Reads of the Week: Outrage, Legacy, Sexism, Reporters
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“Never doubt that an outcry of rage from those who’ve had enough of the bullshit, and a torrent of shame against those who’ve enabled the bullshit too long — never doubt these things can change the world. Sometimes I think they’re the only things that ever have.” – Arthur Chu, Salon
- “It doesn’t matter one little bit that I once loved Bill Cosby or his work. I have to let that go. Anything he created stands on a foundation of deceit, manipulation and the worst of human nature. His “legacy” is irrelevant in the face of the crimes he has committed. As I’ve written before, we must choose humanity over legacy and over art or accomplishment.” – Roxane Gay, The Toast
- As I wrote last January, “political correctness” isn’t a real thing. Rather, the term is a sort of catchall charge that’s used against people who ask for more sensitivity to a particular cause than we’re willing to give — a way to dismiss issues as frivolous in order to justify ignoring them. It’s a way to say that their concerns don’t deserve to be voiced, much less addressed.” – Amanda Taub, Vox
- “At the same time, many of us are puzzling out what it means to be black reporters reporting on black death in an industry that’s traditionally operated like this: Some people tell the tough stories (white, upper middle class, mostly male), and other people have tough stories happen to them. It’s an industry that’s long boasted a nebulous ideal of “objectivity” without considering that the glaring homogeneity of its ranks helps make that claim believable.” – Gene Demby, NPR
Reads of the Week: Racism, Reason and Vulnerability
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“I am praying that Americans will get their shit together and stop fighting over the same old bones we’ve been trying to hide in the closet for over 400 years. The jig is up. The world knows we’ve got a closet full of racism, that we’re no poster children, that we systematically subjugate people of color and the poor.” – Hillary Crosley Coker, Jezebel
- “Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an abandonment of reason.” – David Niose, Psychology Today
- “I think as dangerous and daunting and scary as vulnerability can be, I don’t think it’s ever as dangerous, daunting, or scary as reflecting back on moments in our lives where we wonder what would have happened if I would have shown up. ” – Drake Baer, Fast Company
Marriage Equality!
Just the first (but amazing!) step towards equality for all members of the LGBTQ community, check out Vox‘s video chronicling the progression of marriage equality.
Reads of the Week: PC, News, PLL and Apologies
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“What has come to be called “political correctness” used to be known as “good manners” and was considered part of being a decent human being. The term is now employed to write off any speech that is uncomfortably socially conscious, culturally sensitive or just plain left-wing. The term is employed, too often, to shut down free speech in the name of protecting speech.” – Laurie Penny, NewStatesman
- “No one but the fearful, the crazy and the deeply, pathologically Caucasian (overlapping demographics, to be sure) bothers to vote when the presidency is not at stake.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon
- “The male gaze — in film and TV, in advertising, in online dating, in this new wave of social media as theater — is all about reassuring men that women exist to be seen and evaluated by them, right? Women have no agency outside of the framework of their gaze. Women don’t create their own meaning; their meaning is imposed on them by men working out their fantasies and obsessions on them. Charles is distilling the Liars down to one-dimensional versions of his desires.” – Heather Hogan, Autostraddle
- “When a woman opens her window at 3 a.m. on a weeknight and shouts to her neighbor, ‘I’m sorry, but can you turn the music down?’ the ‘sorry’ is not an attempt at unobtrusiveness. It’s not even good manners. It’s a poor translation for a string of expletives.” – Sloane Crosley, The New York Times
Reads of the Week: Salaries and White Fragility
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“There’s no such thing as pure feeling. You have a feeling because you’ve filtered the experience through a particular lens. The feeling is the outcome. It probably feels natural, but of course it’s shaped by what you believe.” – Sam Adler-Bell, AlterNet
- “By sharing that basic data, we empower everyone. And yet when I look deep into my heart and ask why I haven’t yet just typed my current salary here I must admit that it’s because the powers of taboo are strong in me, too. I think back to that man in my old job; I think of my current colleagues. One tweet could change the way we all feel about each other. And that’s what’s so terrifying about it.” – Emily Dreyfuss, Wired
Reads of the Week: Baltimore, Childless, Inequality
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“Any people with nothing to lose will destroy anything in their way. Like anything. Any people who feel as if their lives are not valued, like they are second-class citizens at best, will not be stopped until they’ve made their point. They, we, do not care if our communities have not rebounded from the last major American rebellions of the 1960s. We care that we have to live in squalor and misery and can be shot at any given moment by each other, or by the police, and no one seems to care. A rebellion, a riot, are pleas for help, for a plan, for a vision, for solutions, for action steps, for justice, for God, someone, anyone, to see our humanity, to do something. ” – “Why Baltimore is Burning“
- “Not having children isn’t selfish. Not having children is a perfectly rational and reasonable response given that humans are essentially parasites on the face of a perfectly lovely and well-balanced planet, ploughing through its natural resources, eradicating its endangered species, and ruining its most wonderful landscapes. This might sound misanthropic, and it is, but it is also true.” – “Why Women Aren’t Having Children“
- “And I think this is the right moment to examine the consequences of the inequitable shifts toward equity. For we will find that, just as with people with AIDS – the access remains constrained by class and race and gender, so that solutions long desired and fought for by diverse people, are creating profoundly inequitable conditions that worsen the lives of some of us, while transforming the values of those with access. ” – Sarah Schulman
Reads of the Week: Diversity, Poverty, Idiots and TV Quizzes
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“But everyone benefits from outstanding television. To state something so obvious it is difficult to believe it must be stated: you don’t have to be black to like Empire, you don’t have to be Latino to like Jane the Virgin, you don’t have to be Asian to like FOTB. Good shows are good shows are good shows. And for the love of a country that grows more diverse by the day, “ethnic casting” is not a ‘trend.'” – ThinkProgress on Deadline’s ridiculous diversity article
- “Poverty is a chaos that screams in the present tense, and the anxiety of having no money forces poorer families to direct their attention to immediate concerns. As a result, the poor spend relatively more on what will keep them alive, because they must. And the rich spend more on what will keep them rich, because they can.” – The Atlantic
- “And for Wenner, a rich, powerful 69-year-old man, to place culpability for his magazine’s lapse on a twentysomething pseudonymous woman, well, that tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it?” – Gawker on Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner
- Take Vulture’s TV personality quiz! (Figured a little light-heartedness was needed this week.)
Reads of the Week: Shonda Rhimes, LGBT Women & ‘Glee’ Women
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
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Photo: @shondarhimes
“I am making TV look like the world looks. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people equal WAY more than 50% of the population. Which means it ain’t out of the ordinary. I am making the world of television look NORMAL. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe. And your tribe can be any kind of person, anyone you identify with, anyone who feels like you, who feels like home, who feels like truth. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe, see your people, someone like you out there, existing. So that you know on your darkest day that when you run (metaphorically or physically RUN), there is somewhere, someone, to run TO. Your tribe is waiting for you. You are not alone. The goal is that everyone should get to turn on the TV and see someone who looks like them and loves like them. And just as important, everyone should turn on the TV and see someone who doesn’t look like them and love like them. Because, perhaps then, they will learn from them.” – Shonda Rhimes, “You Are Not Alone.”
- “We know — intuitively, from stories, from our own lives — that queer women face unique and devastating economic challenges and are at higher risk for poverty than even straight women and LGBT men. Now, we have clear, comprehensive data that solidifies the seriousness of the problem and provides a new resource for battling it.” – “New Report Finally Gives Crucial Numbers on Economic Disparities Hurting LGBT Women”
- “Glee, another show that started out focusing on a female character whose career dreams kept her going, is now one of the most anti-female shows airing. The show consistently belittles the role of women, using them as little more than emotional leaning posts for their boyfriends, boyfriends who are always heroic and decent. When Finn outed Santana it was treated as a good thing, Finn helping her come to terms with her sexuality by serenading her with a cover of Girls Just Want to Have Fun. After all, lesbianism is just girls having fun, right? Weeks later when Dave Karofsky suffers similarly by being outed it is shown through an emotionally overwrought montage and makes way for a story about teen suicide.” – “Where Have All the Good Women Gone?”
Reads of the Week: Call outs, Kids, Corinthian, Police
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing.” – A Note on Call-Out Culture
- “The casual dismissal of something you know to be absolutely true about yourself is infuriating at best, and dehumanizing at worst. Let us also acknowledge not only the vast amount of sexism contained within these ideas, but also the cissexism embedded in them as well. Not all women can have children, and not all people who can have children are women. Gender stereotypes like these end up being all the more harmful because they refuse to operate outside of a binary that winds up being exclusionary to the many folks who don’t neatly fit into it.” – Jessica Burnell, I Don’t Want Children–Ever
- “If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a trillion dollars, you own the bank. Together, we own the bank.” – Corinthian 15, on Student Loans
- “Since 1935, nearly every so-called race riot in the United States—and there have been more than 100—has been sparked by a police incident, Muhammad says. This can be an act of brutality, or a senseless killing. But the underlying causes run much deeper. Police, because they interact in black communities every day, are often seen as the face of larger systems of inequality in the justice system, employment, education and housing.” – Yes, Black America Fears the Police. Here’s Why.
Reads of the Week: Bi-Invisibility
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“In usual form, nearly all the responses, from the media and public alike, ignore the possibility that anyone could be bisexual (or queer). And nearly all the responses attempt to either confidently or subtly assert an identity upon an actress who has never provided any public defining label about her sexuality.” – Raechel Tiffe, “Buzz About Kristen Stewart’s Sexuality Tells Us a Lot About Society’s Discomfort with Bisexuality”
