actually have some kind of recourse when they have a bad doctor. Conscience clauses aren’t creating a new problem, they are just making explicit an already extant problem and at least this way, I’m forewarned.
I guess the problem is that health care puts a lot of people in situations where they don’t really have enough choice for that forewarning to be useful. A lot of hospitals in rural/ impoverished areas (i.e. Mississippi) are really struggling because states don’t want to comply with the ACA, and as a result those hospitals are closing down/ seriously understaffed. There are plenty of people who live an hour away from their closest medical center, and people die because they can’t get to the hospital in time or there is no one available to help them when they arrive. If I am bleeding out during pregnancy and I have to get airlifted to the understaffed hospital in another town for emergency surgery, I don’t really have the option of picking the non-bigoted doctor. I can only hope that the surgeon on shift can be cajoled into seeing me no matter what he privately believes about the situation.
I don’t know about other jurisdictions but in Ontario you can file a complaint against any doctor who “you think did not meet the high standards set for the medical profession.”
Not everybody knows this though, I only found out when a terrible thing happened because I went to a psychiatrist. And then I never actually filed against him because I was too busy unfucking myself from having seen him.
“it’s not like you can call up the hospital and say “hey, is the doctor on rotation today a big asshole?”
(I call my mom, who works at the hospital and knows all the doctors either personally or by reputation)
Or medical boards revoking the licenses of physicians who refuse to treat certain people.
See, I think that the problem with that is that it would actually be an effective deterrent. It wouldn’t stop them from being bigots, it would just make them more covert about it and I don’t want people to end up in the situation where the person in charge of their care is bigoted against them. By the point that a society is shitty enough that the bigoted person has become a doctor, any attempt to deal with the issue on the doctor level is going to just be putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. In order to actually fix the issue, there needs to be a large cultural shift because without one, the disparities will continue to exist, just in way that is more hidden and more difficult for vulnerable people to avoid/deal with.
But if I need emergency surgery, I would like for the person performing that surgery to not have the option of letting me die. I’d much prefer that bigot to be employed as a glass blower or something that has no actual power over my life.
The Mallorese dialect follows Mallory rules, in punctuation as in all things. Deleted commenter, when at Toast, do as the Toasties do: keep an ear for the language and go along for the ride. You just might learn to laugh at something.
Maybe even LIVE LAUGH LOVE like Nicole
“But, is that picture supposed to be ironic? What if I already have that many precious moments figurines?”
Linguist Explains Mallorese
Only some people want a baby, everyone wants Hamilton tickets.
This is great, and the best part is obviously the man in his cage (what?).
At least they gave him a book.
MY LIFE
This is my favorite thing.
That’s the same crate we have!
My dear sweet Mr Daki is going to spend a couple of months taking care of his mom as soon as his school year is over, which means he won’t be with us when we go to Hamilton.
I am so excited bc now I get to take my Hamilton-obsessed niece with us.
(um, my mother-in-law will be okay; she fell & fractured her pelvis & we don’t want her living alone / going up and down stairs / driving until she’s fully recovered.)
I’m not letting myself be excited about this because Tate Britain are t h e w o r s t for promising exhibitions that turn out to be shitty and conservative (wanna yell about the Art of Empire show with me? Because I am here for that), but:
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhi… thoughts?
(I WILL FINISH WRITING MY DISSERTATION TODAY I WILL I WILL I WILL aaaaaargh if you see me here again today pls yell at me and if I’m in the OT tomorrow and it’s not done and I haven’t started my history paper, ban me for life)
Yeah, I’m a bit sceptical about the use of ‘queer’ in the title, but the curator is a lesbian who seems to be consciously using it in a political sense rather than as a depoliticised catch all term… also, see this great quote from her “I grew up in the 1980s under section 28 and that made it very difficult to come out as a lesbian … The only role models that existed made me think that to be lesbian I had to get tattoos and piercings and die in a motorcycle accident.” I mean… it’s not a bad way to be a lesbian.
I’m fuzzy on using ‘queer’ too, especially since it seems to have a pretty cis male focus. But maybe that’s just the artists they’re using for promo?
Wait and see on that one I think. The new Tate Modern will apparently be FULL OF WOMEN (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/apr/14/tate-modern-extension-london-south-bank-women) but whether that attitude is reflected in the rest of the Tate group – I’m not so sure.
As a Bostonian I did a massive double-take at seeing John Singer Sargent on that list! But cautious interest, I guess?
GO WRITE YOUR DISSERTATION!!!!! YOU CAN DO IT!!!! WE BELIEVE IN YOU!
Do you really think a straight man could have painted Portrait of Madame X? (I mean yeah but it’s always seemed super gay to me)
Haha, I meant the “British” part! He did the murals at the Museum of Fine Art and they have a ton of his paintings so I always mentally associate him with our city.
Tate Britain, whose remit is officially “British art and British art only”, have previously hosted an exhibition on Picasso (and his influence on British artists, fine, but it was a Picasso show let’s not pretend anyone looked at the other stuff). They will claim anyone who’s ever spent more than five minutes in Britain.
GIT ER DONE
What was wrong with the artist and empire exhibition?
I had really unrealistically high hopes, which is my fault. I also wrote a paper on it for uni, and I think most of my criticisms came from spending too much time thinking about it, but I found it tried to do too much and ended up being a messy surface reading, and played it safe when it came to addressing the darker, bloodier bits of history.
Mainly I was annoyed that they tried to collapse time and geography, but still quarantined most of the contemporary work into the last room when it could have been much more effective to create a dialogue between the imperial art and the modern response.
And I’m concerned that although it was incomplete it’ll be a nice box ticker for the big British institutions, and now empire/colonialism have been officially “done” for the next ten years.
I’m trying to decide whether or not I’m going to write about it for an upcoming project. There were various problems with it but the curators/researchers mentioned the exhibit was in part a reaction to these narratives not being taught in British schools, so I saw it as a kind of condensed parallel to the official narrative. I really hated the exhibit’s analyses of some of the works, though; the audio guide got really patronizing
I didn’t see it, but didn’t it also ignore the fact they are the TATE galleries, I.e. built with wealth from sugar I.e. slavery?
Yes. Exactly. And no mention of how anything came to be in British collections, or how much was paid for with money that came from slavery (a lot). So much was wrong. And I take back saying the faults came from me thinking about it too much. They were definitely real and wrong.
I think it’s going to be good. I work at Another Big Museum in London, and attend our LGBT+ committee which has pretty close links to this show and the people working on it. It’s very deliberately positioned as a 50th anniversary commemoration/celebration of the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK.
This is good to hear! I have been disappointed by a lot of Big Museum in London shows recently, and while I’m obviously not going to give up on them I’m trying to lower my expectations and be a bit more realistic – just because they’re not perfect/how I want them to be doesn’t mean they’re bad!
There’s just so much that goes into making a big exhibition happen – literally years of planning, and multiple people having input – that very often the final product is quite far removed from the original curatorial conception. From things like not being able to secure an important artwork for loan, to having the learning/education department drastically edit the label texts (for accessibility, consistency, what have you), the curators of a show don’t always have as much control over the end result as you might assume.
(but there are some really bad exhibitions out there)
I know. Artist and Empire was interesting to watch unfold, because my lecturer was one of the academics (not curators) behind it, and she was extremely disappointed with the end result. I understand the process, but I’m still frustrated by it. I’m about to graduate, and I am so torn over the idea of working for major galleries like the Tate – there’s so much potential to do something brilliant and challenging, but it seems like there isn’t actually any enthusiasm from the institutions.
Jumping in to be a pedant – the Sexual Offences Act 1967 only affected England and Wales. Homosexual acts weren’t decriminalised in Scotland until 1980 and in Northern Ireland until 1982. (But thanks for the reminder of the anniversary – I should make sure my library puts up a display for it!)
You’re quite right, thank you. (As usual, Northern Ireland lags behind on the progressivism thing, thanks a bunch DUP).
Best of luck with finishing the dissertation!
The fact that that Ask a Manager letter and this Newsweek article (“The Fight to End Period Shaming is Going Mainstream”) were posted the same day is serendipitous, to say the least: http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/29/womens-periods….
Related: I keep an open Safari tab (on my phone) at all times of this Atlantic article from last year: Don’t Let Them See Your Tampons.
My own mother invariably referred to menstrual products as “supplies” (pronouncing it “[long pause] soooo-PLIZE [another pause, eyebrows]” so as to differentiate it from, you know, baking supplies or camping supplies or school supplies) and I like to think of it as a tiny victory every time I unflincingly say the word “tampon” in her presence. (Once we were visiting my parents and my wife got her period unexpectedly. “Oh, we’re just going to the pharmacy to buy some pads,” I told my mom. “Do you mean [pause, wince] pads like supplies?”)
Mom: “Do you need any supplies?”
Me: “Yeah, could you pick up some super-plus tampons and those Infinite pads?”
The woman made me a fucking pad gift basket for when my period “began my womanhood” or what the fuck ever and she can’t say what she put in it.
That is the exact same pronunciation my mom uses! And now I use it to, just because it’s habit. But I also say things like “FOR MY BLEEDING VAG” and “it’s like the elevator scene in the shining down there!” and “BLOOD FARTS” so I feel like it evens out?
Every time I see the word “tampon” I think of the movie We’re The Millers and how the Edie character says “TAMpun” (and then I think NO RAGRETS). 😉
Let’s begin with the obvious: Every woman in the history of humanity has or had a period.
WELL, ACTUALLY, NEWSWEEK…
I know, right? SO MUCH of period-related activism is ridiculously cissexist as if by fucking default.
Also, there are a fair number of cis-women who have never menstruated due to medical issues.
The first sentence alone of that link is frustrating though… most women have periods but not EVERY…
I finally got around to reading this, and WOW:
“While sifting through survey results from product pilot tests, Sierra found a dusty page from a girl in Mbola, Tanzania. Answering the question, ‘What do you like most about the menstrual pads?’ the girl wrote that she was ‘so happy because she knew someone somewhere loved her,’ Sierra recalls, ‘because that person made something so beautiful that she was so proud to be girl.’ And so the name of Sierra’s company was born. ‘Here you have a girl continents away telling you that something as simple as a sanitary pad is giving her…a sense of dignity and pride,’ she says. ‘Being able to run, walk with confidence, be comfortable and clean…. That’s all you want as a designer, that assurance that what you’re doing matters.’”
Do not attempt to deprive a German of her rightful share of sausages.
I lol’ed so hard when I first read that one — glad it made international news.
“Oy, you there, with the sausages poking out of your suit-pockets!”
Who orders a non-integer multiple of discrete food items? “Oh it’ll all even out I’m sure. Why, I bet some people wont even eat 2.”
THAT IS ASKING FOR TROUBLE.
This is delightful. Thank you for sharing!
It’s funny because Swabians (Daimler headquarters are in Stuttgart, I think?) are infamous for being really cheap. You’re a shareholder in Daimler but feel the need to take buffet food home with you. It’s just so perfect.
A question of some controversy: Tom Hiddleston playing Lord Peter Wimsey, would it work, yes or no?
YES. I have also been vocal about this on the DLS group on facebook.
My first instinct would be yes (although my personal vote would be for Tom Hollander.)
It would also depend almost entirely upon who’s playing Harriet Vane. (How about Freema Agyeman? That would blow some people’s minds, I think.)
I am gasping in delight at how much I’d love her as Harriet!
Ooh, I had the same thought about Tom Hollander! And hell yes to Freema, that would be fantastic.
Ooh, yes to Freema! That’s … that’s an amazing suggestion.
Is there a legit possibility of this?? Because I am in camp ALL THE YES for Lord Peter Hiddleston. And I am not even a person who knows that much about Hiddleston.
Zero legit possibility. Hiddleston just gets raised in Lord Peter dream casts a lot, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.
I mean, it would be amazing, but he doesn’t look as rabbity as Lord Peter, IMO.
Yes! But please keep him away from Bond (he’s been mentioned).
Oh wow, he’d be perfect!
In ten years, maybe? He’s too young for me (well, not for me-me, but too young to play Lord Peter, in my eyes).
And who’d be his Harriet??
Unless he did all of them in ‘real time’ over the next 10 years…
Yes, of course! I totally forgot that he is obviously not 45 in the first books.
Uh, yes to this. Let’s do ALL the books (except Five Red Herrings)
He’s too tall, but we can’t have everything.
Too tall and from Night Manager evidence, also too muscle-y. As you say, we can’t have everything. No way yet of smelling verbena scented cologne through the television either.
Some day. Brave New World promised us scent movies, and the world has yet to deliver.
Personally, I could do without The Nine Tailors. (I thought it was about clothes-tailors at first. I assume you can imagine my disappointment.)
The Nine Tailors is an incredible work, although it needs to be taken at its own pace. It can seem really dry, and then it just sucks you in.
Yeah, I think it’s one that really rewards rereading. (Five Red Herrings, however, never fails to bore me. I cannot keep all of the suspects straight and I don’t care.)
But The Nine Tailors is how I learned that there’s such a thing as campanology and that ringing bells is actually very complicated and I kind of loved that. (Doubt that would translate to 21st century screen though!)
Yes me too!
There’s a 2002 Midsomer Murders episode called “Ring Out Your Dead” about bell ringing, so it’s still hanging around as a mystery trope* (what ho! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes… ) though considering Midsomer County to be truly of the 21st century is, perhaps, dubious…
(*I mean, really, it’s probably just a straight reference to/ripoff of Wimsey)
IT WOULD TRANSLATE BEAUTIFULLY.
ALL THE LOVELY CHANGE RINGING. FORGET THE MURDER PLOT. JUST THE BELLS.
(I, uh, might have strong opinions in favour of bells & Nine Tailors)
Five Red Herrings! I read that one. All the way through, despite all the phonetically spelled brogue.
The Harriet dilemma is a very good question.
Emily Blunt. She has a cool, sharp, wry delivery that pops out now and then and it’s exactly as I hear Harriet in my head.
Possibly too pretty?
I am much less invested in the Harriet question than the Bunter question – and alarmed that I cannot even think of any possible Bunters!
Oh no! Who would be Bunter?? This is a vital question.
Actually, I could see Hiddleston as Bunter rather than Wimsey. He’s too tall and goodlooking for Wimsey (who’s supposed to have a fairly silly face), but Bunter has no such limitations.
I don’t have an alternate Wimsey to put forward, though.
Half of the world’s population: Hiddles looks too weird to be handsome, y’all are strange for being obsessed with him!
The other half: He’s gorgeous and he doesn’t look anywhere weird enough to play Wimsey!
Bunter DOES need to be at least somewhat handsome, and maybe very very mildly sociopathic? He has to flirt and scheme all the time to get info for Lord Peter. Thus I tentatively recommend Rob James Collier or James D’Arcy.
Lord Peter even says he’ll pay up if Bunter gets sued for breach of promise! I love reading about Bunter flattering unsuspecting women to get information.
That’s why I asked about Harriet – I couldn’t think of a Bunter! No one is as perfect as Bunter is; no one could do him justice.
Absolutely concur. I had a dog once that I named Bunter. He wasn’t perfect, either, but it was as close as I could come.
I am planning to devote a substantial amount of time tonight to figuring this out.
Mark Sheppard.
Bunter is such an enigma!
Me. I would be his Harriet.
Someone age appropriate, please and thank you
This is the first time I have seen any mention of it! I think it’d work, maybe with Ruth Wilson as Harriet?
Ohhh, bold suggestion. But I think I could work with that. (Not that I have anything to say, but still.)
Edit: Now I’m sad about Luther again 🙁
Ruth Wilson has the right kind of interesting face for Harriet.
Ah, see, Ruth Wilson is just on the wrong side of pretty for me. Perfect.
I see him as more of a Saint-George, tbh.
(Who survived the war, by the way. He totally did and settled down and married a woman with a good head on her shoulders who shepherded Denver through the mid-20th century. He was fine. He lived. Lalalalalaanything that says he did not isn’t canon anyway.)
Also, any revamp of the Vane/Wimsey series must have Harriet Walter in it *somewhere*.
What? No. What?? (I’m referring to Saint-George.)
Let’s just say I recommend avoiding the Jill Paton Walsh sequels *anyway*.
Heartily agree, they are the worst. (Well, I only read the first one, but that was plenty.)
Oh, that’s a shame! I haven’t read that one, but The Attenbury Emeralds was amazingly good, I thought. Like A+ fanfiction. (There was great historical stuff about WWII Britain and also the decline of the aristocracy, etc.)
I haven’t read it in a while, but my recollection is that there was nothing wrong with the mystery itself, but Walsh completely missed out on what made Wimsey and Harriet such great characters. Half their dialogue was just a repeat of their conversations in Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon. (Also, I have heard about this killing-St.-George travesty and want nothing to do with it.)
OH, I just remembered another reason I lovedlovedloved this book: its exploration of Wimsey’s PTSD after WWI. And all the ways Bunter helped him cope when he couldn’t bear to give anything resembling an order and had severe anxiety about social situations. Details that would have redeemed this book no matter what else happened: the first time they spent the night in someone else’s house for a big party, Bunter slipped out of the servants’ quarters to make up a cot in Wimsey’s room, to be on call during the night. And then modern-day Wimsey reflecting, “I think I went for months with no better purpose in life than not disappointing Bunter.” OH MY HEART.
I’ve read those other books you mentioned, and hm, none of the dialogue reminded me of them, but YMMV!
The reviews on Amazon disagree with me, too, so no worries! Sometimes I’m just a curmudgeon when it comes to these things. 🙂
The first is the best one (thanks, probably, to the Sayers material); you’re not missing much.
Hmm, he’s too old for Saint-George for me, Saint-George really needs more of the baby-face youth about him (unless it’s a 1950s murder set at Denver in which Saint-George is CLEARLY STILL ALIVE AND HAPPILY MARRIED).
Agreed on Harriet Walter.
Oooh, I could see it! Edward Petherbridge in the BBC miniseries from the 80s had the look, but was a decade older than the character even in the last book, which made it hard for me to be fully on board.
Much too tall. He’d have to crouch. Or stand in a hole.
Has the re-posting of the Two Monks series caused “Ah, si mon moine” to be stuck in anyone else’s head?
Ah, si mon moine voulait peindre,
Ah, si mon moine voulait peindre,
Une femme sans coeur je lui donnerais,
Une femme sans coeur je lui donnerais.
This would be better if I had actually learned French. I don’t suppose any Francophone Toasts would care to take the wheel?
Nope! Mostly because i had totally forgotten about this song and never really worked the lyrics out. BUT. Anyone else remember the Medieval Babes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8U27cXXg6M
This…compares favorably to the version that followed me around from middle school to college choirs. 🙂
I got that CD from my very first academic crush – Chaucer prof. He remembered EVERYTHING about the books that he read, even ISBNs. Then he married the illustrator for his book and my dreams were CRUSHED, but I still got the Medieval Babes!
Their version of Tam Lin is my fave, and I have about… three? I might have a problem.
Yesssssss! I listened to them so much as a tiny child! I spent many long roadtrips begging for my dad to play Ah! Si Mon Moine or Kinderly. For a while, I thought they were the same song actually, Ah! Si Mon Moine going directly into Kinderly. I tried to sing along sometimes but I didn’t even know what language they were in so it was mostly, “Ah! mon lala DANSER!”
Then, in high school, a French girl moved in with me and I was like “Oh! It’s French!” and demanded she translate it for me. She grumbled about the pronunciation (or something? this was a while ago) but we bonded over it. So much love for them.
“Ah, if my monk wanted to paint
Ah, if my monk wanted to paint
A heartless woman I would give him
A heartless woman I would give him”
Yes- the original song is about “if my monk wanted to *dance*” and suggests giving him a monk’s habit and a belt and a hymnbook and things, but I wanted one about monks who wanted to paint, and could only think of the French for “woman with no heart” (big hair implied!) and not “emotionally destroyed dog”, “cup of horror”, “inaccurate map” or “tornado with head sticking out.” 🙂
And there’s still the chorus- “Peignez, o moines, peignez?”
Well now I have that song in my head. For the Toastie version, maybe swap out “peindre” for “dessiner”…it’s not ideal but it rhymes? Or use “créer,” create, to cover the full range of monk creativity.
Nice! Créer would take in the maps and religious denominations as well!
Holy crap I haven’t heard that song in at least 15 years and it got instantly stuck in my head just from reading the lyrics. I guess that’s what 8 years in a professional children’s choir will do to a person.
I was at San Diego Comic Con in 2013, and Hiddleston appearing before Hall H in full Loki garb (and in character) was one the greatest things I have ever seen. The crowd went absolutely wild. I took like one picture because I was too busy cheering. Just the best. That cemented my big ol’ crush on him.
OH MY GOD I think my uterus would have exploded.
It was a close thing, I assure you.
But it’s on YouTube, so you too can be awed (there’s lots of flashes in the video)! https://youtu.be/toPstPIcGnI
You have no idea how many times I’ve watched ALL THE VIDEO of that.
Then again, you might…
I’d say something clever but all I can think is “You were *there*? :O”
… I wanted to post OnlyLeigh’s wonderfully appropriate video about this here, but it seems it’s gone. Now I’m sad.
Is that the one where he shushed the entire crowd and they went instantly silent?
There was at least one appearance at SDCC where he did that, and then a dude in the back yelled “My wife loves you!!” and Tom smiled.
He probably hears that a lot.
Having been thoroughly schooled as a child in the Bible, I’m PRETTY SURE that Jesus would not approve of the “religious liberty” BS.
It did not bother HIS conscience to eat with tax collectors, sinners of all stripes, prostitutes, and sick people.
YEAH right on. Like he brought Lazarus back from the DEAD and the Bible doesn’t mention that he asked questions about Laz’s sexual history.
“Mmmmkay, before I do any good-ol’ miraclin’, let’s talk for jussa sec. Did he do any sins? Like, the gross kind? No, not like, stealing or coveting or any of that shit, that’s just human nature, amirite? No, the g-r-o-s-s stuff. You know. No? You’re sure? Not even just once in boarding school after a few too many wineskins? Okay, great. Cool. Let’s do this.”
THANK YOU. I’m not a Christian but every time I see so-called Christians complaining about such thinks I think but, but, that’s not what Jesus actually said/did.
Because Jesus, being well-versed in Scripture, understood that all of the commandments about resting on the Sabbath, etc, take a backseat to healing people and otherwise preserving human life and dignity.
oh my god pads oh geez how gross I can ‘t believe it i mean that’s way grosser than tissues which no one has a problem keeping AND USING in shared spaces
*eyeroll*
If men had periods I bet there would be used mestrual products littering the streets. They are spoiled by our modesty and encouraged in their contempt.
“They are spoiled by our modesty and encouraged in their contempt.”
That is a perfect sentence. Brava/o
Oh geez no. It’s bad enough to run across used condoms in public. Could not handle.
But do you think I am wrong???
nope, not one bit.
They’d think it was hilarious when dogs grabbed them for chew toys. They’d probably give them to their dogs as treats.
Also, anyone who has ever seen a men’s restroom (note: the worst) at any office building should have no issue at all with a box of pads or tampons, which are clean and sterile and packaged up.
So I started my workday by getting a message on the office Lync instant message system from a friend who said she was tired of the internet screaming about whitewashing.
This led to an . . . interesting conversation.
ETA: “We don’t know that they only cast white people because they’d already asked all of the Asian actors and they were all busy or not interested” is not a very compelling argument, that’s all I’m saying.
I’m fairly certain that most casting directors are perfectly capable of crafting their shields of plausible deniability on their own. She does not need to help them.
And yet she would like so much to help them, it seems.
It was a wild ride of a conversation from there on out, believe you me. We went from there to the inevitable terrible “But you have to consider the historical context of the source material, all the characters were white back when it was written decades ago” thing. (Which led to me going, “Great, so why not update your adaptation to reflect a more diverse present-day instead of trying to preserve a relic of outdated racism?”)
(Her point of concern were Ghost in the Shell and Dr. Strange. She had not previously–to my knowledge–cared about either of them. She admitted she didn’t know anything about Dr. Strange until she saw the trailer . . . and yet now the whole history of this character she’d never heard of suddenly became important to preserve?)
” We went from there to the inevitable terrible “But you have to consider the historical context of the source material, all the characters were white back when it was written decades ago” thing.”
Oh, wow. “Sure it was racist THEN, but NOW… something something historical context!”
What a winner. Sorry you have to put up with this AT WORK.
I think her argument was that you can’t just yell about racism and oppression without considering the historical context first? WHICH DOES NOT MAKE IT BETTER.
Ha, okay, also full context: When I say “friend at work” I mean “friend who is both a coworker and also someone I’ve been friends with since middle school.” So I get to put up with this whenever, it turns out.
(She’s usually not too bad, comparatively, but her long-time boyfriend is the epitome of everything wrong with Straight White Dudes a lot of the time. In that way where his world has always defaulted to using people just like him as the major lens through which he gets to relate to everything, so he has never learned to relate very well to any point of view that isn’t Straight White American Guy. I’ve realized that when talking to him about media, any major character who is not those things is–in his head–a deviation from the norm and harder for him to relate to.)
(Yes, for anyone keeping score at home, these are the people I’m in that book club with that I’ve complained about on at least one Open Thread. Mostly complained about him and their roommate, who’s the worst of the three.)
hopefully she didn’t try to argue that the characters in Ghost in the Shell were actually white when it was written decades ago
Hahaha, thank god no. That was the “well, we don’t know that it’s not just all the Asians were busy” one.
“But you have to consider the historical context of the source material, all the characters were white back when it was written decades ago”
It’s true. Everyone in the world was white until, what, about 1990?
For one thing, even in this hypothetical and extremely unlikely world where you’ve asked literally ever Asian actor if they’d like to star in your cool superhero movie* and ALL OF THEM have been like “oh, no, I have to, uh, wash my hair that day,” the sensible person’s next move is to perhaps… look into why none of them are interested? Because that kind of suggests that maybe, from their point of view, there is something terrible about your movie and/or the role you are offering them?
* actually I just assumed we were talking about Dr. Strange but this could be any number of movies, couldn’t it. Alas.
Hahaha, yeah, it was Dr. Strange and Ghost in the Shell. Although when she sent her initial message about not liking people complaining about whitewashing, I kind of had to go, “You’re really gonna need to be more specific.”
And I tried to point out that in this incredibly implausible scenario she proposed, if you are literally incapable of finding an Asian person willing to be in your big movie, that’s a big problem that can’t just be fixed by shrugging and going, “Well, we tried. Guess we’ll just cast a white person; it’ll be fine.”
But the Dr. Strange portion kind of went:
HER: Everyone is complaining about Dr. Strange too.
ME: Oh, yeah, I read a lot of criticism about their decision to cast Benedict Cumberbatch when that was first announced.
HER: What? I didn’t know anyone had any problem with him? Is it because he has a weird face?
ME: . . . . What. No. What. (Attempts to explain the criticism of casting the whitest dude ever as Dr. Strange.)
HER: I just hear people complaining about Tilda Swinton, but I think she should be in everything ever.
And then, as I said in a comment above, suddenly the historical context of when it was written came into play as a defense of the fact that he’s a white character and can therefore continue to be played as a white man without issue. And I did not think at the time to question her motives on the fact that she’s defending preserving the not-necessarily-very-great racial history of a character she had never even heard of until just a few days ago when she saw the trailer.
. . . Sorry, that was a long reply.
I have a friend who is always “Well we gotta give them the benefit of the doubt, they probably had a good reason” and it infuriates me to no end
Ooooh, I have that friend too and it drives me crazy sometimes. (Different friend, this one is usually pretty cynical, except I guess in this one case when cynicism is far preferable.)
As an overall approach to life I am on board with the benefit of the doubt, when the alternative to is assume that like, someone random has a personal vendetta against me. But when the question is “is racism at work here?” in a white supremacist society, there is not actually doubt! There is racism, built into the system from the get-go.
So essentially: “validate the illogical thinking that allows me to pretend society is not racist in any way that I would need to care about… because that might require me to actually, I don’t know, DO something”?
I always think of The Crucible when someone tries to make an argument like that.
Parris: Why could there not have been poppets hid where no one ever saw them? [“Well MAYBE they DID ask all the Asian actors and they ALL said no!”]
Proctor, furious: There might also be a dragon with five legs in my house, but no one has ever seen it. [“That may be within the realm of theoretical possibility, BUT IT HARDLY SEEMS BLOODY LIKELY.”]
That is a great use for those lines. Yes.
Or, indeed, a literal five-headed dragon.
My little dog is in surgery right now to remove a thyroid tumor. Please send good thoughts. He’s an old little guy. I’ll hear the results soon, but the waiting is hell.
Good luck little dog!
Oh, little dog, I hope it goes well. [hugs] Best of luck to him and to you in your waiting and worrying. Yes, do keep us posted!
Aw, thinking of you and your buddy. Old dogs are the best dogs. <3
Hey, he’s out of surgery, and everything went well! They got the whole tumor out, and anesthesia went smoothly. He’s resting quietly. They suggested that I not visit, so as not to overexcite him, but they’ll call with an update tonight.
Thank you for the good wishes! I’m so relieved–particularly because a miscommunication meant I thought it was going to be over around 10, but I didn’t hear anything until more than 2 hours later.
HOORAY!
oh good! I hope your little dog has an uneventful recovery 🙂
YAY! Lots of gentle pats and (when he is well enough for them) treats for your little buddy!
Hurrah!
But what about the later AAM letter about the boss who refuses to give raises even when transferring to a higher CoL area, retroactively removes vacation time, and wants his employees to house and chauffeur his nephew.
MURDER HIM
Maybe what the-Toast needs is an open thread every single day JUST to discuss current AAM posts.
yessss pls I’ve never commented on AAM bc 1) can’t think of a clever name that doesn’t link to my non-career-focused internet presence, and 2) too scared
I had to switch mine because someone else started posting with my original one (it’s very plain) but I figure that will just confuse anyone who thinks they might know who I am.
Well, I support that. And catmanscrothers, I will make a special name for you to use if you would like.
HOLY GOD I could not even with that letter. LEAVE NOW, NEVER LOOK BACK! :gollum face:
Maybe it’s just because I’ve been watching too much Kitchen Nightmares but I had flashbacks to Amy’s Baking Company when I read that.
What should hospitals, private practices, and medical associations do about doctors and therapists who say it’s against their beliefs to provide care to LGBT patients?
Fire their bigoted asses, immediately.
I am absolutely baffled by this whole thing. First do no harm, fuckos. If you aren’t willing to care for everyone who walks through your door, then you should not be in the caring profession.
Now I really want to protest with a DO NO HARM, FUCKOS sign.
I want it embroidered on a throw pillow!
Spreadsheet!
Fire them into the sun.
Fixed that for ya.
If ESPN can (should) fire an employee for transphobic remarks, a hospital can (should) fire an employee for being so bigoted they refuse to do their job.
This, exactly.
If only doctors took an oath to help all people, even the gay ones.
I don’t think they should be fired. People are entitled to their beliefs, even if they are small-minded and bigoted. They should be LEGALLY REQUIRED to refer the patient to someone who will help them without judgement, and the penalty should be SEVERE should they not do that.
I know that’s really tough to uphold, and can really suck if you have a provider who you really like who just happens to hate gay people or whatever, but I think that’s the best medium we’re gonna get.
I’m sorry but this just makes the problem worse. It places a tremendous burden of time on the patient, for one thing, and in many geographical areas this might not actually work. Not just because of a scarcity of providers, but because of a very likely homogeneity of social beliefs in a given geographical area.
Not to mention, think about the Little Sisters of the Poor v Burwell case… Here you have an employer saying that it is a burden for them to fill out a piece of paper so that the employee can get contraceptive coverage. Can you imagine if Dr Bigot had to take the time to a) see the “sinful” patient in the first place, b) look up all the patient’s insurance network information so that they can be sent to someone in network, c) write out a referral, d) probably bill the patient’s insurance in the first place anyway for the “consultation.” That actually is a legitimate burden of time (for an illogical and unethical reason) and no way would this sort be okay with that.
Edited to make it less shouty, sorry for the shoutiness everyone.
Nah, you are not entitled to a belief if that makes you unable to do your job. If people have awful opinions but keep them to themselves and do their jobs well, there is no issue.
Ben Carson was apparently an excellent mentor to gay doctors, even given his ridiculous beliefs. It is possible. If a person is not able to do it, they should be fired.
They need to be fired. It’s hard enough to find the one doctor in your area that your shit insurance plan will cover. What if you go there and they refuse to treat you? There are documented health insurance plans out there that people are paying thousands for that are legit managed to have as few providers in the network as possible to maximize payouts. That they can do that without being punished is bad enough.
I’m helping some friends negotiate insurance and referrals now, and no, this is not a good solution.
Not all doctors take all insurance. Not all doctors are accepting new patients. Not all doctors have the correct expertise. Referring out can wind up being exactly the same as denying health care.
If your precious beliefs/prejudice you’re going to call a “conscience” requires you not to treat someone, which comes into conflict with the oath you take in order to take that career, you need to quit your fucking job.
This is Kim Davis all over again. You cannot be paid to do a job you refuse to perform.
ETA: Also, what everyone else said about the burden it puts on the patients, that’s the real point. But I just get so incensed about this repulsive sense of entitlement.
No, they should be fired. There are lots of people with deeply held moral convictions that are completely wrong. Nobody gets to feel that they don’t want to treat black people, don’t want to treat people of other religions, don’t want to treat people of opposing political opinions. There’s no medium here. At least there’s no medium that also wouldn’t result in fundamentalists refusing to treat non-Christians, or racists refusing to treat people of their disliked races. Why should it be possible to opt out of treating LGBT people, when you can’t opt out of treating any other group?
People are entitled to their beliefs. They are not entitled to, essentially, punish other people based on those beliefs. Refusing to treat someone based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity falls in the latter, IMLTHO.
I don’t know if I believe in ghosts but I’m super into ghost stories! #12 oh my god
#13 is for sure the scariest, it has a ghost trying to TRICK you into coming downstairs to get murdered.
A friends grandfather was in the FBI and for a while was keeping a defector in their house secretly.
This guy would, when “nobody was home” occasionally play a piano located in the basement.
My friends mom assumed the house was haunted for like 30 years before that story finally got sorted out.
(also wasn’t there a buzzfeed listicle a few years ago about people who had been living secretly in houses for years?)
WHAT I need that listicle immediately
I love this so much and want it to be true, even though: ultra creepy if true.
OH MY GOD that is terrifying and also amazing and also terrifying.
(Rec for anyone else fascinated by wall-dwellers, even though it’s kind of a spoiler: Housebound, it’s on Netflix, it’s great)
Ooh, I keep seeing that on Netflix and not watching, but I’ll give it a try!
A quick interneting suggests I may have been thinking about this old Toast article
Number 12 is amazing and I want to station ghosts like that everywhere in the world.
Number 2 is FUCKING CREEPY though.
I am 100% here for hero anti-rapist ghosts. If I were a ghost that is what I would do.
Men’s squeamishness around even the idea of menstruation is one of many things we should not be proud of about ourselves.
My wife always apologizes for asking me to pick up tampons for her. I’m like, “Don’t worry about it. a) I’m happy to have somebody to buy them for and b) If you didn’t need them, it would mean you’re pregnant.”
My favorite instance of doing this was the time another bf/husband reached for the same box of tampons. We just both kind of laughed and shrugged.
A person I follow on Twitter tweeted yesterday something about how men ought to be proud to pick up pads/tampons, because it indicates that there’s a woman in their life who loves them, and I was like…YES. THIS RIGHT HERE.
Also, I will never forget once when my teenage sister nervously asked our dad to pick her up some pads when he went to the grocery store, and he came back with teeny tiny pantyliners. Poor didn’t-know-better dad. Poor embarrassed-to-say-anything sister. Men should be educated on this stuff!
Totally. I was in the hospital once long-term and asked my husband to bring me tampons from my supply at home and he brought like six. He meant well, but… insufficient.
“well, that’s like, one per day…. yeah that sounds right. *nods to self*”
Somewhere there has to be a happy medium between that and NASA thinking one woman needed 100 tampons for one week in space. (This was when Sally Ride was going up for the first time.)
Maybe, although I might also pack 50 or so at least for a trip to space. I get paranoid and over-pack – I probably have a full box of tampons divided between my purse and my backpack at this point because every month I add a few more to the pocket “just in case.”
To be fair, I would probably need 100 tampons for a week in space. 40 for my period and 60 for miscellaneous crafting purposes.
It was also obvious when we moved in together long ago that he had never lived with a female partner before. He went on about how we shouldn’t have a trash can in the bathroom and I shut that down in two seconds by saying, Do you really want me walking through the house with used tampons in my hands??? He was 35.
…but also, where am I supposed to put my used tissues? My used dental floss? My used-nail polish cotton balls and face wipey stuff and empty shampoo bottles and toiletries packaging and but but but who is this guy with no bathroom trash?!?!?! I’m baffled.
I don’t get where these guys throw away their toilet paper rolls. Do they just like… walk all the way to the kitchen trash can with them? Stack them in a pyramid in the bathroom corner?
I take mine downstairs to put in the recycling (and feel weird about throwing them away in other people’s houses, because they’re cardboard and I don’t want to just put them in the bin). But not having a bathroom bin is strange. (And bathroom bins with no liners and/or lids. I want stuff to be covered up and not stuck to the bottom of the bin.)
I’m that person who has a lidded, lined trash bin, and a little paper bag for recyclables.
Men should be educated on so much! The number if dudes I’ve had to explain IUDs to is embarrassing. (for them, not me) Although the looks on their faces when they inevitably ask how it gets in there is priceless. Educate men about periods! And birth control! And pap tests, endometriosis, etc!
We could do like a Schoolhouse Rock thing!
Oh man, I’ve had an IUD for a year and my husband (who is heading to nursing school!) just found out that they don’t give you anesthesia when they insert it. I think he was mildly horrified when I told him NOPE, they just pop it up there–and yes, it hurts.
Yeah, my husband (then boyfriend), was there to pick me up afterwards and take me home, so he saw that nightmare (and heard the gory details) firsthand.
I had cervical anesthesia when I got my IUD because we tried without first and it wasn’t bearable. But even then it still hurt! (I just kept telling myself it hurt less than having a baby would.)
Every time I pass this comment I see “cervical amnesia” – every. time. And then I think of Calculon.
My poor dad was the only one around when I got my 1st period, and we were away from home so there were no supplies at hand…it was a years-later-funny-story about how he had to go find a store, and find a female clerk, and ask for advice…
Later it occurred to me that after 60 years of life, two wives, and one older daughter, it’s kinda weird that he’d never had to do it before.
My dad also! My mother travels a lot and I had to wake him up and he just moaned “I knew this would happen while she wasn’t here” into the pillow.
Happily, he was more prepared (and my parents had done a lot of ‘give the child a book about the future thing, let her read because talking would be awkward’ parenting so I knew what to expect (and to complain about the pain so as to get a day of school)
My dad had to get my first supplies, too, though we were at home.
He only gets a pass about his confusion because Mom had a hysterectomy at 30, after their 4th kid (all conceived on birth control) was born.
My husband has always been happy to pick up tampons for me, as long as I have carefully specified which type (he knows enough to know it matters). His take on this has always been, “Yep, I’m having sex with a woman. Yea! She sometimes has periods.”
This reminded me one time they were out of what my wife had specifically requested and I called to ask if she wanted me to go somewhere else or get a different kind.
“Well what do they have?”
So I was standing there reading tampon boxes aloud until I hit on one that was an acceptable substitute.
YES THIS IS THE ONLY SOLUTION.
My husband is the shyest of all shy dudes, AND only has brothers, and even he is completely matter-of-fact about periods. He just kind of doesn’t get why it would be a big deal. (But I do use a cup, which I am legally obligated to tell you, it’s in the contract I got when I bought the thing, so he doesn’t have to buy tampons ever.)
Mine too, on all counts! I honestly don’t know how it happened, but I really appreciate his total and utter lack of weirdness about it. I have definitely dated men who were gross about it, and that . . . does not feel good dudes.
My Grandad sounded really uncomfortable when I mentioned having period pains recently, and now I kind of want to cheerfully and passive-aggressively talk about periods more often.
In case anyone’s missed it, the definitive word on men and period products.
Seems like this is a good place to point out that the squeamishness around menstruation is responsible for some of my mother’s greatest advice to me:
When I went to college, she recommended I keep my cash and jewelry at the bottom of my box of tampons, under the actual tampons, “because no one will ever look in there or steal it.”
I STILL DO THIS WHEN I TRAVEL.
When I work renaissance faires I always bring a box of tampons because it’s the single best place to stash $1000 in cash when you’re traveling and the goddamn banks aren’t open on Sundays.
this is how you sneak cameras/booze into concerts, also, stick them in a tampon box at the bottom of your bag and choose a male security guy
(back when digital cameras were a thing concerts could ban, and not just part of our phones)
Ok now I need to see a movie where a female super-spy does this, like hides the stolen flash drive with all the secrets on it inside her tampon stash.
Are there flash drives that look like tampons? Because that should definitely be a thing.
I fully support taking advantage of male squeamishness. Also, in last week’s episode of Broad City, Ilana smuggled weed through airport security by wearing pants with a very obvious period stain on them and then acting offended when the drug-detecting dog started sniffing her crotch.
This is awesome, I would apparently make such a great smuggler.
It was absolute proof of the Broad City brand of genius, I was so impressed by that.
And then I watched this week’s episode last night — felt like our discussion was very on the pulse. Why I love this show, man!
In college, when on a trip to Cuba, someone wanted to sneak home a cigar. All the women on the trip were like, take out a tampon and put it in the empty wrapper.
I had a friend in high school who wouldn’t come into the house because my mother had left a box of UNOPENED tampons on the front stairs. Like he was a vampire and it was a garlic braid.
I will never, ever understand that. Like, even if you somehow (*shock horror*) managed to accidentally bump into it, an unopened box of wrapped tampons is probably the most sanitary thing you will have ever touched in your life, you disgusting teenager. Get over it.
This is one of the most endearing things about Señor Negroni. Tampons are virtually impossible to find in the country where we live because Nice Girls Don’t Use Tampons. I couldn’t drive for a few months so he would often have to go to various pharmacies to ask for tampons and of course they’d treat him horribly and do the whole “Price check on the Godless American Whoreplugs” over the PA thing and he never once complained. In fact, when he got back he would always be filled with righteous indignation about the whole thing.
Where is this? (also, he sounds like a great guy)
This is a meet-cute in a Netflix series I would totally bingewatch.
This comment to the AAM post really pissed me off:
My dad was a little bit like this. I grew up believing that a proper girl/woman should always hide her bodily functions. To this day, out of habit, if I throw away a wrapped pad or tampon I’ll make sure it’s buried under other trash so *quelle horreur* no man has to see it. I was actually pretty shocked when I grew up and had male friends who didn’t freak out when discussing periods.
That said, he would dutifully go to the drugstore and pick up a pack of pads or tampons for us, and would even get it right if you meticulously wrote down the exact brand, type, and number. (If you didn’t, you’d get something weird.)
“Buying pads when they are needed” is not something a man needs special thanks for; it should be the default.
I remember once going into great detail about the types of pads my dad needed to buy at the store, thinking he wouldn’t know what to get. At some point, he stopped me and said, “I’ve been married 15 years. I know what type of pads to get.”
“Know your place! I’m above you!”
Wow. No.
Just high enough above for me to punch you in the balls, asshole.
Alison so rarely get sarcastic/scathing in her advice, but she TOOK THAT GUY TO TOWN, it was delicious.
When I saw that AAM I immediately searched for the Divacup recommendation and I was not disappointed.
I got really mad reading the comments yesterday because they were soooo full of ~helpful advice~ about how the LW could be less conspicuous about her period. NO NO THE QUESTION WAS “MY BOSS IS A JERK, WHAT DO I DO?” ALSO THE LW HAS BEEN A WOMAN FOR A WHILE, KNOWS HOW TO HANDLE PERIOD SUPPLIES.
I usually like the extraneous advice that pops up in the comments, but when it’s like “here’s what you should have done…” I wish there were more strict moderation.
Yes! I was sooo angry when the comments dissolved into bickering about where EXACTLY she put her pads, and where she SHOULD HAVE put her pads, and I just wanted to jump in like, “Did you all miss the part where he yelled ‘KNOW YOUR PLACE’ at her?!”
aaah I know, there were so many passive aggressive commenters saying things like ‘well I just put all my sanitary products in an adorable tote bag in a locked safe in the basement but i don’t see the need to broadcast my menstrual cycle haha idk maybe it’s just me :)’
Like, no. You have entirely missed the point.
Yeah, seriously, the issue is definitely the boss and not the pads.
But also, the “squeamishness” around bodies and especially menstruating bodies doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it can be worthwhile to think about that, although the AAM comments section may not be the best place for it.
and everyone’s got a different level of squick and privacy around that stuff, so, why exactly are y’all arguing like you’re going to reach a consensus? We have a more relevant consensus: boss was jerk.
You’re totally right and I think the comments section just depressed me the most
You know that should have read “and” and not “but.” The boss and the people icked out by periods exist on the same continuum.
Yeah, I loved that Alison’s actual response had no “well, in the future you could hide your bodily functions better like this…” aspect to it. It was just full-out NOPE on that boss.
Maybe you could recommend a menstrual cup for someone who writes in and says “I get so sweaty downtown when I have to wear a pad all day at work, and I find the dry cotton in tampons to be really irritating… If only there were another alternative!” But I can’t imagine anyone writing to AAM about that.
I feel like, in general, everyone in that office should have a little box/crate/cubby that they can keep personal stuff in on that shelf, so that each person has a designated space for their stuff, but the idea that she should buy a decorative box for her maxi pads because her boss is an asshole is ridiculous
also, LOVED the person who got such a weird little thrill out of typing “anal leakage pad” 10,000 times
A–I love my divacup and I think it’s great, but that might not be true for everyone and I don’t ahve to force every goddamn person with a period to get a divacup. It is so irrelevant to this letter. If she wants to use pads, then use them and this asshole boss can go screw himself.
B-oh my god you have the best username in the history of the world, A+ work right there
Right? I have one too and think it’s pretty great but when someone evangelises it to me it makes me want to go right back to tampons.
Also thank you so much, she’s my favourite 🙂
Oh man. So many people needing to be fired a.s.a.p., managers, doctors, therapists… 🙁
OT, but i kinda need to talk about it. on monday of this week some friends and friends of friends made a goofy little prank FB event saying limp bizkit was going to play a secret concert at the sunoco gas station in dayton (my former town). a bunch of us spent the evening cracking jokes about JNCOs and flat-brimmed hats and figured that would be the end of it.
by yesterday evening, i was reading about it on vice, gawker, the daily beast, and international news. i don’t know what to do with my feelings about all this.
Wallow in them, roll in them, and feel really good about having the _actual_ inside scoop?
Media – FACT CHECK. That is literally your job.
… write us an article? Even friends of friends of friends reporting would be better than some articles I’ve seen on this. 😛
i’ll see if i can turn something around tonight!
Good news! I got a job yesterday! It’s in my field and starts in two weeks (the day after classes end but before graduation)! It’s five minutes from my house! I’m actually going to be using my MSW! And in classic MSW style the pay is shit! But that’s okay! Because I have a job!
Better news! My parents and my boyfriend’s parents are going to meet! We were all supposed to meet at graduation but I’m not going (because work!) so instead his parents and sister are graciously hosting us all for a family dinner on graduation weekend. I’m pretty sure we’re a few months at most from getting engaged, and this is a necessary prerequisite for me, so, yay. Good things are happening all around.
Less good (but hopefully temporary) news: they’re doing something extremely smelly in the empty condo next door, and between the generator and the fumes, me and the pets are not feeling all that great today. I’m assuming they’re painting, which I assume means they’re getting ready to finally rent it out. They’ve been renovating the place since early February, and I work from home three days a week (but not for much longer!) and it’s fucking awful.
I’m not sure I can read that Hiddleston article without swooning.
I got shit to do this morning.
Abandon the stuff, embrace the swoon.
ugh but i have to teaaaaach.
Change the subject to Shakespeare, show nothing but Hiddleston clips.
“HEY You thought we’d be talking about primary source research, but no. Shakespeare, Tom Hiddleston and Listomania.”
The students will love you forever.
Re: Tubman on the 20: This was the design I saw — would be pretty f’n awesome:
I have to say I would prefer if they didn’t have her holding a gun, just because I saw some comment on facebook from a NRA nut about how this is exciting because Tubman was a “proud gun owning Republican”. Which is absurd, but if we could keep the 2nd amendment debate as far away from this as possible I would be pleased.
I don’t know, yeah but as Fred Clark over at slacktivist likes to put it Harriet Tubman was an “Unstoppable, death-defying, badass revolutionary outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.”
and she was the first woman (and civilian) to lead a u.s. military operation.
She did not play nice and she should be honored/remembered for that too.
I’m just uncomfortable with the idea of white men (who for the most part represent the people who yell about gun rights online) co-opting her experiences and turning them into fodder for modern day political arguments about the second amendment. Since I already saw it happening once, I imagine it would only be worse if she was represented holding a gun on the actual bill. She was a badass, and a badass who used a gun to achieve her means, but I’m not sure it would be ignoring that or not acknowledging it to have her without a weapon on the actual currency.
White Guys co-opted Jesus for political arguments in favor of slavery, and currently for denying basic medical care to… well this LR has an LGBT example but lets be honest denying basic medical care to anyone that isn’t also a White Guy (and they better be rich too).
I mean it’s moot because there is not one chance in hell that that picture would make it to the bill but there’s no way we can stop them from trying to claim Harriet Tubman would have voted for Reagan no matter what gets put on there (A picture of Harriet Tubman Punching Reagan? Why it’s a boxing match between friends)
I mean just because they’ve done it before and will probably do it again doesn’t mean my head won’t explode if I see somebody using Harriet Tubman using a gun to help people escape from slavery as an example for why they should be allowed to own an assault weapon with no restrictions. They’re probably foaming at the mouth at the idea of anybody holding a gun on US currency because they’ll see it as an endorsement of their garbage opinions. It is my personal preference that this not happen! I’m aware it’s naive, but that was my gut reaction to seeing her holding a gun on the bill. I think she can be represented as a badass without it!
We could replace it with a walkie-talkie, maybe?
With or without the gun, I really like this action-heroine pose.
I can’t help thinking Come with me if you want to live every time I see it and it never gets less awesome.
or the Lego Movie version, “if you want to NOT die” 😀
It’s the role Pam Motherfuckin’ Greer was born to play!
*swoons*
OMG YES!
Something like this would be amazing! I was picturing the same ol’ staid shoulders-up portrait like the other bills have. Not sure about the gun, but having her hand extended like that in a dynamic pose is just fantastic on so many levels.
I’m not even American but I’m so excited for these changes to the bills. Guess I won’t be making fun of how boring and same-y American money looks anymore.
Toasties who are in and around the Philly area! Come join the google group! If you are already a member, come check out the meetups we are currently trying to plan! Suggest new meetup ideas! Tell us what works for you!
Is someone holding Mallory hostage? All these classic posts are starting to unsettle me. Mallory-in-the-Cave, I MISS YOU!
I think she has been traveling quite a bit, giving talks and such?
But my brain also immediately went to “Oh my God, what is happening, is The Toast going down”.
I assumed vacation, like people with jobs often take. Then I remembered we both live in the US and vacations are actually just a cultural myth, like fiddler’s green, we keep passing around and was sad.
If that’s what’s happening, hell yeah, I’m all in favor! I admit I was worried too!
I am taking ONE WEEK SORT-OF OFF AFTER TWO MONTHS OF NONSTOP TRAVELING, CAN I LIVE
YES I SUPPOSE YOU CAN GOSH
LIVE, do!! Just, in this unpredictable and dangerous world, I suppose I seek reassurance that you will never leave us. I am now satisfied that you are not trapped with Richard Simmons, which is all I needed.
I absolutely will leave you at some point! This pace is exhausting and I cannot keep it up forever!
I know. This is right and good. I recognize that I am the toddler here. Now shoo, go and live!!
That sounds like something someone trapped with Richard Simmons would say.
I 100% support you finding a work life that does not burn you out (even if it’s not here!), with all the breaks you want/need. You’ve given us a lot of excellence over the last few years and owe us nothing. <3
(I don’t think anyone here meant otherwise, I just wanted to jump in with my personal expression of thanks.)
WE JUST MISS YOU.
I suppose the shouting is not conducive to relaxation.
PRINCE DIED TODAY and we don’t need you dead too, dear.
Thanks for the reassurance that you’re concentrating on living.
NO YOU ARE HERE to entertain us!
I honestly enjoy the classic Two-Monks posts enourmeously, you can post those forever until the end of times.
Did anyone really know, at the time, that we were living in the era of Classic Toast? Can any truly classic era be fully recognized as such, until it is gone? Had I known, I would surely have posted so much more. So many timelessly classic moments, to be caught up amid the crystal amber of perfection. We were all so much younger then. And now, in these latter days, the posts clatter and clash, harsh and bereft of grace, dropping earthward with the dull clang of base metal. Where has all the magic gone?
Memories, like the corners of my mind…
Misty water-colored memories, of the way we were…
Here is a video of the Queen cutting her birthday cake, baked by GBBO’s Nadiya.
I seriously thought you were talking about Beyoncé until I clicked on the link.
I DID TOO
Was it because of this link that my twitter is suddenly in German?
I mean, I fixed it, after reading who “folgen Dir jetzt” but it’s a funny thing to have happened!
Oops, sorry 🙂
It was a fun moment of confusion. And could have easily been some other click and I just didn’t notice.
The link itself is adorable.
OH MY GOSH I’M GOING TO EXPLODE WITH HAPPINESS
I unapologetically love the GBBO and (with some apologies) love Elizabeth II, THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL MERGING OF THOSE LOVES. I’m especially happy for Nadiya, who must have never imagined this happening when she started out on the show!
I know we’re not at open thread yet, but what do I say to a guy I just started kind of dating whose views on abortion, marriage equality, and universal healthcare are: “They’re complex issues and I don’t really think about most things in a categorical pro or against answer.” This isn’t apropos of nothing, he mentioned being a conservative Republican and I had follow up questions, but am I overreacting to think that some/most of these are basic human rights and I probably shouldn’t date this person anymore?
Yes on the first question, no judgement on the second.
Yes I’m overreacting, or yes these are basic human rights?
FWIW, I don’t think you’re overreacting, and I wouldn’t date him either, but YMMV.
Yeah, I’m fleeing from this situation entirely.
100% appropriate response.
Of course, these are things that everyone should decide for themselves, but being pro-choice and pro-full-rights-for-gays are kind of essentials for me. Universal healthcare too, actually, though if you’re in the US I can sorta see the “it would be ideal but not without practical problems on the way” stance being sorta acceptable.
But seriously. Gay marriage is not a complex issue. It’s basic common sense and humanity.
Agreed, 100%. Running like the damn wind.
I respect anyone who can recognize when their opinion on an issue is not really relevant and decide to keep their mouth shut about it, which it sounds like he might be doing? Like, I give no shits about what another person thinks in the private depths of their mind as long as they’re not going around making it everybody else’s problem. But of course when you are dating someone, you may decide that you have more shits to give.
Yeah, if this wasn’t a person I was genuinely interested in dating I would just like, whatevvs you do you, but the idea of trying to have a future with this person is making me a little queasy.
So my husband is a moderate Republican, and I am a crazy liberal Democrat. I adore him — he understands me, and cares for me, and makes me laugh so hard every day. We are absolutely in sync on almost everything else. I think the fact that he was raised in a hard-core conservative Republican household and I was raised in a hard-core liberal Democrat household is part of it. He is actually more socially liberal and economically conservative, and right now describes himself as a man without a party because the Republican party has gone so batshit crazy. I guess what I’m trying to say is — I wouldn’t cut someone off JUST because of what their political beliefs may or may not be. We just have agreed to not talk about politics much at all, especially during an election year. But I cannot imagine my life without him.
Just kind of stop dating him.
I mean marriage equality seems pretty straight forward to me. Abortion has had some pretty racist as fuck currents in the conversation and I’m willing to allow people their quibbles about when life begins (not that I care, I’m a body-autonomy person). Certainly Universal Healthcare is economically complex…
But you know what? Nobody in the history of history has ever said “they’re complex issues and I don’t really think about most things in a categorical pro or against answer” and actually meant it. Almost no one thinks of most things in a categorical pro or against manner. Almost everyone allows nuance in their opinion.
I wasn’t there, so maybe he proceeded to have a very well thought out monologue about the complexities and why he feels so equally torn on those issues. I suspect however he’s an ignorant juicebox.
“I suspect however he’s an ignorant juicebox.” THIS.
There was no thought out monologue, but there was a great deal of mansplaining and being generally pedantic.
Ugh no dump him with extreme prejudice.
Oh HELL no.
NOPE.
I don’t think you’re overreacting, and I don’t think you should date this person anymore.
Not at all. I’d split ASAP. There are plenty of cute, nice guys out there who aren’t getting on the Wrong Side of History bus.
Basic human rights, yes. And dating, eh, your call–but I would not have sexy time with someone who opposed my right to end a pregnancy.
My little sis fell in with a Republican (and he’s a good guy) but they don’t agree about abortion–their compromise is double contraception. Which works for them.
Frankly, if I were attracted to dudes, I wouldn’t date one who wasn’t an unapologetic feminist. Even if you won’t go that far, I think you might the right choice to flee!
Yeah, I dated someone who definitely wasn’t a feminist for a long time, and it was very difficult for me. I don’t want to do that again!
Those are all absolute deal-breakers for me. I wouldn’t date him anymore.
OT, but omg yesterday I ran into a regular customer of mine, who is one of those very hot and cold kind of guys and lives next door to the shop, and as I was lifting my hand to wave, who should follow him out of the building but an IDENTICAL VERSION OF HIM and my face must have been amazing because I had zero clue they were IDENTICAL TWINS THIS WHOLE TIME and the one twin I guess I know the most (I just thought he really liked to switch it up between contacts and glasses!) goes, “Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention that.”
Still screaming internally tbh
But, to quote Sherlock, “It’s never twins!”
won’t it be weird when you find out that instead of living next door to one hot twin and one cold twin, you live next door to two hot and cold twins?
I didn’t know I needed to read this today, but I did. WHAT.
(When I was a teaching assistant in Germany at quite a large school, there was a little boy from one of my 6th grade classes that I saw EVERYWHERE, constantly. He was very distinctive looking, so I just thought I was noticing him more than some of the others. But lo and behold TWINS! And eventually I counted 3 sets of twins – 2 identical – in the same grade. Twins ahoy!)
My school year of ~250 pupils had five sets of twins (two of them identical) and one set of triplets (including me, not identical). Is that a weird amount? It seemed perfectly normal to me, but my partner claims his year group of a similar size had none.
My school year of 40 people had three sets of twins so.
This is the greatest thing ever.
I have two twins on my lacrosse team. They were easier to tell apart when they were little. Now they are 13 and they know they can trick everyone. AND their names are james and seamus, which doesn’t help. Thank god they have numbers on their jerseys, so I can at least tell them apart when I have a game! When they really hate me they show up to practice in matching outfits. I have taken to just grabbing the nearest kid before I yell, and going, “Which one is that, who just slashed/fouled/scored?”, and then yelling the answer. Sometimes the nearest kid is wrong, too. Oh well.
Isn’t Seamus just… gaelic for James? Why would you give your kids the same name?
Passing_Strange, your username is the perfect comment on that situation. Now we just need intensedebate user “WAT.” to drop by.
I know a woman who gave birth to twins. When she was expecting only one baby. Before we could predict gender.
She had chosen two names, one for a girl, one for a boy. But she gave birth to two boys. The first she named Nathan, a name chosen months before. She was exhausted and dopey when asked to name the second boy, so she said the first name that came to mind.
Twin brothers: Nathan and Jonathan. Their father sometimes teases with “Nathan and Joe-Nathan”.
I love this! I think sometimes that maybe naming the second twin is exhausting or something, because two of my best friends are twins and one of them has a very fancy, bougie French name and the other is just named Megan. Megan is younger by about an hour.
I had to rewatch Drunk History with Octavia Spencer again last night and its just as perfect as I remembered.
“I need y’all to be down and just do what the fuck I say.”
I’m so happy Crissle will be back for next season.
God bless Drunk History.
So is there a reason there have been so many old articles reposted this week? Are the editors on vacaciones and I missed the announcement? I love my Old Grains, but also: are you guys okay? Repost five Dirtbag articles in a row if you are being held against your will in an undisclosed location.
Mallory was away traveling/speaking. Nothing’s wrong!
Glad I wasn’t the only one freaking out in gradually increasing amounts, kind of like a lobster in omen-cookpot-water while the temperature gradually rises, except with human levels of self-awareness. (I know the ending! We are all going to boil!)
I HAVE TAKEN THREE WEEKS OFF IN TOTAL IN ALMOST THREE YEARS
COME *ON*
SHE REPLIED TO ME PERSONALLY
I AM BLESSED THIS DAY WITH HER PRESENCE
I WILL GO FORTH AND QUESTION MALLORY NO MORE
I know, it felt amazing that she replied to me and then terrible that it was to tell me to leave her in peace.
it’s only terrifying because we love you and because this is what April whatsherface did right before Regretsy went offline.
Winchell. Thatsherface.
Re: Harriet Tubman – Ta-Nehisi Coates recommended Bound for the Promised Land by Kate Clifford Larson as a biography of Tubman yesterday. It’s only $0.99 on Kindle so get on that if you’re interested! (I realized I definitely don’t know enough about her, so I’m looking forward to it.) http://www.amazon.com/Bound-Promised-Land-Portrai…
Thank you for this – I just bought it! I was able to visit her home in upstate NY once. It was fascinating, and also made me realize I needed to know more about her life. She is amazing.
My mother and I went there on Mother’s Day last year– it’s a great museum and well worth a trip! The guide we had was extremely knowledgeable.
(We have a family friend in that area who’s a descendant of Tubman’s and who donated some of her original furniture to the museum, which is pretty cool).
I bought too! Thank you for the note.
Well great now I have 47 books on my to-read list. I hope you’re happy with yourself.
Also thanks. I’ve been looking for good books about all the women who are about to be on currency.
In my old job the ladies bogs had deodorant and baskets of tampons and pads for anyone to just use, and they were restocked daily. It was amazing.
Now I’m in my considerably smaller company I have instigated a common use (spray) deodorant that lives in the ladies’ and am considering beginning a tampon stash, even though I’m a cup kinda gal these days. It is so freeing going to the loo without having to hide various items of feminine hygiene about your person!
Do it! It will build you up treasures in heaven. Don’t be scared, vagina.
I’m choosing to interpret “vagina” here as a verb instead of a noun. (“Don’t be scared. Vagina!”)
I went to the Rich People Mall once and there was a shoe store with fresh (warm!) cookies on a table and baskets of tampons in the bathroom. If I ever talk myself into buying $200 shoes, it’ll be there.
Oh man, having to hide tampons on my person while wearing a pocket-free uniform in high school is one of the primary reasons I switched to OB. That brings back serious uncomfortable memories.
I totally led the charge in getting the women’s bathroom at my old job (small ad agency) stocked with options. Pads, plastic fancy corpo-tampons & organic crunchy tampons (this was in Portland, natch). They live in a wooden box on the otherwise empty counter. I just brought it up when we got a new receptionist, and treated it as a foregone conclusion, a workplace amenity akin to the free coffee and microbrews on hand(and free toilet paper, which come to think of it, is more analogous). I first saw free pads & such in the employee bathroom of an Austin bakery back in the 90s and it made so much sense!
I too first saw free pads and tampons for the first time at a job in Austin!
Now that I am an office manager (in Austin), I have carried that tradition forward.
Austin: Stocking Bathrooms with Pads & Tampons One Small, Weird Business at a Time!
The horrible soul destroying testing center I took all of my architecture licensing exams in kept their (unisex, even) restrooms stocked with pads and tampons, which I’m sure has been a mercy to many a poor testing candidate. Really, the people in charge of the center were great- it was just the building and it’s purpose that created the soul destroying miasma.
Just misread “stash” as “sash,” now picturing like a tampon bandolier, which is wonderful.
I need help with grammer, Toasties!! What do you call it when a sentence is written like this:
1) To expedite completion of the work, an additional crew was scheduled.
Compared to:
2) An additional crew was scheduled to expedite completion of the work.
Also, am I correct in thinking that #2 is better than #1?
You are correct. The 1st sentence is a result of lazy planning and no editing.
Thanks! I’m editing a report where the writer uses the 1st style constantly, so I wanted confirmation that I should be correcting it to the second one.
ALL of my work reports are written like this.
AND I HATES IT PRECIOUSSSSSSSSSSS.
Passive voice gives me hives.
Isn’t that passive (1) and active (2)? And I think you’re right that active is generally believed to be the preferred structure, especially in more professional settings.
They’re actually both passive (since the crew is the object of the verb “to schedule”, and the subject of the verb – whoever/whatever is doing the scheduling – is not present in either version of the sentence). Passive voice can be useful when you want the reader to focus on the object of the verb, rather than the subject (in this case, I’m guessing the person/entity in charge of the scheduling would be known to the intended audience already).
Thanks! It’s done constantly in the report, not just the once, and while I’m no grammarian (obviously since I see I misspelled “grammar” in my post) it just jumps out at me.
Sounds like the writer has an annoying stylistic tic! Your editing instincts seem sound, though 🙂
Thank you very much! The writer is young, she’ll learn.
It’s a professional report. Thanks!
2 is better than 1 — it reads more smoothly (no comma necessary!) and it’s active (foregrounding “an additional crew”).
The only POSSIBLE reason I could see for preferring 1 to 2 is if you suspect resistance to scheduling the additional crew and you want to foreground the reason why another crew was needed.
I can see that, but that’s not the case – it’s just the style this writer was using. Thanks!
Yeah, the order should be determined by whether the goal of the sentence to say that the crew is bigger or to explain why.
They’re both grammatically correct, but #2 sounds better to me as an individual sentence with no other context. I can imagine a case in which #1 might arguably be “better” (e.g. if it were adjacent to other sentences with a similar structure – “To minimize disruptive noise, work was carried out only on weekdays between 10-2”), but absent any other context I definitely prefer #2.
Thanks! As others have said I can see #1 if you were emphasizing something, but that’s not the case here.
Yes, the first one is written in passive voice. Active voice is just plain superior.
Thanks!
They’re both passive voice. That’s not the issue.
How is this? SUBJECT—INFINITIVE CLAUSE
An infinitive functioning as the subject of a clause refers to an activity in a general rather than a specific way. The infinitive, a reduced verbal form, is not marked for tense or person and does not often have a subject. In the subject position, it is usually followed by be or a static verb. It is uncommon for an infinitive structure to begin a sentence, with the exception of dictionary definitions and quotes.
SUBJECT
1a. To start a sentence with an infinitive
PREDICATE
sounds
COMPLEMENT
awkward.
(from a grammar quiz site http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/infinitive1.html)
That’s the analysis I was looking for, even if I don’t fully understand it (“it looks wrong” is as far as my grammar knowledge goes.) Thank you!!!
It is also a construction that might hide a true grammatical error, such as a misplaced or missing referent. This would involve the use of a pronoun, though, e.g.: “To expedite its completion, an additional crew was scheduled” where there is no clear object referred to as “it” (the work).
In this case, if starting with the infinitive [To+verb] is still the preferred structure, your “To expedite completion of the work, an additional crew was scheduled” would be better as “To expedite completion of the work, the coordinator scheduled an additional crew,” where the person doing the scheduling is the one who took that action. This would move it from passive to active construction.
Eliminating unnecessary clauses is always a good idea for clarity, also. Because the first example starts with a clause that can be simplified and eliminated, the second is a big improvement.
Thanks! Short and concise is always preferred for technical work.
Now I’m super curious about whether the writer
1. knows another language that has a verb-first word order, or
b) just tends to think that the purpose driving the ultimate decision/action is the most important thing.
But all of your comments here make perfect sense/are good writing advice.
I think she’s just getting ahead of herself. Jumping to explaining the purpose of the sentence before stepping back to identify who did what. It’s fine for informal purposes, and would likely go away with a bit more practice.
Yep, 2 is better because it’s in a more active voice than the first.
ETA and because it’s shorter and more concise which is likely a side effect of changing to active voice.
You’re right. Thanks!
UGH it’s like all my clerks’ work. UGH stop it with passive voice STAAAHHHHHP
I am forced into it at work–we think it sounds more professional.
Wait, why do so many people think the problem with the first one is the passive voice when the second is also passive voice?
Geoff Pullum of Language Log blames Strunk & White, which seems plausible.
I think because grammar instruction is either skipped over or grossly underexplained, since most people (even teachers) tend to be grammar-phobic. They internalize the idea that passive voice is to blame in bad writing and jump to that conclusion when it is muddied. I learned grammar better from acquiring new languages — it is hard to analyze your first language because you learn it from immersion rather than studying the rules. Plus English grammar is totally idiosyncratic.
That makes sense – I myself was never taught grammar at all, looking back, besides what a noun and a verb are.
When I think about religion and medicine, I’m reminded of the nun at St. Mary’s hospital in San Francisco who contracted HIV (and later died from Aids in 1982) through treating AIDS patients in the middle of an epidemic.
I also think about the devout Catholics, Muslims, and Jews I know who continue to treat HIV patients, who in the US are still disproportionately gay men, sex workers, and drug addicts.
Sure does make those assholes looking for religious exemptions look Christlike, doesn’t it. -_-
If you’re the kind of person to tell another person to “Know your place!”, you should probably know that nobody in the history of the world has ever said that to somebody and not had it also mean “I’m above you!”
So if you’re going to be a world class tool, at least don’t be redundant.
Tilda Swinton got away with it in “Snowpiercer,” but she had the false teeth going for her.
I am fully aware of early photography requirements/conventions etc. but I really love how Harriet Tubman’s facial expression in every photo of her I’ve ever seen is “get out of my face white boy”
Here for the Hiddlepuns.
I had a temp job at a Very Fancy Law Firm one time, where the restrooms had FREE tampons and pads (as well as a well-stocked medicine cabinet with all manner of FREE pain relievers).
Of course, the expectation was that they provided all this stuff so their overworked associates would live there and never go home, but still. FREE!! Every office should do that.
Another great thing about working in health care in general is that somewhere, reliably, there is a giant box labelled “maternity pads” or “peri pads” or “ob pads” and they are bulky af and have no stickies on the back, but when you are a bloodbath person (I am a bloodbath person) they are a lifesaver at work.
ETA: also a lifesaver at work: disposable underwear, disposable pants (trousers), communal sets of scrubs.
I currently work for a small store that employs all women and you better believe that our bathroom is stocked with pads, tampons, and pain relievers at all times. It is literally on our supply list alongside things like toilet paper and printer ink.
As it should be for every office! I am the office manager for an office that employs both men and women, and you can bet your ass that I provide free pads, tampons, and Midol. They are in our unisex bathroom in an open-faced cabinet that faces the toilet. Everyone sitting on the toilet — men included — can see them because a) I want the women to know that they are there and b) men should not ever be offended or squicked out by menstrual supplies.
OMG, nothing in a law firm is truly free. #freeme
Jumping in to say: THANK YOU anonymous Toastie, I bought a much-needed new laptop/bookbag for school with the Amazon gift card you sent me. I love it. I have a big-ass mapping laptop and it’s taken me years to find a bag that fits my 18″ laptop and isn’t black.
Also, I just discovered that occasionally loudly exclaiming, “Oh, FUCK YOU” (to my computer running analyses, or to really annoying texts from team parents), TOTALLY stops conversation attempts from the manspreading guy for, like, hours! Finally a good use for my swearing habit! To scare men away!
I am beginning to think I know *why* I haven’t had much luck dating, but, oh well. If I get magical swearing powers I might be ok with it.
Wait… mapping laptop? Do you do GIS too?????
Yes! There’s at least one more of us floating around here, too.
I’m in a Geography PhD program (first semester), and concentrating on geoarchaeology. Right now I’m working on remote sensing canals in Cambodia.
I did a tiny amount of GIS this week and thought of you! (boss: can you take these lat/longs and put them on a map? me: rolls eyes)
This is so rad! I’m part of a women’s group called Women in GIS. We just started back up and if you’re not already a member, you should join! http://www.womeningis.org/
I just want to say this even though I don’t know you, that I read your posts on OT and everything with your ex sounds so overwhelming, but you’re a kick-ass mom and a lacrosse coach and now you are even doing a PHD. I have literally one tenth the challenges you have and I’m falling apart, so I am just in awe! Congratulations on starting your program and the new laptop bag 🙂 Isn’t it nice when something small can really make our lives so much better?
OMG Yes. The bag I’d been using was a yoga bag that incidentally had a laptop pocket, but my laptop was too large for the pocket and almost too large for the bag. But it was the only one I could find 3 years ago, and after several trips to the field and 3 years of school it was on it’s last legs. Plus my laptop only went in/out one particular way which made me a favorite in the TSA line (sarcasm). It’s SO NICE having something with 2 shoulder straps!
Dear lady, leave a used pad on your boss’s chair, leave that place and never look back.
I was under the impression that a majority of doctors see the Hippocratic Oath as basically being their religion from an ethical standpoint, whether they are religious or not. This bill deeply violates that oath, as far as I can tell. But we already have hospitals in this country that will nearly let a woman who is miscarrying die of sepsis because fetal heartbeat, so it really comes down to who decides whether you are a human deserving of care or not. Our national ethic framework has reduced nearly all situations to individual consumption choices devoid of ethical deliberation. Whether these choices objectify, humiliate, or kill others has been rendered irrelevant by the very people claiming our morals are going down the toilet: safety from gun violence be damned. Ability to access health care be damned. Ability to earn a living wage or provide for your family when times are hard be damned. Ability to live a life without government spying and intruding on your liberty and physical safety be damned.
Leave it somewhere he reaches without looking, like the desk drawer with the pens.
Fellow WWE (née WWF) Toasties (I know you’re out there), our lovely Chyna passed away yesterday. Anyone want to gather for some internet hugs?
I met Chyna once when I was around 9. She was amazing and I told her I thought she was beautiful because I had never seen a woman that was so strong and able to hold her own against the men. And she had to put up with so much crap, scripted and unscripted. I cried in my car when I heard it announced on the radio.
Oh, man. I wasn’t into wrestling as a kid, but her presence was big enough back then that even I thought she was badass. As I’ve become much more of a wrestling fan since being with my husband, my appreciation for her strength has grown hugely; she was one of the true pioneers for women in wrestling, and the strides the industry has made recently in terms of how it treats its women are due in large part to her legacy, I think. I’m grateful that she was alive to see the return of the Women’s Championship.
I think maybe we’ll watch some of her best matches tonight in tribute.
I will always remember her from her cameo role on Third Rock from the Sun:
I’m way more persuaded by Feminista Jones’s take on the 20. It seems like a dishonor to Tubman’s legacy to put her on the currency at all and even worse to make her share that spot with a slave owner. It’s just a really shallow, hollow form of multiculturalism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/…
I’ve seen other WOC celebrating this, so I really think it’s a matter of personal perspective. Mine is that “money is power” and whatever philosophical/moral stance you take doesn’t change that. It particularly seems like sweet justice after reading the anecdote about how Harriet Tubman once staged a sit-in for $20 to help her parents.
I respect those who take a stand against it, but I can’t buy into the idea of “it’ll sully women too much to occupy these respected positions of prominence/power/influence, let’s leave it the white men who’ve always had it.”
I strongly disagree with that article. There is no one action we can take that will magically fix everything wrong with American inequality; it’s a series of hard-fought, sometimes incremental steps. It seems like every time there’s some marginal progress in representation, people say, “But this doesn’t fix everything, so celebrating it at all is BAD, and maybe it would be better if it didn’t happen at all.” (See also: Hamilton, Star Wars, Fury Road) Of course this doesn’t fix everything–nobody is saying it does. Symbols are still powerful.
Also, I’m sure this was simply a result of poor phrasing, but I am seriously side-eyeing this paragraph: “America’s currency is viewed as a place to honor people of historic political influence. To suggest that black women are part of that club by putting Tubman’s face on the $20 simply would cover up our nation’s reality of historic and lingering disenfranchisement.”
Or perhaps we should start acknowledging that even people who were historically disenfranchised still had a huge role in the shaping of our country, even if they didn’t have legalized political influence.
thank you for perfectly articulating that over which I have just been sputtering ineloquently all day
Prince news
Prince is apparently dead, at his Paisley Park Studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. TMZ is reporting this, but there are no independently confirmed reports as of 11:58am.
Lots of outlets reporting ten minutes later.
edit–his publicist confirmed it.
Was hoping it wasn’t so. Just shocked, stunned and can’t even cry yet.
WELL GREAT.
I AM SO HAPPY 2016 HAS YET AGAIN ONE UPPED ITSELF FOR THE CELEBRITY DEATH I AM MOST PERSONALLY AFFECTED BY
*nods*
I wrote him a poem a couple days ago, on the occasion of his diverted flight. (Sort of like Frank O’Hara’s poem for Lana Turner, except that I am not Frank O’Hara.) It had honestly never occurred to me before then that he was mortal. I thought he was a changeling who was going to live forever, writing and performing whatever the hell brilliance he wanted and engaging with the music industry and public on his own terms.
Nooooo I am literally not ready for a world without Prince.
This is embarrassing but I actually didn’t hear Purple Rain all the way through until last year. I loved it immediately and understood the Prince love so much more than when “When Doves Cry” was the Prince song the radio played when they got tired of playing “1999” (or whatever it’s called.)
When doves cry is the best song….
It is an amazing song but no one song can represent his style.
“If I Was Your Girlfriend” blew my mind. It was a perspective I’d never heard from a male artist before.
“Purple Rain” got me through several deaths of loved ones (and dramatically imploded friendships) in junior high, too.
He wrote such meaningful, applicable songs that it was a long time before I actually noticed what a fucking AMAZING guitarist he was.
I just. Prince! I didn’t think 2016 could get much worse, musician-death-wise, but oh, it has.
I was really hoping this wasn’t real.
My dude told me this and we’ve just been wondering what kind of crisis the home planet is in that they’ve had to call back their two most important ambassadors so close together, Prince and Bowie.
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING.
That planet is being real selfish. Why give us these wonderful ambassadors and then take them so suddenly? They better leave Elton John right the fuck where he is.
Yes! We must immediately form a protective posse to surround Elton John 24/7.
I just gasped and clutched where my pearls would be if I wore them to the office.
At least Tim Curry has successfully turned 70.
This gives me such strange and wonderful comfort right now.
I’m so glad I got to see him play live. So, so glad.
That at least is a beautiful thought.
Local news is airing interviews with fans and others who have worked with Prince over the years. There’s gatherings at First Avenue, which Prince brought to fame in “Purple Rain” and at his Chanhassen Paisley Park studios. And I’m finally starting to lose it, some of the shock is wearing off. Here comes the Rain.
http://www.startribune.com/the-life-of-prince-as-…
Goddamnit, 2016. I am sick and tired of your bullshit.
2016 is a bag of dicks.
2016 doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
Prince? Really?!
Today has been terrible since I woke up and now it’s worse. I wish I could just go back to sleep and start it over again.
I am in shock. This is such a shitty year! We are losing all of our best people!!!!!
I just imagined a walk-off between David Bowie and Prince.
This is helping.
It really sucks that we’ve lost two celebrities that showed us that there was no wrong way to be a man. There aren’t many of those. And in such a short period of time.
I have a radical socialist friend (white, male, impoverished) who is upset about Tubman on the $20 because money was used to buy slaves, so it’s bad to put her on the money.
I just want to beat him to death.
If you feel like talking to him again, make sure he sees the story about how she once staged a sit-in for $20, in order to help her parents. And also point out the blinding obvious truth of how slavery is a crime because they weren’t given money for their labor, so putting a former slave’s portrait on that same currency she was once denied is quite fitting.
Sadly, I’ll probably be talking to him for the rest of my life. It’s a THING about people who went to my very liberal and progressive school in Vermont. They’re so far up the ass of being Liberal that they’ll do things like not vote for Bernie Sanders because he isn’t Liberal enough.
I do love your anecdote, though, and I will pass it along.
I just cannot with that shit. *sigh*
Have you ever seen that SNL Andy Samberg digital short where he sings a song about throwing things on the ground? “I threw it on the GROUND! I don’t need your hand-outs, hot dog man! I’m an ADULT!” Those dudes remind me of that, but they’re somehow the liberal versions of that.
Ooh, that’s a Lonely Island video! I fucking love it (except for the juvenile sexual violence reference near the end, but that’s their schtick).
Also ask him what he uses for money. I mean… he doesn’t let that nasty slavey stuff actually touch his hands does he?
Or is it only the _victims_ of *what has been done with money in the past* who can’t be part of it?
Dick Cheney still lives. Life is so grossly unfair sometimes.
But, as our Toastman braak said on Twitter, at least Scalia is still dead.
I think he’s more cyborg than man at this point.
Mr. Delperro said “that which is not alive cannot die”
Oh, this has become a very sad no-good day but I am here to share with you all a delightful link that will bring hours of joy. I stumbled upon it a few weeks ago while on the hunt for something or other that I gleaned from this very website, became ill, and then only last night landed upon the link:
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/
Is this a place where I can pick a fight with Mallory? I am reading the Prudie about hitchhikers, and the hitchhiking statistics article is giving me HIVES. HIVES. It’s actually probably a good answer to the lady who is worried about the hitchhikers beating up her husband or something, but is is a TERRIBLE article for 1) statistical analysis and 2) having any awareness at all about any of the socio-economic factors that go into hitchhiking and risk. As a woman from BC where we have the Highway of Tears, I can tell you: to read that there is a “0.0000089% chance of being raped or killed and then being left on the side of an Interstate Highway” which means everyone should hitchhike makes me all kinds of upset.
Unfortunately the women who died on the Highway of Tears were vulnerable for other reasons than hitchhiking, with their race at the top of the list. They weren’t safe anywhere. I really don’t mean to minimize your reaction, just point out that they were targeted for who they were, not what they were doing.
No, totally. But who hitchhikes? Vulnerable people, a lot of the time. People without cars, for one thing, or people who will drive them places. People who know they might get picked up, for another (like young women). Who they are informs what they were doing, and provided the opportunity for being targeted.
And that article didn’t engage with the question of “who hitchhikes” and what that means for their risk at all, except to say, matter-of-factly, that female hitchhikers were at high risk of “rape”, while male hitchhikers were at high risk of robbery. As if that is just a statistical factor.
The article also took statistics of how many people were murdered or raped while hitchhiking and extrapolated them to the whole population. And there were so many things wrong with that. First, to say that you are more likely to fall down than die hitchhiking is ridiculous. Most people walk. Most people don’t hitchhike. You can’t say that people have a 0.0000089% chance of getting raped and murdered hitchhiking when most people don’t hitchhike. I don’t hitchhike, so my chance is 0. Somebody who DOES hitchhike, therefore, has a much higher risk than 0.0000089%.
It also completely fails to engage with the fact that, even if most people DID hitchhike, that some people would be way more vulnerable than other people while they hitchhiked.
Ugh, the whole article was just so poorly done. But anyway, yes, you are write about the Highway of Tears.
ETA: I guess partly what I mean is that the article completely failed to even acknowledge that there is a huge difference between, for example, being a young man hitchhiking on the way to a music festival and being a young aboriginal woman hitchhiking in a remote area, or a woman hitchhiking at night at a truck stop. As if to say “look at this math! You are safe and your concerns are ridiculous!” And the math was so bad!
You’re right. You can’t apply the rate of murder among hitchhikers to the entire population, just to the amount of people who hitchhike, plus that number is different for different gender and races.
I wonder what the numbers really are?
Wishing I could wear my raspberry beret. It would be a comfort. But it’s too hot here. And there’s rain on my face.
MTV is playing nonstop Prince videos, and is supposed to air Purple Rain tonight. It doesn’t help, but it is something. 🙁
:(((((((
Ok, some dude on my FB just posted a link about China’s first robot girlfriend and I’m kind of sick to my stomach. There’s a little war going on in my head between my ultra-objective self asking me (in a very calm, robotic voice, of course), “Why does this bother you? Will this harm you in some way?” and my deeply-offended-men-are-disgusting-using-women-as-objects self who wants to start roaring and spitting and hissing.
I totally agree with your second voice. But a third perspective which occurred to me is that men who would be happy with a robot girlfriend ARE WELCOME TO THEM. Who wants to date a guy who’s looking for that kind of blind obedience and soulless personality? It might be an efficient way to filter out the trash.
Yes, that was a third voice somewhere. As long as they stick to the robots.
ETA: hmm…no, I really don’t want to think about this anymore.
I mean…
I would date a robot if it was able to act sufficiently like a human. I would also bone a consenting alien if the opportunity arose, or a sapient humanoid fox version of Robin Hood. I think the issue is not in being attracted to a non-human sapient being, but in the programming and intent of the creators and consumers of the robot girlfriend.
“Sapient humanoid fox version of Robin Hood.”
Yes please, I would gladly get boned by this creature.
As was established on The Toast previously, I think we all want that.
Lt. Cmdr. Data was my first childhood crush.
““Honestly, don’t dirty any more plates. Keep these plates dirty, and I’ll be fine.””
You know how sometimes you’re so gone that you feel a prickling heat start in your heart and crawl up your shoulders, neck and face until you’re like Miss. White in Clue stammering about white hot flames but in an attracted way?
That’s what this guy does to me.
"“Honestly, don’t dirty any more plates. Keep these plates dirty, and I’ll be fine.”"
You know how sometimes you're so gone that you feel a prickling heat start in your heart and crawl up your shoulders, neck and face until you're like Miss. White in Clue stammering about white hot flames but in an attracted way?
That's what this guy does to me.