#InternationalWomensDay2019

I'll be working the door.

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FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
This woman-created, multimedia spectacle features performances and works by 40 artists from
France, Switzerland, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, China, Ukraine, Netherlands, and the US honoring diverse
female icons. Each icon will be brought to life with an original composition, a narrative film and dance.
From Eve to Ishtar, Joan of Arc to Kali, and more, these unique retellings aim to inform, empower,
and inspire. In times of war and conflict, “Bring us your women” is uttered to establish dominance, instill fear,
and subjugate. But underneath is a recognition of women’s strength and Her essential role in society,
whether a neighborhood or a nation. Bring Us Your Women echoes that recognition and expressesreclamation at a time when women around the world are reclaiming their power.

Please consider becoming a supporter!

We're almost ready to print the show program, but we need donations towards defraying production costs. Individual and business sponsorship (levels from $50 to $500) will go a long way towards travel and production expenses. Backed in part by grants from the Passim Iguana Music Fund and the Somerville Arts Council, and in part by local organizations who are granting funds for lighting and sound expenses, the artists, crew and organizers have all donated significant time and talent. We need you! Please consider sponsoring Bring Us Your Women: An Arts Odyssey.

Deadline is 5pm on Tuesday, February 26th.

See the levels of sponsorship (and what you get in return) at http://www.bringusyourwomen.com/sponsor.html.

_________________________________

IF YOU COME:

BRING IS YOUR WOMEN: AN ARTS ODYSSEY
March 8; Doors 7:30 p.m.; Showtime 8:30 p.m.
Tickets are $20 at Somerville Theatre box office or online (other fees may apply).

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Get Yourself A Fairy Godmother

Today I talked with Sharon for nearly three hours. 

"AUNTIE Sharon" is what she'll say to that sentence. Yes, Aunt Sharon, in that she is one of Louie's little sisters (there's a load of other aunts). But Lou is my mother's husband, not my "bio dad" nor my "on paper" father at all, and regarding that fact, the Lombardi family (including those other five aunts) never let me forget it. Not for a day. Except for Sharon. Beautiful, sweet-smelling, musical and creative, Sharon was the first "grown woman" that I knew, besides my mom, that carried a kind of tanglible energy. I don't know if there's an English word for it, but it's like a light...it's a kind of light of love...it's a luminous energy that women know how to exude, and receive, and carry forward to other women. It happens when we hand someone a tampon in the ladies room, or when we catch each others' eyes across a crowded train whenever one of these guys starts acting up (y'all know what I'm saying.) It's how your friend takes your kids after school so you don't go insane if you hear "mom? mom? mom?" one more time, and how your sister-in-law instinctively knows you will take care of her baby. It is like a luminous energy river flowing. So when I was a little girl, Sharon is the first female person, who wasn't my mom, and in fact bore zero relation to me in any way at all, whose flow joined mine, wordlessly. She danced with us, she colored and drew pictures with us. She introduced me to music, art and books that I still own today. Even though I was just the deformed, unwashed little runt that Lou's latest "girl of the week" brought around the house, Sharon had my back, even though she was, actually, just a girl herself.  A teenager when her big brother knocked up my mother, who herself had been a teenager when she'd had me. They were all so young that it boggles the mind to consider what life was like? When Michael was born, Sharon became his cummari. That's pronounced "goomba" and it's Sicilian for "godmother." Michael called her Auntie Sharon. I called her Sharon ("AUNTIE!") but what she won't know until she reads this is that I thought of her as my godmother, too. Because her flow of strong energy was so tangible to me, I knew, if anything ever happened to my mom, Sharon would have taken care of me, too. The Lombardi family made sure I didn't forget I was not a blood relative, but the covenant of a woman's love has nothing to do with blood. Thank you, Sharon. ("AUNTIE.").  ⾎

You May Also Like: If It Ain't One Thing It's Your Mother

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Hot Head v. Cool Head : Who Really Prevails?

I'm among those who did not tune in to the Kavanaugh hearing today, because I've had enough. Of everything. And all these old white men. But I see from all of your posts and tweets that the "honorable" (that's laughable) judge had himself a little mantrum today, is that right? This reporting has been countered by a great deal of "...and they say women are too emotional" memes and wisecracks. It is on this point that I wish to write today; this fantasy fairy-tale that men tell each other about women being "too emotional" for leadership. My experience doesn't bear that out, like, at all. Here is a brief look into just one of my experiences navigating the frail male psyche. You know what, people? Far more often it is we women taking care of business while men are freaking out. Fact. This story is about things that happened in my workplace some years back, and about the male emotions I had to navigate on a daily basis. Most of this, I've kept silent about, until now. - md

Women in male-dominated fields deeply appreciate good "male allies." These days the term used often is "woke men." It's pretty simple: if nobody in the group ever makes anything about gender, then nobody has to get all wrapped up in bullshit. The subject simply never comes up. Imagine that, a workplace where we can simply work side-by-side, everyone listening to everyone else. When it's like that, we get so much more done. Many of my male colleagues were friendly, hard-working, smart and professional. I tend get along with everyone, and I really appreciated all those cool guys with families and dogs and interests and hobbies. We had things to talk about, we were a team. Our all-male sales team, for example, were really cool, and always professional, excellent people and colleagues. 

And then there are the others.

The Frail Male At Work

I worked for, and with, a whole bunch of emotionally frail and insecure men. They worked hard. But professionally they were a disaster. Emotionally, they were underdeveloped. I found myself having to navigate a gang who were sarcastic, dismissive, superior, taunting, good-time party boys who didn't seem to do anything other than drink and work. They didn't know how to work with women, not even a little bit. These are the kind of men who act like they own every place they walk into. And these became the men that the boss eventually came to prefer, bringing together an all-male inner circle that passively and actively closed ranks. For the invited inner circle, work lives extended into social gatherings with some regularity. They would get together over drinks. Lots of drinks. No one else was invited. They developed in-jokes. Important, lasting decisions were made, company roadmaps changed only within the confines of their circle.  

Because the line between this alcohol-fueled camaraderie and our workplace had been obliterated, the boss stopped listening to anyone other than those men. He changed, after years of working side by side with me on a somewhat professional basis, he had gravitated towards his ilk like moth to flame. Having all these alpha men around, he had found his squad. Morale outside the circle fell apart. The rest of us, even the "good male allies," couldn't tell the boss anything anymore. Fully ousted, some of us would say "Did you try telling him with a beer in your hand?" We were only half joking. Gallows humor, I suppose. It took a few years, but gradually, with the boss seeming to have found the all-male element that he liked better, the workplace culture changed. He hired more and more of the same kind of men. He inserted some of them as management, some of them as partners (above me) and that's when everything went wrong.

Toxic Dynamics

We were only all together a few times a year, on trips to trade shows where a group of around sixty of us worked the company booth. The Vegas trips were the worst. They went out every night. They drank thousands of dollars' worth of expense reports. More than a few times, one or more of these guys would not even make it to the booth the next day. Just not show up to work because of partying too hard. I'd overhear that one of them didn't come back to the room at all, I'd hear that another was "found on the floor in the bathroom." Celebrating their lack of self control was normal to them. Tales of their escapades were told, and everybody would get a big laugh. It is inconceivable to me that such a person could keep his job, but there you have it: the wide, vast leeway given to men. I can only imagine what would have happened if a woman acted that way in a work setting.

Consider the group dynamics of all these white men, half over the age of forty. Think of these swaggering men drinking, driving around, trading stories and one-upping each other with locker room style jokes. Now imagine being the lone woman in the mix. What do I say when they openly make comments about women's looks, including the contractors with whom we were working side-by-side during the trade show? Do I ignore or do I engage? What should I do when they announce they're going to strip clubs that night? Am I supposed to hope they invite me or pray to God they fucking don't? And how should I act during breakfast the day after where the in-jokes prevailed?

Eventually I just stopped meeting up with them outside of work hours. That either helped or didn't, depending on how you look at it.

Profiles in Misogyny

One time, the lot of us had been put up at a very nice accommodation that, it turned out, was only nice on the surface. It was actually a dump, run by a shady organization, and staying at that place caused total disruption in our work week and annoyed all of us a great deal. There were malfunctioning key cards, dirty rooms, no hot water, no cold water, parking problems, some of our people were hassled by security, and so forth. Staying at that place was a nightmare, so tensions were high. 

That nightmare week all came to a head one evening when a bunch of us returned after working all day to find that our rooms had been entered, our things moved around and riffled through by someone unknown. Worse, some of the rooms had been padlocked due to some lawsuit between the rental agency and the condo association, so my people couldn't even get inside their rooms. Phone calls to the rental agency went unanswered. One of my guys had a pre-dawn flight, and here we stand with all his things padlocked inside his room. This was supposed to be dinner time, and instead of going to dinner we all stood wondering what to do next. Everybody was trying to think of something. We called the police, and then we waited. 

Me and the three boss men stood in a circle discussing the situation. 

Boss #3 said something to the effect of "Well this is weird, isn't it, I don't know how to react to someone being in my room then locking me out of it." 

Boss #2 said something sensible in response to that comment, but I don't remember what he said by way of consensus.

And then I agreed and added, "I don't know how safe I feel sleeping here tonight." That's when Boss #1 whirled on me, red-faced, mouth a rictus of hate. He practically spat the words, "MICHELLE, YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!" People stopped and looked. There was a moment of stunned silence. Because three adults had just spoken, in the same conversational tone, about the same topic. No reaction until I spoke, unleashing some seething rage. He went on, "WE ALL JUST WANT TO GO HAVE A NICE DINNER AND YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!" 

I was embarrassed in the moment, but humiliated for the greater impact of this kind of targeting. The boss was cultivating a dynamic where it was acceptable to belittle, dismiss and yell at me in particular. He was reveling in his newfound role as an outwardly hostile misogynist with no control over his emotions. The few women in the mix bore the brunt of his rage. We would consult each other about the problem. We used to say "He holds it all in until he sees the nearest woman."

Big Man, Little Man

I knew that he was a hothead way before all this male-dominated toxicity was introduced into the workplace dynamic. Early on, several of his former employees took me aside to warn me. Sensing my resolve, one of them, on his way out the door, said plainly, "You can't change him."

The first incident happened about a month after I started. One day, at the peak of a particularly foul mood, he let out a bellow, furious over something (I thought maybe some cables were tangled, he hates that). And with that bellow, he swept his arm across his desk, sending everything on it crashing to the floor in a jumbled heap. Laptop, phone, all of it. He stormed out and I cleaned up the mess wordlessly. We never spoke of it. Years later I found out that he had lost an envelope containing two thousand dollars in cash that day. His wife told me about it during a work party. I got the sense that she'd been holding onto it, that is still bothered her. She told it from her perspective in a roundabout way, saying that she'd been annoyed with him over it, and she said she'd told him it wasn't fair to me. This all took a moment to process. "Fair...to me?" Imagine my surprise when she told me that he'd assumed I'd stolen the cash.

Imagine me sticking with this guy for so many years, full knowledge that I worked for a boss whose idea for handling a tricky situation was a full day stomping, muttering, slamming-things-around. What kind of man doesn't simply say that he'd lost some money and ask for help finding it.

For the record, I've never stolen anything in my life.

"I Don't Want To Answer Any Questions"

I knew that he was wired differently on my first day. With just the two of us there in the small office where we started out, he asked me to ship something overnight. I asked, "Do you use UPS or Fed Ex for shipping?" Pretty basic piece of knowledge one might wish to share with the person you'd hired just yesterday. He said, "I don't want to answer any questions." Our desks faced each other. First day on the job, face to face with a person acting as though I wasn't there at all.

For some reason I didn't just stand up and walk the hell out of that place. What I did was say to myself, "this guy needs major help." 

So I helped. That day I called local carriers and asked them all if this company had an account. Turned out it was Fed Ex. Next day, I set up UPS instead. Then I set up a proper international freight carrier and ordered the necessary loading dock supplies. After that, I set up a global logistics system, back office administration, developed the first CRM (Filemaker, y'all). We grew the company. We figured out billing and accounts, warranty returns and an HR policy. We picked a phone system and a health care plan. First we hired one person. Then two more. We doubled that in three years, then doubled that again the next year. We moved to a bigger space. Whatever needed doing, we both did. We cultivated relationships with dealers, vendors and customers, we made endless pots of coffee, we answered the phone, we ran out to Staples for supplies. We worked around the clock. "I go home when you go home," I would say in those days. 

Mistaking Motion for Action

He'd come running in with a full head of steam telling me about the latest thing that was on fire. Before I could even open my mouth, he would yell "I'M SERIOUS, MICHELLE!" This happened a lot. I knew his thinking; to someone so kinetic, he thought that I was not reacting. "I know you're serious," I would reply, reaching for the phone to start working on an actual solution. I don't see the point of panic. Taking control of the situation, rather than running around like my ass was on fire, was then and always will be, my mode. "What would he do," I wondered, "if one of these times I jumped up and started yelling, too." Isn't that a thing parents try with toddlers, where they'll get down on the floor and mimic the kid's tantrum? 

He often confused people and then would become angry at them for not understanding, so I interpreted him for the others. "Give him two choices and the price, that's it," I counseled, knowing that too many details overwhelm him. And something I'd been told by a former employee, I would dutifully pass along: "Whenever he says 'Somehow or other we need to...'" I told people, "that means he wants you to do whatever it is. Today. "

He liked to call everything a "crisis." I think I heard the word "crisis" more than real crisis workers. I can't even speculate about the number of times he would call me in the morning when I was en route to the office saying "All hell is breaking loose!" When I'd arrive, no hell was ever, in fact, breaking loose. Just the usual fires to put out. I learned that "all hell is breaking loose!" might mean "where do we keep the stamps?" or "we are out of coffee"or "I forgot my anniversary" or "there is no way we're going to make this release date."  

The Nearest Woman

By nature I'm a calm person, and I was always a hard worker, a dedicated problem-solver. I rarely raise my voice. Freaking out is not now, and has never been, my style. I resolve issues without becoming part of the issue myself, and when you have clients in crisis and people to engage, freaking out helps no one. But what to do when the boss thrives on chaos and confusion? When he considers not-freaking-out a major flaw, that in itself becomes an issue. A whirlwind of chaos does not solve problems. Motion is not the same thing as action. He would regularly go on rage-walks around the office. He'd stomp, swear, throw things, yell at the nearest woman even if she didn't have anything to do with the problem he was having. Even in the later years when there were two additional women, the person upon whom he would direct his emotional outbursts was mostly me.

One afternoon he came tearing into the office of another co-worker, where I was holding a small meeting. We could hear him coming, because he was screaming my name. He was looking for me. He burst in, saying "THIS ISN'T WORKING!" What wasn't working was this: at 9am he had sent an email to the Tech Support address that reached 34 people...all men...but not one of them had replied. I guess he'd waited all day and it was now 4pm. While the situation was unfortunate, the person who needed to know about "this isn't working" was the Tech Support Manager (a man) whose office he'd run past while coming to find me to yell at instead. Someone should have been held responsible, but apparently the wrongdoing wasn't on the part of any of those men. He needed to find me in order to unleash the rage he felt towards them. 

I'm definitely leaving out many, many other examples when this man, and other emotionally underdeveloped men he brought on board, behaved similarly. This was clearly a situation that I should have left, but I gritted my teeth and worked through the misogyny and I stayed at this company. That would turn out to be a very bad decision, but at the time, I had not yet realized the extent of the mental stress, nor could I foresee what would happen several years later as a result of remaining in such a toxic place for so many years. It got bad, then worse, then impossible.
 
Sometimes It Was Funny

One time we heard someone say, by way of greeting him in the morning, "Hi!" and his answer was a terse, "What's good about it" and then he slammed his office door. Get that? You see, he had become so emotionally worked up over something that he arrived at work ready to be mean to the first person who spoke. Maybe he rehearsed it on the way in, and since he expected a "good morning," he went with his rehearsed mean-ass retort. Comedy gold.

 "Hi!" 

"What's good about it."

Another time, I was ordered to pretend to go along with a terrible plan (the worst kind, one that would waste time AND money) because one of the men had thought of it, and the boss said that it was very important that I make sure to "stroke his ego." Um...no, I'm not going to stroke anything. Nothing will I stroke. Another time, one of them walked all the way back to the office from the grocery store (about a five minute walk) to ask me where the grocery store keeps the bags of peanuts still in their shells. I had no idea, but..."...Produce section, maybe?" not even bothering with why ask me rather than someone who actually works at the grocery store. Another time, another one of these guys called me from the airport in the middle of the night sobbing because his luggage had been lost. These are grown men.
 

Boiled Frog Syndrome 

Without even thinking about it, I had let myself become the buffer for the boss' unchecked emotional fits. I had learned to hear from his silence what he wanted, and I had developed ways to "manage" him so as to minimize the impact on the others. I shock-absorbed him, putting myself between his emotional, reactionary behavior and our dealers, end users, sales staff and other employees. "Don't send whatever email you're typing," I would say quietly, passing through with the mail and noticing that he was furiously banging on the keyboard with his face veins bulging. "You can't fire him, not without first telling him that you're unhappy with his code and giving him two weeks to improve," I had to say about one of the developers he grew enraged about, someone he was about to fire on the spot for something that poor developer didn't even know was an issue yet. I would go get him some lunch and put it on his desk, because he was always on a diet and skipping meals, which made him lightheaded and grumpy. Or I would bring some kind of good chocolate (he was an 80% and higher dark chocolate kind of guy) when I could tell his afternoon mood was looking like it might turn foul. Another check in the "plus" column for God's gift of chocolate. It isn't so much because I wanted to bring him chocolate. It was because we were always on deadlines and I needed him working, not ranting. That's the thing: when he was focused, he was brilliant. The rest...well, sometimes there wasn't enough chocolate.

The situation escalated in the final three to four years. The heat turned up, but I continued to focus on the good, nose to grindstone trying to do the best job possible. So focused, I let myself become the fabled frog who gets boiled alive because the water temperature gets increased by degrees. All those years, I never realized just how serious of a toll this was taking on my mental health. Not until later. Far too late. This experience broke me, in fact I've never been the same since. I shattered. I fell apart. And it wasn't because I was ever emotionally frail. It was because I'd had to be twice as strong, constantly, for years on end, to compensate for these men melting down all the time. 

I Am Not Your Mother

The boss split his time between being angered by my steady demeanor, and acting grudgingly grateful that I was organized, and that one of us could handle a "crisis" without falling apart. I put out fires daily, both real and imagined. His moods, I took all in stride. On his emotional roller coaster, I was resilient. I was "fine with it." Until I wasn't.

Not only was I one of the few women at all, but the only woman considered a "senior" staffer. My title, however, did nothing to alleviate the more asshole-ish of the guys from treating me like some sort of den mother on those trade show trips, rather than as a colleague and professional. I organized and ran the whole shebang. For a job well done, I didn't get handshakes and claps on the back; I got "thanks for looking after us." Most didn't fully grasp my seniority and thought my job was "looking after" the men, seeing to their comfort and needs. None of the men who knew better ever uttered a word to combat that view of my role, and the shitty way the boss talked to me in their presence sure didn't help. How, after all my hard work, do you think that feels?  

Near the end, the situation had begun to escalate and it all got to be too much for me. After my resolve had begun to break down, as I found it increasingly harder to withstand the constant buffeting of all this male sturm und drang on a daily basis, I did sit down with him in a series of meetings. He knew that I was unhappy. He agreed to talk about it. He let me tell my grievances. About the misogyny. The yelling. The obvious lack of respect. The "thanks for looking after us" kind of comments and shitty behavior when we all got together at the trade shows. "It comes from the top," I appealed during one such meeting. "The guys all look to you to see how you treat me." I tried everything to reach him, because we had worked side by side for so many years before all these others came on board. Before the dynamic seemed to change in favor of a male-oriented one that felt uncomfortable, unfair and fraught. 

I Am Not Your Wife

During one meeting he tried to tell me that I had done a poor job of making him understand how toxic the work environment had become. He went on to specify that his wife is a very loud woman, and that she screams at him all the time, so I should, too, if I wanted to be heard. That's how he capitulated that perhaps he was flawed, but not because he ignored, talked over, or yelled at women. Rather, he claimed he acted that way because he was used to being screamed at by his wife and so anything less than full-throated bellowing was lost on him. 

I informed him that I did not plan on acting like he's describing his wife as acting, at work or anywhere else.

Being told that I should act like his wife was more than unsettling, so for the next meeting (as it turns out, the final one of these meetings) I brought a witness. I asked one of the "good" male allies to please come in with me, and he did so. During that last meeting, I did become tearful, emotional, and louder than usual. And guess what? Boss inquired after my mental health, framing my fraught state and tears in such a way that...well, let's not mince words. This goddamn fool suggested that I was the one who was unreasonable and emotionally unstable, and that perhaps it would be a good idea if I sought the help of a psychiatrist.

Good Women Don't Matter To Bad Men

He fired me early on a Friday morning after I came back strong against another one of his misogynist rants over email. I was gone before anyone else arrived at the office, and he and I have not spoken since. 

Lord knows what he told everyone about that morning. What, for that matter, has he told himself? I heard that my sudden termination sent shock waves around the company. I'm sure partially because I'd been his right hand person since the early days back when it was just the two of us, and partially because the others, women as well as "woke men," were well aware of everything that had been going on. I also know that more than half the staff left within 18 months of my firing. Most of these men sent me genuine, heartfelt notes with messages of well-wishes. "I'm a free man!" one said. Another wrote, "I was always hoping for your sake that you would quit, glad for mine that you didn't, because you really made the whole experience a lot better, but I knew it wasn't healthy for you." Another wrote, "I feel a bit gutted I wasted 10 years on it all." There were others, men and women. The departed told shocking anecdotes about the giant me-sized hole that had been left, and how impossibly toxic the place had become without my steady hand. Cold comfort, as my life had fallen into shards by then. I am still picking up the pieces.

Men, specifically white men, are granted infinite freedom to act out on every impulse. They are socialized to feel entitled to indulging their every whim without consequence. They don't see themselves as emotionally fragile lunatics when they rant and rave like Kavanaugh did today. They protect each other. As women, if we say nothing at all, we're later told we should have. When we do say something, our method, tone, time and place are picked apart. If we press on and continue to say something, we become a problem that needs to be dealt with, in my case, fired. A woman expressing any sort of emotion at all? Forget about it, she's hysterical and needs to see a psychiatrist.

But yeah, please, let's keep talking about the emotional frailty of women.∎

Related: Me and the Loony Bin

Related: I Love My Job

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I'm a Blogger On My Mother's Side?

We do not have your typical mother-daughter relationship, JoAnna and I, to say the least. If I tell most people even one thing about my mom, they think I must be making her up. Like my weird and awesome imaginary friend. But she's real! What we lack in tradition, we certainly make up for in...well I don't have a word for it yet. Take today's realization, okay? You guys will get a kick out of this. This is bananaballz. And this could not possibly be more fitting a discovery on Mother's Day.

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You Don't Know Rosie

This is not Rosie.

Rosie the Riveter, and the perpetuated myth about who she was and what she stands for, is an example of "collective misconception," the phenomena known as the Mandela Effect. 

This is Rosie.

The Mandela Effect is a societal phenomenon where a group of  people repeat a false thing so many times, others pick it up and keep repeating it, and then eventually the false thing "becomes true." It is kind of terrifying.

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Rape Culture Infographic

WomensMarchMN

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DONALD TRUMP: AMERICAN TRAGEDY

For decades, women had been risking their careers and reputations coming forward to tell their stories about being cornered and assaulted by Donald Trump, the tacky New York luxury real estate guy turned TV show host. When the Access Hollywood tape was made public in October 2016, Donald Trump was caught bragging about his self-appointed right to sexually assault any woman that he happened to find attractive. I was like, "People are seriously considering this clown? For PRESIDENT. Of. The United States of America. Well, you can kiss that "United" part goodbye, that's a fact." I got, "Oh, give him a chance." What. Knuckleheads.

This daft, unqualified Republican candidate simply scoffed away the seriousness of these accusations with his usual braggadocio. He appeared in public rolling his eyes and smirking, mocking and denigrating any and all, but especially women, who reported the facts. Any individual who spoke out against his habitual sexual misconduct became a "hater" spreading "fake news." Every crowd of protesters became paid actors or shills for the liberal agenda. Unbelievably, this clumsy tactic worked. He should be in court today, but he is, absurdly, in the oval office. With no experience at all and a cartoonish platform, this buffoon has become the leader of the free world. On a platform of what? There was hatred for Obama, the notion of a wall like something out of a Roadrunner cartoon, and in his own words, "I am very very rich" and "I married a beautiful piece of ass." 

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Let Them Wear Buns

If you're a card-carrying feminist and you're mocking the so-called "man bun," then you can turn in your card. Right now, no feminist card if you're mocking his bun. What? Why? One more time for the bitches in the back of the room, here's the bold type.

The Bold Type

We will never reach true equity until men have the same access, without mockery, to feminine tropes as women do for the masculine ones. The "man bun" is just a bun, the same as any woman can wear a "pageboy" haircut, buzz cut, a tie, or, you know, pants.

Entirely aside from FEMINISM, which you're doing wrong if you're still reading and aren't convinced, is this: Girl, you sound ancient. You sound older than a dust fart. SO old, like when The Beatles were considered to have long hair and "the adults" would go nuts over how long their hair was! My mom told me. She laughs at how OLD all those adults sounded, vis a vis the Beatles' "long" hair. Well sis, that's what you sound like to me, if you're making fun of buns. Not to mention...dude...this takes so little brainpower to understand. It is so simple: Men with long hair have all of the exact same reasons as women do for taming the wild mane...why wouldn't they? What on earth does it mean to you, to think that their hair is any differently-enabled than your hair when it comes to getting it up, out of the way? So next time you raise up your arms to pull your bonny lockage into a scrunchie for the upteenth time this week, pause for a second, and imagine there's some people about to make fun of you for it. That is all.

PS: Any man walking around on the street in flip-flops, though. You are free to point and laugh at THEM all day. That shit is ridiculous. But let them wear buns. ⚥

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Happy Birthday, Lucille Ball

You fantastic, immortal superwoman.
The world would be so beige without your brilliance.
Happy Birthday, Lucille Ball!

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The Invention of Mothers: What About Your Husband?

"You need to give him children. What are you scared of? Responsibility?" 

These are actual words said to me yesterday. By a total stranger. In the park. It's astonishing to me that anyone feels entitled to lecture women about something so personal. I am 47 years old. It is 2017. Are you freakin' kidding me.

Yesterday's Child-demander

I took a walk with my sketchbook. I got a kale smoothie and stopped on a park bench. People were out and about, walking dogs and strollers, riding bikes and generally participating in the pastimes that make up a sunny Sunday in the city. It was a nice day.  I did not set out expecting yet another battle in the whole "Virgin/Mother/Whore" war, with yet another man who ain't got a clue.

I'm personally of the belief that to expect a come-on every single time a man talks to me is not fair, "not all men," yadda yadda, so for the simple reason that I don't wanna be a dick, I am always friendly to strangers. When today's stranger sat a respectable distance, on the next park bench, I lobbed back "nice lady" rejoinders. I inserted "my husband" as soon as I could fit it plausibly into the conversation, which is a woman's gentle just-in-case'ism because we have learned how guys can turn instantly vicious if, in their mind, we've "led them on." Shit, these men make it SO HARD to be polite, don't they? He told me he was from Morocco, that he'd just moved to the neighborhood, where did I live? I waved in the general direction of our apartment. That's when the interrogation kicked into high gear.  

Do you have children?
No.  
Why not?
Because I don't want to have any children. 
CAN you have them? 
I don't know...? and I'm sure the look on my face said, "...this is getting weird because a man I've never met is asking about my reproductive organs in the park. He, amazingly, pressed on.

Why don't you have children!?
It's not the life for me. I'm not cut out for it. 
What about your husband?
He does not want children either. 
You need to give him children  What are you scared of? Responsibility?!

Wait, Do Men Think They Own Motherhood?

I'm not scared of kids. Kids love me, I like to hang out with them sometimes, but then I need to go home where it's quiet. And I'm not scared of responsibility. Lucille Ball said "Responsibility is the ability to respond." Well, childless women (alone, rarely men) have had to respond to this line of questioning for soooo long. I am sick. Of. It. Please let Gen X be the last of this shit.

Men? Back the Hell Off

It's pushy enough when it comes from aunts and stuff, but when YOU do this to childless women, you're taking yet another stride in your aggressive muscling-out of our own agency. You dudes feel way too comfortable sticking your nose in our business, from how we wear our hair to THIS.

Why do men think a women's personal lifestyle choice is their purview in any way, whatsoever? Here a man who has happened across a woman alone in the park demands personal information. What would have happened if I stood up and dumped my smoothie on his ridiculous head. 

It gets better. "Do YOU?" I finally asked. This guy has three children. By two different ex-wives, in West Virginia and New York. He didn't know ANYTHING about his kids except for their names. Not what grades they're in, what sports they like, what music, do they have pets? He isn't in their lives. At all. He never sees them.  He never sees them. He never sees them. Please, by all means, tell me more about responsibility. What a total jerk. ⧫

Related:
The Mommy Problem ("I Hate Jake's Turn")

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If It Ain't One Thing It's Your Mother

Today is my mom's birthday! I called her first thing this morning to wish her a happy day. Because it's a Saturday, Louie doesn't have to work, so she has the whole day planned. But first, out to breakfast, so she had to get off the phone. We set a time to talk next week. When we do I'll ask how today's plan turned out. There is always a story. 

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Make Our Own Contribution

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Do Something Splendid

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Strong Female Characters

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Believe In What You Do

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The Revolution Will Be Digitized (Because F**k This Guy)

Every generation needs to find a way to come to terms with its dark years. Slavery, Chinese encampment, Japanese persecution. Here is what people have been asking themselves throughout the recorded history of humans: "If I were alive during [mass persecution of any one group] and saw what was happening, what would I have done?" Three weeks into the Trump administration, you no longer have to wonder what you would have done. What you are doing right now is what you would have done.

Mankind reels with every reign of ruthless fear-mongers and their followers, then we study the events for decades so that we can figure out what went so horribly wrong. Statesmen debate and scholars write stentorian tomes about what critical path led to so many wrong choices that it seemed like a good idea to enable and support the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Stalins of the world. How do we keep crowning these pompous, deadly would-be kings?

And then there's America. What happened? Who looks at a Donald Trump and says hey, yeah, THIS is our leader, for sure. The unqualified buffoon was elected on a platform of anti-everything except his own interests. Donald Trump is just some tacky real estate quasi-millionaire that has more money than class, and knows exactly squat about the job he's been "elected" to do. Donald Trump chooses to be a crude, loudmouth braggart over being a decent person, because that's what he thinks it means to be a man. He's no leader. He is without honor. All he has ever wanted is the world's largest audience to know his name. He's gotten that, for all the wrong reasons. Wow.

One might think that certain Americans fail to make the connection between "then" and "now" in any meaningful way. Why is that? All that most Americans want is for our darkest years to be behind us. From "America the Beautiful" to the "shining city on a hill," we strive as a people to lead by example in civil rights, freedom and due process.The intention is so sincere, but how we make that happen is a big mystery. Only it's really not. It starts in first grade.

Education: We're Doing It Wrong 

Early childhood education has done, and is still doing, a gargantuan disservice to America and in turn the world, and nobody seems to care. What a shame. We need to do better. We should teach American history to kids in an accurate way, including the harder facts. In fact, these facts, when learned and discussed, will make it even easier to teach all of the greatness that followed: if you connect HISTORY with ART HISTORY and literature, poetry and music, then we'll be turning out some better-adjusted, level-headed kids who have a chance at developing critical thinking. What we're doing is the opposite of that. For example? Thanksgiving is bullshit.

🦃

I said what I said. Thanksgiving is Bullshit

Here's a message from Generation X: Our history books were ridiculous. Teaching American children an entirely fictionalized Thanksgiving story as though it were actual history for hundreds of years is the sort of casual propagandizing that poses problems for literally all of mankind. Instead of teaching the real history to its kids, the American education system went a whole 'nother way. They all got together and came up with these ridiculous fairy-tales instead, and those were repeated and perpetuated. How come we don't call it what it was? A massive disinformation campaign. The so-called history of Thanksgiving they taught us is nothing but myth, sold as factual, and it is a perfect example of how we were steered entirely wrong on some major, important stuff. What tales were told, what facts we were graded upon, we had to spend the rest of our lives figuring out how to "un-know." It's been exhausting. We're exhausted, just so you know.

Even the Brady Bunch got involved.

Instead of corn and turkeys, that history lesson should go like this:

"Disgruntled religious fanatics sailed ashore from Europe, some bragging that they'd found India. Even when that claim was found to be wholly incorrect, later colonists still insisted upon calling the natives "Indians" and "savages." This would later be written about by historians as an early harbinger of a new kind of American "identity politics" that carried forward and continues today, wherein whole groups of people would be systematically dehumanized by those in power, in order to justify murder and call it a good deed. In the century that followed, the colonists spoke of noble ideas, but the newcomers played dirty. For example, a gift of warm blankets were deliberately disease-ridden, meant to kill off many natives. Whoever survived, they slaughtered or drove off, then called their land "real estate" and that's why we have Donald Trump.

The colonists built churches in which to congregate and praise themselves for being such good people. At times they were good people...in addition to all that bloodshed, also they invented democracy, started many libraries, colleges and universities and wrote the Bill of Rights." 

My generation got the same short-shrift in history of slavery, women's rights and a whole host of other fraught topics. Stop teaching cutesy fables about American history, because we tried that and it is not working out.

North and South

Here's another example. Why does Bubba not know that the biggest affront to the American flag is his Confederate flag? Bubba doesn't know that he's flying the wrong flag. No one taught him that Robert E Lee was a traitor to America. Not a hero. Bubba's history book was ridiculous, and NOW WE HAVE DONALD TRUMP. That's your fault, Education people. You did that. American History is largely horrifying but we need to be teaching the truth about it, as atrocious as our forebears acted a great deal of the time. But think of what gets opened up, then, once the atrocity is taught and discussed. That's when teachers have the opportunity to teach ideas, not rote memorization of dates. Teach great ideas of evolving civilization, not rote memorization of state and country capitals. Teach history in such a way that people will understand how repeating the unjust parts will affect the country and the world. All of it,  from the first Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock to the War of 1812 to the American Revolution to the 60s up through today. Teach when the gears of progress attempted to atone for past atrocities, and what we learned as a people. 

Hope in the Golden Age of Content

Up to Generation X, the nation's leaders decided what was taught and that became our textbook, end of story. But now, more than at any time in our history, we all have access to literally everything and it's right in our pockets. We have all the books. We have all the music. We have all the art. "Knowing" is here to stay, and this is the first time "knowing" is democratic. At one time, only wealthy people had access. But now "knowing" has been democratized, to the point where a wrong fact can be instantly Googled and refuted. It's a whole new age, and isn't it wonderful? Not only do we have access to the whole of history in our pockets, but we can tell each other about it, and talk about it real-time. We can unpack current events with lightning speed now.  We have this 24/7, cross-generational, income-agnostic way to communicate real-time. As much as it can suck living our lives tethered to the digital omnisphere, technology connects us to each other as individuals, and connects modern civilization to our fraught past. Social media amplifies the great numbers saying "Not today, motherfucker." Twitter, Facebook, Podcasts and Youtube give us this cloud-based babel fish. [Related: tba]

Boston Then

How hard must it have been to generate a resistance in Boston over two centuries ago. Wow. Even sending coded messages at the speed of a strong horse-and-rider, they would have used extreme caution, never knowing friend or foe since that kind of backtalk could get you shot for treason. The Boston Tea Party is a pretty big feature in the American timeline. That's when a different kind of first shot was fired back, at tyranny of the elite. Enough people got together that were finally sick enough of the king's shit that they didn't care anymore about his man-baby reaction. Did those rebels know what would happen the next day, or the next century? Did you know that the tea party numbered only 144 people who were all "fuck this guy"?

Boston Now

Did you see how fast that January 21 Women's March got rolling? It boggles, the insane logistics that must have gone into pulling together a march so global. There was the building and promoting of a responsive website, Twitter and Facebook pages. They needed city permits, awareness-building on a nationwide level. People made travel plans, carpooled to DC. And what began in DC spread to the nation's cities. Then it went global right down to the pussyhats. People from Boston to Belgrade knitted their asses off. Stores sold out of poster board and pink yarn. People who have never marched for anything in their lives, linked up and made themselves known. Strength, courage. In numbers. All in about five weeks' time from idea to the biggest global rally in the history of the world. This means something. This means everything. This time, in Boston we were 120,000 to 150,00 strong, because fuck this guy.

The Revolution Will Be Digitized

If you've been paying attention, not just now but this whole time you've been alive, you'll recognize that the situation in America has reached grave proportions. As a nation we are in serious, historical trouble here. We are in the next-level kind of trouble that will take centuries to resolve should we continue to make the wrong choices. Choice as individuals, as our family values, and choice as a united nation.

When you learned about Hitler, you may not have caught that if Czechoslovakia had not given Hitler the Sudetenland, the dark years that followed might have been avoided. Good people believed Hitler when he promised that he would go no further. The lesson "Liars are always the wrong choice" still hasn't sunk in AND NOW WE HAVE DONALD TRUMP.

He's got to go. Because, seriously, fuck that guy. ∎

"The revolution will be digitized." - Goddamn Glenn (Photo by Honey Pie)

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