However, you will never be able to see these women clearly if you insist, anachronistically, on seeing suffrage as a fundamental human right. ... No one was having their humanity denied—not £7 householders in 1866, not women in 1914. If you do not understand that, you will never understand women like Mary Ward.
A loss I can live with.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, 10 March 2015 15:51 (nine years ago) link
And wow it only gets more gross from there.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, 10 March 2015 15:52 (nine years ago) link
amen
We so rarely hear from those who really choose to be childless, and there are few essays from women who don’t regret having had an abortion, who wouldn’t have been “ready” at a later age, who had the money for IVF and childcare but who chose not to go there. The mainstream conversation is colored by if-arguments, eerily reminiscent of the 1950s, when women without children were pitied (and, possibly, pitied themselves). If I had found the right partner… If I had had enough money… If my childhood hadn’t been so bad… Whatever the reasons, they all suggest that something went wrong.
I don’t have any if-arguments (which doesn’t mean that things don’t go wrong in my life). I simply never wanted to have children. Not when I was 20, not when I was 30 and not today.
I didn't read the whole thing but this part sums up my feelings so well that i just wanted to put it somewhere http://blog.longreads.com/2015/04/02/the-answer-is-never/
― groundless round (La Lechera), Thursday, 2 April 2015 15:26 (nine years ago) link
yep.
― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 2 April 2015 19:33 (nine years ago) link
good piece!
― Pic Verry (mattresslessness), Thursday, 2 April 2015 19:57 (nine years ago) link
i should really read more simone de beauvoir. what a writer.
― Pic Verry (mattresslessness), Thursday, 2 April 2015 20:14 (nine years ago) link
she is my very favorite of the old school anarchists, especially search her pieces in the Mother Earth anthology called "Anarchy!"
https://libcom.org/history/anarchy-anthology-emma-goldmans-mother-earth
― sleeve, Thursday, 2 April 2015 20:18 (nine years ago) link
argh so sorry I thought you meant Voltairine De Cleyre
I also need to read more SDB
― sleeve, Thursday, 2 April 2015 20:19 (nine years ago) link
i am looking at facebook's live feed of people sharing the report on the rolling stone's retracted campus rape story, and it's incredibly disheartening
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:52 (nine years ago) link
the report itself, the article, the things people say about it ("why does no one talk about the war on men on our nation's campuses" oh god)
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:53 (nine years ago) link
the retraction article is pretty excellent i think? i mean what people are going to say about it is still gonna be terrible but as far as case studies in how journalism goes wrong it seems like it really is something people can read and learn from.
― creaks, whines and trife (s.clover), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 04:55 (nine years ago) link
idk im at the bit where the authors claim erdedy should have shared all the details of her investigation with phi kappa psi because she had no reason to believe they would not have acted in good faith and ... really?
― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Tuesday, 7 April 2015 05:00 (nine years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/books/review/selfish-shallow-and-self-absorbed-sixteen-writers-on-the-decision-not-to-have-kids.html?smid=tw-share
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 20:30 (nine years ago) link
" a morass of resentment, insecurity, longing and disappointment for those who don’t find the right man in time to mate (the terms “childless by circumstance” and “social infertility” have been coined to describe this group); an ungovernable tangle of anxiety, confusion and exhaustion for those who combat infertility issues with costly and invasive assisted reproductive technologies; and a pervasive fog of self-recrimination and angst for those who simply don’t know what they want. "
skim-reading this I initially mistook it for a description of those who do have kids; obv I am projecting a hell of a lot bc I read blogs about how parents find themselves feeling 'not cut out for this'
― kinder, Tuesday, 7 April 2015 20:53 (nine years ago) link
i got an email from statewide library org with this:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y153/struggin/l1.jpg
immediately started writing a response to the guy who sent it, a reference librarian for the LDS church btw, pointing out that it was sexist ageist and disrespectful etc. then revised to say how it "could" be read the wrong way. now i feel like there's probably nothing worthwhile about pointing out possible negative interpretations in a dumb email instigated because i was offended by some typically tone-deaf thing sent from someone who works for the stupid church i hate so fn much. two hours gone. blechhhhhhhhhh. is it even objectionable in any way? i can't trust myself tbh.
― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Thursday, 9 April 2015 21:48 (nine years ago) link
it seems objectionable to me; my sister is a librarian... think I'll share with her.
― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 9 April 2015 21:51 (nine years ago) link
thanks. this is what i'm considering sending in response but i'll have to sleep on it.
I’m looking forward to hearing more about this presentation. I just wanted to let you know that the promotional image in your email could be interpreted in an unfortunate way: the words could be read as a comment on the women in the photograph, not just the card catalog. I am sure that is not what you intended. I just wanted to pass this information along to you in the hope that you’ll consider it as you plan announcements in the future.
― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Thursday, 9 April 2015 21:58 (nine years ago) link
my thirtysomething librarian sister just wrote back "yeah, this is tone deaf" so there you go
― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 9 April 2015 22:05 (nine years ago) link
Maybe if it were indicated that it's the librarians in the photo speaking, sharing the sentiment that they want/need better resources too? Could be like Married to the Sea speech bubbles or something.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Thursday, 9 April 2015 22:09 (nine years ago) link
agreed; the "we" doesn't read as the librarians, they read as "old resources"
― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 9 April 2015 22:12 (nine years ago) link
yes. i asked a colleague and she also said it could have been intended that the pictured librarians are "tired of the same old resources". i think tone-deaf is the accurate read then.
― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Thursday, 9 April 2015 22:17 (nine years ago) link
i'm going to rewrite this imagining myself as a friend pointing out someone's innocent faux pas.
― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Thursday, 9 April 2015 22:24 (nine years ago) link
^did that as briefly as i could, he responded that it hadn't even crossed his mind, thanked me, nbd.
― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Friday, 10 April 2015 16:29 (nine years ago) link
I feel like I've seen dozens of things like that in the library world--especially because young digital folks are always finding lol old photos whiles scanning images
― Is It Any Wonder I'm Not the (President Keyes), Friday, 10 April 2015 16:33 (nine years ago) link
yeah i feel like it's been a pretty common angle on the "web" in library world ... for 20 years. he's asking for new web resources but afaict the best "new" content out there is digitized old stuff. using the "old is tired" angle prob. not the best way to reach the special collections / archives people.
― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Friday, 10 April 2015 16:48 (nine years ago) link
http://tableflip.club/
― Premise ridiculous. Who have two potato? (forksclovetofu), Monday, 13 April 2015 20:13 (nine years ago) link
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/14/study-suggests-stem-faculty-hiring-favors-women-over-men
― Mordy, Tuesday, 14 April 2015 13:53 (nine years ago) link
has this been posted? http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-hollywood-keeps-out-women-5525034
She was struck by how Johnston "would just happen to be at lunch with one of the guys that was hanging out with guys, and [they] would all get to know one another and all of a sudden they're making Cedar Rapids" — a movie written by a man, edited by a man, directed by a man and produced by five men, including The Descendants director Alexander Payne.
While not criticizing the industry's propensity for male bonding, Lee said that for women, "It's much tougher to fall into those casual relationships that lead to something."…"People hate risking anything, and they think it's doing something wild and crazy to hire a woman," says one female director. She asked to remain anonymous, saying that if she were identified by name, "I have a feeling that all the companies that I've been dealing with will be really evil to me."
― Florianne Fracke (La Lechera), Sunday, 3 May 2015 14:03 (nine years ago) link
'Where's My Cut?': On Unpaid Emotional Labor
― mookieproof, Saturday, 18 July 2015 01:38 (nine years ago) link
look at this bullshit
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/opinion/sunday/you-go-guy.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
― Treeship, Saturday, 18 July 2015 21:41 (nine years ago) link
"opinion"
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 19 July 2015 20:10 (nine years ago) link
But emotional labor? Offering advice, listening to woes, dispensing care and attention? That’s not supposed to be transactional. People are disturbed by the very notion that someone would charge, or pay, for friendly support.
wait, what? this is why a lot of people pay therapists.
― sarahell, Monday, 20 July 2015 08:27 (nine years ago) link
Yeah I don't get that opinion at all.
― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Monday, 20 July 2015 13:31 (nine years ago) link
that's just one line, the rest of the thing makes a lot of sense(although i can't say i love the hashtag)
― La Lechera, Monday, 20 July 2015 13:47 (nine years ago) link
not sure where to post it but i thought this article on spinsters was great
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/on-spinsters
These many magnificent spinsters and their unnamed sisters expand the range of femininity far beyond the familiar territory of the cute, cool, or easily commodified, and ignoring or shunning almost all of this classic spinster pantheon — as Bolick does — has political consequences. Above all, it domesticates the threat that the spinster poses to normative systems of love, sex, and power. There is a reason the word “spinster” has long been a queer-tinged insult with a straight-slicing edge — a reason why Katharine Hepburn, one of cinema’s great spinsters (Summertime! Desk Set! The African Queen!), was devastated in The Philadelphia Story when her ex-husband called her a “married maiden” and her estranged father called her a “perennial spinster.” Historically, spinsterhood has meant a kind of radical unavailability to straight men, implying either rejection of them or rejection by them or both.
― Merdeyeux, Tuesday, 21 July 2015 02:18 (nine years ago) link
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/happens-talk-salaries-google/
4 days ago6@EricaJoy's salary transparency experiment at Google
― j., Wednesday, 22 July 2015 00:26 (nine years ago) link
In context she's offering up that viewpoint as being RONG, if u read it.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, 22 July 2015 12:23 (nine years ago) link
lol
― just sayin, Wednesday, 22 July 2015 12:28 (nine years ago) link
@ no one reading that but still having opinions on it
I love Herland, but my own favorite spinster manifesto (which doesn’t appear in Spinster) was written almost half a century earlier, in 1869. It’s a chapter in Louisa May Alcott’s misleadingly titled An Old-Fashioned Girl, a novel about being a youngish woman in Boston (which Bolick once was, but there the resemblance ends). Polly is an unmarried music teacher struggling with loneliness and depression; her friend Fan is an unmarried lady of leisure also struggling with loneliness and depression. When Polly suddenly becomes happier, Fan assumes her good mood must be because she’s falling in love with a man, but Polly corrects her: “No; friendship and good works.” Polly takes Fan to see her new spinster friends, whom she describes as “lively, odd, and pleasant,” and the young women share an improvised indoor picnic (“it’s so much jollier to eat in sisterhood”) and a riotous feminist discussion at the home of Becky and Bess, both artists, who are partners in a Boston marriage. As Polly explains, Becky and Bess...live together, and take care of one another in true Damon and Pythias style. This studio is their home,— they work, eat, sleep, and live here, going halves in everything. They are all alone in the world, but as happy and independent as birds; real friends, whom nothing will part.
...live together, and take care of one another in true Damon and Pythias style. This studio is their home,— they work, eat, sleep, and live here, going halves in everything. They are all alone in the world, but as happy and independent as birds; real friends, whom nothing will part.
I love LOVE that book and that exact passage!!! Oh bless, bless her.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, 22 July 2015 12:36 (nine years ago) link
But as a spinster who craves connection and community above all and who has found it outside of the standard couple form, I’ve come to realize that I owe an immeasurable debt to the intersecting groups of people who have historically been barred from the privileges of marriage by law and demography, and have learned to create intimate lives apart from it. In other words, I’m indebted to queer people and to African Americans, and to all who have seen their loves and families treated as nonexistent or pathological, and who have had marriage used as a weapon against them or as a compulsory straight and narrow path to equality. These people are more than “awakeners”: they have done the hard work of loving and world-making in defiance of the powers that be, and all unmarried people benefit from their centuries of emotional and material labor.
Goddamn that essay is brilliant.
― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Wednesday, 22 July 2015 12:38 (nine years ago) link
ya lots there v otmslate review she links to is good too
― drash, Wednesday, 22 July 2015 17:35 (nine years ago) link
what I don't get about the emotional labor article is why the author finds being an emotionally giving person so annoying.
― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Wednesday, 22 July 2015 23:57 (nine years ago) link
She finds it exhausting. And asymmetrical in practice--women perform it, men benefit from it, it's basically invisible. That article is right on.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:22 (nine years ago) link
i way over-identify with that article because emotional labor was my life and major source of identity while i was in graduate school. it is not worth it, trust me.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:24 (nine years ago) link
or it's more like, it's work that needs to get done, but it's not valued or even seen. it's the same people always doing it, it's invisible to most people, and it takes a serious toll on the people performing it.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:26 (nine years ago) link
now i am obsessively summarizing an article whose meaning is entirely manifest. clearly it struck a chord.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:27 (nine years ago) link
EMOTIONAL LABOR: DON'T DO IT.
(or force people to acknowledge that it's a thing and make its practice more shared somehow.)
― horseshoe, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:28 (nine years ago) link
agree i didn't need to read it to know it was trueesp difficult when someone is required to do emotional labor for money (like as a teacher or in another caring profession) and then do the same outside of work for freeas i said, i think the hashtag is crass but there's no arguing with the idea of unpaid emotional labor
― La Lechera, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:30 (nine years ago) link
yes i think being a teacher has something to do with how hair-trigger i am about this.
― horseshoe, Thursday, 23 July 2015 00:34 (nine years ago) link