today i read

it is the day where we talk about mental health, and i am not sure i want to talk about it, i am having a lot of thoughts about it, and i don't want to engage any of them right this minute. so. other people can talk. this is good, sad, helpful, true (sorry so tiny, click it, click it):

{sarah nicole pricket}

* snp tumblr ask january fifth

that is all.

ff

never surprising. always disappointing.
so sayeth lissa today, and she is right on for this week's feminist friday mood.

{jessica testa for buzzfeed news}

let us begin with: fuck off, rolling stone & harper's bazaar. fuck off and fuck you. you are disgusting and pathetic.

and of course. there is the academy award nominations. you know. the whitest oscars since 1998. in the year of fullerton. or. the praise for complicated white men awards.

let's take a look at the best picture noms.

american sniper - white man is good at shooting stuff
birdman - white man is eccentric
boyhood - white boy becomes white man
the grand budapest hotel -  white man has wacky adventures
*note. it is arguable that a person of colour is the main character, or a main character. so YAY!
the imitation game - white man is good at maths and science
selma - HOLLA!!! ding ding ding! woooooooooo!
the theory of everything - white man is suuuuper good at maths and science
whiplash - white man plays music

okay, so. i'm not saying these are bad movies... i have only seen one of them, but they are almost all high on my wanna-watch list. but. BUT. omg, world. can we make movies about anyone who isn't white and male?! only one of the women nominated for best actress is in one of these films. that's bonkers. i guess they just acted real real good in absolute shit movies. good work, fancy ladies!

AND THEN. of the men nominated for best actor, four of five are from these films. and the fifth is from A MOVIE ABOUT WHITE MEN! whaaaat?! crazy. know who isn't nominated... that's right: the one person of colour leading a movie. so selma is one of the best movies, but the main character is whateves, and it must have directed itself because the WOMAN of colour who directed it got a big fat: nope!

all the best screenplay noms, both original and adapted, are men. every. single. one. cuz women writers ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

it is so remarkable it is almost laughable. almost. except not. just disappointing. and not surprising.

{waterford wispers news}

 

speaking of laughable! hahahahaha it's funny because we are left out of everything, but we're equal, no really, shit is equal, everybody stop complaining, women are like, TOTALLY TREATED EQUAL and are found in equal positions of power!!! stop loooooking for reasons to be offended, ya god damn harpies!

 

happy friday, harpies!

ff

here is a thing that is not the worst.

{legits the best thing}

alanah pearce is a game journalist who contacts the moms of internet boys who send her rape threats. and alanah pearce is friggin great. all the cheering and jazz handing for alanah pearce.

happy friday, don't forget you have a mom.

ff

{emma sulkowicz in new york magazine}

ooof, guys. this week. there are so many things, i can't decide which to write on, so we're gonna just go links-a-palooza up in here. clickity-click.

* how to start a revolution - vanessa grigordiadis

{e.r. kennedy's tweet on sarah woods state recreation site}

* e.r. kennedy's twitter (trigger warning)

* we don't have to do anything - sophie katz (trigger warning)

* sarah jean alexander on sophia katz's piece

{andi zeisler for salon}

* stop telling women not to 'take things personally' - andi zeisler

* why we need to fight online trolls, not just ignore them - emily gould

{sandra leong & kerry j. sulkowicz, parents of emma sulkowicz for the columbia daily spectator}

* an open letter to president bollinger & the board of trustees - sandra leong & kerry j. sulkowicz

* 'yes means yes' law passes in california!

* why can't you track periods in apple's health app? - nat buckley

* texas, the 2nd most populous state in the country, loses all but seven abortion clinics - maya dusenbery

* 'science' centre teaches boys rocketry, girls makeup - doctor zoom

{laura clawson for daily kos}

* voting is like wedding dress shopping? - laura clawson

 

happy friday, i want my mommmmmmm.

ff

{bunnika}

 

* i'm not sorry anymore, men: more on misandry, coded misogyny, and whiny manchildren

i shared this piece earlier via the facebook, but i wanted to come back to it again here. because yes. i mean, first of all: don't wear a fedora. a tiny tiny section of humanity can pull off a fedora without looking like a complete asshole, but i mean TINY.

and also, yes. i'm not interested in having you around if you don't listen, don't learn. i have a lot of really spectacularly wonderful man-humans in my life. the top-est of top quality. i don't neeeeed more men around. i don't care, anymore, to take menfolk by the hand and tenderly lead them through the big bad world of gender-theory like a mother trying to rationalize with a raging toddler. i don't wanna.

 

happy friday, my misandry army!

also,  you know i just wanted an excuse to use this, again:

 

 



today i read

***

{sara corbett for the new york times}

* the weird, scary and ingenious brain of maria bamford

if you didn't already know of maria bamford, well... shame on you and also now you do. i also strongly recommend listening to basically any podcast she ever guests on.

ff

i have hearts in my eyes for geena davis, i sure do. of course, you say, we all do... why do you bring her up on the blorg today? because she wrote a little somethin somethin that i very much like about women in cinema.

* two easy steps to make hollywood less sexist

easy steps, you say? there are NO easy steps in the war that is feminism! ha HA! you're wrong, genna is right, there are easy steps. check it!

"OK, now for the fun part: It's easy, fast and fun to add female characters, in two simple steps. And I want to be clear I'm not talking about creating more movies with a female lead. If you do, God bless and thank you. Please consider me for that role.

Step 1: Go through the projects you're already working on and change a bunch of the characters' first names to women's names. With one stroke you've created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they've had a gender switch. What if the plumber or pilot or construction foreman is a woman? What if the taxi driver or the scheming politician is a woman? What if both police officers that arrive on the scene are women — and it's not a big deal?

Step 2: When describing a crowd scene, write in the script, "A crowd gathers, which is half female." That may seem weird, but I promise you, somehow or other on the set that day the crowd will turn out to be 17 percent female otherwise. Maybe first ADs think women don't gather, I don't know.

And there you have it. You have just quickly and easily boosted the female presence in your project without changing a line of dialogue."

 {geena davis for the hollywood reporter}

captain awkward, who is awesome, recommends that you - when struggling with something like, say, the blah-lazies of depression - do little tiny things and acknowledge them as accomplishments. small tiny things that you can actually handle and then LET YOURSELF FEEL GOOD about those things. don't say 'today i will clean this apartment top to bottom!!!' and then find yourself crushed under your pathetic inability to do so. (that's mean depression voice talking. i don't think you're pathetic.) say 'today i will do one load of laundry so i have clean underwear!!!' and be proud and pleased and satisfied with that getting done. done! you did it. it is done.

so this advice here from geena? same same! it is an incredibly easy thing to do. blammo! just like that. it is so insanely simple it seems silly. but it isn't. not at all. it is brilliant and great. be proud and pleased.

ff

have you marginalized your daughter today?!

person i know! making a great thing! i like this very much.


Kinder Surprise for Girls: Gender Surprise! by yourgeeknews

surprise! more exclamation points! (shout out to old-friend-from-stage-polaris kristen mcgregor - who plays the daughter up in there. nice one. very cool.)

happy friday, kinder.

ff

this week emily yoffe, aka dear prudie, wrote an exceptionally idiotic and irresponsible piece of victim-blaming drivel about girls and drink culture and rape.

i'm not linking to it cause, ew, dude, you don't deserve the traffic. i found it because they had her on to talk about it on double x, the slate so-called feminist podcast. i can't even begin to express my 'ugh' after listening to that bullshit episode.

i'm not surprised that people continue to write stupid ass pieces about rape being, really, kinda sorta, ohi'msorrytohavetosayit, alittlebit THE VICTIM'S FAULT... (but she's not 'victim blaming', she continues to shout at the internets.)

what surprised and sickened me is that double x talked about the piece as if it was: something new. like. OMG has anyone ever noticed that sometimes ALCOHOL is involved in the sexual violence perpetuated against women and girls?! and, WORSE YET, has anyone ever noticed that high school and university experiences often involve IRRESPONSIBLE DRINKING?!

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that shit. sorry, but seriously. i'm not a journalist. i don't have research standards to meet. i don't have an editor reviewing my work... and yet i have been able to locate hundreds of hundreds of facts and statistics on rape in the US and canada. i've linked to a whoooole pile of them throughout my time feminist-fridaying. i'm also a baby-feminist. but in these few years of being concerned about the cause, i've managed to get a solid education about rape culture. so if you're going to get paid to write about rape culture, put in some goddamn time, do some fucking research, or shut the hell up and stop spewing your toxic pearl-clutching babble. what do you think you are doing to the girl who was raped when drunk? or the girl who was raped even though she did 'everything right'? what is the value of your 'advice'?

i've never been raped. yay me.
i have been completely and totally irresponsibly intoxicated. maybe even more than once!!! i went to unchaperoned parties in high school and university. i met strangers at parties or bars and i made friends with them or flirted with them or ignored them. one time when i was, like, 16 or 17 i went to a boy's house in the middle of the night with a few friends and we hid in his basement goofing off and flirting and our parents didn't know. i made mistakes and stupid choices and took risks.
but i never got raped.
because i was lucky enough that there was never a rapist around. when i was doing those things.
or when i gave rides home to people. when i lived alone. when i had new friends over for parties. or old friends... or stumbled home drunk and alone at night after a gallery opening in edinburgh. or not drunk and not alone, but still, you know, a women with my oh-so-rapeable bits just being right out there in the world.
i didn't get raped cause i wasn't with rapists.

so fuck you for implying that i somehow did something right that some other girl did wrong. or that i'm *lucky* to have made it through those experiences safely. just. fuck. you.

*just a reminder of a really GREAT campaign talking about rape that i'm so proud came out of my home town... just a reminder that talking to the ones who are making the rapes happen are the ones who we should talk to.

and once more for emphasis, fuck you emily yoffe. and shame on you.

ff

{bitches be besmirching, am i right?! photo borrowed from hazlitt but embellished by me, obvi}

so. dude. goes all a dude on the internets.

* david gilmour on building strong stomachs

i especially like the bit where he tells his students to elsewhere to read women authors. probably there is a class that is about lady-writers. that should be kept totes separate from his class cuz his class is just about literature. you know. the stuff written by men. duh.

so then the internets is all 'ummmmm, dude. really? dude...'

* memo to david gilmour
* an open letter to david gilmour
* virginia wolf, beloved chinese author

and then dude is all 'A SADS, I DIDN'T MEAN IT, YOU ARE MEAN, INTERNETS, YOU DON'T GET JOKES AND CONTEXT!' (aka 'WAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH'.)

* there isn't a racist sexist bone in my body

(quote woody allen. nice. cause he's such a charming non-misogynist...)
(also * how not to apologize for saying something sexist)
so the internets is all 'well, okay i guess, here's the whole transcript for context, but, um, you just look bad still, dude.'

* the gilmour transcript

and no one is surprised, and all the internets high-fives and dances to solange and is gladness.

happy friday, i hope he gets fiiiiiiired! (then maybe he and franzen can hang out and talk about that time the internets hurts their feeeelings.)