Remember that scene in season five of Buffy where Giles asks Ben if he can move and then tells him that "Buffy's a hero...not like us," emphasis on the us, and Ben says "Us?" and then Giles stares him dead in the eye and deliberately smothers him with his bare hand, because he's going to do something he knows that Buffy should never have to do but that at the same time absolutely has to be done?…
It’s a perennial question—whenever I meet someone new, be it at a bar or at church coffee hour, the question arises with a renewed intensity. The questioner grasps my hand, peers into my eyes, and sweetly asks: “But what do we call you?” It is one of those unique queries reserved for female clergy—right up there with “Where do you find decent-fitting clergy shirts?” and “Do you have to have a horrible haircut?” The handful of women…
Dear Businesslady,I started a job about a year ago at a small, woman-centered non-profit organization. My boss, the executive director ("ED"), is a few years older than me. We're alike in many ways and get along fine, but there seems to be a class/income divide coloring our interactions, and I need help in navigating it. I grew up in a solidly middle-class home where I didn't lack for much but money wasn't something ever…
Dear Aunt Acid and Businesslady, I'm writing to both of you as my question is both professional and deeply personal. One of my coworkers is my age, but she has a much more senior role. She is sort-of-not-really my boss but she is also clearly interested in finding a work friend. To this end, she asks me numerous personal questions that are not entirely appropriate for our relationship. While I have no problem not answering many…
I love being a librarian. Every day is different, and I enjoy helping people with their plans and projects. But with the job also comes a number of questions I cannot answer, or would simply prefer not to get. While you might imagine you can ask your local librarian anything, there may be times when they simply won’t have a ready response for you. …
Waking from a dream you don’t remember but that nevertheless was powerful enough to leave you with a sense of of having been with people who are somehow both friends and strangers, as well as—you suspect—your ex + complete empty space in the part of your brain where today's day of the week should be + encroaching dread that it might, after all, still be a weekday + rueful…
“Write me an erotic story about Batman and the Queen of England. Bonus points if you get the Queen’s corgis in there somehow.” “Write me a story about a backpacker whose dying wish is a tiramisu cupcake.” “Write me a meet-cute about Cthulhu and a woman at a bar in the style of Charles Bukowski.” I say yes. Of course I say yes -- I’m the man sitting under the tree with a typewriter. In…
Charlene Cheung's previous work for The Toast can be found here. This message and any attached documents contain information that may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not read, copy, distribute, or use this information. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply email and then delete this message. This message and any attached documents contain sentiments that the sender…
Dear Businesslady,I work in a small office (like we-don't-have-any-HR-department small). My co-worker, who is my age (30), is an alcoholic. He used to be a really intense one -- like fucking-up-all-the-time, mystery-sick-days, smelling-like-a-distillery, positively-purple-and-about-to-pass-out-in-meetings kind of intense. Then he was sent on a mandatory leave of absence by the management, for detox. He came back sober, but flash forward a year and he's back to drinking at work on the regular. He's not as extreme…
Dear Aunt Acid, I'm an undergraduate woman participating in a summer math research program. My project team consists of me and two other students, both men. Both of them curse constantly and casually. As long as they're just swearing, it doesn't bother me enough to make it worth bringing up, but I do object to their misogynistic language -- "what a little bitch," "don't be such a pussy," and so on. (Whether or not these…
I’m sitting alone in Girvan, Scotland, on one of the longest days of the year, looking at the late sun and thinking about the women who all of a sudden caught fire. There were a good number of them. Enough, in the 1700s, to constitute a chapter in the medical literature. The most-quoted British case is Grace Pitt, a 60ish female whose charred corpse was discovered one morning in 1744—like “a log of…
The TV is too loud because he’s hard of hearing, and he leans forward so he doesn’t miss a word, his eyes hungry, unblinking. The motorcycle sport documentary On Any Sunday plays on the screen, and though my dad has probably seen it a dozen times, his fascination will never fade. He’s watching the part about the famous Widowmaker hill climb-- the 1,000-foot-tall mountain slope in Utah that only twenty riders out
To be a woman who dares overstep her place in the physical or the digital worlds is to be branded a target by men, men who wish to return to halcyon days: of women only seen (except when they shouldn’t be) but not heard, of apron-donning, of apple-cheeked ma’ams bowing to their every whim. For these men, food -- or rather, feeding -- is the second most important women’s work (with the first being to…
Previously by Carly Lane. Growing up, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t surrounded by birth. I’m rarely a latchkey kid who frequently comes home to an empty house at the end of a school day. My little sister and I make the trek home from the bus stop, let ourselves in, and ease our backpacks from our aching shoulders. Our mother greets us from wherever she was in the house, asks us about our…
