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
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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
A Cappella Cover of Sia’s “Chandelier”
Check out this gorgeous cover of Sia’s “Chandelier” by Twisted Measure, an a cappella group in Durham, NC.
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.)
