Hi there, stardust moonbeams! I’m currently staring out a window on a mountain and it’s GLORIOUS. The cabin across the street has like 47 wind chimes hanging along the front porch area and it’s pretty out of hand. I’m a person who loves a good wind chime — heck I even like a bad wind chime. This, though? This is out of hand. How many wind chimes do you have? What’s your wind chime limit, would you say? Like three, right? Three seems like a solid number. You get your wooden chimes, some tiny tinkling copper things, and then maybe a larger metal chime situation. Done. Anything over three it’s just, what are you trying to prove? What’s the deal?
You Should Go or Do or Give
+ Help Take Short Film “Liz” to Film Festivals!
Queer as in F*ck You
+ Hey it’s our cartoonist Anna Bongiavanni on episode 17 of Gender Inbetween!
Doll Parts
+ Feministing Jamz: A Women of Color Summer Playlist.
+ Can We Just, Like, Get Over the Way Women Talk?
+ A Transgender Immigrant’s Asylum Petition Was Just Denied. What Awaits Her In Mexico?
+ The K-12 Binary: “Schools are becoming ground zero for clashes over transgender rights.”
+ The Power of Seeing Women Masturbating on TV.
+ Meet Caitlyn Jenner’s Super Squad. DO IT.
+ Serena Williams Beat Maria Sharapova for the 17th Straight Time, But Serena Still Makes Less Money.
+ Orange Is The New Black Is The Only TV Show That Understands Rape.
+ How the Rolling Stone Rape Story Failure Has — And Hasn’t — Changed Media Coverage.
+ These Black Artists Made T-Shirts to Remember Women Lost to Violence.
+ Tangerine: Inside the Transgender Revenge Comedy of the Year.
+ The #RocktheCrop Hashtag is Empowering and relevant to your interests! I keep wanting to pitch a story like It Happened to Me: I Can’t Wear Crop Tops Because of a Misguided Tattoo I Got in the 90s. The struggle is real.
+ This is horrific and disgusting and so terribly sad and on one hand I want to apologize for sharing it, but on the other hand I don’t have the right to do that, really. It’s the graphic story of Jackie Fuchs of The Runaways: The Lost Girls.
She told me she never thought she’d go public with her rape, but last fall, she started seeing similar stories everywhere. More than a dozen women had come forward against Bill Cosby. Kesha filed a lawsuit alleging that she had been drugged and assaulted by her producer, Dr. Luke. And there were so many undergraduate women who were finally speaking up about sexual assault. “I realized, ‘Oh my God, this is what’s happening on college campuses,’” she said.
Jackie saw herself in those young women and knew all the hurt and shame that awaited them. “They have to be making the same value judgments about themselves as I made about me,” she explained. “I know from personal experience how all those things can eat away at you. They can take vibrant young people and turn them into something else.”
Saw This, Thought of You
+ This is legitimately goddamned terrifying. I am terrified.
+ Judge Orders Cancellation of Redskins’ Trademark Registration. The team is appealing.
+ Compostable coffee pods motherfuckers!
+ Remember When We Were Pirates? That is such a good headline. I almost want to make it my life’s mission to write multiple stories and essays and poems titled Remember When We Were Pirates? just to say I did it. Such whimsy.
+ Obama Administration to Unveil Major New Rules Targeting Segregation Across the US.
+ Maps and graphs and facts and figures! Snapshot: Transgender in America.
+ Reforming Juvenile Offenders By Training Them to Read Faces.
+ A Dozen Mouthwatering Facts About Krispy Kreme On Its Birthday HAPPY BIRTHDAY DONUTS I L U.
+ Sorry, new squirrel virus suspected in three human deaths. I don’t know this just seemed like information you needed to have.
+ I think it’s fine that this made me cry. People in Toronto Created a Memorial to a Dead Raccoon. I mean, different things make different people cry. It’s fine.
+ Earbuds that change the incoming sounds you hear. Did we already talk about this? I remember talking to someone about this and maybe it was you but maybe it wasn’t.
+ Dorothy Arzner: Hidden Star Maker of Hollywood’s Golden Age. This was written by an A-Camper! THAT IS RAD YOU GUYS.
+ American Muslims Raise $30,000 To Help Repair Black Churches Destroyed by Fire.
+ You Can Read the First Chapter of Harper Lee’s New Book Right Now. But will you? Have you already? Tell me.
f*ck the misguided tattoo, laneia. POP LOCK AND CROP IT
no trust me, i really can’t. it’s like, it’s awful.
Cover up? They can do some crazy things these days .
aw, poor raccoon :(
I thought the memorial for the dead raccoon was funny and great all at the same time. Though someone putting a cigarette in it’s hand was maybe a little to far.
That raccoon was super close to my work! Poor lil guy :'(.
BUT I will say that the raccoons in Toronto are generally menaces – they’re MASSIVE and always fucking around in your compost and they don’t even have any shame about it, they just slink around like cats all “nothing to see here” instead of skittering away like a normal animal. So no one feel too sad about it ok?
+1 for an accurate description of Toronto raccoons. I used to do youth theatre in Leaside and sometimes they’d be climbing on top of my car so they could get into dumpsters that were in the parking lot of the building we rehearsed in when I was there in the wintertime past 10pm. Nope nope nope.
But the memorial was hilarious, IMO. It is now going to be my go-to story when I go back to school and my American friends ask me “So what’s it like to be from Toronto?”
I <3 raccoons
You don’t know about the Toronto raccoons Alex! They are the size of baby bears!!
(also you should come visit me and Mel and the raccoons in TO some time)
+1 to all of this. Our giant violent asshole raccoons have actually kind of become wrapped up in our identity as a city.
If you’re not from around here, this Twitter should tell you everything you need to know: https://twitter.com/City_Raccoon
Fellow Torontonian weighing in….I’m just waiting for the Toronto raccoons to figure out how to crack our new racoon-proof green bins, thus confirming their superiority to, er, everyone.
I once sat on a bench next to a raccoon in Toronto (it was sitting up looking all despondent) and it totally gave me that casual ‘nothing to see here’ glance and then skulked off. It was weird.
But still, poor little man.
“Remember when we were pirates” would also make an amazing tattoo.
Oh damn you’re right
I am about to get a breakup tattoo and I really think this might be The One!
“Remember when we were pirates”…
I randomly get emotional whenever I hear that phrase for some reason. I remember the smell of the brackish sea and the waves create a sweet ache of nostalgia that cradles me.
Then I remember, wait, that is not my life, I’ve been watching “Hook” again.
Arrrrggggh.
this was beautiful
Bra, you are such a treasure, always
I was a pirate! I mean, my school mascot was a pirate, but close enough, right?
I’m just going to leave this here:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8x7A9BkKFM&w=560&h=315%5D
Honestly, with a headline like that I was disappointed to find a very businesslike article about illegal downloading.
sooooooo many things to read!
all these posts with all these links!!
I have a guest this weekend, I can’t do all the reading I need to do now!!
But yes, this is awesome, I will get to all of these, eventually.
That raccoon, I teared up.
like idk if it was the matter of an animal losing its life, or the fact that someone left it a little note?
I know!
Both. I think. The recognition of its sad little body.
Omg crying again.
Serena Williams makes less money than…what…why…HOW IS THAT ALLOWED?! Seriously, eff that ish.
Just here to express solidarity for your feelings about windchimes as great in moderation, alarming in excess.
Further chiming in, Laneia is on.point. and yes.
sooooo, lots of these doors seem cumbersome and or not very safe but very pretty to look at. like, maybe for the set of a play, or a movie, but personally, i like to be sure that no one is walking into my house when i don’t give them express permission.
also i really really love the if [insert person here] was your girlfriend series. “If Gwyneth Paltrow were your girlfriend, you would go out for brunch with her and Beyonce and Cameron Diaz, and Beyonce and Cameron would nod approvingly at you. “You’re good for her,” Cameron would say. “You tame her,” Beyonce would say, and you’d laugh and rest your hand on Gwyneth’s shoulder, and Gwyneth would smile, and outside a hundred ravens would take off in a cloud of black.”
ALSO, i really wish i had a car right now for donuts because I have money and two dozen krispy kreme donuts for less than $5 sounds like heaven.
also the playlist is so good!
That Gwyneth Paltrow piece is definitely in my top three favorite things I read this week! It was so super deliciously creepy.
I think they would generally keep people out when closed, although I think the slanted one has a lot of potential to let unwanted rain in. Any shift in the building, and your seal might be gone…
Poor raccoon
That article on reforming juvenile offenders was interesting although I wish it provided more information. If these kids aren’t psychopaths as the article states than why is it that they are unable to recognize emotion. I’m not suggesting that they are psychopaths but the article doesn’t really give any other option other than mentioning that there might be something wrong with their amygdalas. It would be intriguing to find the source of their anti-social behaviors. This kind of study could also be applied to adults, I would be fascinated to see the affects this could have on fully grown adults and if this technique could be successfully used in rehabilitation programs.
Just like some people are more athletic and some people are less athletic, some people are more able to read emotions and some are less able. Just like people can practice an athletic skill, people can practice emotional skills.
I work with little kids and some need more explicit help in reading the social cues of other kids and figuring out how to respond in socially appropriate ways, while others more easily get it on their own.
For some reason, I’m obsessed with the psychology of Inside Out? I can’t stop analyzing it and reading OTHER people’s analyzations…that movie will never cease to be PURE GENIUS, not to mention Amy freakin Poehler’s arguably PERFECT performance…
Her rendition of the Bing Bong song was, in my opinion, the best.
Agreed. Bing bong was amazing all around.
I was hesitating about seeing that movie because the trailer seemed p sexist but I’ve heard good things as well. Is it worth checking out?
Oh, I loved this movie! I keep thinking about it and imagining the inside of my head with tiny emotion characters.
Loved the article about reforming juvenile offenders by training them to read faces. I remember seeing something on TV about this a few years ago and it was so fascinating. They showed how a proportion of young people had difficulty telling the difference between different expressions and that people in juvenile corrections facilities were more likely to exhibit this issue. In particular, they had trouble telling the difference between fear and anger, which often led them to react against what they perceived to be anger, but which was really fear. If it’s correct it seems like something we as a society could do something about and help a lot of people along the way.
laneia i think we did talk about this
thank you
Gah! So many *EXCELLENT* links this week! I don’t even know where to start my weekend reading!! Well selected/curated choices! Thank you!
(Ok, I told a teeny lie- I know where I’m starting: “The Power of Seeing Women Masturbate on TV”. Because, yeah. That’s awesome.)
Add to that: The women of color summer playlist! YAAAAS JAMZ!
Love the Inside Out article!
I found the raccoon thing sort of sad but also kind of funny.
Humans are so weird man.
Ok, now that I’ve read the “Women Masturbating on TV” article in full, I’m having some feelings about it.
On one hand, I agree that showing women on tv pleasuring themselves is super powerful and rare and necessary. On the other, (unless I’m mistaken) all of the examples that the writer provides are of white women, when I know that black television shows have been similarly exploring this for a while now (Gabrielle Union as the titular character on BET’s “Being Mary Jane” comes to mind right away). And I think that is worth special attention, because as much as female sexuality is still considered taboo, in a lot of black/Latinx communities- that can stigma can be even worse.
I know that no one article can do everything, and this article is still worth the read, but I couldn’t help but walk away feeling- I dunno, unseen and not represented?
LOVE Being Mary Jane
yeah that’s super valid
so.many.articles.
#1–loved the OINTB rape article. so true.
#2–Gwynth (?) Paltrow gf article…very frightening indeed.
Also, am i the only one underwhelmed with Inside Out? I thought it was cool and interesting to see the take on memory, though.
Dude, Inside Out has kind of changed my life. Not really sure why I’ve paid for so many hours of therapy when I could have just watched that haha.
yes exactly
I want a Krispy Kreme donut now and I don’t even like donuts very much.
OITNB article is good. I’m still so bothered by GoT and Downton Abbey.
I want to hear how 47 wind chimes sound. Ridiculous? Annoying? Too loud? Not as loud as one would think they’d be? Relaxing? Like a stampede?
like a stampede. yes. a stampede of sound.
Fucking unusual front doors. I’m obsessed.
I came home to a new front door today and was so thrown off guard, but now the glass gives off so many rainbows I can’t even be mad. And I think three wind chimes are plenty.
my girlfriend cried spontaneously upon seeing this picture of a hairless raccoon, and it is not even dead.
That’s actually really cute!
WHAT THE BLIND HOLY FUCK
That is a racoon? so not what I thought it was…
Never in my life did I expect to lay my eyes on a photo of a hairless raccoon, and never in a million billion years would I ever guess that is what a hairless raccoon would look like.
This is not how I pictured a raccoons face under the fur.
Omg, so weird and cute! What happened to all its hair, I wonder? Racoon pattern baldness? It got drunk and passed out and its racoon buddies shaved it in a ridiculous racoon prank? Inquiring minds want to know!
Usually hairlessness in animals is due to some sort of disease, unfortunately. Or it could be a genetic mutation.
Also, do a Google image search for “hairless bear” if you never want to sleep again.
Y I K E S did someone shave it or is it just hairless like a sphynx cat??
Feeling v haunted by this bald raccoon
*wheeze laughing*
You do you but I will never cry for a raccoon because they terrify me- they’re smart, know how to use tools, and have human hands! What’s to stop on from picking the lock to my front door and then strangling me with it’s tiny opposable thumbs? Or fashioning some sort of weapon with it’s advanced brain and knowledge of tools?!
i mean you make valid points.
That article about the way women talk blew my mind because it’s the first one I’ve seen that takes that approach and makes that argument. And I’ve seen so many to the contrary recently, and was starting to take them to heart, working in non-profit (which is way more business-y than anything I ever planned to be doing).
Also those doors.
PS I love windchimes. I would like to have 3+ windchimes beside the electric blue door plz.
I also think that article was really cool :).
It definitely feels a little bit like policing women when we read so many articles on “how they should or shouldn’t speak” (esp. when there are none out there for men). It’s also interesting to think about where those speech patterns come from and how they can hurt us WITHOUT telling us “in conclusion, we’re gonna tell you how you should behave”.
I think it’s in the same line of looking at our choices regarding clothes / shoes / make up and recognising where it comes from / how it’s perceived WITHOUT slut shaming.
A lot of women feel that it’s unfair that they should shave EVERYWHERE and men don’t have too, yet they can’t help but feel gross if they haven’t shaved. I’m currently trying to unlearn that but that’s MY decision and it shouldn’t be somebody else telling me i’m a bad feminist if I shave !
So I think the language thing is the same issue : the articles shouldn’t be about how vocal fry is HORRIBLE and ugly and makes you look dumb, it should be about : where does it come from ? why are we using it? are we lowering our voices to sound more like men ?
… and then once we understand that information, we get to make a choice about it. ON OUR OWN, like a grown up !
also i’d be really interested in learning / understanding how this particular phenomenon (vocal fry / “valley girl” speak – ugh I hate that term) intersects especially with race.
Am I wrong in thinking it’s typically a white girl thing ? (I really have no idea, I’m French and we have different speech patterns dividing gender/race/Class).
would WOC be more judged (esp. by white men) for “sounding black” or for having “vocal fry”, or would it be a mix of the two ?
really liked the article on how women talk and its conclusion that we talk the way we do because “we are better at being human.”
also, feeling pretty strong about my decision not to date gwyneth paltrow.
I just came in here to say that photo of the raccoon legit freaks me out. Raccoons are scary as fuck.
Ok now I’m going to actually read the article.
oh damn i tried to find a raccoon that was saying less, “i’m dead” or “i’m gonna eat you” and more “huzzah!” or “jazz hands!”
I love the Also.Also.Also section, it is always so varied and yet so relevant to my interests! Reading all these articles will take so long, and I’ve got work to do, so I’ve narrowed it down to my favourite few…dozen :P
I had no idea I liked front doors. But I do!
Stop making us all curious about what this tattoo is :P
I want a front door that is a combination of most of those front doors.
Like just the most ridiculous thing, a door made up of smaller doors and each of the smaller doors is based off of one of the doors in the post.
It would be the ultimate door, door-ception.
Wow, have I said doors enough?
I initially read “the team is appealing” after the link to the Redskins article as “the team is appalling,” and tbh it felt right.
So did I!
A couple pro-soccer players (Erin McLeod and Ella Masar) got married this week. They have cute pictures all over their social media, which seems relevant to everyone’s interests.
I should probably specify that they got married to each other and not to some random dudes or something.
Very relevant to my interests!
It’s gonna be in the Funday! #plan
Gwyneth Paltrow sounds like a bad relationship choice…
Inside Out is a magisterial movie. Truly.
I ate 5 donuts today to celebrate Krispy Kreme’s birthday, but sure, I guess I’ll read the article too
I always save at least two links to Pocket out of these posts, and then I scroll up and save at least one more after reading the comments.
That raccoon thing. I still think it’s hilarious that the hashtag included TO, because what, were they worried there might be a dead raccoon incident in some other city at the same time?
I really need to talk about Tangerine with some queer people.
The OITNB rape article was very good. Thanks for posting x
Awesome Also Also this week, perfect start to my Saturday. Though the Jackie Fusch piece was terrifying, the bystander effect, it describes so much, absolutely chilling.
Thanks for all of this Laneia! I’m exploring the links whilst eating my strawberries & granola and listening to the women of colour playlist. It feels like an enriching morning!
The OITNB rape article is very powerful; I’m looking forward to the Autostraddle exploration of that episode. It was one of the most harrowing episodes of television I’ve ever seen.
My partner & I took our daughter to Inside Out because it’s school holidays here. Goodness gracious Agnes Joseph we were already crying because of Lava (we’re both the volcano guy!) & then blubbed the whole way though . One of the best movies I’ve seen in ages.
Also Serena is amazing. Simply amazing .Disgusting she earns less . At this point they’ll probably make her play left-handed & she’ll still win .
Will try toreads the other articles this weekend.
I just really really love AAA.
thank you!!
Those earbuds are cool and stuff, but I’m waiting for a pair that can turn down tinnitus. Honestly, my ears don’t ring so bad and it’s better than it was last year, but I can’t a) take NSAIDs or anti-histamines, or b) listen to headphones, like, ever again if I want it to stay that way. I know people who have it a lot worse than me, too.
Woah, NSAIDs can impact tinnitus? I feel fortunate that my moderate tinnitus isn’t worse, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Best of luck to you, too!
NSAIDs are ototoxic, and taking them a regularly can worsen tinnitus. I think my doctor warned me away because of something-something I can’t really understand, but I am now very, very careful about which medications I take.
Good luck!
If Gwyneth Paltrow was your girlfriend…literally what did I just read?
I really felt that article on OITNB’s treatment of Pennsatucky’s rape storyline this season. I especially liked the last paragraph:
I want a pair of those sound altering earbuds when they’re in like the fifth generation. They’d be so rad! They talk about adding reverb to everyday situations BUT what if you went to a concert hall and then made it sound like they were playing in your living room??
COMPOSTABLE KEURIG CUPS. My family was gifted a Keurig at a recent holiday by another part of our family that is REALLY strapped for cash and we have felt awful ever since owing to the fact that we are totally not behind the massively destructive and wasteful system of non recyclable k-cups. We never ever use it and feel so bad because they must have really been proud to give us such an expensive thing that they thought we would use all the time (since we do drink coffee every day) and I would be so happy to be able to put it to good use, even if it’s abhorrently expensive.
Um, who do I have to talk to to get a SUPER SQUAD LIKE CAITLYN JENNER??
I still haven’t seen Inside Out and I feel like I’m failing life because of it.
Welp, I done goofed that HTML (as I suspected I might). If anyone could not infer from the context, I was attempting to quote the last paragraph from that OITNB article.
i fixed it! :sparkle emoji:
I’m so confused over the Gwyneth Paltrow article. Is it meant to be satirical?
I loved the article about the way women talk. I have memories of past relationships with men in which I said the word “just” CONSTANTLY, I was so bothered that I used that word so much to communicate with them, but I also couldn’t reconcile another way to say it because using “just” is what I *meant* to say, I didn’t mean it any other way. I struggled a lot with this kind of thing, until I decided that I am going to talk the way that I do, and everyone else is *just* going to have to f*cking listen to me!
Also loved the two pieces on masturbation on television and Penn’s rape scenes in OITNB. I was trying to figure out what was so different about the way OITNB treated these scenes and what was more meaningful, that article put it well into words.
Also thanks for this compilation! I love that these things are like little literature reviews *heart eyes emoji*
Yeah of course AS links the first article I’ve read on rape in TV that actually resonates with me
“Remember when we were pirates” reminds me of that Jenny Owen Youngs song Pirates which gives me lots of good gay feelings.
Remember when we were pirates as a title reminds me of last week when I answered a phone call only to say after the brief hellos “Oh I have your unicorn”. Work is strange. Maybe my unicorn sentence is the B-Side to the Pirates debut single? Also I have wind chime feelings…is there a collective noun for too many? Like an embellishment of wind chimes?
“embellishment of wind chimes” — this sounds good yes, let’s go with this.
I am officially obsessed with those doors. Stupid apartment I can’t paint.
Those doors are snazzy like! Maybe a little impractical, and almost definitely will not feature on any house I have (*sob*) but pretty darn cool!
So many things I want to read, the article on oitnb rape scenes was so good, hit on the reason I just can’t watch some things because of how they seem to regard rape.
Can’t wait to come back and read everything I don’t have time for yet!
I always got called out for my upspeak in grad school. I actually had a professor tell me he thought I couldn’t handle the more difficult theoretical concepts discussed in the class because of how I spoke when he first met me. I mean what a fucking prick.
I got an A by the way.
Personally I think one wind chime can be very chic, but any more – even, say, two or three – is already chaos, so might as well pile them on. Out of hand!
1) That article on female talk is so annoying! From The Cut, I mean, I guess it’s fine, but anything this obtuse about talk and its uses by women…confront the performative!
2) “If Gwyneth Paltrow were your girlfriend, she would laugh at all your gleeful misandrist jokes. “Men are ridiculous,” you’d say, and she would say, “Who, again?””
I fucking love this. And the fact that The Toast filed it to ‘Beauty.’
3) Bookmarking “The Lost Girls” for later reading. Thanks for the links Laneia!
Do you think my neighbors are getting tired of my chanting “S E R E N A. S E R E N A S E R E N A”?
A moment of silence for the racoon…
*raccoon
I bought a crop top to wear to camp, with no intention of wearing it anywhere else. But there were so many amazing crops being rocked at camp, and I felt so comfortable in mine, that I’ve finally started leaving the house in it, rather than just rocking it with yoga pants in my living room. I even layered it over a tank top and wore it to work once! :D
I am SO excited about those biodegradable coffee pods.
I have a very close relationship with my Nespresso, but despite the recycling program for pods that they have, I always end up feeling so guilty. Yay for science!
Whoa. How am I just now learning about Gender Inbetween?
The women talking article was fantastic, and very much needed in the current storm of contradictory thinkpieces on the topic.
And about the windchimes.. maybe they were trying to create a sound wall? A very annoying, tinkly sound wall that says “DON’T ASK ME FOR A CUP OF SUGAR AND ALSO I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO SLEEP AT NIGHT”. Here in AZ, Sedona has this wind chime store where the windchimes actually sound quite beautiful.. some of them are HUGE, and I’ve always wanted one, but like everything in Sedona they’re reeeeally expensive.
The feature image of the jazz-hands racoon is so cute.
All of the images to AS posts are always so good, like above and beyond. Y’all are boss.
I feel as though the whole point of windchimes is to enjoy the combinations of notes which are specifically tuned to sound good together no matter what the random combination…. So, really having more than one in a specific area is just not respecting the art. Maybe two. Ok two is fine.
Really enjoyed the women’s speech article – I took a linguistics class once where the tutor said that the most linguistically innovative group is teenage girls, and as their innovations eventually spread to the mainstream, they actually drive language change in society. Take that upspeak haters!
The female masturbation article was also really interesting (though for god’s sake don’t read the comments). But I’m a Cheerleader was rated NC 17 for that tiny scene implying (not even showing!) Natasha Lyonne masturbating, because apparently women’s sexual agency is utterly terrifying.
ALSO just read the Dorothy Arzner article and it was great – loved Katharine Hepburn saying ‘she wore pants. So did I.’. Can only assume that was the 1930s ‘gal pal’.
I loved Inside Out and I love crop tops. The theme for my 21st birthday party was “feminism and crop tops.”
This week has brought so many badass Spotify playlists into my life. Yessssss.