Saeed Jones shuts some nonsense DOWN:
In 2008, the same year that Eich donated money to support Prop 8, the same year Barack Obama continued to resist supporting marriage equality, a straight man tried to kill me. He held me down on the floor of his apartment and said, “You’re already dead” over and over again while beating me. This happened in Arizona, a state that just a few weeks ago almost made law a bill designed to protect the religious freedom of business owners who fear they’ll be sued by marriage-equality supporters. It is surreal to hear that anti-gay people feel they are being bullied for their beliefs.
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Jaya Saxena ruined Manhattan.
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I hope he dies I hope he dies I hope he dies SOON:
When he testified about the texts, Pistorius talked about them as capturing “a bad day in our relationship” that had been “resolved,” although, he granted, “I wasn’t kind to her like I should have been.” He said it helped that she subsequently mastered the details of his training regimen and strict diet, and was committed to accommodating him.
MURDERING ABUSER. I mean, look, he is CLEARLY LYING, but even if he was telling the truth (he’s not) he’s a criminally negligent irrational loose cannon obsessed with firearms who should be living on a goddamn ISLAND ALONE FOREVER. Reeva Steenkamp died cowering in a bathroom screaming for her life, and this man brings out my inner Nancy Grace with his crocodile tear nonsense. Okay, pulling back my rage today.
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Stop coddling the condors.
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I got Mallory hooked on eating jerky, and she got me hooked on Cowboy Dan’s jerky reviews.
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The uplifting essay about how your book did GREAT…remains to be written.
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Brazil embraces misandry (via a reader!)
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You KNOW I would only link to xoJane in order for you to read Roxane Gay talk about literally anything:
My body is wildly undisciplined and I deny myself nearly everything I desire. I deny myself the right to space when I am public, trying to fold in on myself, to make my body invisible even though it is, in fact, grandly visible. I deny myself the right to a shared armrest because how dare I impose? I deny myself entry into certain spaces I have deemed inappropriate for a body like mine—most spaces inhabited by other people.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Oscar Pistorius is an abusive murderer and people defending him is what’s wrong with the world i WILL STICK BY THIS OPINION TO THE END
Yes — I keep thinking about how hard it must be for her mom to have to listen to him say over and over that he wanted that night to “protect Reeva and myself” and that’s why he fired off his gun wildly like a madman. And that’s in the most positive interpretation possible.
More likely: a weak man who lost control of himself just enough to fire a gun at his girlfriend multiple times through the bathroom door so he didn’t have to look her in the face as he did it, maintaining the possibility of denying responsibility for it to others and maybe (probably) even to himself.
You don’t even need tor ead between his lines to see that he spent most of their relationship emotionally (and maybe physically) abusing her. He murdered her. He knew it was her in there and he shot anyway.
Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, even if you do that, it’s shocking negligence to just shoot into a locked room when you know someone else is in the house, especially if it is someone you claim to love.
But he knew it was her in there, and I suspect your interpretation is most accurate. He got really angry, and shot through the door so he didn’t have to face her when he killed her.
You put your finger on it. Abusers are weak. It’s a weakness, taking out one’s frustrations on someone else. More so when the abused is in a position of less power.
scared white man testimony is the ABSOLUTE WORST
Men always justify ridiculously shitty behaviour because they were ‘scared’ but me crossing the street to avoid men I’m scared of is unreasonable and stupid.
Nice to know that if Jos gets ‘scared’ he could – if he wanted to – kill me and lots of people wouldn’t even blink and some would even support him.
Why haven’t we burned the world yet?
*strikes match*
There’s something very strange about how white men view their fears. They seem to hold out being “scared” like it’s some justification or an important fact. Pistorius was “scared” so shooting his girlfriend was reasonable. There’s a guy in the comments of that Saeed Jones piece stating that the fact that he is scared to disagree with the piece is evidence of the existance of a Gay Mafia. It’s like they think somehow their fear can affect reality, or maybe that they are such objectively-thinking perfect human beings that they’d never be scared unless what they are afraid of is 100% true. I will cross a street to avoid a man who makes me afraid, but I don’t pretend that because I’m afraid he was definitely going to attack me. I am well aware that he might just be going about his own business, or just wanted to flirt with me or whatever. I would certainly not consider my fear all the justification necessary for shooting him.
This is really insightful, I think.
Yep, me too.
Yes! And your fear is deemed to be irrational, whereas their fear is deemed rational.
Not just rational, but SO rational they can act like what they fear has already happened, so they can shoot through a bathroom door without knowing what’s in there, or shoot a teenager who swore at them and played loud music because their fear is some Minority-Report-level precognition that removes any abiguity. So (pretending we believe his story) he heard a weird noise in the night and felt he wouldn’t be able to successfully fight off an able-bodied man. Big fucking deal, I don’t know many women who haven’t been in that situation many times in their lives, and I don’t know a single one who automatically started shooting up the house.
Bingo
So well-stated.
IT HELPED THAT SHE WAS COMMITTED TO ACCOMMODATING HIM
Yeah, I’m with Nicole on this one – DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE ALREADY
That’s what got me, too. “Hey, for a while I was less ragey and abusive because the target of my abuse starting giving in to my every whim. So I get points for that, right?”
Even worse is the implication that it’s her fault for somehow failing at this. *Head explodes with anger*
And they were only together FOUR MONTHS!! Not that any level of abuse is excusable over four days or four decades, but….sweet baby jeebus, it’s horrible.
UGH UGH UGH UGH. What an utter waste of carbon.
The Roxane Gay essay was amazing. The world is going bonkers about bodies. Other people’s bodies, their bodies. And oh how the health is everybody’s business. She hit that bullshit nail on the head.
I would read an essay by Roxane Gay about nearly anything, but this piece in particular was truly something else. I always learn from reading her and this one was no exception. Bullshit nail on the head indeed.
In less rage-y news, that piece by Jaya was lovely!
For real, right? That was some good writin’, Jaya!
Thanks, guys!
oh my god! so good!
So wonderful. I sent it to my sister, who lived in Brooklyn for years in the 90s and did plenty of walking (and crying in public) during that time.
“You’re not a New Yorker unless you’re completely comfortable crying in public, knowing the best form of privacy is the kind you enjoy when everyone can see you.”—Jaya Saxena
TRUTH TRUTH TRUTH
“Her body, like most women’s bodies, instantly became a public text, a site of discourse […]”—Roxanne Gay
This. I wonder if it’s why I’m so into midrash, magical realism with multiple and/or ambiguous endings, performative poetry, and places like The Toast, where the discourse can be changed and taken back.
I came down here to quote that line from Jaya’s piece too! SO MUCH TRUTH
New York is a great place to cry publicly! Nobody talks to you and it’s great! When I was flying back from Michigan once, I teared up angrily at the airport because it looked like we’d have to spend the night in Milwaukee in the best case scenario. Three ladies IMMEDIATELY swarmed me to make sure I wasn’t dying. If I started crying in LGA or on the subway, no one would bat an eye.
Boston isn’t bad either. I’ve walked down the sidewalk bawling, and no one’s given me a second look. Hooray for big impersonal cities!
That condor article started out normal and then got VERY REAL about puppets and life and death. Woah.
It’s so good! It starts with a pretty blah straightforward headline and then just gets increasingly awesomer and awesomer the more you read.
Not the cheeriest Link Roundup ever. Wait, is this Nicole driving up pageviews for HOUND again?
(But seriously: thanks for all these. And double-seriously: UGGGGGH the world sucks so much sometimes.)
“He said it helped that she subsequently mastered the details of his training regimen and strict diet, and was committed to accommodating him.”
Hahaha, yeah, once she completely re-shaped her life around him, apparently, THEN she was worthy of being treated SLIGHTLY more kindly – but not enough to keep from being shot when he got angry at her (I don’t care what anyone says, that is 100% what happened and all this bullshit about him thinking she was an intruder is an insult to her memory and to everyone else’s intelligence).
This is why I have no patience for anyone who talks about feminists being man-haters. Because there are a fuckton of men in this world, in every single country on earth, who think that if women don’t do exactly as they’re told they deserve to die; that if they literally exist for any reason other than to accommodate and support men, they should be destroyed. One third of female murder victims in this country are killed by a current or former intimate partner, and that’s a conservative estimate. So just don’t fucking talk about misandry or whatever like it’s a real, serious problem. I know I’m kinda preaching to the choir here, but god, my heart just breaks for her and how scared she must have been. I hope he rots in a hole forever.
Well said.
YES. I had a job dealing with murder for several years and I was absolutely gobsmacked by how many women were killed by their partners during that three year time period in JUST MY STATE. Women with restraining orders, women who bought themselves guns for protection, women who fled to shelters, etc (seriously, a man barged into a women’s shelter and shot his ex with a shotgun before fleeing and killing himself). And so many of them had such similar stories (controlling partners, escalating anger and abuse, etc) that it’s just….like…a thing I don’t really have the words to express, I guess. I was glad to leave that job. It’s still happening, of course, but it’s not on my desk every Monday.
I think it’s a Margaret Atwood saying–something along the lines of men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them?
Yeah.
Had not heard that one. That’s a fantastic explanation. Thanks for that.
I may not have the wording exactly right, but you get the idea. It’s pretty haunting how starkly it lays things out.
The first time I heard that quote it felt like a shock to the system, and I still often think about it, because it so perfectly captures the dynamic and shows what very, very different worlds men and women live in. Men hate and fear and kill women for reasons that basically seem to boil down to them not wanting women to escape their control – while women fear men because of the very real possibility (statistically speaking) that they will hurt and/or kill them. It also puts me in mind of that very funny yet also very sad Louis CK bit where he asks why women would ever date men, considering how potentially dangerous it is. He said to the men, imagine trying to date a bear-lion hybrid (or something like that) and just hoping that this one is a nice one. I just wish more men would try to consider things from that perspective vs. getting mad at women for calling guys creepy or crossing to the other side of the street late at night.
Another unsettlingly funny thing that Margaret Atwood quote reminds me of: Donald Glover’s bit on how every guy has a “crazy girlfriend” story, but why doesn’t he ever hear “crazy boyfriend” stories from women? Oh, right, if you have a crazy boyfriend, you’re gonna die.
I remember that particular saying showing up in Hild, but that could have easily been an allusion to Atwood for those in the know.
There was a study/survey a little while back that asked folks going on first dates with people of the other gender what their biggest fears were leading up to the date. Men were afraid that their date had misrepresented their attractiveness and women were afraid of being raped/murdered.
Yes, I remember hearing about that! Same tune, different verse.
Thank god for the reality check from Saeed Jones. Lately, I’m noticing that people are laughing at me (or worse, thinking I’m playing the issue up for sympathy) when I imply that I don’t feel like American society is safe for LGBTQ people. That article made me feel a little less crazy.
Quite a read that Rumpus article, “Solidly Mid-List” (the story of you how your book did…). It almost makes me feel a little guilty, as a reader, for how easily I pass up some books and how random my reading habits can be. But much like Sapporo East in Jaya Saxena’s piece, you realize how much is up to the whim of the market and how little your small commitment to a place/book/all of literary fiction can be when it’s up against larger forces.
I deny myself my attractions. I have them, oh I do, but dare not express them, because how dare I want. How dare I confess my want? How dare I try to act on that want? I deny myself so much and still there is so much desire throbbing beneath my surfaces.
I’m just gonna lie down on the floor here for a while. What? No, I’m not crying, what are you talking about.
I mean…she totally laid out the gooiest of inner self loathing. I feel simultaneously empowered AND so cheap that I get to look, agree and sob privately.
That particular part ties into a lot of stuff I’ve had percolating – about invisibility of being bi, being femme, being fat; about being absolutely shit-scared of putting myself out there – and I might have to actually write it down and post it somewhere.
Put it out there, if you’re comfortable, and remember that there’s a whole group of us here who love and support you. <3
This is the one that got me: They are thinspiration as the parlance goes—thin inspiration, a constant reminder of the distance between our bodies and what they could be with the proper discipline.
Because every damn day I work with my “thinspiration” – my sister, who’s our whole lives been kinda the same as me, body-wise, except that I had kids earlier & lost pregnancy weight later (oh, wait, I never lost it.) So we work together and for years kind of bitched together about weight, bleah, dieting, bleh, etc. And then I started to go to a trainer, and lost a little & got stronger & that was all good (though not lasting, except for some of the strength part).
And then she started to go to a trainer, and lost a lot, and has kept it off (and we don’t need to get into her emotion-based factors, though they’re there & I’m fine not having to share them) & frankly, each new dress where I can basically see her hipbones & each new pair of skinny jeans she wears are a giant-ass (that would be MY giant ass) reminder that, hey, I actually </>could convince my body to, if not show quite that many bones to the world, at least show the world that there are bones somewhere in there.
And I haven’t.
And so I am even more of a failure.
A very comfortably-padded failure.
Yeah, my sister and I are the same height and we have similar frames and both take really obviously after our dad’s side, curvy and strong. But I weigh well over a hundred pounds more than she does. She was a varsity athlete; I got sidelined by injuries in middle school and then had various fun psychological issues and disordered eating and whatnot. We look alike now, but it’s weird sometimes to look at her and think I would look even more like her if I lost the weight. For me personally it’s not something I care enough about to beat myself up about, and I don’t think you or I are failures, but… it’s weird.
Jaya, I loved your piece (mostly because I am a fellow Astorian so of course I think you made the right decision).
Thank you so much for linking to that Roxane Gay piece. It was perfect.
“The odds will never be in my favor, but there will always be that small percentage of a chance that my small stream of words will wriggle its way into that narrow crevice and break out into the world like a fucking typhoon. And because I have that completely irrational, often unearned ego that all writers need to keep going, I’m always preparing for that ride.”
Gawd just speak all the words from my mouth, why don’t you, Mr Mid-List? I’ll be over here with my personal flotation device, awaiting that ride.
Roxane Gay’s piece brought up all the body image feels. Excuse me while I have a quick cry in the office bathroom.
Watching the 2000 Dune miniseries, it struck me how recently it was that a character’s homosexuality could be used to signify him as evil. Or with another character, in Arrested Development, how it could signify him as a clown.
Nowadays, it’s bisexuality that’s used to signify you as evil or a potential traitor. It happens… ridiculously often.
Here’s the TV Tropes page for the Depraved Bisexual trope, which backs up your statement 110%.
But yeah, while we live in a world where people are being murdered for being LGBTQA the whole ‘I’m being bullied for my faith’ doesn’t ring true to me.
I said on tumblr that it reminds me of when you’re a kid, and some nasty little brat is bullying you. And finally, after a lot of suffering, you are able to stand up for yourself – and the kid goes crying to the teachers about how ‘mean’ you are for picking on them.
Info for those who are not yet aware: Being criticised for your destructive and bigoted opinions isn’t harrassment, bullying or any of those things.
The other thing you would link to xojane for is a Samantha Irby post.
Confession: I didn’t finish the Roxane Gay piece because each time I scrolled down another headline would catch my eye in the sidebar and I got tired of going “what? uugghh.”
But like isn’t the toast the best though?
Can we talk about the Bolsa Famîlia some more? I think it’s an awesome idea to give money directly to women, but how effective is that for women in abusive relationships? One would think an abusive partner would make a woman hand that money over.
And what do we think about the criticism that this further instills the notion of women as carers of children? Or that it lets fathers off the hook?
I’m fascinated by this program!
The article argues that it’s doing the opposite, since it gives money to women who would otherwise be financially dependent on their husbands, helping them leave abusive situations. But I don’t know how it would work in practice.
Also, I wonder to what extent welfare programs in other countries are reinforcing the same gender ideas. I know in the US we have WIC, which is kind of similar? (albeit with crazy restrictions compared to the Brazilian program)
Not to mention, it seems like a jerk move to argue about reinforcing gender ideas while real women are raising real children and living in real poverty!
Like, sure, we want to allow women to be things other than mothers, but are we going to punish women who already are mothers because of that?
I think the idea for women in abusive relationships is less that it will allow them to build up savings to fund their escape, and more that they will feel more confident of their ability to survive post-escape since they have a bit of guaranteed income once they do.
Don’t worry, Jaya. Queens is better anyway.
Every time I see June Steenkamp’s face I want to cry.
So today’s Pistorius headline is that he states that he didnt pick on her which is laughable when you look at her messages. He picked on her accent, her gum chewing, her friendships – her messages even say that she has to be so delicate around him because he picked on her so much. Jesus. He was awful to her and it makes me so sad for other people who suffer that type of relationship bullying.
Also he said he was screaming before he shot and thats what the neighbours heard. If she was in the bathroom, why wouldnt she have said something?
Anyone who has ever known an abusive person will recognize the mindset in Pistorious’s words. His sense of entitlement. His rage at being denied anything. The anger so much like a toddler thwarted. The crocodile tears.
I’m with Nicole -can they kill him several times?
Death is too good for abusers. It’s an escape. They should live long. And suffer every minute of their long life. Yes, I advocate torture.
Oh, Jaya. That was just so lovely.
The Saeed Jones piece was an excellent counterweight to the bullshit being published by a ‘respectable’ columnist in the Globe and Mail today, which is trollish linkbait contrasting Eich’s stepping down to firing a lady for wearing hijab. I am … really, really angry about this.
Ughhhhhhhhhh
I am attempting to express myself better than that but I’ve got nothing right now except maybe hijab doesn’t oppress other people, active support of a measure that hinders others’ rights to live their lives does. #preachingtothechoir
I actually have a plan in case I ever become an unsellable mid-list writer. Contingency BETA PESSOA involves maintaining a suite of vaguely continental fallback pseudonyms, each with their own genre:
-Ilsa la Suvenne: a nine-volume epic following the fortunes of a family through three thousand years; each installment named after and dedicated to a different muse.
-Sven Analilus: grim Scandinavian detective novels.
-Nell Suivanas: a bestselling YA series about plucky teens scattered through history who are mysteriously granted access to Wikipedia.
A friend told me last night about a workplace “Biggest Loser” competition that involved a scale in the shared office! Just…why?!
Unrelated to anything: http://www.eonline.com/news/530500/stephen-colber…
whaaaaaaaaaaat
Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh, the worst possible case scenario. Not only do we continue to get a super-boring late night line-up, but we lose the Colbert Report too. Which is far from perfect, but still better than yet another white dude having conversations with celebrities in the most mainstream way possible.
AGREED. This news is proving to be surprisingly disappointing and deflating to this feminist. I’m having a hard time articulating my feelings about this…like it’s annoying (?) to feel so out of sync with mainstream pop culture and feeling like I don’t even want to try to talk to people about it because I don’t want to hear lame defenses of the status quo and besides we’re talking about a TV show here not something that really matters except that it does.
Reading that Roxane Gay essay makes me feel even more excited for my pre-ordered copy of her book.
The Oscar Pistorius trial is really messing with my head. When I read the New Yorker piece, I literally shuddered. The things he’s saying? That he “wasn’t kind to her” and that they had had “a bad day”? I was in an emotionally abusive relationship last year, and I heard those EXACT same words from my ex. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened – it’s as though abusers follow a script. And now that I know what the script is, I can never unsee it, I hear it all the time, and it makes me furious – both for myself and for every woman out there who has been the recipient of these lousy half-assed efforts made to hide abusive behavior. I sincerely hope that Pistorius is found guilty and spends the rest of his life in prison for what he’s done.
One thing about having been there is that you can spot it A FUCKING MILE OFF. When Nigella Lawson called her ex an ’emotional terrorist’ I think there must have been a flash of recognition in every single woman who’s ever been emotionally abused by a partner.
I do not know anything about South Africa’s justice system (or really the US system) (and obviously I could learn on Wikipedia) but at the very least this shitbag should get the equivalent of manslaughter or accidental homicide, right? There’s no way shooting BLINDLY though a fucking DOOR is anything less. Any legal eagles know the deal?
“Or with one of the lesser charges for which Pistorius may be liable, under South African law, for firing a gun at anyone unknown through a closed door.)”
So there’s that, I guess. I don’t know what the sentence for that alone is, or if its compounded by whatever resulted from the shooting, even if the outcome is shown to be accidental.
Mexico has been doing the same thing for about 10 years, and also paying female heads of household directly. https://www.rbfhealth.org/news/item/406/mexico%E2… They say they haven't found a link between participation in the program and domestic violence, but that they agree the potential for conflict is there. It does say they found it raised women's self-esteem and status in the family and in the village.
And they were only together FOUR MONTHS!! Not that any level of abuse is excusable over four days or four decades, but….sweet baby jeebus, it's horrible.
Off topic, but in the May issue of Harper's, there's a piece on Sherlock Holmes (and Sherlock and Elementary), and Sherlock is very popular in China, where they have nicknamed the boys Curly Fu and Peanut
Thank you for unleashing some real rage on the Pistorious thing. The CBC keeps ruining my morning by playing clips of his testimony on the radio in the morning, and I cannot handle it. He’s a lying murderer. And Jesus Christ just because he feels sad that she is dead it does NOT mean he did not murder her in cold blood. FUCK.