Feminist Fare Friday: #facepalm MEN! Edition.
Oh my goodness people! I have had a week. Or rather, my family has. Apparently when we decide to come down with a nasty cold virus, we like to do it all at once! I've gone through two bottles of kid Tylenol this week, and downed a fair amount of the stuff myself.
As a result, our collective productivity as a family unit has been severely compromised. I am banging out a few posts today to catch up on my personal challenge to publish once a day (during the week) for all of September.
I won't bore you anymore with all of my woes, because there was so much great stuff on the internet this week, and you have some reading to do!
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1. I really love Shannon Barber. Everything she writes makes me THINK and QUESTION my life, my choices, and especially my privilege. Her Open letter to Readers about diversity, published on Medium this past week, is no different. And, I just realized I made an assumption recently about my own avid new reader, and assumed (incorrectly) he wouldn't want to read a book with a female protagonist. WHAT THE HELL NATASHA!? (I know right, I had to really shake my head at myself about that one.)
“The space for different stories and voices, is infinite. Whether it is fiction, essays, reportage, online think pieces, interviews-there is room for all of it. And we know that because ask any Reader how much stuff to choose from is too much and a lot of us will rub our hands together and get our evil laugh on, it could look like this: (Y’ALL I FORGOT THE BEST GODDAMN PART)”
2. Look, I know we all love Barack Obama and will miss him and Michelle like no one's business, but he is still a dude, and has been surrounded by many more dudes during his time in the White House. The few women who did get into the inner circle had a pact, a system of being heard and I think it is brilliant. I also think it sucks that they had to have this system, but at least it kept them heard and recognized. Small things like this CAN lead to big changes.
“Female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.”
3. Oh Lordy! Donald Trump has unveiled his "Child Affordability Plan". GAWD! What a stupid name that is - oops, sorry, not the point. The point is that the GOP stupid-ass candidate is just as sexist as always, and has unveiled a plan to give MOTHERS paid leave. "Uh, cuz that's what the women folk do-take care of babies. I love women, and they love me. Really." (Okay, I made that quote up, but he totally could have said it.) Anywhooo... ARGGH, I get so mad whenever I talk about him! Which is why you should read what Avital Norman Nathman had to say in Rolling Stone about Trump's proposed policy and what it really means for parents in the US.
“...there are some glaring problems with his plan. For instance, in allotting six weeks of maternity care, Trump completely neglects half of all parents: fathers. Even putting aside the paltry six weeks of leave Trump’s plan calls for (Hillary Clinton’s plan proposes 12 weeks of paid family leave, and the average paid leave policy around the world is around 15 weeks), it’s still incredible that in Trump’s America, only women are allowed to take time off for a new baby.”
4. THIS IS THE BEST THING ON THE INTERNET RIGHT NOW! Poor, poor Robert.
5. On most Tuesday evenings, you can find me on Dinner Television as a member of the #ParentPanel. This past week we discussed the case of #TeacherBAE, aka, Patrice Brown and her so called "inappropriate" wardrobe. I made the point on air, that Miss Brown wasn't being policed because of her clothing, she was being policed because of her body. Her curvy, black body. Preston Mitchum at the Root.com delved into this in much more detail and it is well worth a read.
“The truth is that we find Brown attractive and can’t help looking at her curvy body because of our own problematic male gaze. Instead of being honest about that, we impute our inappropriate thoughts to her young students. These are students we could easily teach not to objectify women and girls. Instead, many of us are using this as an opportunity to put down our faux progressive cards and pick up a conservative one—just to police attire on a curvy woman because we have bought into respectability politics.”
5. I love Kristen Bell. Her silly obsession with sloths, my discovery of Veronica Mars after I turned 40, and her foul-mouthed character on House of Lies. She and I should hang. For realsies. (Hook a girl up if anyone knows her OKAY?)
And now she did this! MWAH! I love you KBELL!!
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Ok, my lovelies.
Have a great weekend.
(There may be a few surprise posts this weekend, so check back tomorrow and Sunday. I have to catch up now that the plague has {hopefully} vacated our bodies and our house!)
XO,
N~
BONUS READ:
I just found this one from Rebecca Woolf over at Mom.me and it is brilliant.
“If you were to search “the art of rejecting,” which I have just now done, you will find 34,700,000 results. The only problem? They’re mostly about how to deal with “REJECTION,” not how to be a better “REJECTOR.” This is problematic to me.
It’s problematic because, like many other human beings out there, I have struggled my whole life with SAYING NO. I am actually really good at it now but only because I HAVE WORKED and WORKSHOPPED and matured into a scrappy no-shit-taker in my old age. In fact, I’m experiencing a bit of a NOPE-AISSANCE in my ability to reject things/people/ideas I think are full of shit. I am also still recovering from many of the instances I should have said no but said yes. That said, my inability to say NO was, for many years, a struggle for me.”