What refugees pack for the voyage:
Houthayfa is not bringing much to sea. First, he hasn’t a lot to take with him – most of his valuables were left behind in Syria. Second, he’s been told the smugglers discourage taking all but the essentials. On such crammed boats, keeping the weight down is vital to keeping the boat afloat.
He’ll take a black jacket, to keep him warm during the nights. A big bottle of water, to keep him hydrated. As proof of identity, he’ll have his nearly-expired passport and a government booklet detailing his military service.
Reading The Guardian‘s Europe news has been my first stop for following the refugee crisis, but I would love to know yours.
What went down with Roxane and Erica Jong (Roxane is a SAINT):
Jong’s response began rather differently. “I also want to say that anybody who says that feminism is only a white thing is ignorant of the history of feminism,” she began. She mentioned blues singers, black abolitionists, and black female civil rights leaders, “who were all passionate feminists beyond any white women you could name”.
Jong said she thought anyone who claimed otherwise was speaking from “historical ignorance. “We have a long tradition of people of colour, of women of colour, being feminists,” Jong insisted. “A long tradition.”
When Gay agreed but reminded Jong that mainstream feminism has historically excluded women of colour, the audience clapped. Jong, apparently taken aback,demanded: “And I don’t know – are you talking about me?”
Gay answered simply, and almost consolingly, “No.”
In New York and Los Angeles, the simulated patients are often actors; here, in eastern Virginia, they are part-time or former professors, baristas, retail workers and house spouses, all contract workers paid by the session, and not extraordinarily so. Gliva-McConvey, the program director, said wages were confidential but added, “All I can say is, we don’t pay them enough.”
Vocabulary becomes hugely important to avoiding clumsy wording. Teachers are taught to neutralize sexual language — it’s a “table,” not a “bed”; a “drape,” not a “sheet” — and cut back on awkward phrases: Say “footrests” instead of the too-equestrian “stirrups”; “lots of pressure” instead of “this is going to hurt.” Students aren’t supposed to “grab,” “stick in” or “pull out” anything, though in the moment, instructor Kelene Williams said with a laugh, “sometimes neutral doesn’t come out.”
This lovely man, Rob Gough, who we just lost to cancer on August 29th, the day before his 42nd birthday, was a dear member of my family, and he did SO much to raise money for other people, and I would love it if some of you could help his wife and kids, who are obviously swamped with both grief and uncertainty, and this is a tough dang world. Prayers and good vibes appreciated too! But money definitely wouldn’t hurt, and it would mean a lot to me personally for you guys to help.
Beejoli Shah taked to Andre “Bubbles From The Wire But Also So Much Else” and they hung out and it was magical:
He continues to wind his way through the all-white futuristic display case, as an older Russian woman sifting through a nearby rack of sweatpants exerts exactly the least effort possible to pretend she didn’t hear Royo hypothesizing on the trendiness of his teenage daughter’s sexuality. In a space not much bigger than a shipping container, Royo has already canvassed the room twice, while running through his feelings on homosexuality (for), smartphones (against, he still uses a flip phone), and the neighborhood loveshack he used to run as a teenager (“The best!”). And we’ve only been shopping for three minutes.
My friend Carrie’s puppy is sitting on a couch:
Fun feminist web series Kickstarter alert! She’s a Friend of The Toast.
Game of Thrones casting season came late this year, but it currently appears to be in full swing. Days after Danish actor Pilou Asbæk was cast as Euron Greyjoy, BuzzFeed reports that unREAL‘s Freddie Stroma has joined the cast as Dickon Tarly, younger brother of our beloved Samwell. (In the Game of Thrones books, he’s supposed to be about 13; in real life, Stroma is 28, a year older than John Bradley-West.) Dickon has not yet appeared in the books, but he’s described as everything poor Sam is not: In the words of the leaked season-six casting breakdown, he is “athletic, a good hunter, an excellent swordsman, manly, not particularly bright, but the favorite child of the father.” Stroma is also known for playing Cormac McLaggen in the Harry Potter films, so this latest role does not seem like too much of a stretch.
WHAT! HE WAS CORMAC? WHOA.
Speaking of perfect things like unREAL, unREAL is perfect and you have to watch it right now.
Whenever I’m having a bad day, I read the wikipedia article for the high five. pic.twitter.com/RonWOFPSlY
— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) May 16, 2015
Via Daily Life: “Asked what she would say to women of colour who feel excluded from contemporary feminism, [Gloria Steinem] said ‘I wouldn’t say anything, I’d listen.'”
Erica Jong, TRY to keep up!
And that’s why, as the author of that piece rightly noted, Steinem is still relevant, where Jong isn’t particularly. It’s hard to do anything important if you’re focused on playing defense.
Yes, yes, yes.
What’s the German word for “inadvertently proving your debate partner’s point without even realizing you’re doing it”? That’s what Erica Jong is.
ETA: Also, Roxane Gay is a transcendent angel for replying “no” to Jong’s #NotAllWhiteFeminists instead of saying, “Yes, probably.”
“Not you specifically, but generally a category that includes you…yes.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m not not talking about you.”
That Beatles story is fake, but let’s face it, that’s always a possibility in the darkest timeline. Especially if it’s Sean and not Julian Lennon.
Also, why is every Onion-knockoff site on the internet so absolutely piss-poor. You wouldn’t think the fake-news style would be so hard to pull off but every Portly Gazelle/Daily Currant/ whatever else seems to be written by people with only a cursory knowledge of the human pastime of hum-or.
Will rep for Reductress as a fake-women’s-lifestyle magazine! It has been on a bit of a roll lately.
Yes, Reductress is brilliant!
I definitely thought of Reductress’s “I don’t have white fragility, stop yelling at me” article after reading the Erica Jong thing.
Duffel Blog (ie the Onion for the Military) is also good, so maybe the secret is to create as small a niche as possible.
You beat me to it!
I’m very relieved that that story is fake so the only secondhand embarrassment I need to feel for those guys is related to their hair.
Aaaaaghhh, that’s exactly why I fell for this damn story! I thought “this has gotta be fake” but nothing about that site screams OBVIOUS AND ALSO HILARIOUS SATIRE.
Waterford Whispers is a very Irish specific Onion type site, I rarely read the articles, but the headlines get me everytime.
http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/
You wouldn’t think the fake-news style would be so hard to pull off
I think I said something similar to this in a discussion about Terry Pratchett last week, but people tend to really, really underrate how hard it is to write funny stuff. At its best, humor seems so effortless that it’s hard to believe how difficult it is to be consistently funny for any length of time. I think the Onion’s status as an institution at this point undersells how amazing it is that they’ve managed to do their thing so well for so long.
Well said. See also: the works of one Mallory Ortberg.
So true about Pratchett. I’m sure it’s in an interview somewhere but I’m not sure I want to know how long it took him to craft some of his more memorable one-liners that just pin down human nature perfectly.
I do think of this every time someone links to a weird news story with “Not the Onion.” I’m like, no, the Onion would do a LOT better.
re: Pterry – plus you can just compare The Colour of Magic with, I don’t know, Hogfather and see how he still continued to hone his craft
That, plus the internet rewards shitty fake news sites. They get more shares & clicks on Facebook if people mistake them for real news, which means they get more ad money than they probably would if they were any good.
Facebook added a thing for flagging fake news, but I always forget to use it.
Wodehouse too.
wodehouse 4eva
(and pratchett)
I don’t get it. What is it satirizing? I think some people get confused and think satire is just lying.
ROXANE GAY IS LOVE AND LIFE AND life goals, catholic goals, writer goals, feminist goals.
All this happened right by my college and Im so upset I had to miss it.
Part of our mission as New, Young Feminists™, I believe (as a 17 yr old), is to reeducate those who came before us respectfully.
Bottom line: Intersectionality is thing and we need to make sure people know this.
I have a perennial question which goes “What is mainstream feminism?” Like, where does it live? Is it Double X or Jezebel or NOW or Planned Parenthood or…?
Obviously, intersectionality or GTFO. But my internet feminism home is here, and my offline community is fairly insular. So I believe it when people say “mainstream feminism is exclusionary/silencing/frowny face” but I also don’t know where to look to see it?
I think of it as the feminism you hear about in Not Feminist, news…like the endless “can women have it all?” articles, Hillary Clinton vs. whoever said the most recent nasty thing about her, celebrities calling themselves feminists, women advancing in business or government, etc…and it’s not that those aren’t intersectional feminist issues, but then the story about immigration or the minimum wage is never presented as a women’s issue. Or one of those “this actress made a bold statement for women!” headlines is about the cute white woman while “this actress stirs up controversy!” isn’t….or there’s no debate any more over whether a woman can be President, but gotta hear both sides on this story about a trans woman…
I’m in the same place, like, my feminist community is tiny & made of good people, but any time I’m watching the news outside my bubble it’s like, ok, these are the issues feminism has pushed into the main main stream, and there’s a pattern to what’s there & what’s missing.
Yup, also I would consider all the “lean in” rhetoric very Mainstream [White ]Feminism.
My “mainstream feminism” (New Young Feminists as I call it) is the community of my classmates at my women’s college as well as places like tumblr, but I would assume that true “mainstream feminism” is the thing that celebrities say that they AREN’T, which isnt right. gah no thank you.
Just peeking in to add that I think Planned Parenthood does a pretty decent job of addressing the fact that women of color and poor women suffer the most from reproductive injustice. I follow them on Facebook and they have a lot to say about it! Although I wish a lot more of their media material would feature non-white/able women.
Feminism is a huge part of fighting the class- and race-based discrimination both in the western world but also globally. I think it’s incredibly important that the Newest Young Feminists are able to put their strength behind both developing their own wave of feminism without the exclusion and with being supportive of the more entrenched organizations and discussions changing to become inclusive.
Just please don’t say I need to be reeducated by a teenager, I can only face feeling old so many times a day. (this is meant in a gently kidding sort of way.)
<3 <3 no disrespect to the Feminists Before Us.
To quote Winifred Banks, my first feminist hero, “our daughters daughters will adore us”
I adore all feminists for making the fight easier for us, and now the fight can be focus on wider intersectional things.
VOTES FOR WOMEN!
No disrespect to you either! It’s part of being Passionate Youth! If you weren’t full of certainty and itching for progress you wouldn’t be the Force for Good you are! (yes I’m enjoying my extraneous capitalization, how can you tell?) We need you to push things- this is where the fight for equality happens. If we can’t get intersectionality done inside the movement we have no hope of getting it done elsewhere.
Now I’m wondering what Itching for Progress would be and it sounds like hiking in a malarial swamp which just can’t be good.
still can’t believe this was said with a straight face: ““Gloria Steinem when she started Ms. magazine made people know who Sojourner Truth was,” Jong continued. “People didn’t know about her before. ”
Riiiight, like no one knew of Sojourner Truth before Gloria Steinem. huh.
What she means is White People(tm) didn’t know about her before.
White People = Everybody. Obvs.
… Even if that was true. Like, okay, good, yes. And??? Is that…. enough? Is that all we expect? And even if it’s all we expect, shouldn’t we then…. work for MORE???
nope, we know about sojourner truth, that’s that handled. No need to worry about it anymore.
Does this mean I have to forget everything I learned about Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman?
I think they’re grandfathered in, but no learning more. or else.
I can’t even read that article about Roxane and Erica Jong because I get too much secondhand embarrassment. I will just rest peacefully in the knowledge that Roxane responded tactfully and thoughtfully as she always does.
this is really off topic but is there a word for the secondhand embarassment thing? i have it with articles but with videos especially, where i know i’m just gonna feel so INCREDIBLY awkward watching it that i just avoid it.. like it actually prevents me from partaking in certain conversations sometimes?
In LJ fandom, I would have used “embarassment squick”
As in “I was too squicked out to finish listening to the interview”
That article is so much worse than I thought it could be.
It does make Roxanne sound smart and considerate. And Erica Jon very…#NotAllWhiteys
Not only was Freddie Stroma Cormac in the HP movies, he also has his university degree in neuroscience, which means we’re practically soulmates except for the part where he’s dating Anna.
Apparently my whole family watched all of it this weekend. My mother informed me that they all loved it even though she’s never seen the Bachelor and they thought it was going to be a light and funny comedy. Oops?
Wait, I am confused. They watched GAME OF THRONES under the impression that it was a light and funny comedy??? Oooooof. Or do you mean some other show?
No, no, they watched UnREAL thinking it was a comedy about a dating show. I think everyone in the family gave up on GoT sometime last season.
I did not need to know he has a degree in neuroscience. This is too much.
(by which I mean I totally needed to know that, thank you for bringing that light, and a 2:1 from UCL at that, apparently! Solid neuroscience at UCL.)
You’re supposed to slap your forearm when you air five, otherwise there’s no satisfying noise! Bad form, wikipedia.
The practice of training and paying gynecological teaching associates, or GTAs, is only a few decades old, and for years it went unnoticed even at the highest levels of the medical world. Gayle Gliva-McConvey, a former president of the Association of Standardized Patient Educators, remembers trying to spread the word at an American College of Physicians conference in the ’90s, blocking off space with a velvet curtain and asking passing doctors, “Would you like to refine your breast and pelvic examination skills?”
“Nobody even knew what GTAs were,” she said. “I got one guy who looked me up and down and said, ‘Sounds intriguing.’ ”
OH LOOK IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF THE WORK WEEK AND I ALREADY WANT TO MURDER ALL MEN (#MURDERALLMEN).
How about when they used to practice on unconscious women without their consent? And then Doctors wonder why patients don’t trust them.
Whaaaaaat? D-:
From the article:
Some doctors today began their careers practicing pelvic exams on patients zonked on anesthetics, many of whom were poor walk-ins to outpatient clinics, never asked to give consent. In the late ’60s, realizing passed-out guinea pigs didn’t offer the best critiques, medical schools started recruiting untrained pelvic models, including prostitutes
I cannot help myself from reading GTAs as “Greater Toronto Areas” – a phrase which I shall forevermore associate with vaginas.
That said, I kind of want to do this now. It seems like such a good thing!
I read it as Grand Theft Auto which makes the entire concept seem very Fury Road
I’m just back from a weekend camping trip where we decided that Killing All Men would start today (because we wanted to finish the trip first). So this is right on schedule!
Uuuuugh Erica Jong you really have Woody Allen on your website endorsing your new book? Really??
wut
…
…….
…………..
welp.
Burn it down burn it all down
I want to know how that idea passed through the no doubt several layers of publicists, PR people, and internet wizards, without anybody saying “wait, are we really doing this? Why are we doing this? This is a terrible idea, and we need to not do it.”
Although somebody did, and then that person probably got overruled and shouted at.
So it seems as if Game of Thrones Season 6 is going to cover book material they left out (to the extent they can since they’ve DESTROYED so many of my fav plotlines…) which means that I MAY HAVE spoiled the entire next season to my entire office and peer group, since I was in an unstoppable book purist rage for approx 6 wks after the last season? Oops? I guess? Whatever, I’m not over what they did to Sansa and if they have Dany get raped by the Dothraki who just found her I will turn into a dragon MYSELF and burn it all down.
I’ve pretty much already forgotten all of the Greyjoy stuff from the last couple of books because there is only so much space in my brain and I’d rather dedicate it to Vampire Diaries plotlines, so Season 6 should be pretty fresh for me!
Oh, as a book-only type who is still so surrounded by show-types that I know every last thing they have twisted and made sad, the reminder that season 6 will exist and I will have to live through it is making me whimper.
I am not a book purist by any means but season 5 is fucking MESS, even more of a mess than book 5, which is also a fucking narrative mess.
I gave up on the show long ago, but I am always here for yelling about the steaming pile of garbage that is book 5. Between the whole “where do whores go” thing and the inexplicable fascination with the term “butt boy,” I feel like I showed commendable restraint by not just setting the book on fire and throwing it off a cliff.
Also a whole bunch of c-bombs, when that wasnt a word ever used previously.
I really look forward to the day in which society has moved forward so much that I’m as behind the times as your average still-identifies-as-a-second-wave feminist is now.
Whether you’re a The Beatles fan or not, you must admit that this is terribly exciting.
Not… really?
In totally irrelevant news – I missed yesterday’s open thread because I didn’t think there’d be one – husband and I are moving in the spring, and as I was idly looking around to see what’s available in this neighbourhood, I found a promising building just a few blocks away and glanced at their floor plans. Their 2-bedroom units have a walk-in closet in the master bedroom with its own en-suite bathroom. I have never lived anywhere with more than one bathroom, so this prospect is extremely exciting to me. If they don’t have any apartments available in February/March I will be heartbroken.
Call them! They might be willing to tell you that they normally have a few units open at the time or they have a few leases coming due then and may have openings. They may also have a wait list you can put your name on- it may require a deposit but it may not! I live in a town with a crazy rental market and if you’re not at least on the waiting list you’ll never even get to see the apartment. That goes double for nice apartments with 2 bathrooms. Hopefully where ever you’re moving is less intense though!
Wait- moving?! Did I miss the news? Did Montreal work out?
Not yet – the latest news re: that job is that they haven’t hired anyone yet because they’re “rethinking the parameters of the position” but we’ve decided to move to a bigger apartment if we end up staying in Ottawa for now.
Oh, okay! If/when you do move, send me a note with your new address!
That’s awesome. I moved from the crappy neighbor building to the dreamy neighbor building a few years ago and it has been BLISS. I so want to get a second bedroom place, but buying is really the better choice for that. Can I dreamily live vicariously?
Also, they’ve been building a lot of new fancy apartments around my office lately, and for a while I obsessively stalked all of their floor plans. One of them had a one-bedroom plan where you walked through the bathroom to get to the walk-in closet area. Which is all well and perfection if you live alone, but that sounds like awful logistics for a couple if either one is a morning pooper.
Dana Schwartz is awesome. She also writes the tweets for GuyInYourMFA, and I absolutely cannot decide if that or her personal twitter is funnier.
also Dystopian YA Novel! Which while not as funny as GuyInYourMFA, is still quite brilliant.
I missed yesterday’s OT so I missed the opportunity to tell everyone that MrChouffe and I got to hang out with BestLaidPlans and MrBestLaidPlans, and we had beer and pizza in a fantastic dive bar and they are so wonderful and we had a GLORIOUS time.
Apart from that, my weekend was almost entirely shitty and stressful until yesterday afternoon, when many things fell into place, and today I picked up our marriage license.
We had a fabulous time with you both! I’m so glad we got to hang out.
And we went back there for breakfast the next day and felt better about ourselves in that we were the only people there not drinking 3 or 4 gin and tonics at 9 a.m. Suffice to say, that dive bar is now my new favorite dive bar.
Can’t wait until we get to do it all again sometime in the not-too-distant future!
Ha! I’m so glad that you did and SO SO not surprised by the early-morning G&T drinkers. Next time we’re downstate, it is ON.
Guys… guys…. oh my lordy.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kimberleydadds/tom-hardy-…
I may be in the minority here because, mind you, the pics are glorious, but the best part for me is his old “About Me” section. “what a load of self satisfied smug and charmless tatter x” is how everyone should sign all letters in the future.
I can’t read it because it hurts me to remember that I probably had an About Me that was not much different.
However, I do see a new email signature in my future!
Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is sort of an enormous dick move. The song is literally “naw, bitch is crazy”.
Bubbles! Also, that wikipedia entry for the high five reads like the summary of a delightful and quirky documentary that I’d watch on Netflix to cheer myself up after watching Breaking Bad or something.
You might enjoy “Going Deep With David Rees” for those purposes
Cool, thanks for the suggestion! As much as I love all of my depressing entertainment, I often need some levity to balance it out.
“May I just remind you that Beyoncé walks in the shoes of Billie Holiday and Ida Cox, the great blues women,” Jong said. “most of whom were African American, who created feminist poetry in this country.”
“my dear sweet children if you might just sit calmly as perforce I bring to light some history which may surprise you”
The thing that kills me is, who says that about anyone you say “Happy birthday” about, let alone Beyonce? I wouldn’t even do this kind of derailing for strangers on the street. “You know who else has birthdays..?!?”
“May I just remind you” oh my godddddddd Erica STAHP
seriously it almost sounds like one of those humorless feminist caricatures. Like, I can see Lisa Simpson yelling this as a crowd of excited Springfielders rallies at the city hall to make 9/4 Beyonce Day. (Lisa comes around at the end of the episode though.)
What makes her “let me educate you” moment even more galling is that she didn’t know who Moms Mabley was. If you’re gonna come for people about popular music, be aware that there’s a fine and contextual line between educating and condescending, so err on the side of caution.
May I just remind you of Phyllis fucking Wheatley, an African-American in the sense of being born in Africa and owned by Americans, who was the first rockstar poet in this country.
UnREAL is SOOO GOOD i can’t even like it’s literally my favourite show of the year so far and possibly one of my faves ever.. the relationship between Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer’s characters is just SO AMAZING AND COMPLEX AND AM I GOING CRAZY OR WAS THAT A KORRA-TYPE SEASON ENDING RIGHT THERE
I spent a good chunk of the long weekend watching UnREAL and now I need to talk about it forever. What is this show? Quinn and Rachel and Rachel’s mom all trying to manipulate each other is chilling.
Its so good! Its a masterpiece. Delicate and cunning.
The only thing I worry about for next season is Rachel’s ex (the normal, calm dude) becoming evil. I think the show needs a few characters who are sedate and absorbent, just to show up the insanity.
I 100% agree that the end is chilling. “you know I love you right?” get out!!!
After such success, I wonder how hard it will be for the writers to keep accidentally making great feminist people make heaps (only?) bad decisions.
From the Andre Royo piece:
“Royo moves on to what arguably has been the most terrifying part of shooting Empire in Chicago: the weather. ‘It’s my first time in Chicago, and I’m loving it,’ he says. ‘I’m in the Gold Coast, right next door to a lake with a beach. But Chicago people, they know I’m not from here. They’ll come up to me and ask, “Are you having a good time?” and I tell them, “Yeah, man! Loving it! Chicago is great!” And they always go “Winter. Is. Coming.” I feel like I’m on Game of Thrones.'”
This is a 100% accurate depiction of Chicagoans’ relationship with the weather.
Can verify, is true for Vermont as well.
Thirded: Northern Michigan.
Northern MN in the house!
A while ago on the SyFy channel they did an adaptation of the Dresden Files, which takes place in Chicago, and I don’t think anything more clearly exemplified “this is shot in LA and we’re just hoping no one notices” than the fact that the guy was driving around in a Jeep with no doors. “Wait a minute,” I said, when I saw it, “I can buy that a guy is a wizard detective with wizard powers fighting vampires and devils, but I cannot believe that he drives around Chicago with no doors on his car and a canvas roof.”
I’ve seen a doorless Jeep in Chicago! True story! It was driven by a guy who looks like he lives in either Wrigleyville or Lincoln Park.
True it may be, but it is nevertheless unbelievable.
Is this the guy who drives around with like three golden retrievers in the doorless Jeep? I love him because the dogs are always wearing seat belts.
Alas, the Jeep was dogless.
No, they exist. In profusion, once you get closer to the beach and away from especially-packed areas. I think there’s a secret Doorless Jeep Parking Garage near the trust-fund-yacht docks on the Museum Campus.
Frand Wilde did a guest post for Charlie Stross’ blog about SF/Fantasy/YA writers (who happen to be women), including a list of 20 English-language debut books from the past year or two. I hadn’t heard of any of them, but I’m glad to add them to my to-read list!
This is wonderful! Thank you!
Signal to Noise was great, and I liked The Girl In The Road as well. But the others? Never heard of em, can’t wait to read em!
I enjoyed Zen Cho’s Spirits Abroad & The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, and I’m super excited about The Sorcerer to the Crown: “Magic, manners and dragons in Regency England” and “fluff for postcolonial book nerds”
Has anyone else read about the Best American Poetry kerfuffle? Basically, a white guy named Michael Hudson got his poem rejected a lot, resubmitted under the name Yi-Fen Chou, was rejected some more and then finally published, and had his poem selected to be in this year’s Best American Poetry anthology, upon which he gleefully revealed himself as a white guy.
Sherman Alexie responds here.
I’m so afraid of the shitstorm this is about to unleash on social media. “See? This is empirical evidence that white men are being discriminated against in the arts!” No. It is not.
Michael Hudson is an asshole, and Sherman Alexie, while a brilliant poet, is wrong here. Jia Tolentino wrote a good piece about it.
I kind of loved Sherman Alexie’s response? I mean, even with him being wrong, I feel like he was honestly admitting everything in a healthy way, and even if it was ethically wrong to keep the poem there, I think he’s right about the PR fallout that would have happened otherwise.
He’s admitting to his part in it, and that by no means takes away from HOW WRONG Michael Hudson was, imo.
I mostly agreed with Jia that, by framing his decision as nepotism, he’s doing a disservice to people who make conscious efforts to increase diversity. It plays into the framework of the people who howl about “reverse racism”. And I guess I feel like, you’re going to get flack from right wing nuts no matter what, because they hate the idea of even minor steps towards diversity. Do the right thing, and at least you’ll have backing from the people who value diversity. Instead, he’s catching shit from all sides.
Thanks for the link! I appreciated the perspective, though I think it’s a little iffy to say that it’s not a good poem. It may or may not be – I don’t personally like a lot of what ends up in BAP – but to claim that it’s objectively not good implies that the only reason Alexie included it was because of the perceived race of the author, which I think is part of why he chose to keep it.
While I personally don’t feel like I can say whether Alexie was right or wrong to keep the poem, as I am not a poet or editor or person of color, I don’t envy his dilemma. If he keeps it, he’s rewarding an asshole, but if he removes it he’s opening up every writer of color who was included to scrutiny about whether they “really” deserved a spot in BAP or whether Alexie unfairly chose them because of reverse-racism/nepotism. He can’t just worry about his own reputation, he has to worry about the reputations of every single poet of color he included. That’s a hard thing to balance.
“…but I will say this, Cum Bucket has been having an excellent season.”
Andre Royo sounds hilarious and amazing. I want to be his friend!!!
This seems relevant to The Toast’s interests: http://www.themarysue.com/labor-day-rock-activiti…
I’m always very excited to see Andre Royo in stuff, and I am SO EXCITED he’s going to be on Empire, the greatest show of all time.
Fallen London Toasties: Failbetter Games has a Charitably Mysterious Bundle up for 11 Fate, all proceeds donated to Medecins Sans Frontieres to support their work with refugees in the Mediterranean. They’ve also committed to matching donations up to 10,000 GBP, go FBG.
http://www.failbettergames.com/supporting-medecin…
Whaaaaaat? D-:
The guy I learned to do a DRE/testicular exam from was uber creepy. I wish a preceptor had been in the room. The five students were quietly mortified and it was awful. The ladies who taught us pelvics were awesome though.
From the article:
Some doctors today began their careers practicing pelvic exams on patients zonked on anesthetics, many of whom were poor walk-ins to outpatient clinics, never asked to give consent. In the late ’60s, realizing passed-out guinea pigs didn’t offer the best critiques, medical schools started recruiting untrained pelvic models, including prostitutes