Incredible article in the Ottawa Citizen by a reporter looking back on the Montreal Massacre, and how she and her colleagues participated in sanitizing the misogyny of the killer and erasing feminist anger (if you’re not following, we are STILL watching this massacre being spun to this day):
When I review the stories I wrote, I almost never used the word feminist; I never profiled the achievements of one of the slain engineering students or the obstacles she’d toppled. I never interviewed a single woman who was angry, only those who were merely sad. Why? No one told me what not to write, but I just knew, in the way I knew not to seem strident in a workplace where I’d already learned how to laugh at sexist jokes and to wait until a certain boss had gone for the day before ripping down Penthouse centrefolds taped on the wall near his desk.
My stories were restrained, diligent and cautious. For years, I remembered one of my sentences with particular pride. Reading it now, it shows everything that was wrong with how I covered the event:
They stood crying before the coffins of strangers, offering roses and tiger lilies to young women they never knew.
I turned the dead engineering students into sleeping beauties who received flowers from potential suitors.
I should have referred to the buildings they wouldn’t design, the machines they wouldn’t create and the products never imagined.
They weren’t killed for being daughters or girlfriends, but because they were capable women in a male-dominated field.
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Why the poor stay poor (you think everyone knows this shit but APPARENTLY NOT, because “buy in bulk!” is still something people utter like it’s a silver bullet for food costs):
One time I lost an apartment because my roommate got a horrible flu that we suspected was maybe something worse because it stayed forever–she missed work, and I couldn’t cover her rent. Once it was because my car broke down and I missed work. Once it was because I got a week’s unpaid leave when the company wanted to cut payroll for the rest of the month. Once my fridge broke and I couldn’t get the landlord to fix it, so I just left. Same goes for the time that the gas bill wasn’t paid in a utilities-included apartment for a week, resulting in frigid showers and no stove. That’s why we move so much. Stuff like that happens.
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Wonderful interview with Jenny Diski.
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Emily Nussbaum on last night’s CAMPUS RAPE-THEMED episode of The Newsroom (scorn tone IN PLACE):
After the Amtrak scene, I turned downright mellow, even fond of the series, the way you might cherish an elderly uncle who is weird about women and technology, but still, you know, a fun guy. My guard went down. So when I watched Sunday’s infuriating episode, on screeners, I wasn’t prepared.
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Mark Wahlberg is the worst, and he is guaranteeing that people will now have to stop ignoring his violent racial hate crimes.
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To be honest, I do not know what to link to in re: the Rolling Stone fiasco, so I am open to suggestions.
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too excited about this to function
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Amazed by how entertaining the oral history of “The Right Stuff” is, since I had it open in a tab for over a week without getting to it:
BARBARA HERSHEY (GLENNIS YEAGER): Chuck was so warm and incredibly generous. He even started calling me Glennis, which really meant a lot to me. One of the terrible things about the poor wives of the test pilots was that, when they said good-bye to their husbands in the morning, they didn’t know if they’d see them again that night. I would look at photos of these women and they all looked like they’d been snowed in for the winter.
YEAGER: Barbara Hershey was the spittin’ image of Glennis.
HERSHEY: I asked Chuck, “Is Glennis going to come to shooting?” And he said, “Oh no, no, no, she is never going to come to Edwards again.” And I asked him, “Did it ever get to her, this terrible waiting?” And he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, did she ever get emotional?” And he said, “Oh no, no, no, not emotional. She’d throw things, but she wouldn’t get emotional.”
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sarah koenig’s voice is hella fucking soothing. the first night we tried to listen to the shit i fell asleep halfway through it. that NPR flow just gets me, bro. that’s why i don’t know shit about world events, because every time i try to listen to morning edition it knocks me right out. i don’t know how you people listen to that shit in your cars. i would drive through the front of a building. hot damn those gentle inside voices are all i need to lapse right into a coma. it took me four tries to get through the first episode. zzZzzZz
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I’m right down the road from one of the old Utah Jeffs compounds (now an exciting real estate opportunity!) and a second, active polygamist compound, and have a morbid fascination with all things FLDS, so this incredible piece on a non-polygamous couple moving back to the husband’s Short Creek roots GOT ME:
When Jinjer did run into townsfolk, she felt a chill, even at city offices. She and Ron applied for water, sewer, and electricity soon after their arrival — a simple request that would reshape their lives. They said they didn’t anticipate a fight; their neighbors already had service, indicating there were lines nearby. But summer cooled to fall, and the Cookes still had no utilities. Officials said the towns had been grappling with a water shortage since the summer before, when a pump briefly failed, and had placed a moratorium on new meters — though, strangely, reconnecting a pre-existing hookup was allowed.
Frustrated, Ron wrote a letter describing his medical woes. He realized the towns were parched, but a few houses had recently burned down — perhaps that freed up a meter? He gave the letter to his brother-in-law, who showed it to David Zitting, then the mayor of Hildale. If the Cookes were FLDS, Ron’s brother-in-law recalls Zitting saying, they’d have service by next weekend. (In a deposition, Zitting later said he did not recall the conversation.)
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Omggg “buy in bulk” does not work if you can’t afford the $25 for 50 rolls of toilet paper in the first place.
“Buy in bulk!” is the second cousin to advice of “Cut your spending by making coffee at home instead of buying a $5 latte every day!” or “Shop at outlet malls instead of paying full price!”
Helpful hint: No. If you have $4.27 to spend and you need toilet paper, you will be buying the $1.99 four-pack at the drugstore, not going to the Costco-that-is-not-close-to-you and spending money-you-don’t-have. Why is this so difficult for people to grasp?
Oh my god I hate the “make coffee from home” thing. I am not in poverty, but in my tighter times fucking duh, the first steps are always stop going out to eat and stop buying anything new if I can help it. That doesn’t make rent lower.
yes! I have been working on saving now that I *have* a full time job. And as I review my spending, it has expanded, but only because my rent is hella low, and bc I haven’t had car trouble lately.
Um, also, not to mention how freaking expensive groceries are.
Like, $6 for a jar of instant coffee versus $1.50 for a coffee in a shop. Some days, the $1.50 is easier to manage than the $7.
I don’t drink coffee and my mom asked me to pick up a can the other day. Holy fuck that shit’s expensive.
I can’t even GET to outlet malls because I don’t have a car and they’re alllll the way out in the ‘burbs or even not even where transit goes at all.
Relatedly, I can’t stand the advice to save money by not buying lattes. As if it’s all just an issue of reworking a budget… “move $100 from your latte budget into your rent budget and taa-daa!” only works if you have a latte budget to start with.
Exactly. This is great advice for people who have been middle-class or so and are having to cut back for one reason or another. That’s one audience, and if you’re implicitly writing to that audience, stop being so darned implicit and JUST SAY IT. These recommendations have absolutely no bearing on the lives of people who are low-income and who have been low-income and who don’t really see that changing any time soon, which is a lot of people whose realities the writers of these articles are totally not acknowledging.
My husband and I have both taken dramatic pay cuts in the last year and a half or so to get out of a soul-sucking profession. That is a luxury we had. We also had the luxury of a little savings, a functional car, a giant pantry, and reasonably good appliances bought in plummier days. Heck yeah we buy in bulk and make our own coffee. But we are already playing the game at a lower difficulty setting than most of the people in our income range because of where we’re coming from.
Or you’re carrying everything on the bus or dangling off the back of the baby’s buggy, or you’ve got half a cupboard kitchen storage space in your house-share… Seriously, who ARE these people?
Or if you can’t transport or store them! I can’t imagine trying to fit bulk packaging of everything in my studio apartment
Seriously. We have a fairly decent-sized apartment but we have one bathroom with a tiny under-sink storage area where I can fit maybe 8 rolls of toilet paper if I don’t have anything else to stick there, even if I had $20 to spend up front for 50 rolls of tp or whatever.
Sleep on the toilet paper and save the cost of a mattress!
Yes! My new apartment has a little storage room. For the first time in my life, I can buy in bulk. (A 12-pack of paper towel! They exist!) But previously, I could never buy in bulk.
it’s amazing how much shit you can pack into a galley kitchen if you only need to pivot from the range to the shelves to the cutting board tho
~and then you get roaches~
Right? All my closets are full and I don’t have any more kitchen cabinet space. Although I have cleverly stashed bulk toilet paper and paper towels in the corner of the living room behind the bookshelf, I cannot actually get it back out with my short arms and I have to yell at my boyfriend to do it whenever we’re out of something.
Haven’t read It (my Stephen King knowledge is limited to a couple short story collections, ‘Salem’s Lot, and Pet Sematary), but the person who commented that Michael Shannon should be Pennywise is a real winner.
I’m not going to insist that you read It, but you absolutely must read Nicole’s piece about It if you haven’t already:
http://www.theawl.com/2013/01/classic-trash-it
LOL if you think I didn’t click that link immediately.
I actually just finished reading it for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was so freaking long! It wasn’t scary, but it was pretty depressing thanks to all the horrific bullying going on in the flashbacks. Plus its pretty damn sexist, and King does that thing where he has a Racism Is Wrong component but then manages to include a ridiculously stereotypical Asian minor character. I dunno, I guess it was worth reading to catch references to it in other works, but it’s not a great book on its own, in my opinion.
Also Michael Shannon has creeped me out since Bug, he is the perfect Pennywise.
Ugh, I posted something about the Wahlberg thing on facebook the other day, and one of my friends commented saying “It’s not my eye, but I really don’t see what the problem is. People change.” etc, etc. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS. Jesus.
You know who else probably doesn’t see? The fucking man who’s blind in one eye now because Mark fucking Wahlberg beat the shit out of him!!!!!!!!! FUCK YOU GOD FUCKING DAMMIT. Fucking shitbag.
That is the perfect gif for almost all occasions that involve people on facebook.
There was this fluff piece interview with Wahlberg in Toronto Life a while back (sidebar: why the hell do I keep reading Toronto Life) and he said, “Toronto inspires me to push a lot of American cities to clean up their acts” first of all what does that even mean and second of all HOW ABOUT CLEANING UP YOUR OWN ACT THOUGH and at the very least apologizing to the people you beat the shit out of? There’s a thought.
YES. But he already has! From a 2006 Nightline interview: “I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes,” Wahlberg says. “You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn’t until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don’t have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning.”
So, of course, he has forgiven HIMSELF and has let the guilt go. Hallelu, Mark, what a lucky fella for earning that, and paying for your mistakes. That sure frees up your time to make a difference in those communities! Such a fucking scumbag.
The comment that said “Turn the other cheek” was the one that rankled me. (Also, don’t read the comments. Seriously. Ever. On anything, except on this site.) I’m not a biblical scholar, but I’ve always been fond of the Marjane Satrapi quote “We can forgive but we must never forget,” which I think is much more applicable here than (what I perceive as) a mishandled interpretation of a Bible verse.
we had to read that verse in the freshman seminar I teach. So I told my students that that verse has been used to keep women down.
Marjane Satrapi is amazing and that quote equally so.
Both Mandela and JFK have been quoted as saying something similar, but hers is the one I read first. It’s in the introduction of whatever edition of Persepolis I have.
Ugh.
My dad always talked about “turning the other cheek”.
To which my mom replied, “There’s a time to turn the other cheek, and there’s a time to make a homemade whip, march in, and OVERTURN THE MONEY TABLES.”
WWJD? THAT, MOFOS.
Don’t know how relevant it is at the moment, but it’s sometimes useful to know when people are saying that: “turning the other cheek” means demanding treatment as an equal. It works like this: People didn’t touch each other with their left hands, so if someone hits you, they’re using their right hand. The scenario described in the Bible verse is that you’re getting hit on the right cheek. If someone is hitting you on your right cheek with their right hand, they’re backhanding you. That’s how you slap a social inferior–to the extent that there were stronger legal penalties for backhanding an equal than slapping them with your palm; it literally added insult to injury. So. Someone backhands you, and you turn your other cheek to them: you’re not offering a fresh target, you’re refusing to be treated like a slave and challenging them to meet you on equal ground.
Interesting!
Extremely relevant! Even if it’s more for our edification than what that commenter was attempting to convey. (Their interpretation felt a lot more “forgive and forget” than anything else.) I was raised Christian—still professing, but not as active in the church as I used to be—and I knew I’d heard a different interpretation somewhere down the line. Thanks for the reminder.
Glad to help–it made up the substance of probably the most memorable sermon I’ve ever heard. (Of course it’s fiendishly difficult to know what, in a new situation, is the thing to do in the spirit of turning the other cheek/demanding respect. It’s almost like having a religious commitment to a text-based tradition is hard, and not something to casually, mealy-mouthedly recommend a complete stranger to do after he’s been the victim of a hate crime!)
Wow, this is amazing. Do you know where I can learn more?
I wish I had more to offer–I learned about this stuff from a college chaplain, and I trust his scholarship but don’t have a lot of sources to cite. This little piece by Marcus Borg suggests Walter Wink’s “Engaging the Powers” and “The Powers That Be” as possible sources.
Seriously. One of the truest things I’ve ever read about money is James Baldwin saying, “it’s expensive to be poor.”
On Rolling Stone: http://www.buzzfeed.com/route95/why-i-dont-want-t… http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisafran/victims-memorie…
Guys, I’m hijacking this roundup because I’m very upset and could use some kind words: my little dog was attacked last night by another dog who nearly killed him. He had a 4-hour emergency surgery and is still at the vet, being watched, because he isn’t doing very well. A couple of questionable things happened at the vet also but I cannot think about that right now or I will freak. What complicates this even more is that the attacker dog, which we were dogsitting for the weekend, belongs to my good friend. No one was home when this happened, so there’s no direct proof, but I KNOW it was her dog and not my other one, who has lived in harmony with the little dog for 4 years.
Anyway, sorry, I’m just sitting here trying to work but feeling panicky and sick to my stomach and couldn’t sleep and just… needed to get this out.
Oh no, best thoughts for your little guy and that some how the interpersonal relationships don’t make this even more stressful.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Oh no, you poor thing, I hope he makes it.
Thank you…
oh no! That sounds absolutely horrific, and I hope your little dog survives and recovers well.
Animals can react strangely when one of them is hurt, so I would definitely keep a good eye out on your little dog even when the other dog is returned to your good friend. But I don’t think the dogs can be blamed here. They do fight for dominance among themselves — it is part of their nature. It is really unfortunate. I am sorry.
Thanks. He’s about 10 years old, so I’m also hoping the recovery isn’t too hard on him. Attacker dog is back in his own home, fortunately. Little dog is a bit of a Napoleon and is fairly grumbly– mostly in a “leave me alone” kind of way– so I’m sure the attack did not come entirely unprovoked, but the severity of it is shocking. I’m also PISSED at my friend, even though I know I shouldn’t be and that it’s not her fault.
Oh no, I’m so sorry. Hoping he pulls through. Let us know. Many hugs to you and the pups.
Thank you– I will hug my healthy pup now and the other one as soon as I can see him.
We have taken in a foster dog and she and our male dog have had a couple of fights. Dog fights are scary. We have to keep them completely separated. They even had a fight, on opposite sides of a fence, where our dog got bitten on the lip through the fence. My husband and I both felt like you after the last big fight they had, panicky and sick. Just know it is not your fault. Dogs are like that. Our dogs have been fighting with each other also, which I think is from the stress of another dog in the house. I hope your dog gets better soon.
So scary. Through a fence, even… wow. Dogs, man. Thank you for the well wishes, and I hope things remain as peaceful as possible in your house.
It took a few weeks but we finally have a system in place where the dogs never see each other and there is always at least two closed doors between them.
I’m so sorry! My little dog was attacked a few years back by a larger dog in my neighborhood. Luckily there wasn’t much damage, but it was terrifying and I felt so helpless. Best wishes for his fast recovery.
Your poor dog! I’m so sorry!
I’m so sorry and am hoping for the best for your little dog!
Hugs, hugs and more hugs. Pets are so important, I’ll be keeping both you and your buddy in my thoughts!
Thank you so much. And his name actually is Buddy, so your thoughts seem even more personal. 🙂
Oh no 🙁 Best thoughts to you and your pup. I hope he pulls through.
Oh no, that’s so scary and awful. Best of luck to you and your little guy.
I’m so sorry. I hope your dog is okay.
I’m so sorry, sending all the good vibes so your little guy gets better.
I hope he gets better so soon. Poor little guy.
I’m holding a good thought for your little guy, and offer the only hopeful story on that front in my trick bag: Not long ago my aunt was at an outdoor event at a friend’s house. A neighbor’s dog broke through their fence, picked up the host’s small terrier by the neck, and thrashed it like a toy for several minutes before someone could pry them apart with a 2 X 4. Dog went to the emergency vet and everyone crossed their fingers. I met this woman roughly a week ago and my first question was, “OMG YOUR DOOOOOOOOG!” and she said her terrier tenacity paid off & she’s on the way to a full recovery. I pray the same for your pup, and hope your friend will help you as much as possible to make this right.
Oof. 🙁 I really hope your dog pulls through, and I’m sending good vibes.
Linda Tirado’s piece gave me more Feelings than I was really ready for at 9:00 on a Monday morning and I can’t really sum them up in words beyond WHY WON’T ANYONE JUST LISTEN TO WHAT WE ARE TELLING YOU ABOUT POVERTY.
It was very very reassuring to see that she is also talking about time poverty as a huge aspect of how things can be really difficult. Yeah, dried beans are definitely cheap, but if you’re working two or three jobs, who’s cooking them? (I just typed out and deleted a giant rant about food and time and I could rail about this for WEEKS.)
I would like to join you in ranting for weeks about this!
Also any and all advice that requires you to have a SECOND GODDAMN FREEZER. Like, we are finally, finally not struggling and the idea of saving up enough money to buy a whole SECOND FREEZER and having a big enough home for it and having enough PTO to be able to take delivery of it let alone having the kind of money every week that buying in bulk upfront costs, I just….. I can’t deal. People are so clueless and their cluelessness is so hurtful and demeaning. If I could afford a SECOND FREEZER I feel like I wouldn’t necessarily need money saving advice in the first place.
And the time/food issue is part of why there are so many urban food deserts – sure, Someone could take a bus to the grocery store to get fresh produce, but if She gets off work at 5 and takes the bus and has to transfer at least once on the trip between work-store-home, She may not get back with her two bags of food (which She is, of course, juggling, and probably dropping because some asshole refused to move His backpack off the one free seat so she could sit down) until after 7:30. Which leaves not a lot of time to cook, because the kids have to be fed and washed and in bed by 8:30. Suddenly the Wendy’s down the block seems like a far better food choice, because at least then She can have a little time to spend with the kids (who, of course, have not been left either alone or with the sitter when She was out playing public transit roulette to buy a little wilted broccoli).
I may feel strongly about the limits of public transportation when it comes to procuring food.
BINGO. Yep. Exactly.
I think a lot of Thinkers miss the significance of this. Like, if you are working two jobs, six days a week, cooking is irrelevant because at some point you do have to sleep, and if you’re up for an extra hour cooking something more complicated than a packet of ramen and then washing dishes afterward, that really cuts into time you have to rest. Throw some kid time, studying, etc in there and you’re toast. It is fucking HARD to be poor.
A British Baroness is in deep shit with the press right now for saying that “Poor people don’t know how to cook.” She knocked up one cheap-ass and probably nasty-ass meal and now she thinks she knows it all.
There are so many colossally fucked up and horrific things about the Montreal Massacre, but this is where I lost it:
A memorial erected in Vancouver sparked controversy because it was dedicated to “all women murdered by men”, which critics say implies all men are potential murderers.[78] As a result, women involved in the project received death threats and the Vancouver Park Board subsequently banned any future memorials that might “antagonize” other groups.[79][80]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechn…
Until this weekend when Nicole was talking about it on Twitter, I had never even heard of it. (Possibly this is because I am American, but I grew up in Upstate NY, closer to Montreal than many American cities)
>>As a result, women involved in the project received death threats
Oh MEN, you sweet little things, you.
Oh, what the fuck. “How dare you imply all men are killers! I WILL KILL YOU!” It’s too infuriating for words.
If all murders by women were set aside, would the murder rate look significantly different?
That is so twisted and so sad. Jesus.
That’s HELLA fucked up.
The memorial in Ottawa (the Ottawa Citizen picture is of the vigil occurring around it) is dedicated to “all women murdered by men”, and I’ve seen other Montreal Massacre memorials with that wording. It shouldn’t be fucking controversial, because it’s fucking true.
The vigil in Ottawa intersperse the names of the 1989 victims with the names of women who had been murdered in the Ottawa region in 2014 — an incredibly powerful reminder that the issues are still present, still ongoing
Oh for fuck’s sake.
I really like this (temporary, sadly) memorial set up on the mountain (highest, most visible part of the city) — one light for each of the 14.
#notallmen, just, y’know, me and my creepy buddies
On Rolling Stone: http://www.buzzfeed.com/route95/why-i-dont-want-t… http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisafran/victims-memorie…
Here are the links I have been sharing about the Rolling Stone fiasco:
A letter her first-year suitemate wrote: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/blog/on-sexual-assau…
“Rolling Stone scapegoats rape victim, makes matters worse” by Alexandra Brodsky http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rolling-stone-scapegoa…
Thanks for the links. The second one really articulates my thoughts on reading the Rolling Stone apology — I was like, are you actually blaming an interview subject for your failed due diligence? Really? The whole thing was a cock up on their end, and they could not have worded their retraction in a way more likely to encourage readers to dismiss and discredit this woman (or campus rape allegations, in general, if they were already predisposed to do so).
Thanks for sharing. I wrote something along the same lines: This is not a story about a lying woman.
Completely unrelated – Queens Toasties, can anyone recommend anywhere good to eat that may be open late near the Wyndham Garden on 9th Street? I got called for an overnight mobilization for groundwater sampling in Newtown (I think I’d talked about it in an Open Thread a few weeks ago) and I have a hotel today until Wednesday, but am working from midnight tonight to 10am tomorrow.
Related, that The Right Stuff oral history is GREAT.
Oof I have no recommendations but I just wanted to commiserate with you on the overnight work. I did a project out at a major airport in NYC where we had to drill monitoring wells overnight in JANUARY because that was the only time they could close the runway we needed to be working next to. Really terrible. Stay warm!
True story about that though — someone had the bright idea to just leave the soil cuttings next to each well and the vac truck we were using to hand clear the borings to 5′ (which, do not even get me started) would come back at the end and vac them up, easy peasy. Guess what wet soil does in 15 degree weather in January? Yep, it freezes totally solid! FUN TIMES I CAN TELL YOU.
It’s snowing in Jersey where I am right now, and we’re only supposed to have work in “significant rain events” – hooray! Not. I kinda hope that the rain holds up and it stays snowing, because then I don’t have to do any work until it lets up. on second thought, no, because I don’t want to START at 3am. Ugh. I’m gonna go buy some UnderArmor. :[
But oh god I can’t even imagine frozen borings needed to get vacced up. No. No no no. (Our employer makes us hand clear to 5′, but in a critical zone it’s eight feet and just, whose genius idea is that MOVE THE DANG BORING).
Ugh yeah hand clearing is the WORST. At one of my previous jobs, the client, who shall remain nameless, required the whole 5’/8′ thing PLUS you weren’t allowed to use a pry bar unless you called the actual fucking CLIENT on the phone and got authorization. If you couldn’t get the safety guy on the phone you had to stand down until you got authorization. Every single goddamn borehole. And they never understood why the jobs took so long.
I gotta say I do not miss that work even if I’m missing being in the environmental field in general these days.
Yep, that is totally familiar. I’d honestly rather be out in the field doing groundwater sampling than in the office writing DEP reports, but certainly not in this weather.
One of our PMs came over to us and was like “seriously guys, if they don’t have somewhere warm and dry for you to take designated breaks, put up a stink because it’s dangerous and we don’t want you to get hurt or sick.” Glad to know that at least SOMEONE here is looking out for us.
Oh man I’ll take soil borings and well installations over groundwater sampling, hand clearing and all. I HATE groundwater sampling. There’s so much…..TANGLING of everything.
Alewife or Sage General Store or Alobar. You’re also really close to LIC Bar, but I don’t know if they have food.
LIC Bar has like, paninis and stuff but I’m not sure how long that part of the bar is open.
Oh gosh, you’re right next to John Brown Smokehouse, too! Awesome BBQ. I’m not sure how late most of those places are open, but there’s also always the Court Square Diner.
Oh gosh I hope some of them are open at least a LITTLE late because my shift is overnight but thank goodness there’s at least a diner.
Thank you so much!!!
Court Square Diner is good! You might also have luck just logging into delivery.com or seamless.com to see what’s open. Even if you want to eat out, if somewhere is still open for delivery it’s definitely open to walk into.
The entire reappropriation of the Polytechnique massacre to talk about guns is killing me. Yes, it is before Parliament right now, and yes, guns are available, etc., but why can’t we talk about what the massacre was really about, which is the killing of women for being feminists. Yes. That is it. That is the topic. A man killed twenty-five women because he thought feminists were ruining his life. It could have been a bomb or a stabbing or a any number of other things, but if you want to talk about mass killings, let’s talk about their root cause, okay? The root cause is fucking hatred of women. The root cause is not the availability of assault weapons–yes, it may have contributed, and gun control is definitely a topic worth discussing, but let’s not shy away from the self-professed words of the shooter, shall we?
Oh no, wait, the CBC and the National Post and the Globe & Mail are on this, and they say it’s guns. Oh. Well. Okay then, I guess misogyny isn’t a problem any more at all, ever. Glad that was cleared up. Awesome..
HE LEFT A FUCKING NOTE SAYING IT WAS BECAUSE OF FEMINISTS. HE SAID SO AS HE WAS SHOOTING WOMEN.
BUT LET’S NOT JUMP TO FUCKING CONCLUSIONS AAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHHH
*An Angry Woman just hijacked my keyboard for a second. Terribly sorry for the outburst.
I love how when a man does this – tells everyone his motivations and that it was ‘hatred of women’ – society as a whole just can’t accept it. Nope! Musta been something else. We don’t do this when someone leaves a note saying they hated the government. Then we go “Ah yeah, another one of those anti-government whackjobs.”
“The phrase ‘hatred of women’ in this note must be a devious code of some sort. Only a keen investigative mind can figure out the true target of this man’s rage.”
The wilful ignorance of his note is infuriating. >:(
Yeah but taking the bold society-saving stance of repeating your party platform regardless of context or relevance is the kind of iconoclasm that gets you reelected
And 25 years later a man in America does THE EXACT SAME THING and it’s the same reaction. Him saying over and over “I’m killing women because I hate women” is not evidence that he killed women because he hated women. We’re blaming him because he’s mentally ill! He’s the real victim!
I always wish a movie got made for King’s “Rose Madder”. It was one of my favorites.
Agreed. “Rose Madder” was such an empowering book. Perhaps the way the husband would abuse and subsequently kill women was too tough for TV or film? Otherwise, I could see a faithful adaptation done by Frank Darabont.
The Sam Vimes “boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
I was scrolling down to see if someone else had already posted that one.
I have always loved this passage, because I had this conversation with my mother about my £5-10 shitty school shoes wearing out alllll the time as a kid.
I read that book long before I had any formal class on economic theory, and Sam Vimes still makes the most sense of the many, many economics theorists I’ve read.
This is the best (only?) piece I’ve read about the Rolling Stone debacle: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/5/7341973/trauma-rape-… “That meant that I had a responsibility to protect the people I interviewed by checking the details of their stories before exposing them to the scrutiny of the public or an immigration court. Presenting their stories without first doing that kind of due diligence would not have been a way to protect them from harm. Rather, it would have left them with a record that undermined their credibility, and no means to recover from it.”
Please tell me we are also going to talk about this at some point, because I just cannot even: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/20…
Like sure, I get that there needs to be due process for sexual assault cases on college campuses, but come on Prudie, you’re against affirmative consent because it’s…silly? And recentering the conversation about sexual violence to make men the victims? I just…ughhhhhhh.
You know, I love to hate read Dear Prudie as much as the next person but I’m done. I refuse to give her any more page clicks.
I said that binge drinking was bad for everyone but that it presented a particular danger for young women because it made them more vulnerable to sexual assault […] I was widely denounced for “victim-blaming.”
Yes. Well. Yes, that is what that is!
Ughhhhhh. Why do I do this to myself?!
Can I hijack this link roundup to toast-source some info about abnormal paps and colposcopies? I just got the call from a nurse who was completely unhelpful and I don’t really want to google it at work. I mean, I don’t really want to google it at all but that fucking nurse literally told me “I don’t know what this means but I can spell it for you if you want to write it down.”
This Hairpin post is really informative and clear: http://thehairpin.com/2012/01/a-scenic-guide-to-y…. I’m sorry for the horrible nurse (seriously wtf kind of comment is that) and I’m sending you lots of hugs and good vibes.
Bad nurse needs to fucking look it up if her job is to deliver the news and she doesn’t know what the words mean.
Hugs and good vibes to you – I had that exact phone call maybe six years ago, and it was so scary. Don’t fall down the google hole at work! Check out that Hairpin article and be kind to yourself.
My doctor described “abnormal pap” as just meaning there are some cells that look a bit abnormal. After two ‘abnormal paps’, she scheduled a colposcopy; which includes a camera up your lady parts to have a good look at your cervix. I could see the live feed on the screen as they went. In full, larger than life colour.
My colposcopy revealed no problems, and all my other paps since (10 – 15 years?) have been ‘normal’.
This happened to me recently, and the nurse I spoke to underscored the fact that an “abnormal” reading could be caused by things like recent sex, or a recent yeast infection, or just a bad/inconclusive reading. It doesn’t necessarily mean “abnormal cells aka cancer/pre-cancer.” It just means that I have to have another pap test in a year, rather than in 5 years, but — in my case at least, and according to the nurse — it’s nbd.
I’m sorry that your health professional was unprofessional and crap, and hope this helps a little.
This is such a normal thing, they shouldn’t call it abnormal because it freaks people out. More than likely you just have a touch of the HPV, a virus that your body will clear within a few months. Normal paps and clear sailing after that.
HPV is cleared within a few months? I thought it was a chronic thing?
Well, I find a good way to think about is that pap smears don’t test for cancer so much as they test for your risk of MAYBE developing cancer in the future. There are lots of changes that cells have to go through before anything scary develops and the goal of pap tests is to catch anything BEFORE it gets serious.
As someone said above, an abnormal test can be due to all sorts of things (where you are in your cycle, a minor infection, whether you’ve had sex, smear being done wrong) so generally an abnormal smear will be repeated. If the second one is normal, nothing else needs to be done.
If it’s still abnormal you get a colposcopy which looks at the cells more closely. If this is normal, you’re fine. If this is still abnormal it means you may have a lesion that could, possibly (but NOT inevitably), over a few years gradually develop into something more serious. These lesions can be treated quite simply (in the clinic where I did my elective they treated some of them on the same day as the colposcopy).
Don’t worry, pap smears are about prevention not diagnosis.
Sorry for the rant. It just irks me when patients end up scared or anxious because a doctor/nurse couldn’t be bothered to spend two minutes explaining things like this. So much distress, so easily prevented.
Emerging out of lurkdom to offer some abnormal pap/colposcopy solidarity! I got the call on Friday, two minutes before I had to teach a class and it messed me up for the weekend. Sending positive thoughts to your cervix!
I had an abnormal pap, and then colposcopy results (they swabbed some vinegar on my cervix, put a camera up there, and had a good look around, and the camera was linked to a computer monitor!) which were also abnormal. The doctor who called me about it said that there’s a huge spectrum between “normal” and “cancer,” so abnormal can mean anything. She also said I didn’t have to do anything but continue with my yearly pelvic exam and pap, because abnormal cells are actually incredibly common, and are often things that are not cancerous at all.
This is a little late for reassurance, but I literally saw a nurse-practitioner today, I mentioned I’d previously had an abnormal pap, and she went, “everyone has an abnormal pap in their twenties, it’s nothing to be ashamed about.” Finding out about it is definitely the worst part. I ended up having the colposcopy, which felt embarrassing at the time but is not a lengthy procedure and is not painful, I’ve had normal follow-ups for the next three years, and at my next check-up my doctor told me I had a beautiful cervix, which is a compliment I carry around with me as a mark of pride. The Hairpin article is really, really good, do look at it. Hugs and hope you’re feeling better!
Oh my god that Newsroom episode. God bless Emily Nussbaum for her review, really. I’ve been hate-reading the comments on the AV Club (also an excellent review!) and they’re all “Why are you spending so much time complaining about your POLITICAL AGENDA can’t you talk about objective things like camera angles” and “OF COURSE Sorkin agrees with Mary he was just SACRIFICING Don for the sake of his ART.” Ugh everything about Sorkin fanboys is just infuriating.
Thanks Emily Nussbaum. I was thinking of catching up on Newsroom and now I’m like lol nope.
As the years go on, I’m starting to think Sorkin’s likeable characterization of Danny from Sports Night was a complete accident.
I’ve just been convinced by this Zoe Williams article that a lot of the parenting madness and placing of extra burdens on pregnant women to avoid even the most minuscule of risks is political, and specifically a way to blame women for the effects of poverty on their children in an unequal society so that we don’t have to take responsibility as a society for addressing structural problems. It’s smart and a good companion piece to the Linda Tirado. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/zoe-…
adverse conditions that are related to poverty are recast as parenting failures. For instance, mothers in the bottom quintile go back to work soonest, presumably because they cannot afford to take their full entitlement of maternity leave. This makes breastfeeding for the “recommended” amount of time impossible: it also renders unrealistic the ideal childcare for the pre-toddler – one-to-one, round-the-clock care from the primary care-giver.”
I love a good truth nugget just before lunch.
I hadn’t read that article, but I’ve seen the idea before (possibly in that Emily Martin book?) and it makes good sense.
See also Sarah Kendzior’s piece on the enshrinement of helicopter parenting as an unattainable “norm” and how that results in the criminalization of normal/poor/necessary/different parenting choices. http://qz.com/293849/how-baby-boomers-ruined-pare…
Yep. Also, all of the “advice” is written in such a way that it is WAY scarier if you don’t have the resources to fact-check it. It’s all so paternalistic and awful.
I LOVE Sarah Koenig’s voice, I really do, but sometimes I wish she’d give just a little more emotion when she’s reacting to what she’s discovered. The episode where she went out to talk to Jay and she and her (assistant? coworker?) were recapping in the car was the most emotion I’d heard out of her and I really liked it, it added a bit more personal tone to things from HER perspective. I know she wants to present the facts of the case as impartially as possible, but occasionally she’ll stop and give her own opinions and I think in those moments she stays so calm and collected that it almost feels dissonant.
That said, I’m loving Serial, and this most recent episode was a DOOZY. Can’t wait ’til Thursday!
Yeah, WTNV got a lot better too when Cecil started using intonation.
Sam Irby gets me pretty much all the time. I love a lot of NPR shows, but that doesn’t change the fact that public radio was my go-to solution for insomnia in my tween years. Terry Gross in particular has a deeply soporific voice.
I get too caught up in the NPR stories to fall asleep when I listen to them. However, I have gotten into a bad habit of listening to my future wife Rachel Maddow’s show as I go to sleep, and so never actually getting to hear the news. I always wake up and am like, “Aw, damn, I only heard like 30 seconds of the story on Texas’ gubernatorial race.” The show’s not even particularly somnolent, I’ve just reprogrammed my brain!
Why is soporific even considered an insult when it comes to media?
Falling asleep to Serial. You are not alone.
Yeah, sometimes I think because we often erase the misogyny of crimes against women (I mean, it happened again with the UCSB shooter just a few months ago) is part of the reason why this stuff STILL HAPPENS. (And why I’m terrified as a woman who’s pretty involved in the video game industry that it could happen again. Hell, it almost did.)
Thank you for the link to the article about the Montreal Massacre. I was six when it happened, so I wasn’t really aware of it until I was an engineering student myself. It really bothered me that all the memorials and things talk about the victims being targeted for being women, and ignore that they were targeted specifically for being women in a traditionally male profession. But I’ve always had trouble picking apart exactly what it was that bothered me about it. That article gets it exactly right.
Back several years ago when I was in university choirs (I miss those days…) the main choir performed this piece: http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/program_notes/polytec… which commemorates the 14 women and is a response to endemic violence against women. I was only in women’s choir that year, but I had a bunch of friends in the main choir, so waited for them while they ran through this piece during the dress rehearsal for our joint end-of-semester performance. It was in a big, empty church, and other than the choir I was the only one left, and it was…. heartbreaking. By the end of it I, at least half the choir, and the conductor were all in tears, and I’m tearing up at my desk remembering it six or seven years later. I’ve never been so moved by a piece of music in my life. Everyone warned the people they knew coming to the concert that this was a really hard piece, but somehow with a full church it just didn’t have the same power. But holy crap did it ever rattle those of us who were there for the rehearsal.
Oh my goodness, I just noticed that my old choir director wrote a paper on the piece and that performance! http://musicandartsinaction.net/index.php/maia/ar…
Yes, exactly. It’s been a weird week, reading all the commemorative pieces, and then looking around at my engineering job and realizing how I stick out, and how dangerous that can feel. Like I’m the chicken with its neck stuck out.
One of the invisible/forgotten pieces to commemorating the deaths at Ecole Polytechniqe is how polarized Canadian campuses already were that fall. We had just survived an awful backlash to the anti-rape campaign at Queens. (In Kingston, just down the road from Montreal)
http://www.queensu.ca/alumnireview/no-now-really-…
We had a sexual predator roaming the stacks in the library (signs up warning women not to be in the stacks at night); walk home services starting up for evening classes.
Student politics were unreal for the next few years – Ali Velshi ran on a progressive slate at Queen’s that was defeated by a group of bros that threw their names in as a joke. Jian Ghomeshi was high profile at York. Guelph had a tent city for months protesting the war in Iraq.
We were also fighting against the criminalization of abortion, following Morgentaler’s Supreme Court win.
I remember being afraid for weeks that another shooting could happen. Attending vigils, staffing the Women’s Centre, writing exams… every time a door opened unexpected… afraid of who was coming through, because our frame of what could happen, because we were women, were feminists, were speaking out, had been so violently re-framed.
HEY GUYS guess what we do here in Canada? WE THROW SNAKES. IN TIM HORTONS. http://globalnews.ca/news/1714538/snake-thrown-in…
That’s why I keep my snakes in my front pants pocket, to discourage pickpocketing
You must be very popular.
We Canadians have a reputation for being polite and peaceful, but you dice our onions wrong, you best get ready for some snake-throwin’!
Holy shit I’m in Saskatoon right now. I flew in today. This is amazing. I want to go to that Tim Horton’s tomorrow morning and order a double-double and a snake.
Yay the Toast knows who Stella Young is, that is, one of the greatest activists Australia has had of recent years.
I am devestated at her death. She was just such an amazing, vibrant, engaging, intelligent person, and such a force for good in this world. I’m glad to see her remembered here on the Toast.
I am being perfectly serious when I ask: has there ever been a case of a woman going on a shooting spree killing men she doesn’t know because she hates men for ruining her life? Shooting, bombing, stabbing, anything? Anywhere, ever?
I cried when I read Stella Young had died. I just… it’s a real shame. I wasn’t ready for her to not be in the world, yet.
I cried when I read Stella Young had died. I just… it's a real shame. I wasn't ready for her to not be in the world, yet.